The City of London Corporation’s planning committee has voted unanimously to approve proposals for the renewal and extension of the Grade II-listed Ibex House, located on the Minories.
Completed in 1935, Ibex House is a rare survivor of the fashionable ‘Streamline Modern’ movement, designed with striking horizontal lines and curved corners.
Working with our client, Henderson Park and Dukelease Properties, AHMM will return this iconic building to ‘best-in-class’ office provision, with a sensitive and discreet multi-layered approach, including a pair of refined single storey pavilions at ground, and another at roof level. The refurbishment will provide increased access to the building on three sides, with a new community space at ground floor.
The proposals have sustainability at the centre of the design approach, seeking to minimise operational and embodied carbon emissions through reusing existing fabric, re-introducing natural ventilation, substantially improving energy performance with high performance glazing and insulation, and moving away from gas to become an all-electric building. The development will achieve a significant reduction in operational carbon emissions, meeting the GLA’s Net Zero target, and providing bike parking to London Plan standards for new buildings.
Terraces have been incorporated to support the wellbeing of occupiers. Planting is integrated to sunken lightwells and roofs of the street-level pavilions, adding a degree of softness to the street scene and creating a green corridor with Portsoken Street Garden to the south, connecting to the World Heritage Site of the Tower of London beyond.
Waltham Forest planning committee has voted unanimously to approve AHMM’s proposals for the redevelopment of the site at No 1 Blackhorse Lane in north east London. The proposed building for Scape Living will deliver innovative co-living accommodation for 272 residential apartments with a series of shared residential amenity spaces. The project also provides a new cultural venue for Waltham Forest, enabling the site to continue its tradition of providing entertainment to the local area by replacing the vacant pub and much-loved music and comedy venue that previously occupied the site.
The proposed scheme presents a different urban approach to a key junction in the area with a series of stepped planted terraces that seeks to mediate between the established low rise residential buildings along Forest Road to the east and the newer taller buildings of the Blackhorse Lane Masterplan to the west. Developed with landscape architects East, this articulated massing provides each floor with an outside terrace and the form of the building tiers up and encloses a south facing central landscaped courtyard adjacent to the shared amenity spaces of the building. Articulated brick horizontal banding emphasises the stepped approach and the building is set on a colonnade providing further public realm up to and around the building.
Lansdowne House, 330 Gray’s Inn Road and the Alder Centre for Child Bereavement were named WAF Awards category winners at last week’s World Architecture Festival. On the festival’s first day, Lansdowne House, a major new office building for developer CO-RE located on the historic Berkeley Square in Mayfair, won the Future Project: Office category; while the Alder Centre, which offers a unique place for counselling and wellbeing for people who have experienced the loss of a child, won the INSIDE: Health category. On day two, 330 Gray’s Inn Road, a masterplan for the former Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in the King’s Cross, won the Future Project: Commercial Mixed Use Award.
Held this time in Lisbon, this year’s Festival was the first in-person event since 2019 – read more about it here.
AHMM has participated in this year’s Gingerbread City, a model metropolis made of gingerbread ‘plots’ designed, baked and assembled by teams representing more than 100 architecture and design practices. Choosing the railway station plot, and addressing the theme of the climate crisis and sustainable construction, the AHMM team interpreted the traditional Victorian train station typology with energy-efficient, regenerative principles in mind, incorporating isomalt solar panels and ginger wind turbines into the liquorice station structure.
Now in its sixth year, Gingerbread City is organised by the Museum of Architecture, a charity dedicated to finding new ways for the public to engage with architecture and to encourage entrepreneurship within architectural practice to stimulate learning, collaboration and action. The exhibition is on display at 6-7 Motcomb Street, London until 3 January - read more about it and book exhibition tickets here.
AHMM’s design centre for brick merchant EH Smith was named Retail Space winner at this year’s FX Design Awards, held last night (30 November). The centre in Clerkenwell was conceived as a showcase, workshop and event space for EH Smith, which is one of the UK’s largest independent builders’ merchants and brick suppliers, and it has transformed the existing brick-clad building into a welcoming space where architects, designers and homeowners can explore and choose from the range of clay products. Organised by FX Magazine, the FX Design Awards celebrate the year’s best British and international interiors projects and products – read more about them here.
AHMM’s recent collaboration with Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children has been recognised at Open City’s Architecture in Schools Awards. The Architecture in Schools programme aims to inspire the next generation of architects and city designers by partnering Key Stage 2 primary school pupils with design professionals, who work closely with them to explore buildings and cities and develop design and modelling skills to understand the places around them. AHMM teamed up with Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children, which is based in King’s Cross; Year 5 and 6 children were studying the Romans as their core topic for the first half of the autumn term, so the AHMM team worked with the children to explore Roman architecture, including materials and approaches to design, through ‘Reimagining Londinium’. Following a visit to the Mithraeum, where the children discovered that much of Roman London remains beneath our feet, the children worked with the AHMM team to make a series of models of Roman buildings, and in a second workshop they considered elements, principles and materials used by the Romans to create models of their own contemporary buildings.
Our collaboration with St Francis Catholic Primary School, Newham was also commended within the programme for its approach to sustainability. The children had as their brief imagining and reimagining new and existing connections across the Thames. Their designs were inspired by a site visit to the Greenwich Peninsula and learning about the art and architecture of Ancient Kush. Before making their models the AHMM team helped the children to also consider the impact of their design ideas on the environment and how they could make these more sustainable. Read more about Architecture in Schools here.
Three AHMM projects have been announced as New London Awards winners at this year’s NLA Lunch, held today (29 November) at the Guildhall in the City of London. Hawley Wharf, a completed mixed use masterplan that has transformed a neglected site in Camden, north London, won an award in the Masterplans and Area Strategies category, while another masterplan, currently ongoing, for the former Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital site at 330 Gray’s Inn Road in King’s Cross was a winner in the Mixed Use category. Finally, AHMM’s on-site proposals for the sensitive redevelopment of Sir Denys Lasdun’s 76 Upper Ground (known as the IBM Building) received a Conservation award.
