Empathise and engage

If there’s one thing we’ve learned makes better buildings, it’s empathy. Architecture never happens in isolation—and simply by being interested and engaged, we’ve found it’s possible to open up the conversations that connect a scheme to its clients and community.

Weconstraints

We believe that the more constraints there are, the better the architecture. If there aren’t any constraints, we create them. Challenging sites, existing buildings and complex briefs almost always present incredible opportunities for great design.

Passive future

To limit our environmental impact, we start with what is already there. By manipulating the form and fabric of a building—whether new or existing—we can work with the existing conditions of topography, light and orientation, and harness the natural energy sources offered by air, ground and water.

Social detail

If a site’s constraints guide the bigger design decisions, then it’s empathy that informs the smaller, social details. These details frame the human narratives that aren’t included in the brief, anticipating specific moments in the users’ lives.

Mud on our boots

Good architecture is as much about what happens on the building site as it is about what’s on the drawing board. By working alongside contractors as well as clients we can ring-fence the ideas and details that matter, championing quality and sustainability throughout construction.

Welsh Harp Urban Farm
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Curl la Tourelle Head
Work
  • 
Staple's Corner Urban Farm and Liveable Space

  • Brent, London

Featured in
  • NLA Zero Carbon London Report

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  • > Housing brochure

  • > Project study

The area around Staples Corner in north-west London, where the North Circular meets the M1 motorway, is a particularly Bollardian landscape of flyovers and industrial sheds. Straddling the main road, the cluster of sheds—many of them now redundant—blocks access to the Welsh Harp (or Brent) Reservoir from a large grid of interwar suburbs to the south. We were approached by the London Borough of Brent to produce a study into how the area could be redeveloped. As Strategic Industrial Land (SIL), the industrial base had to be retained, but their aim was to reinvigorate it in a more sustainable way, as well as introducing new housing and improved connections across the neighbourhood.

We began by looking at the economic activity that had historically taken place in the area. Much of this was food production, increasingly targeted towards the aviation industry at nearby Heathrow. In an attempt to decarbonise the site and reallocate it to green industry, we worked with The Ecoponics Group, experts in aquaponics, to look at how more environmentally friendly food growing businesses could be located here. As a result, our masterplan proposes an urban farm that could become the UK’s first major centre for hydroponic and aquaponic farming, our projections showing that potentially all of Brent’s residents could be fed each day with fresh vegetables grown within the borough. Hydroponics would colonise the site on a large scale, the buildings taking an industrial greenhouse aesthetic, accompanied by a centre for agricultural training.

The residential elements of the scheme take full advantage of the benefits offered by waterside living on the fringe of the reservoir, new bridge connections removing the focus from the busy roads that currently fragment the neighbourhood. Our design code suggests the residential blocks would be clad with brick to give a more domestic feel, and—in line with the scheme’s environmental ambition—have a crosslaminated timber structure. They would have passive environmental systems, sharing an energy recovery system with the greenhouses and aquaponics facilities.

The scheme shows how civic values—of wellness, sustainability, education and work—can be applied to urban development. It marks a shift away from automotive priority to a better pedestrian experience, with the restoration and improvement of public realm central to the masterplan.

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