Congratulations to Joe Crawford, who recently became a Certified Passivhaus Designer. Joe will build on our knowledge and expertise in designing energy-efficient buildings. He joins Jonathan Mann and Paul Wild in Gort Scott’s Passivhaus team, spreading best practice on all projects through our in-house training and reviews. This ever-growing expertise demonstrates our commitment to low carbon design.

Designing buildings to Passivhaus standards involves creating spaces that achieve exceptional energy efficiency, comfort, health and wellbeing by minimising energy use for heating and cooling and creating a stable, high quality internal environment. This is achieved through meticulous yet creative design, high-performance but practical construction, and enthusiastic collaboration with our clients, specialists and contractors.

Gort Scott is currently working on a £60m Passivhaus scheme for Girton College, Cambridge.

Enduring projects for a changing world

In changing social, environmental and economic contexts, we make projects with an enduring presence, influence or legacy whether they are buildings, temporary projects or long term strategies. Primarily, places endure when they are loved; so common to all our projects is care for people’s experience of the place, permeating all scales from the city to the detail.

This month we had the pleasure of hosting architecture students from the University of Westminster for a tour of our affordable housing project 458 Forest Road in Walthamstow.

The tour - led by Architect Benjamin Carter - forms part of the RIBA Future Architects programme, where we pair Gort Scott mentors with Year 3 BA Architecture students at universities across the UK, supporting future and emerging architects.

The initiative is part of our broader outreach programme, which includes workshops, work experience, internships and mentoring, and covers all ages from primary education through to adults in work.

Thanks to Pocket Living and the Forest Road residents.

Directors Jay Gort and Fiona Scott were invited by the Architecture Foundation to deliver the latest talk in the Architecture on Stage series.

The lecture, titled What Matters, reflected on how they practice architecture in a changing world. They structured the presentation around four key questions that drive the work that comes out of the practice:

1. What role does design play in the urban block?
2. Should we be building at all?
3. Can we be both bold and contextual?
4. Is it possible to create - in reality - the settings we imagine?

Thank you to everyone who joined us at the Barbican last week. It was a privilege to share the questions and ideas that have shaped our work over the years. A recording will be available soon via the Architecture Foundation.

Thank you to the Barbican, Ellis Woodman and the Architecture Foundation for the invitation.
 

Forest Road is shortlisted for the 2025 Housing Design Awards in the Affordable Housing category. Gort Scott and Pocket Living will host a building tour for the judging panel in April.

Forest Road provides 90 affordable one-bedroom homes for local first-time buyers in Walthamstow, on a prominent site opposite Lloyd Park and the William Morris Gallery — the Grade II* listed former home of the Arts and Crafts activist. The building achieves a high density of affordable housing within a predominantly low-rise context, with sensitivity to neighbouring terraced housing. A third of the homes were sold off-plan within five months, reflecting high demand for affordable, community-oriented housing in the area. Almost 50% of the homes have been sold to people who live or work in the borough. Features include large floor to ceiling windows for maximum daylight, ample storage, continuous flooring throughout main living spaces and sensible room proportions. Communal spaces have been integrated into the design to foster a sense of community and wellbeing. Two roof terraces with park views, a south-facing communal courtyard and a lobby area serve as welcoming, shared environments where residents can relax and socialise. 

Director Fiona Scott was invited by the Fritz Schumacher Gesellschaft to speak in Hamburg for the final event in a series of lectures at the Architektur Salon Hamburg titled MAGISTRALEN, which coincide with the launch of the city’s Magistralen Masterplan. 

Hamburg’s Magistralen are a series of important arterial roads, and the masterplan aims to turn them into more vibrant urban spaces. Main roads are the spatial backbone in Hamburg and a key focus of the urban development in the coming decades.

Fiona presented thoughts from Gort Scott’s analysis of urban blocks and streets, ideas on what makes a good high street building based on our public, workspace and community building projects, our Old Oak masterplan, civic buildings and housing.

The New Court: Girton College Cambridge was awarded Education Category Winner + Overall Winner of the 2025 AR Future Projects Award. Project Architect, Sela-Jaymes Taylor was invited by the Architectural Review to present the award-winning project at a special event last week (Wednesday 9th April), during Milan’s Salone del Mobile at Dropcity. Alongside The New Court, two highly commended projects were also presented. You can view all the category winners here.