The New London Awards are given by New London Architecture to projects which demonstrate the positive impact high-quality design, planning and construction can have on people, neighbourhoods and the city. Read more about them here.
Westminster Council’s planning committee has voted unanimously to approve AHMM’s proposals for the redevelopment of the site at 26-46 Lisson Grove in west London. Located close to Marylebone railway station, the six storey scheme will replace an existing 1960s Job Centre building providing over 100,000 square feet of new office space with retail at ground floor. Its brick facade varies in colour and tone to reflect the local context, and floors 4 to 6 are terraced to provide amenity for building users and articulate the building’s massing in relation to the neighbouring townscape and Lisson Grove conservation area. The building’s construction will use a hybrid CLT structure, precast facade elements and modular on-floor plant to minimise whole life carbon emissions.
Five AHMM projects have been recognised with a total of six AIA Central Oklahoma Design Excellence Awards at a ceremony held last Friday (11 November) in Oklahoma City.
The Well received an Honor Award for Commercial Architecture, Social Capital received a Merit Award for Adaptive Reuse, and Western Gateway Elementary a Merit Award for K-12 Education. Both Classen 16 and Wheeler Block 13 received Citation awards - Classen 16 for Large Commercial Architecture and Wheeler Block 13 for Interior Architecture. As well as an Honor Award, The Well was awarded the COTE Award which aims to promote and advance the positive impact of buildings on people and the environment, recognising projects that improve health and human experience through design.
The Design Excellence Awards are given each year by the Central Oklahoma chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Previous AHMM winners have included Central Exchange and Bob Moore Campus.
The Alder Centre has been announced as a winner of this year’s Brick Awards, announced yesterday (10 November).
Located on the Alder Hey hospital campus in Liverpool, the Alder Centre, which won the Public award, is a unique place for counselling and wellbeing together with office and administrative spaces supporting people who have experienced the loss of a child; brick was central to its palette of healthy materials together with its timber ceilings.
The Brick Awards are organised by the Brick Development Association, the UK’s trade body of clay brick and paver makers, and they celebrate the year’s best brick architecture and craftsmanship. Read more about the awards here.
AHMM has appointed its first Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Lead. The year long, full time secondment will be responsible for the development and delivery of a range of recommendations from the practice’s existing working groups.
Rochelle Dalphinis, who co-founded AHMM’s ED&I group in 2020 along with the self-initiated group _The Space, started in the role in July 2022 and has already begun working with the practice’s various working groups (ED&I, Employer Ownership, Gender Pay Gap, and Partnerships working groups), HR team, and other internal stakeholders to implement a range of initiatives, with an initial focus on the prioritised actions and recommendations arising from the ED&I Report.
As well as its internal focus the role will also work with the Partnerships lead to develop the practice’s social value commitments in support of project bids and cultural outreach initiatives.
It is hoped that this role will also develop external networks to maintain and share up-to-date knowledge, gain an understanding of best practices being applied elsewhere, and champion their application within the business.
AHMM has launched Delivering Net Zero: a guide for architects, a key output from a collaborative Knowledge Transfer Partnership between the practice and UCL’s Bartlett Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering. The KTP has been a two year programme researching the opportunities and implications of developing net zero carbon large scale, mixed use, urban, commercially driven and densely occupied buildings. The guidance has been written to define net zero in such a way to help architects rise to the challenge of designing net zero carbon buildings, but it will support anyone interested in reducing carbon emissions in the built environment. Reducing carbon emissions is a matter of urgency and the guidance aims to improve people’s knowledge, distil thinking, and ultimately change the design process to that end. Download it here.
The Alder Centre for Child Bereavement has been named Best Healthcare Development under £10m and Best Interior Design Project at the Building Better Healthcare Awards, announced today (2 November). Part of the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital campus in Liverpool, the Alder Centre is a dedicated place for counselling, mutual support and wellbeing for people who have experienced the loss of a child, and provides additional space for training, offices and a national child bereavement helpline. The centre has already received acclaim and awards including the European Healthcare Design Award and a World Architecture Festival Award.
Building Better Healthcare is a leading journal providing built environment news and resources for healthcare professionals, and the awards are held each year to celebrate and recognise achievements in healthcare buildings and infrastructure. Read more about them here.
Bream Street, AHMM’s residential-led development in east London, was announced as the winner of the Building Awards Housing Project of the Year 2022 last night (1 November) at a ceremony held in London. Bream Street provides 202 new homes across seven buildings in the Fish Island area of Hackney Wick, adjacent to the Lee Navigation and close to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Half of the homes are assigned to affordable rent, and the scheme also includes commercial space and new public realm.
Organised by Building Magazine, the Building Awards celebrate cross-industry achievement in the built environment - read more about them here.
Flamingo Tiki in Oklahoma City has been awarded the Interior Architecture Honor Award in this year’s AIA Central States Excellence in Design Awards, with jurors praising the design’s ‘controlled use of color, pattern, texture’ and its ‘elevated kitsch’. Located in the Paseo district of Oklahoma City, the bar’s interior embraces the tiki theme with a bold tropical colour palette teamed with planting and mid-century furnishings. It is AHMM’s second project in the thriving Paseo arts community, joining Oso on Paseo.
The AIA Central States include Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, and their awards celebrate design excellence within these states and around the world. Read more about them here.
Lansdowne House has reached a key milestone with Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, agreeing to a pre-let for the building to become its new European headquarters. Located at the southern end of Berkeley Square in Mayfair, London, the ten storey ‘long-life, loose-fit’ building for developer CO-RE offers 226,000 square feet of offices with 14,000 sq ft of retail and restaurants at ground level; units in Lansdowne Row are purposely sized to attract smaller local retailers, serving the needs of residents and local workers. The project also includes the redevelopment of public areas surrounding the site at the south end of the square.
