Study Trip: Exploring the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux  

—Embedded into the landscape through its extensive use of columns, the stadium reflects the adjacent trees within the surrounding flat landscape, deliberately contrasting the homogeneity of Bordeaux’s historic centre and aspiring for a sense of openness and accessibility. The grand stair blurs the lines between the boundaries of interior and exterior.

Study Trip: Sarajevo's eclectic communist era housing  

—Standing out in the otherwise muted historic cityscape of old Sarajevo, this postmodernist building was the home of refugees and squatters during the civil war. The dwellings at Papagajka are laid out around a tall and narrow atrium courtyard. The entire ground floor plan is taken up by dual aspect retail and cafes, which activate and connect the courtyard and street, while informal nooks with seating and planters built into the balustrades of the access decks create a feeling of inhabitation and encourage use of the communal space

Study Trip: Exploring Peter Salter’s Walmer Yard  

—The luxurious use of form and materiality gives rise to an exciting and unique space in this tight urban site

On Site: Knights Park moving image studio  

—One of the new moving image studios recently handed over at Kingston School of Art. A re-configured layout makes more efficient use of the existing double height volume at the centre of the building, enabling an expansion of studio provision. An infinity cove and technical grid complete a comprehensive upgrade to these facilities which, like all the workshops within the school, are held in common for all academic courses to access

In Progress: Offsite Fabrication  

—Production of our innovative family homes in Liverpool has started in the factory, based at HMP Hindley. The houses will be assembled on site in approximately 12 hours per unit from pre-fabricated externally finished cassette panels

In the Studio: Roger, Danny and Maria  

—Figuring out how the timber structure of the Den, at the Royal Exchange Manchester, will work with its fabric cover and seating

In Progress: Early Albert Island model  

—Early stage massing model of Albert Island, exploring industrial typologies and layout

On Site: Knights Park photography workshops  

—This recently completed darkroom houses the processing and print equipment at Kingston School of Art. It also includes a pass-through sink to make the transition between darkroom processing and review in the light less cumbersome. These new workshop facilities, largely for analogue processes, are retained as part of strong ethos that believes in a holistic approach to arts education

From The Archive: Testing rooflights under an artificial sky  

—Testing the effectiveness of our rooflight design on this 1:20 model of the Royal College of Art, Battersea. The Bartlett School of Architecture has a lighting simulator that can mimic any time of day

In the Studio: 1:25 Model  

—Testing proposals for a courtyard extension to the Warburg Institute Library. The roof structure has been designed to evoke an elliptical rooflight in the original Warburg Institute in Hamburg. The ellipse is symbolic of Aby Warburg’s intellectual theories behind cosmological freedoms of the mind

On Site: Theatre Royal Drury Lane strip out  

—Demolition progressing on the Grade I listed auditorium ahead of a new, improved geometry

Study Trip: Social Housing  

—Wohnpark Alterlaa, a flourishing social housing neighbourhood in Vienna, a city where 62% of the population live in state funded housing

On Site: Fish Island Village  

—Concrete and steel entry lobby at Fish Island Village

In the Studio: Auditoriums  

—Modelling flexible auditorium layouts

From The Archive: Cambridge, Massachusetts  

—Early morning at the Carpenter Centre

In the Studio: Gingerbread Housing  

—Gingerbread tower assembly session for the Museum of Architecture at the V&A

On Site: Albert Island  

—A plane lands at London City Airport, seen from our Albert Island site. The relationship to the airport is a key consideration in the masterplan design.

In the Studio: Samples  

—Carpet discussions for Theatre Royal Drury Lane

On Site: Texture  

—Play of light and shadow, mornings at the Bristol Old Vic

Reference: Entrance for Elephants  

—Entrance to the Malmö Stadsteater. Formerly used by elephants

In the Studio: Sketching  

—Overlay sketching on the Warburg Institute visuals

Reference: Handrail  

—Walter Segal handrail, London, 1950, steel and sapele

On Site: Etching Press at Knights Park  

—The etching press is now in the printmaking workshop at the Knights Park campus, Kingston School of Art

On Site: Grand Hall  

—Finishing touches to the Grand Hall plywood lattice ceiling at Battersea Arts Centre

From The Archive: Bridge Theatre light  

—The Bridge Theatre light is a pendant fitting made of copper mesh, each one is unique due to its hand formed nature.

On Site: Precast concrete  

—On-site processing plant for precast concrete paving at Fish Island

Reference: Markings in Porto  

—Planned and unplanned, formal and informal, anarchy versus order.

