Fiona Scott will be speaking at ‘Urban Depth & Autonomy Workshops: City Depth’ on Thursday 11th February.

Hosted by Art, Architecture and Design Research at the London Metropolitan University, this is the third in a series of four interdisciplinary workshops asking how the built environment shapes our capacity to exercise autonomy in cities.

The workshops explore the nature of spatial order, and the relationship between people and their environments from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. The aim is to establish common ground; understand the nature and breadth of existing research into spatial ordering; define shared concepts and to begin to explore conceptual and normative issues around architecture and urban design.

Fiona will speak alongside Birgit Hausleitner, Nicola Bacon and Francesca Froy.

Click here for details.

Great to see high-quality design by Gort Scott, 5th Studio, Mikhail Riches and RCKa architects promoted the current phases of Olympic fringe development, which focus on affordable housing and sustainable mixed-use urbanism between Stratford high street and Olympic park.

Link to the AJ article here.

Waltham Forest Council have given our Forest Road project the green light. The scheme for Pocket Living will provide 90 one-bed flats, on a site formerly occupied by a care home.

High-quality considered public realm is key for this development, to ensure it is safe and enjoyable for all residents and successfully integrated. The residential block will provide 100% affordable housing, eight apartments of which are wheelchair adaptable, with communal external landscaping.

Precast curved concrete elements respond to the William Morris Gallery opposite and help to articulate the massing. A wall piece, on a section of the façade, has been designed by a local artist and responds to the area’s Arts and Crafts heritage.

We are delighted to announce that we have been appointed by Oxford City Council to develop a masterplan for the Grade II-listed Covered Market, an important historic structure in the city centre.

The masterplan will set out how the market, first opened in 1774, could be regenerated and improved. We are looking to promote participation and inclusivity, encouraging more people to spend time in the market in the daytime and evening. We will be making the market more visible and attractive from the street, while exploring approaches to incubate new uses, businesses and activities. The market will become a model for sustainability, streamlining and future-proofing public services and market servicing.

RE—SET—GO make space for excluded voices and pilot ways to build more progressive and representative architectural communities.

You can now book free 1-to-1 mentoring and ‘CV Surgery’ sessions with London Practice Forum architecture practices, including Gort Scott. You must live in the boroughs of Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark or Wandsworth to take part.

Click on this link for all the details.

We have designed an immersive scenography for the Epic Iran exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Based on the idea of ‘The Exhibition as City’, the show covers 5000 years of history set within ten unique spaces.

Looking forward to seeing the museum reopening soon!

Click here to book tickets.

With introductions from former London mayor Ken Livingstone and his then architectural advisor Richard Rogers, this book by Peter Bishop and Lesley Williams discusses the impact of the Design for London team Livingstone and Rogers pioneered in 2006. Many projects that have been so influential to our practice, including some of our own, are featured, providing insight on London’s ongoing transformation.

Find out more about the book here

‘On a rocky outcrop in the mountains of British Colombia in Canada, the London-based architectural firm Gort Scott has crafted a house in concrete, timber and glass that responds to its spectacular surroundings’ writes David Nicholls, Deputy Editor of House & Garden.

We are thrilled to be the cover feature of House & Garden magazine’s Christmas edition.

Read more about The Rock

Link to House & Garden

We’re pleased to report that our project at Arnhem Drive for Croydon housing provider Brick By Brick has been submitted for planning. The scheme adds 56 homes across two new buildings to enhance an existing estate in the New Addington area with public realm and landscaping improvements reinforcing connections between the estate and adjacent park.

By adopting a low-energy approach, the scheme also adheres to sustainability principles set out in the One Planet Living framework by South London charity Bioregional.

Read more at the Architects’ Journal.

We are excited to be involved in this pioneering programme to increase diversity in built environment professions.

Accelerate was developed and established by Open City, in partnership with The Bartlett, UCL. Over the last decade, hundreds of students have taken part in the programme, with 70% of Accelerate participants securing conditional offers to study architecture and related subjects at university.

Click here to find out more.

The proposal centres on the remodelling of the Dining Hall, with new lantern skylight, to reinstate the Hall as the centrepiece of the site. A new atrium and Garden Room to Chapel Court will connect key spaces including the refurbished Sherlock Library and Rare Books Collection.

Design gestures reference the College’s rich history, including a new Gallery to the Hall that borrows from the site’s past architecture. New red stonework unites the Grade-I listed 17thC Court and 1960’s McGrath Centre, strengthening coherence and identity across the campus.

Today, we’re at St Hilda’s College! This is the first time some members of the practice have seen the project on site, and it’s looking fantastic in the August sunshine.

What does ‘normal’ look like anyway for London’s diverse and ever-evolving high streets? Fiona writes for the NLA, speculating on the future of high streets and the opportunities and challenges that may come in defending urban life.

Reflecting on our recent High Streets Adaptive Strategies research project in partnership with the GLA, Fiona observes how strategies explored in the research have incidentally been catalysed in the unprecedented circumstances of 2020. It is important to use this period to reflect on the consequences of the pandemic – to identify where we have and can continue to make changes in relation to home working, transport and healthier streets. It is vital not to forget the value that comes from community, physical proximity and inhabiting public spaces – it is more important than ever to defend models of urban life when looking towards a sustainable future.

Read more

‘More flexibility and moving more easily between use classes, as well as mixing use classes and incorporating multiple uses within the same property will be crucial.’ Read Fiona’s contribution to the Architect’s Journal feature on high streets adaptability.

Our Architectural Assistant Olly Carter and Studio 7, London Met School of Architecture have won the Sustainable Project award, AJ Small Projects 2020, for the CASS Studio at Margent Farm, an industrial hemp farm outside Huntingdon practising regenerative farming methods.

Congratulations Studio 7 and to studio leaders David Grandorge and Paloma Gormley!

Photography credit to David Grandorge.

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