Enabling works start on site in 2023 with the project scheduled to complete in 2028.
Dovercourt Road, a residential scheme that redevelops a 2.7 hectare brownfield site in north Bristol, has received planning approval. The masterplan, developed for Bristol City Council and Goram Homes, accommodates 140 new homes in a mix of two storey houses, three storey townhouses and four storey apartment buildings. A minimum of 30% of these will be affordable.
In line with Bristol City Council’s One City Climate Strategy and Ecological Emergency Strategy, the design targets the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge standards for operational energy use, embodied carbon and water use reduction. Existing ecology and trees are protected and extensive landscape and habitat creation aim to achieve biodiversity net gain across the site.
The project will start on site in early 2023 with completion expected in 2025.
AHMM’s redevelopment of the University of Amsterdam’s Roeterseiland campus has been shortlisted for the inaugural Architecture Today Awards. The two phase project was completed in 2018, and has transformed two existing 1960s blocks within an unfinished masterplan to create a new home for the Law and Social and Behavioural Sciences faculties as well as a vibrant new public realm around the buildings. AT Awards winners will be announced in February 2023 – read more here.
Wimbledon House and The Vincent have been announced as winners of this year’s British Homes Awards. Wimbledon House, which won the House of the Year over 2,500 square feet category, is a private family home characterised by its interlocking spaces, views and voids. The Vincent won the Later Living/Supported Living Design of the Year category; the development for Pegasus Life has transformed the former Queen Victoria House in Bristol, adding two new blocks to create a total of 65 one, two and three bedroom later living apartments. Read more about the British Homes Awards here.
The Architecture Foundation has announced the ten young practitioners who have been awarded a six-month residency at White Collar Factory. This is the second year of the residency programme, which is offered by AHMM in partnership with the Architecture Foundation.
The new residents are the directors of practices Studio naama, Studio NYALI, Entropic Group and Studio KA, as well as the directors of the campaign group Black Females in Architecture.
This year The Architecture Foundation encouraged submissions from practices led by individuals belonging to groups currently underrepresented in the architectural profession, and applications were selected by a panel including Simon Allford; Jasmin Yeo and Quincy Haynes, co-chairs of the Architecture Foundation's Young Trustees; and Ellis Woodman, Director of the Architecture Foundation. The programme will provide free desk space and access to facilities and mentoring at AHMM’s White Collar Factory studio.
217 Harrow Road has been granted planning consent by Westminster Council. The scheme includes a purpose-built facility for homeless charity St Mungo’s and a mixed tenure residential tower.
The project replaces the existing St Mungo’s centre in west London with a new nine-storey facility for the charity. It will include 45 self-contained en-suite rooms and 11 further ‘move-on’ units where people will be supported for their next steps. The scheme also includes a 20-storey residential tower of build-to-rent apartments, 14 of which will be affordable.
The project is due to start on site in mid 2023.
The Citizen in Oklahoma has been granted unanimous consent from the Oklahoma City Downtown Design Review Committee. The new mid-rise development in downtown Oklahoma City is situated on a sensitive site overlooking the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
The 12 storey mixed use building includes restaurants, retail, executive workshare and offices. The Citizen is due to start on site in 2023.
As people around the world mark the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, we reflect on her eight decades of service to the country, and the period of extraordinary change over which she provided a sense of continuity.
The Queen’s work often took the form of opening public buildings, an important gesture that acknowledged and reinforced their significance – and that of architecture itself – in all our lives. One such building was New Scotland Yard, which AHMM had the honour of designing and the Queen and Prince Philip opened in 2017.
As an RIBA Chartered Practice, we echo Simon Allford’s words in his statement as RIBA President and offer our condolences to the Royal Family.
A topping out ceremony was held today (8 September) to celebrate construction of The Arc reaching its highest point. The event was attended by Paul Gheysens, chief executive officer and Marie-Julie Gheysens, UK managing director of client Ghelamco; Ellen de Geest, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Belgium in the UK; and deputy mayor of Hackney Guy Nicholson, as well as AHMM founding director Paul Monaghan, director Marc Williams and associate director Ashwin Goyal. The Arc, a 22-storey building on a key site on City Road in east central London, will provide six floors of office, affordable workspace and retail with 100 apartments above; it also retains and integrates elements of a historic workhouse building and delivers new public realm. Completion is expected in 2023.
AHMM’s first housing project for West Sussex Council and Lovell Homes has been unanimously granted approval by Adur District Council’s planning committee.
The project in Southwick, on the coast between Worthing and Brighton, develops a brownfield suburban site to create 22 homes overlooking a new central village green. The proposed scheme offers a mix of family houses: two-, three- and four-bedroom homes, 30% of which will be affordable with a mix of shared ownership and affordable rent properties allocated to local people from Adur and Worthing district.
All homes are dual or triple aspect, balancing excellent internal daylight levels, with cross-ventilation and shading to avoid overheating whilst demonstrating a 50% energy efficiency improvement over Part L of the Building Regulations. All homes are ‘gas free’, using air source heat pumps for heating and hot water. The layout protects an existing pond creating a dedicated ecology area and provides improvements to the existing cycle path across the site.
The design references the local architectural context to give a clear character and identity to the development with a robust palette of materials and clean detailing.
Work is expected to start on site in early 2023.
This Thursday (8 September) Open City launches Open House London, the annual architecture festival that gives access to hundreds of buildings across the city, many of which are normally closed to the public.
As part of this year’s programme three AHMM projects will open their doors to the public, offering insight into some very different buildings designed by the practice. On Thursday 8 and Tuesday 13 September EH Smith will offer architect-led tours of its Clerkenwell design centre, a workshop and showroom for one of the largest independent builders’ merchants and brick suppliers in the UK. On Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 September 1 Finsbury Avenue will open for guided tours, inviting visitors to explore AHMM’s reinvention of Arup Associates' seminal Grade II listed office building at Broadgate. The following day White Collar Factory will be open from 10am to 5pm for visitors to drop in.
