What we do
Eight disciplines,
one set of hands.
We are small enough that the person who sketches your building also draws its window junction and stands on site while it is built. These are the eight things that involves.
Eight disciplines,
01 — Disciplines
Everything we
know how to do.
No discipline here is subcontracted. If it is on this list, it is drawn in the studio by someone whose name is on the team page.
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01
Architecture
New buildings and substantial alterations, from first sketch through to the year-five visit.
Covers
- Feasibility and site appraisal
- Planning applications
- Technical design
- Contract administration
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02
Interiors
The inside of a building treated with the same seriousness as its envelope, and usually by the same hands.
Covers
- Spatial planning
- Joinery and fitted furniture
- Lighting and services coordination
- Finishes and specification
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03
Adaptive reuse
Keeping what is already standing. Structurally the hardest work we do, and the work we most want.
Covers
- Fabric survey and condition report
- Structural strategy with an engineer
- Consent for listed and protected fabric
- Making new and old meet honestly
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04
Material research
Testing how a surface behaves over years rather than in a showroom, and writing down what we find.
Covers
- Sample sourcing and weathering trials
- Supplier and quarry visits
- Specification writing
- The studio material library
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05
Furniture
Pieces designed for one room, usually because nothing on the market fits the dimension we drew.
Covers
- One-off commissions
- Prototyping with our model maker
- Working drawings for makers
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06
Landscape
The ground a building sits on, handled early enough to change where the building goes.
Covers
- Site strategy and levels
- Planting scheme with a specialist
- Hard landscape and boundaries
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07
Lighting design
Daylight first. Electric light only where daylight cannot reach, and never more of it than the room needs.
Covers
- Daylight modelling
- Luminaire selection and layout
- Control and dimming strategy
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08
Exhibition
Temporary work, where the whole life of a structure is three weeks and everything has to come apart again.
Covers
- Exhibition and stand design
- Demountable construction
- Graphic and wayfinding coordination
02 — Engagement
How the work is shaped
Disciplines describe what we can do. Two other pages describe how any of it reaches you, and what it costs.
- 01
Listen
The site, the brief, the way you live.
2–4 weeks
- 02
Test
Sketches, models, material studies.
4–8 weeks
- 03
Resolve
Every junction, drawn and specified.
3–6 months
- 04
Build
On site, beside the people making it.
Through to completion
- 05
Return
We come back at one year, and at five.
Year one, and year five
03 — Limits
And what we turn down
A practice that says yes to everything is telling you nothing about itself. Three kinds of work we decline, and the reason in each case.
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Developer volume housing
We are nine people. We cannot give forty units the attention we give four, so we do not take the work.
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Drawings without a site visit
We have never produced anything worth building for a site we have not stood on.
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Styling and staging
We specify what a room is made of. We do not dress it for a photograph.
04 — Start a conversation
Which of these do you need?
If you are not sure, say so. Working out which discipline a problem belongs to is the first thing we do anyway, and it costs nothing.