Girton College set out their principles, values and ambitions in our earliest meetings with them, for a healthy, inclusive, place that supports student life and work, with respect for the immediate landscape context, and for the planet. We are really happy that the robustness of our design response to the challenging brief, has been endorsed by this award and look forward to seeing it come to life over the coming years.

Won through an extended design competition in 2024, this major planned addition to Girton College, University of Cambridge will be the most significant single building project on the College’s main site since its foundation in 1869, and to Passivhaus standards. Read about the project here.
 

We first achieved B Corp Certification 1 year ago. Our B Corp Certification demonstrates that we meet rigorous standards for environmental and social impact. As part of this certification, B Corps are required to publish an annual report. The primary purpose of a B Corp Impact Report is to transparently communicate our performance over the past year.

We are pleased to share our first B Corp Impact Report, published this week and available to download here.

We structured the report according to the five B Corp impact areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers. Our report highlights not only our achievements but also our goals for the future. A large part of the B Corp ethos - and our own - is setting ambitious targets and striving for continuous improvement. Therefore, at the end of each
section we outline our aims and actions for the coming year. We look forward to sharing our progress with you in a year’s time.

The shortlist has been announced for the RIBA London (East) Awards and we’re pleased that our workspace project, 3 Mills Studios, has been selected.

The £6 million renovation project at 3 Mills Studios has successfully upgraded a series of historic buildings, creating 10,000 square feet of new workspaces while enhancing public access to and enjoyment of the site. Gort Scott, in collaboration with Freehaus, worked alongside the 3 Mills team and the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) to deliver a project that balances the adaptation of historic buildings with the needs of creative businesses. The works were made possible by funding from the Getting Building Fund via a £3m grant allocated by the Mayor of London.

Located on the banks of the River Lea in Bromley-by-Bow, 3 Mills is a unique remnant of historic London and is the city’s oldest surviving industrial centre. The project involves the adaptive reuse of three key buildings: the locally listed Gin Still, the Grade II listed Custom House, and Rush House. 

The project revitalised disused or under-used, at-risk heritage buildings, transforming them into lettable spaces for creative enterprises, significantly improving their environmental sustainability, climate resilience, and economic viability.

The New Court, Girton College is the overall winner in this year’s AR Future Projects awards!

The New Court is the most significant addition to Girton, the UK’s first full-time institution for the higher education of women, since its foundation in 1869. The project will allow Girton to accommodate a larger number of undergraduate and postgraduate students in the heart of the College, while improving conference and performance facilities, including an iconic auditorium. 

With an emphasis on sustainability, the new buildings will utilise innovative structural solutions to reduce carbon and meet Passivhaus Plus targets, all set within a bio-diverse landscape that extends an existing Orchard and includes waterways and wetlands.

Launched in 2002, The Architectural Review’s Future Projects awards are a window into tomorrow’s cities. Celebrating excellence in projects still on the drawing board or currently under construction, and the potential for positive contribution to communities, neighbourhoods and urban landscapes around the world. View the highly commended and shortlisted projects here.

As a member of the panel, Jay joins a diverse range of disciplines with significant experience and knowledge of the design and delivery of high-quality development. With expert knowledge of Oxford, its opportunities and constraints and the city’s aspirations.

 The Oxford Design Review panel was set up in 2020 in partnership with Oxford City Council to provide pre-application design advice to applicants and Oxford City Council. Gort Scott has worked on projects of varying scale within Oxford, including a masterplan for Grade II listed Oxford Covered Market, a transformative development for St Hilda’s College, and Oxford North life sciences laboratory.

Our proposals for 326 new affordable homes and ten townhouses at Silvertown were approved by Newham Council Planning Committee. 

The development is a key element in an early phase of the £3.5 billion programme led by The Silvertown Partnership – in conjunction with the Greater London Authority and Homes England – to regenerate 50 acres within the Royal Docks Opportunity Area in Newham. Founded on the area’s rich industrial heritage, the diverse Silvertown neighbourhood will form a vibrant new centre for the Royal Docks and Newham, bringing around 6,500 new homes, 500,000 sq.ft of leisure space, 1,200,000 sq.ft of workspace, and a high quality public realm and network of green spaces.