In addition to these buildings opening, Open House visitors in the Holborn area are welcome to enjoy the Post Building's public roof garden, which will be open from 10am until dusk each day of the festival.
For the first time, AHMM is also opening a pop-up bookshop at 1 Finsbury Avenue on Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 September, teaming up with the Modernist bookshop, the Architecture Foundation, Canalside Press, RIBA Books and AHMM’s own FifthMan imprint. The shop, located at Morag Myerscough’s Atoll installation, will offer publications by established names, smaller independents and Open City itself, as well as limited edition merchandise created especially for the festival.
Find out more about this year’s Open House programme here.
AHMM’s proposals for the redevelopment of the Angel Square site have been approved by the London borough of Islington’s planning committee. Located at the key junction of Islington High Street and City Road, the prominent site, also known as 1 Torrens Street, sits above Angel Tube station and is currently occupied by an existing development, many elements of which have surpassed their design life or are operationally inefficient. The scheme retains the existing building’s concrete frame while creating significantly improved work and amenity space within a new facade and replacing mechanical and electrical systems with energy efficient plant, as well as making much needed improvements to the public realm, including a new public route linking Islington High Street to Torrens Street. The proposals, designed for Tishman Speyer, will now be further developed and work on the site is expected to begin in early 2023.
The Architects’ Journal has announced the finalists for this year’s AJ Architecture Awards, and three AHMM projects have made the shortlist. New Shire Hall, the new home for Cambridgeshire County Council at Alconbury Weald, is one of seven projects shortlisted for the Civic category; Bream Street, a residential-led mixed use scheme in Hackney, has been shortlisted in the Mixed-Use category; and the AHMM Studio at White Collar Factory has been shortlisted for Workplace (up to £10 million). Following judges’ visits to shortlisted projects, the award winners will be announced on 23 November. Read more about the awards here.
AHMM’s proposal for the site of the former Holloway Prison has received a WAFX Award. As part of the World Architecture Festival, the awards recognise international proposals which embrace cutting-edge design approaches to address major world issues ranging from tackling the climate emergency to building community resilience.
AHMM’s masterplan for Holloway will create 985 new homes, 60% of which will be affordable, including 415 for social rent, arranged around a 1.4-acre public park that retains many of the existing trees. Another key element of the design is the Women's Building, which will include a café, laundry and a creche.
As a recipient of a WAFX Award the project is now among the 20 shortlisted projects for this year’s overall WAFX Prize which will be announced in December at the World Architecture Festival, held this year in Lisbon.
Last week 34 students aged 15-19 attended AHMM’s annual Summer School. This free week-long course is an opportunity for young people interested in architecture to experience working in a practice, to learn about drawing and modelmaking, to hear from architects about their work, and benefit from mentoring and tutoring along the way. For the first time since 2019 students were welcomed back to the practice’s offices in London and Bristol, but continued online engagement enabled attendance from further afield, including some participating from Uruguay. The Summer School was made possible by people across AHMM including organisers, mentors and tutors as well as Summer School alumni, all of whom were inspired by the students’ engagement, curiosity and innovative work.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris is working with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to provide Architectural Design, Principal Designer and Lead Designer services to assist Kew with the restoration of Kew’s iconic Palm House, to protect and conserve this impressive Victorian glasshouse for generations to come. The restoration will introduce lower energy heating systems, supporting Kew’s Sustainability Strategy, which aims to reduce Kew’s carbon emissions and reach Climate Positive by 2030.
Richard Barley, Director of Gardens at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew says, “The Palm House is an iconic Victorian glasshouse, home to an amazing indoor rainforest, with tropical plants from some of the most threatened environments in the world. This restoration project is a unique opportunity to showcase low-carbon heating technologies in a world leading heritage context, and we are delighted to be working with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris on this very important project at Kew.
Simon Allford and the AHMM team have been working with Derwent London and Nica Burns of Nimax Theatres for twelve years on what is "undoubtedly the most complex and delightful project I have ever worked on: the highly engineered architecture and design of a Swiss watch but built on an urban scale.”
The theatre is the first of the projects three Acts, the others being the new public space and the office and retail building that sits over and incorporates the Tottenham Court Road Station Tube exit. More will be announced in the autumn on this fantastic collaboration of clients, design team and contractor Laing O’Rourke.
AHMM has been working with Google since 2015 on the design of a flagship purpose-built campus building in the south Indian capital city of Hyderabad. Following an extended period of site preparation, the project broke ground in April with a ceremony attended by Google representatives and local dignitaries. This officially marks the beginning of the construction process, which is scheduled to complete in summer 2026.
At over 3 million square feet, this will be the largest Google owned and operated new build project outside of their Mountain View headquarters. The campus will be a workplace for 18,000 users, in an architectural idiom that celebrates the enduring qualities of shared space and place-making.
New Shire Hall, a purpose-built civic hub for Cambridgeshire County Council, has been officially opened in an event led by the Council’s Chair, Councillor Stephen Ferguson, supported by pupils from Alconbury C of E Primary School.
The building accommodates the council chamber - a multifunctional, flexible space that can be split into three smaller rooms - alongside council offices, public-facing spaces and amenities including a café and servery; more than 700 council staff are now based at New Shire Hall, which brings together local government functions in sustainable workspaces while acting as a new civic centre for the county. New Shire Hall is AHMM’s fifth project at the Alconbury Enterprise Campus, the redevelopment of a former RAF airfield in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
Nine AHMM projects have been shortlisted for this year’s WAF Awards, which will be judged and announced at the World Architecture Festival in Lisbon in November. Wimbledon House, Lewis Cubitt Square, Bream Street, and the Alder Centre are shortlisted in the Completed Buildings categories; while the Future Projects shortlists include Lansdowne House, Holloway Prison, 330 Gray’s Inn Road, the Museum of Happiness and Tower Hamlets Town Hall. Each project will be presented to judges during the World Architecture Festival and category winners chosen each day, with overall winners announced on the final day of the Festival. Find out more about the WAF Awards and the World Architecture Festival here.
