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

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.’

Southampton City Vinyl

In May 2019 Studio BAD were commissioned to write, and curate a series of urban public realm interventions for Southampton, with a view of activating vacant retail shopfronts and redundant spaces.

The competitions are part of the ongoing, incremental strategy by GO! Southampton to enliven the public realm across the city centre. We were thrilled to see the first of the competitions brought to life, with vinyl artwork erected in place on an empty shopfront, located in the busy High Street.

The artist, Nathan Evans, won this first competition with a design concept for the vinyls, themed around a number of key phrases that represent the city and its inhabitants, reflected though the designs in an uplifting and positive way. Each artwork is crafted to be flexible, allowing them to be used to redecorate any dimension of shop front across the city centre.

The designs act to ask questions about the redundant space and place, what are the opportunities and how can the community get involved to reimagine and repurpose these spaces with new, vibrant uses.

A number of themes were identified in the initial briefing, representing the city in all its diverse forms and showcasing some of the best the city has to offer including: CITY OF LEARNING, CITY OF RESEARCH & INNOVATION, CITY OF CULTURE, CITY OF PLAY, GLOBAL CITY, ENTREPRENURIAL CITY and DIVERSE CITY.

GO! Southampton is the City’s Business Improvement District (BID) for Southampton City Centre. It was originally set up 2017 by a steering group consisting of local businesses and organisations who all share the vision for pushing Southampton to reach its full potential, through projects and improvements. Studio BAD are also collaborating with GO! Southampton on the Bedford Place reactivation scheme.