Weston Street, located in the heart of Bermondsey, is our latest project. We have been working on it for over 10 years with long standing collaborator and architect Simon Allford, co-founder of AHMM, the practice that won the RIBA Stirling Prize 2015, the highest architectural accolade. The scheme comprises eight tessellating Solidspace apartments stacked above almost 5000 sq ft of 'Brutalist' office space. The apartments face south over the neighbouring park and conservation area. They are all two- or three-bedrooms arranged over half levels and incorporate the Solidspace DNA   Like the neighbouring Shard, the building has a minimalist, modern aesthetic, while the bricks reference the surrounding historic warehouses, and the aluminium window frames reproduce the elegance of the vernacular crittall windows. This area of London has undergone a significant amount of change in the last decade and we have watched as it has changed and evolved. Now, the area is home to…

Shepherdess Walk, located between Old Street and Islington in central London, is our latest development to complete. Designed by Jaccaud Zein Architects, this project consists of five apartments and three terraced houses all designed with the split-level Solidspace DNA inside. This plot was once home to the UK's first HIV clinic, housed in a 1980s building that was subjected to bomb attacks amidst public hysteria. The area is characterised by a mix of styles from ornate late-Victorian buildings to 1950s low-rise housing. The site sits on the corner of Shepherdess Walk and Wenlock Street and complements its Victorian neighbours both in scale and materiality. Jaccaud Zein Architects' attention to detail is apparent throughout the development from the choice of Belgian brick to evoke the colour of London Stock to the rendered plastered walls inside. The project has been widely published with reviews in the Observer, Wallpaper*, Uncube, Architecture Today and the Architects’…

The site of Stapleton Hall Road, which we purchased at auction in December 2005, was an oddly shaped 270 square metre gap site sitting at a road junction. The surrounding area is characterised by late Victorian and early Edwardian houses bisected by the dominant infrastructure of the elevated Parkland Walk and the cutting of the London overground railway. On the site sat a faded yellow shop selling shoes, a single-storey redundant railway shelter and a huge advertising billboard. There were a number of hurdles we needed to overcome, including some long negotiations with Network Rail and discussions with the planning officer. Eventually we obtained consent in January 2011 with a design created in collaboration with Stephen Taylor Architects. Construction commenced in October 2012 for a pair of mirrored Solidspace houses. The two houses are arranged in a butterfly plan, symmetrical around the axis of the party wall. They are arranged…

We fell in love with this tapered site located between two south London streets, with its high arches and elevated railway tracks. It was 400 square metres of forgotten land owned by the London Borough of Lambeth. We bought the site at auction in December 1998 and appointed dRMM architects a year later. Our first planning application for six units in a six-storey bock was refused in October that year. We thought about appealing but compromised instead. The second application, approved in August 2000, was for a five-unit scheme over four storeys. We weren’t prepared to build the compromise and made a third application, approved in 2000, for a four-storey, four unit version of the first scheme. The project was completed in March 2003. It was constructed around three zones: the first zone being 4 metres wide with bathrooms, bedrooms, entrances and a lobby, granting cocoon to the occupier against…

We have been working since 2008 to activate our site on 100 Union Street in Southwark, South London using it as a 'meanwhile space' until 2016 when we begin building a 20,000 sq ft self-contained office building completed winter 2017. The iconic design by Stirling Prize winning architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris features open plan interiors with exposed concrete soffit and walls, full height ‘factory style’ windows, maple timber floor tiles, ‘acoustic’ decorative timber panelling and high ceilings. We believe that empty sites in London should contribute to their wider community and be used to test new ideas and allow emerging creative studios to create projects. We give the land along with water and electricity and give our partners the freedom to develop projects. So, Union Street has been a lido, a community garden, a lake, a public house and more! Read about the individual projects that have created in more detail…

Our Essex Mews project took shape upon a former back land site of run-down garages located in a sedate south London suburb about ¼ mile from Crystal Palace. This area was characterised by detached and semi-detached Victorian houses with some low- to medium-rise 1970s apartments and large open green spaces. We acquired the site at auction in 2005 with planning consent for two rather mundane chalet bungalows. Working closely with architect Matthew Wood we produced a design for three modest, two-storey mews houses that featured the Solidspace DNA with ‘Eat Live Work’ open social spaces and three bedrooms above. The three Solidspace homes adopt the local vernacular and scale of traditional suburban homes, requested by the conservation area, with London stock bricks, pitched roofs and chimney stacks. The familiar and traditional exterior belies the invention of the split-level interior – a benefit of the Solidspace model that allows it to be…

Our habit of driving around and scouting potential sites, revealed the plot for 1a Donaldson Road - sitting on a quiet road in Queen's Park. Previously home to six single-storey garages behind 77 Brondesbury Road, constructed in the 1970s as part of its conversion into flats, the site had a history of planning refusals and, frustrated, the owner finally decided to try his luck at auction. We were fortunate and purchased this 195 square metre site in October 2004, appointing architects Groves Natcheva to design a detached family house of 187 square metres. Planning consent was approved in October 2005, to create a building of two interlocking volumes in both plan and section. It was dug down by half a floor level and, although two storeys internally, its southern facade to the street was only 4.5 metres in height. This met the proscribed light angle from the windows to the rear…

87 Weston Street is our latest office project and is located less than 200m from London Bridge station and directly adjacent to the neighbouring park in the Bermondsey conservation area. We have been working on this project for over 10 years with long standing collaborator and architect Simon Allford, co-founder of AHMM, the practice that won the RIBA Stirling Prize 2015, the highest architectural accolade. 87 Weston Street comprises almost 5000 sq ft of ground floor 'Brutalist' space with typical ceiling heights of 4m. The office has access to the private gated courtyard. This area of London has undergone a significant amount of change in the last decade and we have watched as it has changed and evolved. Now, the area is home to the bustling Borough Market and the ever popular Tate Modern, which is located just a short walk from Weston Street. We are currently on site and the office space is scheduled to complete by the end of…

Skyroom is another one of those projects that is indicative of the way we work and how projects can evolve and change over time. This project was developed in collaboration with The Architecture Foundation, a think-tank for architecture that we have supported over the years. They had developed an exchange programme between young architects in the UK and Turkey to look at the similarity and differences between their approach to design in London and Istanbul. One theme that emerged was how in Istanbul the rooftops of buildings were used as public spaces and were seen as potential gap sites in the city for appropriation. The architects believed - as did we - that there was potential to bring this to London by raising awareness of the many spaces and places that are available if you just look up. Therefore we developed Skyroom together with David Kohn Architects, one of the UK…