Three AHMM cyclists, Barbara Clark, Christina Agoston-Vas and Director Hazel Joseph, have completed PedElle, a three-day event for women in the construction industry. Organised by Club Peloton, the event raises money for the charities Coram, Cyclists Fighting Cancer, MSA Trust and Tom's Trust. Starting in Vienna, the peloton of 60 riders covered 450km, a climb of 4136m, crossing the border into Slovakia and ending in Budapest, Hungary.
The team was generously supported by its sponsors McAleer & Rushe, Arup, DTF Printing Kings, Secchi Smith, Fare London, Adelina Yard, Real PM, and BANK.
You can still contribute to the team’s fundraising via JustGiving here.
For the past ten weeks AHMM has been leading creative workshops for people affected by homelessness. The sessions for participants from Accumulate, The Art School for the Homeless, were set the brief to create their own ideas of utopia.
Over the ten weeks, participants attended workshops at St John’s Waterloo, creating collages, sketches and architectural models, discussing, and presenting their ideas to the group at each stage of the design process. The participants’ work will be presented in an exhibition to be held at One Crown Place today (7 July). Participants also have the chance to be awarded Accumulate scholarships to attend an Access to Higher Education course at either Ravensbourne University, or Morley College.
Westminster City Council has unanimously granted planning approval for the refurbishment and partial demolition of West One Shopping Centre on Oxford Street. AHMM’s proposals for the site will retain approximately 60% of the existing building’s structure with the top four floors replaced with six new floors in a lightweight steel construction to almost double the office provision.
The new facade employs a language of vertical bays derived from the existing structural grid to the upper floors, this grid arrangement is opened up to provide views across the city. The proposed terracotta facades have been developed to provide a strong identity to the site clearly referencing the 19th century commercial buildings of Mayfair.
Existing retail use on the lower levels will be retained with new high-quality retail shopfronts replacing the existing cluttered facades. Works are expected to start on site in 2024.
Hawley Wharf has won an RIBA National Award, announced this morning (23 June), having won a London Regional Award in May alongside the Post Building and Breakers Place.
Judges commented that ‘each building has its own character, skilfully responding to its context. The overall impact genuinely enhances the character of the local area… the scheme’s real strength is in its harmonious variety.’ Hawley Wharf, which has regenerated a neglected canalside site in Camden, north London, includes 170 affordable and private homes, a primary school for 210 pupils with a 26 place nursery, incubator workplace units, artisanal and industrial workshops, a range of local retail opportunities and a flexible and open market building, together with three new public spaces and pedestrian connections to its surrounding neighbourhoods. It was also a winner of the Housing Design Awards Winner of Winners prize in 2021, and the overall masterplan is shortlisted for the Building London Planning Awards, which will be announced in July.
RIBA National Awards are given to buildings across the UK in recognition of their significant contributions to architecture, and this year have been given to 29 projects from which the RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist will be chosen. Read more about them here.
AHMM is inviting applications for its 2022 Summer School, a week-long programme based at AHMM’s White Collar Factory studio for young people aged 15-19 from Monday 25 to Friday 29 July.
Over the week students will be set tasks introducing them to new ways of observing and exploring the space surrounding us. They will also take part in activities and information sessions each day and, as an important part of the Summer School, benefit from daily mentoring from one of the AHMM architecture team. At the end of the week students will have a series of pieces that will strengthen their portfolio, including an architectural model of their own design. They will also be given an in-depth understanding of the profession to inform their future interest in architecture as a career.
To apply for a place on the course please complete this application form and return to cwint@ahmm.co.uk by Monday 4 July at 6pm. The Summer School is free and materials are provided. Please note that places are competitive and we receive a large number of applications.
Young people from inclusive theatre company Chickenshed have been exploring the RIBA’s headquarters at 66 Portland Place in advance of its refurbishment and created a unique performance using movement, music and dance. Using their own diverse, lived experience, they have analysed the space in order to generate responses and ideas to help ensure that the refurbished building will be welcoming and accessible to all. Chickenshed students have worked together with AHMM and RIBA Learning to create the special performance, which will be open to the public on Sunday 26 June. It will be informal, lively and engaging, demonstrating the power of performance as a tool for consultation and the need for inclusive access to spaces. Find out more about the event and book tickets here.
The Architecture Foundation is offering its second residency programme in collaboration with AHMM to support young architects.
Running for six months from July 2022 to January 2023, the programme will provide free desk space and access to facilities and mentoring at AHMM’s White Collar Factory studio. Successful candidates will be selected by Simon Allford; Jasmin Yeo and Quincy Haynes, co-chairs of the Architecture Foundation's Young Trustees; and Ellis Woodman, Director of the Architecture Foundation.
Applicants must be based in London, have been set up within the last four years and employ no more than three members of staff. Submissions from practices led by individuals belonging to groups currently underrepresented in the architectural profession are particularly welcomed.
The Architecture Foundation leads debate and discussion of the role of architecture and architects, offering an accessible public programme that makes space for emerging architects, groups historically underrepresented in the profession, and representatives of a wide range of related disciplines. The residencies, which aim to support young practitioners at the start of their careers, are an important part of this mission. Last year’s resident cohort included Artefact, Fisher Cheng, Found Order, Madeleine Kessler Architecture, Urban Radicals, Wadhal, and Xcessive Aesthetics.
Find out more about this year’s residencies, including how to apply, here.
This year AHMM is taking part in five events as part of the London Festival of Architecture, which runs throughout the month of June. Founded in 2004, LFA is a month-long celebration of architecture and placemaking, offering a diverse programme of tours, workshops, open studios, performances and talks.