Our work was informed by our knowledge and expertise about High Streets and public spaces, and a desire to create a characterful and successful new neighbourhood with plentiful opportunities for social integration and interaction. The development forms a significant part of the western boundary of the masterplan – knitting into the existing fabric of Silvertown, introducing new neighbourhood connections, and creating welcoming public spaces for the whole community. 

Construction is due to commence in the autumn.

Locating healthcare on the High Street makes health services more accessible to users and delivers considerable social, economic, commercial and environmental benefits to the place. It is happening, but not widely. Gort Scott and Fleet Architects have been working with key high street and NHS stakeholders to define the issues and actions to make it happen. Here is a short PDF document of our findings in 2024, with a summary below. We will be continuing to push this forward in 2025. 

Health on the High Street: 2024 Findings and Actions

[1] There is an overarching need to integrate NHS Strategy with Urban Design. 
[2] There is an absence of healthcare uses, with differing benefits and risks, in National Planning Policy. 
[3] There is need for greater emphasis on longer term wider social and economic value over short term financial cost. 
[4] The internal obstacles within the NHS limit agility and capacity to react to opportunities. 
[5] The complexity of the stakeholdersgroup has highlighted a need for leadership from a lead organisation.
[6] Unlocking the viability of the NHS as an anchor tenant to commercial landlords.
[7] Some NHS Trusts are moving health to the high streets, but by stealth, when it should be national policy and championed. 
[8] Absence of data - There is a pressing need for research to prove the concept and maximise the benefits in application. 
[9] High streets remain places of opportunity as we enter 2025 and for the longer term future of our towns.

Thank you to all who have contributed to our discussions in 2024: Carolina Eboli, Associate Director, PRD; Rick Fentiman, CEO, SHS Holdings & Health Spaces; Valentin Gheorghian, Design Manager, Health Spaces; Lucy Gardner, Deputy Director Strategy and Partnership, Warrington and Halton NHS FT; Hannah Haddad, Head of Strategic Applications, L.B of Hounslow; Kara Marshall, Director of Corporate Delivery, University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire; Andrej Mecava, Principal Urban Designer, L.B of Hounslow; Filippa Mudd, Associate Partner, FMX Urban Property Advisors; Iain Nicholson, Founder of The Vacant Shops Academy; Eugene Prinsloo, Development Director, Community Health Partnerships; Tim Rettler, Greater London Authority; Mark Robinson, Chair of the High Streets Task Force and New River; Marc Sansom, Healthy Cities & Salus Global Knowledge Exchange; Magali Thompson, Project Lead for Placemaking, Great Ormond Street Hospital; Matthew Tulley, Redevelopment Director, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; Michael Wood, Head of Health Economic Partnerships, NHS Confederation.

Director, Jay Gort was invited by London Met to speak as part of a lecture series organised by Metropolitan Architecture Student Society (MASS). Jay was tasked with responding to the theme of ‘Optimism’. He structured the talk around 3 compelling “Reasons to be cheerful”.

1. Adventures in retrofit: Jay shared his experience of re-imagining and repurposing existing buildings and pieces of cities, such as Gort Scott’s work on Walthamstow Town Hall.

2. The urban block: The incredible capacities and capabilities of the London block, drawing on Gort Scott’s pioneering research involving high streets and town centres.

3. A shared journey: Highlighting the potentials of the studio environment as a context for care and collaboration.

The lecture was open to students, alumni and the public. Thank you to MASS for the invitation, and thank you to those who attended.




 

For the latest Supporter’s Column, Associate, Jonathan Mann, writes about the Charles Dickens’ book ‘Our Mutual Friend’ and the lesson it teaches about circularity and waste.

“For Dickens, waste is unavoidably ‘over here’. All characters are linked by exchange, defined by how they view that exchange. If this were just a tall tale about the ‘Golden Dustman’ and those at the centre of the story – rags to riches, money versus love – then it would be an 800-page one-liner. But it is a sustained meditation on value, self and how we interrelate, grappling with greed, corruption, society, class, and identity. There is plenty to think about regarding our cultural constructs of value, of what is ‘waste’ and what ‘treasure’. Circularity requires that we blur the two; in his contemporaneous magazine Household Words, Dickens did exactly that, publishing articles on reclamation, conversion and reuse, a world suddenly full of potential worth.”

You can read the article on the Architecture Foundation website.

Jonathan Mann is Sustainability and Compliance Lead and head of our Environmental Action Group.