On a prominent crossroads corner at the heart of Walthamstow, a series of disused ground floor spaces have been lovingly refurbished to create a new cultural and creative enterprise hub serving the local community.

Discover the story of Central Parade on the Property X-Change network.

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Unity Place and St Hilda’s College have been shortlisted for the AJ Awards 2022 in the categories Housing Project and Higher Education under £20m.

The awards encompass projects of all scales and celebrate the best in architecture across 17 diverse categories.

Huge congratulations to our Unity Place collaborators Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Alison Brooks Architects.

Winners to be announced at a celebratory event in London on 23rd November.

Jay Gort and Fiona Scott have been invited by the Oxford Preservation Trust (OPT) to deliver the annual RIBA Lecture which marks the launch of Oxford Open Doors, Friday 9 September 2022. With previous RIBA Lectures having been given by Alison Brooks, Jim Eyre and Niall McLaughlin; we are looking forward to becoming part of an ongoing discussion.

The lecture, Found Resonance, will centre on Gort Scott’s work for St Hilda’s College as well as other projects in London, Oxford and internationally. Presenting an insight into how we use informed architecture to stitch cities together, create accord, craft actively, feed friendships, imagine futures, and circulate limited resources effectively.

For 15 years OPT have been running Oxford Open Doors, an annual weekend which allows the public access to private buildings in a celebration of heritage and culture across the city.

Gort Scott took advantage of the last week’s good weather to spend some time away from the office on a Big Day Out organised by our in-house social crew GS Life.

Kicking off with a tour of our nearly completed White City office project, Gateway West, we explored the characterful brickwork envelope and low-tech carbon reduction methods used. We then made our way over to the Serpentine to see Theaster Gates’ Black Chapel Pavilion and ended the day with a picnic and games in Hyde Park (which quickly became a little competitive).

Gort Scott’s office culture is key to the success of the practice and it has always been prioritised. We regularly organise team activities, especially when we’ve gained new people, to ensure everyone feels supported and a part of the team. GS Life events are an integral part of our holistic approach to health and wellbeing in the studio alongside our mentorship programme, trained mental health first aiders and commitment to staff’s professional development.

Won through invited competition in November 2021, Gort Scott are developing proposals for the Royal Borough of Greenwich to adapt, refurbish, and remodel the ground floor of Grade 2 listed Royal Arsenal Gatehouse, Woolwich. Following successful collaboration in the design of Three Mills Studios we are working in collaboration with Momentum, OR Consulting and Appleyard & Trew. The project is being delivered as a part of wider proposals with LDA, Studio Weave and Turner Works, funded by the Future High Streets Fund and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, which will see the centre of Woolwich entirely transformed.

The priority for this project will be sensitive restoration of original features and refurbishment of the historic fabric of the building, which will also improve its environmental performance. New additions will be made to the east and west of the building to address untidy remnants from when the building was severed from the Arsenal’s corpus during the building of the Plumstead Road.

These new elements will reference the historic architecture of the Arsenal and provide new public faces to adjacent spaces with interventions across the ground floor which will improve the building’s relationship to the surrounding context and introduce publicly accessible functions.

Overall integration with the wider public realm will establish links through to the new Elizabeth Line station, improving the connection between the Royal Arsenal site and Woolwich town centre.

Gort Scott has been working with WATMOS Community Homes and Community-Led Housing London to develop a series of strategies for the sensitive redevelopment of sheltered housing at Ethelred Estate, Lambeth. The primary focus of this process has been to ensure existing residents of the estate feel confident and secure in the upcoming changes to their homes. This has been achieved by working closely with the community steering group and in-depth discussions with the wider Ethelred community.

The development aims to improve the standard and scale of living for existing residents whilst also providing some additional social and private tenure housing. Gort Scott have proposed options for retrofit as a means to reduce embodied carbon whilst also addressing the history and geography of the area, proposing to reinstate a beneficial through road which has been cut-off by previous development.

“Gort Scott impressed us from the off with their experience and attitude to community led projects. The Gort Scott team were brilliant in assisting us to develop ideas, and really flexible in working with us on adapting the project and facilitating additional services with third parties. Their interaction with residents and project team was professional and friendly, and even fun!” - Watmos

Gort Scott have been shortlisted for Higher Education Architect of the Year and Refurbishment Architect of the Year in the AYA Awards. We are proud to have been shortlisted alongside so many friends and aspirational practices.

Acknowledgment of our work in refurbishment and retrofit seems particularly pertinent during this time of climate emergency as we take steps to reduce our embodied carbon impact.

Winners to be announced 18th October, London.

15 years into our venture as Gort Scott we want to thank our team as they grow with us and embody our values to be conscious of impact, to engage with the context of environment, to value relationships, to cultivate curiosity, and to bring joy.

“The project really is Gort Scott, that’s all the people and all the collaborators … and it’s an ongoing thing, about the processes more than it is the answer, it’s about the line of enquiry and collaborations and keeping that spirit alive within us all here.” - Jay Gort

“It’s more and more apparent to us that it’s not just about the relationships we have with clients and collaborators but also about the friendships that we have with you all as well, and that’s what makes it worthwhile for us” - Fiona Scott

Gort Scott, Feilden Clegg Bradley, and Alison Brooks Architects’ social housing scheme Unity Place has been shortlisted for both WAF Awards 2022 as Best Housing of the Year and British Home Awards 2022 in the category Best Housing Partnership.