Today (8 June), the White Collar Factory design team will be leading tours of the building for groups of older people from St Luke’s Community Centre, who will explore innovative workspaces and learn about the building’s environmental design.
On the same day, Associate Adrian Williams will join speakers from the London Legacy Development Corporation, CM-LLP and architects PRP, Make and Haworth Tompkins on a tour of Chobham Manor, a new residential-led development on the site of the Olympic basketball arena. The tour explores this new family friendly neighbourhood which is centred around a series of play spaces, and includes a variety of residential buildings and commercial and community spaces.
In May young people from inclusive theatre company Chickenshed explored the RIBA HQ ahead of its refurbishment. Using their own diverse, lived experience, they analysed the space to generate responses and ideas to help ensure that the refurbished building will be welcoming and accessible to all. The project concludes with a performance at the RIBA’s 66 Portland Place headquarters on Sunday 26 June, where Chickenshed will demonstrate the power of performance as a tool for consultation and the need for inclusive access to spaces.
Read more about AHMM’s participation in LFA and all events taking place throughout the festival on the LFA website.
A model of Tower Hamlets Town Hall has been selected for this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which opens on 21 June. The 1:200 scale walnut veneer and perspex model created by AHMM’s in-house modelshop illustrates the restoration and extension of the Grade II listed former Royal London Hospital building; the project itself will complete and open to the public later this year as a new civic hub for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
This year’s RA Summer Exhibition has been curated by artist Alison Wilding, who has chosen the theme of climate, and the architecture room has been curated by Níall McLaughlin and Rana Begum. The Exhibition is the largest open-submission art exhibition in the world, and showcases art in all forms, from prints, painting, film and photography to architectural works and sculpture.
The Summer Exhibition runs until 21 August - find out more and book tickets here.
Church Road has been announced as the 2022 Urban Oasis Prize Winner of New London Architecture’s annual competition Don’t Move, Improve!. The collaboration with RUFFARCHITECTS reconfigures and extends a family home in the Highgate conservation area in North London. Set amongst some of the only remaining ancient oaks outside of the Highgate Wood, Kunle Barker, one of the judges, praised the design and said the house was “a true oasis in the middle of North London. The design leaves the outside, out, and inside, in. Intelligently and thoughtfully combining the two.”
Paul Monaghan has been announced as one of the 42 Mayor’s Design Advocates (MDAs). The new cohort of MDAs, appointed by The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, is a group of independent built environment professionals chosen for their skills and expertise to provide advice and expertise on London’s built environment. Their goals include supporting the next phase of the Good Growth by Design programme, setting ambitious design guidelines, carrying out design reviews, and advocating for the creation of quality buildings and public spaces. Find out more here.
The Alder Centre is among the four professional category winners of this year’s AIA UK Excellence in Design Awards. According to the judges, the project 'epitomises that architecture is the materialisation of an idea, sometimes a concept, but also a feeling and a need', and they praised the sensitive design and careful details. Find out more about the awards and winners here.
AHMM’s Head of Sustainability Dr Craig Robertson is interviewed for the latest episode of the AJ’s Climate Champions podcast series. In this episode, Craig talks to Hattie Hartman about AHMM's approach to building performance and shares the findings from a post-occupancy study of the RIBA Stirling Prize-winning Burntwood School. Read more and listen here.
2 Ruskin Square, a new ten-storey office development in east Croydon, has reached its highest point and the construction milestone was celebrated with a topping out ceremony held on site. Paul Monaghan and Hazel Joseph joined the client, Stanhope, and the wider design team on the building’s ninth floor to mark the occasion.
Due to complete in May 2023, 2 Ruskin Square is AHMM’s second building to be delivered in Stanhope and Schroders' masterplan following Ruskin Square, a 22-storey tower next to East Croydon railway station.
The Alder Centre has been shortlisted for the AIA UK Excellence in Design Awards 2022. The awards programme recognises excellence in design and celebrates either projects built in the UK or designed by UK-based architects. Winners will be announced at an awards dinner on 12 May. Find out more about these awards here.
Hawley Wharf, Breakers Place and The Post Building have all been announced as winners of this year’s RIBA London Awards. Judges noted that Hawley Wharf achieves great placemaking ‘by integrating new spaces and buildings that will be useful and delightful for many years.’ At Breakers Place, they felt the building ‘contributes positively to the ongoing rejuvenation of this former industrial area, bringing life through provision of high-quality workspaces, retail units, and housing’. Finally, they praised The Post Building for having ‘successfully reinvigorated a redundant city block, enriching part of the cityscape with a strong sense of place.’ The three projects will now be considered for the RIBA National Awards which will be revealed in June 2022. Read more about the awards here.
AHMM’s proposal for the reinvention and extension of the former Bristol Evening Post Building at One Temple Way in central Bristol has been granted planning permission. The original building was conceived as a ‘machine’ for the creation, printing and dispatch of the newspaper, its stacked asymmetric form a reflection of each step of the process. The locally listed Brutalist building will be sympathetically extended at roof level to create 170,000 square feet of characterful office space, along with a further 22,000 square feet of flexible food and beverage space as part of a renewed street frontage and public realm. A new core and atrium will bring daylight into the centre of the building.
Following initial approval by Bristol City Council in 2020, the Housing Minister Stuart Andrew has granted planning permission for St Vincent Works at Silverthorne Lane, to the east of Bristol Temple Meads station. The 4.2 hectare mixed use urban regeneration scheme reinvents a former industrial site to create 360 new residential apartments; cafes and bars; workspace, research and learning space for the University of Bristol; a secondary school; and generous landscaped areas including a continuous canalside walkway that connects each of the new plots.
Two New Bailey Square has won the British Council for Offices Northern region Commercial Workspace award announced at an awards dinner in Manchester last night (28 April). Judges described the building, which is part of the New Bailey masterplan in Salford, as ‘the very best in architectural achievement’ and ‘a build of distinction’. Two New Bailey Square will now be considered for the BCO National awards which will be revealed at a ceremony on 4 October. Read more about the BCO Awards here.
