We’re delighted to present our office fit-out project for The Portman Estate at FOOTPRINT+ 2026. Joe Mac Mahon and Megan Thacker-Brooks will be joined on stage by Michael Jones, Project Director at The Portman Estate, and Jess Daly, Principal Consultant at Bioregional.

The Portman Estate head office: Heritage workspace transformation for people and planet
 
Wed 13 May 2026, 13:10-14:05
Interiors Focus Stage
FOOTPRINT+ Old Billingsgate, London

The Portman Estate’s relocation of its head office to One Great Cumberland Place presented an exciting opportunity to reimagine the workplace. The project aims to set a benchmark for sustainable commercial interiors across its 110-acre Marylebone estate.
 
The retrofit of the 8,400 sq ft office prioritises collaboration, wellbeing, and exemplary environmental performance while working within an existing base build. Sustainability informed every design decision including:

- low-carbon and high-recycled-content materials
- circular economy principles resulting in reuse of existing services, lighting, and finishes
- inventive reuse of salvaged materials
- specification of furniture to meet rigorous environmental, repair, and replacement criteria

Embodied carbon was measured and recorded to support The Portman Estate’s One Planet Action Plan, achieving carbon neutrality with minimal offsetting and setting a replicable benchmark for future workplace retrofits.
 
Speakers:
Joe Mac Mahon, Associate, Gort Scott
Megan Thacker-Brooks, Architect, Gort Scott
Michael Jones, Project Director, The Portman Estate
Jess Daly, Principal Consultant, Bioregional
 
With support from Aram
 

Gort Scott is delighted to announce that work is starting on site at Woolwich Old Town Hall, where the practice is retrofitting this Grade II listed building to create a new arts hub in the heart of Woolwich town centre. Dating from the 1840s, the building is the oldest surviving municipal building in Woolwich and forms part of a historic quarter of civic buildings.

Over the years, numerous development phases and ad-hoc alterations have resulted in multiple entry points, level changes and internal partitioning, making the building difficult to navigate and detracting from its historic significance. Through a series of sensitive insertions and alterations, Gort Scott’s design improves access, reveals the historic stair, restores the building’s relationship to the street, and transforms the rear yard into a landscaped shared courtyard for public events and everyday use.

Gort Scott was appointed following an invited competition in 2022 as architects, conservation architects and lead consultants. Working with the Royal Borough of Greenwich and Second Floor Studios & Arts, the practice will deliver 21 genuinely affordable spaces for artists, makers and designers in Woolwich and Greenwich. The workspaces will include dedicated wash-up areas for wet art materials, secure bike storage and accessible WC facilities. A building at the rear of the Old Library will be converted into new artists’ studios which can be used as a gallery space during open studios events.

Gort Scott is pleased to have been appointed by the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Bexley to lead the preparation of a new Urban Regeneration Framework for Abbey Wood.

Working with a multidisciplinary team including Something Collective, Cushman & Wakefield, Newmark, Periscope and Mott MacDonald, Gort Scott will help shape a long-term vision for Abbey Wood that identifies key opportunities, supports local ambitions, and provides a co-ordinated framework for development, public realm improvements and investment.

Abbey Wood is a place of significant opportunity, with the potential to build on its growing connectivity, rich local character and neighbourhood assets. The Framework will provide a strategic and deliverable plan for how the area can evolve over time, supporting inclusive growth, healthier streets and spaces, and a more sustainable future.

This work builds on Gort Scott’s ongoing relationship with Royal Borough of Greenwich. The practice recently completed work on Royal Arsenal Gatehouse and will shortly be starting on site at Woolwich Old Town Hall.

This month, Andrew Tam, Associate at Gort Scott, joined Sarah Le Gresley and Emily Herbert on Michelmersh’s Forming the Future podcast to discuss the intersection of architecture and climate change.

The conversation explored the environmental impact of design decisions, the challenge of collecting robust data for whole life carbon assessment, and why sustainability must be embedded from the outset. It also touched on future homes standards, circularity, retrofit, biodiversity, and the behavioural changes needed to reduce carbon across the built environment.

Thank you to the Michelmersh team for the invitation and for creating space for such an important discussion on how we can help form a better future.

Visit Michelmersh.co.uk to listen to the podcast.