Site updates

Site updates

Over the last few months there has been a huge progress on site for our two residential projects currently in the construction phase. We haven’t been very vocal about the projects, the process on site is something we are used to and often take for granted, but it is sometimes good to take a moment to pause, and appreciate how far we have come with the schemes.

In Berkshire Cullverland Farm is looking fantastic. The two storey contemporary extension is making great progress, the fitting of the exterior cladding is nearly concluded, totally altering the appearance of the structure and taking the structure from looking very much like ‘work in progress’ and transforming it to look a finished home (although there is still plenty to do!). Once completed the dark, larch cladding will bring the home into dialogue with the rural, agricultural surroundings and help to blend the new addition into the site.

At Holly Cottage, a Grade II Listed home set in the South Downs National Park, the contemporary extension is starting to come out of the ground. Due to the historic nature of this type of building there have been slight complications along the way, which is to be expected when altering old properties and something we had been anticipating to work around.

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.

AJ Small Projects Award Shortlist

The shortlist for the AJ Small Projects Award 2022 has been announced, we are so thrilled to have St Margaret’s Church included as one of the 20 projects on the list from the 170 entries they received.

These awards were launched in 1996 by the Architects Journal to celebrate and showcase schemes that have been completed on a smaller budget, in this year’s award all the projects included have been realised on a budget up to £299,000.

Having this modest budget for the church reinvention was obviously tight, however we believe that it has given a richness to the scheme, we have had to work very hard to achieve the goals for the completed with the modest cost.

All those shortlisted have been invited to present their projects to the panel of judges on the 6th April, when the overall winner will be selected. The full list of projects can be found here and the project can also be found on the AJ Building Library here.

Reading University lecture

We were delighted to be invited by Reading University Architecture Society to deliver a lecture in their 2022 lecture series titled ” REFORMATION REQUIRES” which we gave last night; after so long presenting lectures across zoom it was a delight to be back talking to a real audience.

For the lecture I focused on our most recent community and public realm work, to highlight how architecture can be a vehicle for positive social change. This is an area which all of us at Studio BAD are really passionate about, in many ways it is a key pillar of the company and the reason I set up the business as I wanted to focus on this area of work.

We strongly believe in re-using what is existing, creatively engaging architecture to re-imagine the potential of a building, or a site, to make it fit the current needs. For example, St Margaret’s Church building had been condemned and likely set for demolition, through our work we have delivered a vibrant space for the whole community which is activated throughout the day and week with much needed services, such as a food bank, café, child’s play area and bicycle workshop. We touched the building lightly, only making physically alterations where vitally needed, such as the flooring where we replaced the wooden floor (which we sold, to help fund the works) and replaced with poured concrete, to work with the newly installed, zoned underfloor heating.

Architecture in the 21st century does not have to be just about a physical building, I believe many projects need architecture in a different which is not necessarily just about the bricks and mortar buildings. We have recently been working on projects that focus on reactivating the traditional high street; with these projects we interrogate how we can change the dynamic of the streets to create vibrant and engaging spaces. In Bedford Place, in Southampton, our project was a result of the community needs in the wake of covid, answering how to activate and reanimate the area to create opportunities off the back of temporary road closures. It has been a real pleasure to see the success of the scheme, now nearly two years later much of the scheme is still in place and the local council are looking to make it permanent. We are currently looking at similar reactivation projects in Gosport, Eastleigh and other areas of Southampton.

We truly believe Architecture can creatively problem solve many of the issues we are currently facing; without ego architecture can be immensely powerful, helping to reactive our cities, reduce waste, reduce carbon and deliver richer, long lasting and interesting projects.

 

 

Interior Architecture Brighton Awards 2021

Studio B.A.D were proud to sponsor an award,  for the third consecutive year, and be an active part of the judging panel at the famed INTERIOR  ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL led by the hugely inspirational Gemma Barton. Gemma has been collaborating with Studio B.A.D on our Bedford Place Tactical Urbanism project.  We, as a collective, are always keen to support, and promote the next generation of designers, it is an important aspect of the practice’s ethos. The ‘Studio B.A.D + Chora Award’ recognises Interior Architecture graduating students for narrative and storytelling, through excellence in drawing and representation.

The entries for this year were of a very high level, with some very inspiring and through provoking designs ideas. We commend all the shortlisted nominations; it was a difficult decision to select just two winners in this category.

First prize was awarded to Matilda Swift-Bernard for her ‘Extinction Rebellion HQ’ project.

Darren Bray commented ‘A wonderful revolutionary project, very much rooted in the now, with a quite beautiful narrative of how two environmental activists come together for form an amazing partnership and alliance to do good in the world, responding to the pressures of climate change. A gorgeous heady mixture of powerful storey telling through rigorous tectonic architecture, some beautifully sensitive representation showing the quite wonderful bird bath structure. The reuse of plastic in a reimagined innovative new construction material in the atmospheric subterranean world is both ingenious and a real spectacle. There are so many layers to this thoroughly well considered project. Matilda is to be congratulated for such energy and inventiveness!’

Second prize was awarded to Iona Hepworth for her ‘The Mussel Club’ project.

Darren Bray commented ‘The Mussel club is quite majestic in its concept and incredibly strong entrepreneurial narrative. The idea of working with water and the way in which this is harnessed for the process of mussel farming is delivered with real passion and rigor. The beautiful iterative platform drawings are reminiscent of Matisse’s abstract cut outs and give a real glimpse and flavor of how one would use and interact with such a space, with some powerful sensory moments, especially those demonstrated through the atmospheric film. There are some quite wonderful representation technique’s employed where the sections show both the tectonic qualities of the existing structure but also the sensitivity nature of the water collection fabric. Iona has created a wonderful world of sensory overload, which beautifully represented.’