The development forms part of the second stage of South Kilburn’s Regeneration Programme which aims to deliver 2400 new homes. The low to mid-rise scheme provides high-density housing in buildings that positively engage with their surroundings and residents. Thorough consultations held with residents of the existing site we ensured the provision of homes which would serve the families living in them. The interactive workshops created a tailored approach to the delivery of culturally appropriate homes.

British Home Awards 2022 will be announced on 30th September and WAF Awards 2022 ceremony will take place in Lisbon on the 30th of November.

Fiona Scott, together with a remarkable panel of speakers, took part in Metropolis Conference London-Berlin which addressed an urban planning topic which is significant to both cities: rapid change of High Streets and outer Town Centres.

“In the public sector, we have seen and witnessed a lot of care, collaborative working, weaving together priorities to create equitable outcomes, despite significant funding challenges. In the private sector, we are seeing rapid progress in thinking within certain strands and organizations, but there are still very big projects moving ahead quickly with this real political and commercial pressure to build more housing in Town Centres and High Streets closer to the community, services, and transports. We are seeing emerging the scale of building and intensity of living in High Streets and Town Centres, and consequently, urban forms and typologies that are quite new to London and not fully tested yet”.

You can now watch Fiona’s speech on Vimeo.

Gort Scott’s transformative development for St Hilda’s College in Oxford has been shortlisted for the Education Estates Awards 2022 Inclusive Learning Spaces for All category.

Inclusion has been central to St Hilda’s ethos; however, its campus had developed with a fragmented layout impeding accessibility, wayfinding, and connections. By transforming the College’s relationship with its setting, Gort Scott’s design supports communal life with a sense of identity and a strong focus on well-being and inclusion.

Winners will be announced on 18th October 2022 in Manchester during Education Estates®, the annual event organised in partnership with the Department for Education.

The refurbishment and renovation of the historic listed buildings 3 Mills Studios, in East London, is rapidly progressing on site. Gort Scott was commissioned by London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) to head a renovation of the historic buildings.

The works will create new lettable spaces to support businesses from creative industries, specifically TV and film production, to make greater use of the busy screen production campus and will help deliver a world-class cultural and creative production hub throughout the Thames Estuary Production Corridor.

The works have been made possible by funding from the Government’s Getting Building Fund via a £3m grant allocated by the Mayor of London, and a further £1.9m funding has been provided through the LLDC’s Community Infrastructure Fund.

Gort Scott have worked closely with a strong team which includes Freehaus, OR Consulting and Momentum.

Gort Scott welcomed an audience of 75 to its Bermondsey studio for LFA panel discussion How Do You Solve a Problem Like New High Streets.

Directors Jay Gort and Fiona Scott were joined by an accomplished panel who were posed questions surrounding strategic approach; working at a local level; design and delivery of a strategy; the relationships between people and place; and integrating well-being and social value into high street design.

A huge thank you to everyone who came by to spend the evening with us, and to our panelists for joining us to discuss this topical and multi-faceted issue:

Morwenna Hall (Partner and COO at Argent LLP)
Alpa Depani (Head of Strategic Planning & Design at LB Waltham Forest)
Eleanor Fawcett (Head of Design at OPDC)
John Nordon (Co-Founder at Neighbourhood company)
Jayden Ali (Director at JA Projects)

You can now watch the How Do You Solve a Problem Like New High Streets on Vimeo

Gort Scott are set to be a part of the latest step in the Mayor’s Recovery Programme: Property X-Change, launching summer 2022.

The initiative aims to create a diverse, cross-city network and encourage collaboration and shared thinking to develop thriving highstreets for everyone. The programme features a strong team in Rumi Bose, Hassell, TEMPLO DESIGN, Ash Rao, James Parkinson, Camilla Siggaard Andersen, Susie Hyden, Adam Scott, Kat Hanna, Elly Watson, Andrea Carpenter, Oli Whittington and Lucie Murray.

Property X-Change was developed by the Greater London Authority, CBI (Confederation of British Industry), Cross River Partnership, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), British Property Federation, London Councils, London First, Guardians of the Arches, the Mayor of London, and Transport for London Property, with support from the Bloomberg Foundation.

Stay up to date with progress and ways to get involved on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Gort Scott’s transformative development for St Hilda’s College in Oxford has been shortlisted for the Brick Awards 2022 Educational Building category. Comprising two bold and elegant buildings which sitting in a redesigned landscape, the Anniversary Building defines the boundary of the College and strengthens its street presence, whilst the glazed Pavilion nestles on the edge of the River Cherwell and provides a space for lectures and events.

In developing the new buildings’ appearance, we have echoed and reinterpreted characteristics and idiosyncrasies of neighbouring College buildings. While the predominant material used is brick, linking these new additions to their context, decorative detailing such as a scalloped frill to the top storey of the Anniversary Building cultivates a unique identity, with precast concrete components and bronze-coloured metalwork providing contrast.

We are pleased to have been included in the Brick Awards shortlist amongst so many other exciting and innovative educational spaces.

Winners to be announced 10th November 2022