On Site: Corten steel shutters for the Bristol Old Vic  

—Prototyping waterjet cut artwork based on two interwoven poems. First by David Garrick from the Theatre Royal prologue written in 1766, he also did a spoken work performance to announce the opening of the original theatre. And second by Miles Chambers, former Bristol City Poet.

Study Trip: Porto  

—Alvaro Siza's Bouca Casas Socials, an alternative to British Standards: narrow entrance doors, stepped planting, stepped access and visible clothes drying opportunities.

In the Studio: Sarah and Safa  

—Placements for school leavers and students are well supported in the office and add to the culture and experience of the whole office.

In Progress: Working 'yard' spaces  

—This typology appears in a lot of our work at the moment. This is in response to the need to keep work places within the city, endeavouring to provide truly integrated city culture.

On Site: Concrete Testing  

—Thinking by doing: Exploring the range of interesting work undertaken by the labs at Kingston University, including these concrete stress tests.

On Site: NT Deck  

—The timber diagrid for the National Theatre’s new rooftop events pavilion is craned into place. The timber structure was pre-fabricated in workshops in York, assembled on the Southbank over three hours and then craned onto the third floor roof deck in under six minutes.

In Progress: 'Use-less' building research  

—Graham Haworth has personally led some research into multi functional buildings, including a mix of uses ranging from maker spaces, workshops and studio spaces. This is brought into live projects such as Fish Island, where the project is being developed in collaboration with the Trampery.

On Site: Colour options  

—A selection of painted sample boards tested on site in order to be developed into large scale mock-ups. The colours match historic precedents and some are made using traditional methods.

In the Studio: Design Review  

—Battersea Arts Centre: In-house design review exploring options for lattice ceiling perforation pattern. Using 1:25 large scale models allows us to ‘get into’ the space and test each configuration.

In Progress: Facades  

—In-house laser cut models, veneered, exploring facade depth and materiality on the corner gateway building to Phase 3. Full balconies, Juliette balconies, brick and metal spandrel panels with variable depth piers.

From The Archive: Working with Artists  

—Grenville Davey sculpture at Cobbs Lane. We enjoy collaborating with visual artists, and have built a number of fruitful ongoing relationships over successive projects. Artists bring a fresh, questioning energy to the design conversation, challenging linear thinking and opening up unexpected avenues of investigation.

On Site: View across Battersea  

—View from the Battersea Arts Centre Grand Hall scaffolding towards the Battersea Power Station redevelopment.

In Progress: Colour study  

—Prior to the current brick horizontal banded design for Network Housing in Wembley, we explored a very different material approach to the facades. Inspired by 1930's Metro Land architecture, smooth matt GRC panels with curved corner profiles contrasted with glossy concave terracotta vertical panels between the windows. Subtle terracotta colour variations created visual movement across the facade.

Study Trip: Porto  

—Our trip to Porto was a small ‘homage’ to Siza. We were all fascinated with Siza’s choreography of the arrival experience. The sequence from entrance, to threshold, to entry, and in this case, descent, is always masterfully accomplished and relevant across the studio.

In the Studio: Corner study  

—General investigation into facades with depth on Fish Island Phase 3 and Archway. Architectural language developed to create buildings of scale with a detail quality that takes the expression beyond a surface treatment.

From The Archive: Bespoke light fitting  

—We design bespoke fittings for many of our cultural buildings. This light fitting was designed for the North Wall Arts Centre in Oxford. Rusted mild steel was used for door fittings, handrails and light fittings throughout the public spaces.

Study Trip: Housing trip to Copenhagen  

—An intense study of housing in Copenhagen and particularly Kay Fisker's work, on bicycles! Fisker was of particular interest as research on contextual, but bold repetitive facades, made of beautiful materials and simply detailed in urban blocks forming a natural extension of the city.

On Site: Public consultation event at Battersea Arts Centre  

—This was held in the ruined Grand Hall and was the first time following the fire six months previously that members of the public were invited into the space to experience at first hand the damage caused and our design proposals for the rebuild project.

Reference: Door Handles  

—On visiting several buildings designed by Alvar Aalto in Helsinki, we were struck by how many architectural elements were repeated across different projects. Fixtures such as these door handles were used frequently, with subtle adaptations in the design according to context.

In the Studio: Project review  

—The studio design process - communication, talking, listening, learning and testing; our approach to the ‘making of buildings’ in order to achieve the user’s aspirations in physical and pragmatic terms, but also spiritually and emotionally.

In Progress: Ufford Street  

—Illustration of the West Mews and the renewed connectivity achieved in the new urban plan. An old street, Marlborough Street, was re introduced to create a finer grain, with more intimate scaled streets re- connecting The Cut with Ufford Street.