The shortlist for the Building London Planning Awards 2022 has been announced. Park Central West and East has been shortlisted for the Best New Place to Live category; Hawley Wharf for the Best Mixed-Use Scheme; and The Post Building for the Best New Place to Work. The Building London Planning Awards, organised by London First, in partnership with the Mayor of London, recognise outstanding town planning and creative development from across London’s built environment sector. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on 20 June 2022 – read more about the awards and shortlist here.
Keith House Eastern Site has been unanimously approved by the Hillingdon Planning Committee. The Eastern Site scheme forms the second part of a masterplan proposal for the wider Keith House site, following the success of the Keith House Western Site, which received planning permission in March of last year.
Keith House Eastern Site will replace a 1980s warehouse with a single L-shaped block of 376 shared living units and a suite of communal amenity areas, and it represents Hillingdon’s first shared living development.
The Western site will create 150 homes across two new buildings with ground level commercial space.
Together, both the Eastern and Western sites will provide new areas of public realm and enhanced landscaping, facilitating access for residents and occupants, and new pedestrian links for the local area.
Work has completed at 1 New Park Square, a five-storey mixed-use building at Edinburgh Park. It is the first completed building in the Dixon Jones-led masterplan for Parabola, located to the west of the city of Edinburgh.
1 New Park Square is one of several, all-electric office buildings on the site, powered solely by renewable energy part of Parabola’s wider environmental ambitions for Edinburgh Park. The completed building offers 87,500 square feet of office space over four floors, with a conference and events space, restaurant and public facilities at ground floor. A new café and bakery, Patina, is due to open soon. The building overlooks a new public square designed by Gross Max Architects, which is home to the specially commissioned bronze sculpture ‘Dancer after Degas II’ by William Tucker RA. The work is part of a wider arts trail that includes the recently installed ‘Vulcan’ by Eduardo Paolozzi.
Meta has announced the opening of its new London offices at King’s Cross, including AHMM’s 10 Lewis Cubitt Square and Bennetts Associates’ 11-21 Canal Reach, which was inaugurated by Their Royal Highnesses, The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall. 10 Lewis Cubitt Square offers nine floors of office space, a fifth-floor wraparound terrace and retail space at ground level, providing flexible workspaces while ensuring users’ wellbeing. Large floorplates of generous height create flexible working environments and are connected by characterful common parts that are defined through a strategic use of robust linings and exposed concrete elements. The building is a key piece of the King’s Cross Central masterplan and acts as a civic backdrop to the public Lewis Cubitt Square.
A topping out ceremony has been held at the Rowe, AHMM’s refurbishment and extension of the former Cass School of Art and Architecture in Whitechapel. AHMM director Paul Monaghan and the project team attended the celebration today to mark the project reaching its highest point of construction.
On completion the Rowe will offer 150,00 square feet of office space across 12 floors, the upper six of which have been designed as a reflection of the original building below. These two components, old and new, are separated by an external terrace that will feature artwork by Yinka Ilori.
Three AHMM projects have been shortlisted for this year’s Housing Design Awards. Bute Street and Riverside are two Community Living Schemes developed for Cardiff Council as part of their Older People’s Housing Strategy. Each mixed-use scheme offers residential units designed with the core principles established by HAPPI (Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation) as a guide. Bute Street includes a community gym, while Riverside offers a community garden and multi-use games area. Leinster Avenue, the third project shortlisted, is a 100% affordable residential scheme designed for Bristol City Council that includes two supported living homes for the neighbouring Knowle DGE specialist Academy. Read more about the schemes and the full shortlist here.
Kingswear Road, a residential development in the Knowle area of south Bristol, has been granted planning permission through delegated powers, receiving high praise from the city’s planners. The project is the latest in a series of residential schemes for Bristol City Council to be granted planning permission, following the award-winning Bonnington Walk in north Bristol and Leinster Avenue, also in Knowle.
The scheme will create 34 affordable homes, with the tenure split between social rent and shared ownership. The bespoke dwelling types respond to the steeply sloping site, and take full advantage of expansive hilltop views across Bristol’s cityscape.
Director Wade Scaramucci has been appointed to the Board of Governors of the Licensed Architects, Landscape Architects and Registered Commercial Interior Designers of Oklahoma. Created in 1925, the board’s mission is to safeguard citizens of the State of Oklahoma by regulating the professions to promote quality practice, and is composed of six architects, two landscape architects, two interior designers and one lay member. Regulating around 3000 licensed professionals and almost 300 firms across the state, it establishes standards for professional qualifications, ensures competence through education, experience, and examinations, sets practice standards, and enforces the Architectural and Registered Commercial Interior Designers Act.
The Alder Centre was highly commended in this year’s Civic Trust Awards, which were announced yesterday (7 March). This year, from 160 entries, 45 projects have been recognised with a Civic Trust Award or been Highly Commended. The Civic Trust Awards were created in 1959 to reward projects that offer a positive cultural, social, economic or environmental benefit to their local communities. Find out more about these awards and read the full list of winners here.
Six AHMM projects have been shortlisted for this year’s RIBA Regional Awards. The Post Building, Hawley Wharf, Breakers Place and Wimbledon House are among the 68 buildings shortlisted in the London region, while The Vincent has been shortlisted in the South West region and Two New Bailey Square in the North West region. Shortlisted projects will be assessed by regional juries and winning projects will be announced in April. RIBA Regional Awards celebrate the best architecture across the UK; winners are considered for RIBA National Awards, announced in June. Find out more about the RIBA Awards and see past winners here.
AHMM has been appointed as masterplanning architect for the next phase of redevelopment planning work for St Mary’s Hospital in London.
