Marley interview, AJ Award

I was recently interviewed by Marley, the UK’s leading roofing product company, about our success at the Architects Journal Small Project Award which they sponsor. The St Margaret’s Church project won the Sustainability prize at this year’s award, which was a huge honour for the myself and the collaborative team.

The award ties in succinctly with the founding ethos I had when setting up Studio BAD, we are interested in two things, one is social architecture and the social impact of architecture. The other is our passion for the reuse and reimagination of existing buildings. I always had a crazy idea that as architects, we could run sustainable businesses by doing pieces of work that question whether you actually have to build anything at all. The success of St Margaret’s Church has demonstrated that my crazy idea is possible!

At this project we only touched the church lightly, yet have achieved a huge transformation for the building and the community that use it. I think it was brave for AJ to give the award to a project that isn’t glamorous architecture. This award is important for all of the Studio BAD team, and is equally important to our client.

 

The full article can be found here.

Architecture Through a Shared Collaborative Process Event

We are thrilled to be hosting ‘Architecture Through a Shared Collaborative Process’ at God’s House Tower in Southampton, it is a free to visit exhibition and discussion from Friday 20th January until Sunday 22nd January 2023.

‘Architecture Through a Shared Collaborative Process’ celebrates four years of working collaboratively and highlights the process and potential in working collectively to achieve inclusion and equality. 

The possibility that architecture can be developed through shared collaboration is an ambition and lived experience for us at Studio B.A.D. Our practice ethos is to collaborate with clients, designers, architects, artists and academics to bring a range of voices and perspectives to enrich their projects.

The process is inclusive; all collaborators are equal.

As a practice we work with community groups through a process of listening initiated at community consultation workshops to develop shared visions and goals with the client body. The practice develops proposals with clients that are about the long-term sustainability of the community, with the architectural practice as partners in this relationship.

Come and join us, tickets are free and can be booked on Eventbrite here

RICS Award Shortlist 2022

RICS Award Shortlist 2022

We are so delighted to have the St Margaret’s Church redevelopment included in the shortlist for this year’s RICS Social Impact Awards 2022, in the Community Benefit category.

The awards were set up by RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) to annually celebrate the most inspirational projects that also have a positive impact on the local community, or natural environment. We feel especially proud to be included in the shortlist for this award, as throughout the church project the community has been at the heart of the design, so we are grateful to to have this celebrated and recognised by others.

We would like to thank the whole collaborative team who have helped to deliver this scheme, alongside our most wonderful clients at the church who have been so open and welcoming to our design ideas.

Congratulations to all the projects shortlisted, we are amongst some brilliant schemes which all deserve to be celebrated. The regional winners will be announced on YouTube on the 18th May.

This is our second inclusion in the RICS Awards, previously our October Books project was shortlisted in the 2020 awards.

Award Win – AJ Small Projects

We are thrilled, surprised, astonished and delighted to have won the Sustainability Award at the AJ Small Projects Award last night for our St Margaret’s Church, in Portsmouth.

The church had been one of the 20 projects shortlisted in this year’s awards, due to the high level of the other projects shortlisted we hadn’t anticipated coming home with a trophy, to be honest we were just going to enjoy the evening! It was such a wonderful shock when our project was announced.

As part of the process for these awards all those shortlisted were invited to present the project in 2 minutes! Followed by an in-depth Q&A session afterwards from the judges, which was slightly intimidating but a good way to really get to the heart of the project, it must be extremely hard for judges to understand the nuances of each scheme just from a standard award submission.

Thank you to all our wonderful collaborative team who were involved in this project, it could not have been done without us all working together. Also, this project could not have been achieved without our amazing and encouraging client, always so open to our ideas and really became an integral part of the design process, making for a richer and more successful scheme.

This award is so important to us, not the trophy but what it represents. As a practice we strongly believe that architecture hold the potential to be a vehicle for social and economic change for the better, we strongly advocate the idea of reusing and reimagining where possible as it can deliver more sustainable and far richer designs.

Congratulations to all those shortlisted in the awards and to Atkin Studio the overall winner for their Drovers’ Bough project, and to Unknown Works for Brightbox which took the People’s Choice Award. There is an exhibition running for the next month of all shortlisted projects at the APT studio at 235 St John Street, London. If you get a chance it is well worth visiting and is free to all.

RIBA Tour of St Margaret’s Church

As a recent MacEwean Award Commended project, the RIBA Hampshire Branch have invited us to host a tour of St Margaret’s Church for local members. We are thrilled to have this opportunity, to showcase how we have transformed the once condemned building though a minimal refurbishment and ‘meanwhile approach’, transforming it for the local community.

Do please come and join us, the event is free although we would encourage everyone who can to make a donation to the church’s fund. Pre booking your tickets is essential, get your here.

Date & Time:
Tuesday 26th April 2022
1800 – 2000

Location:
St Margaret’s Community Church
Highland Road, Southsea, Portsmouth, PO4 9DD