With the support of the government’s New Hospital Programme, Imperial College Healthcare is beginning the next phase of redevelopment planning work at St Mary’s, which involves appointing a team to undertake the first stages of design brief and planning work, including feasibility studies for various options and phasing and a high-level masterplan for the whole site (RIBA 0-1 stages). For the design brief and planning stages, AHMM will be subcontracted to lead architect HOK; other appointed companies are Ramboll (civil and structural engineering); AECOM (mechanical and electrical engineering, BREEAM and cost management); ETL (healthcare planning); and Gardiner & Theobald (project management).
Read more about the redevelopment here.
A group of academics including AHMM’s head of sustainability Dr Craig Robertson has won the CIBSE Barker Silver Medal for a paper on an integrated building performance evaluation of Burntwood School. The Barker Silver Medal is awarded for the most cited and impactful paper published in the Building Services Research and Technology (BSER&T) Journal each year.
Titled ‘Balancing energy and indoor environmental quality in a UK school’, the paper was published in BSER&T in 2020. It was authored by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers in energy, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, lighting, and acoustics at UCL’s Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering: Dr Nishesh Jain (lead author), Dr Esfand Burman, Dr Craig Robertson, Dr Samuel Stamp, Dr Clive Shrubsole, Dr Francesco Aletta, Dr Edward Barrett, Dr Tin Oberman, Prof Jian Kang, Prof Peter Raynham, Prof Dejan Mumovic and Prof Mike Davies.
The paper reported on a holistic building performance evaluation of Burntwood as a recently built school campus in London. It assessed the performance issues and inter-relationships between energy and Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ). Analysing metering and monitoring data along with feedback from the stakeholders, the study showed that if building design focuses primarily on energy, it may lead to unintended consequences for IEQ. An integrated design approach to energy and environmental performance is required to balance the intricate, and sometimes conflicting, relation between these performance objectives.
Burntwood School won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2015. Working with UCL to understand the performance of such an important building has proved to be invaluable; the work has provided AHMM with lessons that can be applied across all future projects in design, construction and use, as well as the basis for future research.
7 February marks the start of National Apprenticeships Week 2022. AHMM has been a member of the RIBA Apprenticeships in Architecture Trailblazer Group since it was founded in 2016 and since then has continued to support apprenticeships with new intakes each year. The practice currently employs eight architectural apprentices at a mix of level 6 (equivalent to bachelor's degree) and level 7 (equivalent to master's degree), and since 2021 has employed two level 3 apprentices in support roles, one in Finance and another in IT.
AHMM values and supports alternative pathways into architectural careers - find out more about this on the Working with Us page, or by contacting the HR team.
Dublin City Council has granted planning permission for Boland’s Bakery, a new office for Google in the Irish capital.
AHMM’s proposal for the renovation of the existing Treasury building strips back recent additions to re-enhance the original 1950s structural form, while at the same time updating the building as a low-carbon, flexible workplace for the 21st century. The proposal has been influenced by the historic industrial character of the wider context, the history of the site and the existing building, with a considered approach to massing, proportions and materials.
On completion the new workspace will accommodate 1,100 employees across around 170,000sqft of floor space, and benefit from a rooftop garden and outdoor terraces.
The scheme proposes to set the standard for future workplaces by providing a sustainable, contemporary, future-proofed design.
Paul Monaghan has been announced as one of the judges for this year’s Davidson Prize. The award was launched in 2020 by the Alan Davidson Foundation and aims to celebrate the transformative architecture of the home. The theme of this year’s award is ‘Co-Living – A New Future?’.
The judging panel also includes artist Yinka Illori, journalist Amy Frearson, the Architectural Association’s Head of Public Engagement Manijeh Verghese, founder of Mary Duggan Architects Mary Duggan, and Agnieszka Glowacka, Associate Director at Haptic.
The Alan Davidson Foundation was created by Alan Davidson, founding partner of architectural visualisers Hayes Davidson, to support a wide range of causes relating to Motor Neurone Disease and associated neurological conditions, as well as architectural initiatives. Read more about the Davidson Prize here.
Cardiff Council has made the unanimous decision to grant planning permission for a community living scheme on Bute Street in Cardiff. The new five storey building will create 45 one- and two-bedroom independent living apartments, accessed via a shared atrium alongside community facilities that include a boxing gym. Bute Street is one of three community and older persons’ developments designed by AHMM for the city, and the second to be granted planning permission following the recent success of Riverside Community Living.
This year four cyclists from AHMM will be taking part in the Club Peloton Cycle to MIPIM ride. Architect Rebecca Nixon and Associates Andrew Morrison, James Thomas and Paul Jones will leave London with their fellow cyclists on Thursday 5 March and ride a total of 1438km over seven days to the MIPIM property fair in Cannes.
Cycle to MIPIM is organised by Club Peloton and raises money for Coram, Tom Ap Rhys Pryce Memorial Trust, Cyclists Fighting Cancer and the Multiple System Atrophy Trust. As in previous years AHMM will be sponsoring the event providing snacks and refreshments for all cyclists along the route. Find out more about the event here and support Rebecca, Andrew, James and Paul via JustGiving.
This week the Alder Centre has been announced as a winner in the Civic Trust Awards and also as one of 12 projects shortlisted for this year’s RIBA Journal MacEwen Award. The Alder Centre, part of Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, provides a dedicated place for people who are affected by the loss of a child to meet, talk, and access specialist counselling services, and also houses a national child bereavement helpline and counselling services for hospital staff.
The MacEwen Award aims to highlight responsible architecture recognising built projects which are of demonstrable and wide social benefit. Kathy MacEwen of the judging panel commented that the Centre is ‘a beautiful, well-considered project providing a tranquil, safe space to be … the intricacies and fundraising efforts were admirable’. Read more about the MacEwen award and the shortlist here – winners will be announced on 1 February. The following month, the Alder Centre will be confirmed as the recipient of either a Civic Trust Award or a High Commendation – find out more about this year’s Civic Trust Award winners here.