We are delighted to share that 458 Forest Road has won Housing Project (up to £25 million) at the AJ Awards 2025. 

The project provides 90 affordable one-bedroom homes for first-time buyers in Walthamstow, sited opposite Lloyd Park and the William Morris Gallery. The judges described it as ‘exceptional’, ‘thoughtful’ and ‘beautifully crafted’.

458 Forest Road has been recognised as a 2026 Civic Trust Awards Regional Finalist. This awards scheme celebrates projects that make a positive contribution to the local communities they serve.

458 Forest Road provides 100% affordable housing for local first-time buyers in Walthamstow. Communal spaces have been thoughtfully integrated into the design to foster a sense of community and wellbeing among residents. Two roof terraces, a south-facing communal courtyard and a large, light lobby area serve as welcoming, shared environments where residents can relax, interact and socialise.

Blank flank walls at street corners have been designated for Morris-inspired murals by local artist Adriana Jaroslavsky as part of a growing street art tradition in Walthamstow. Commissioned by Hive Curates, one of these murals can be seen towards the rear of the photo.

The project will now be reviewed by the Civic Trust Awards National Judging Panel for consideration for a National Award or National Highly Commended.

We are pleased to share that Jonathan Mann, Associate and Sustainability & Compliance Lead at Gort Scott, has joined the RIBA Principal Designer Register.

Jonathan gained this accreditation through the RIBA’s rigorous assessment process, attaining the higher-level membership of ‘Principal Designer Higher-Risk Buildings’. The achievement recognises his capability to lead on health and safety and Building Regulations matters and highlights his deep technical knowledge, experience and commitment to maintaining the highest professional standards.

Since joining Gort Scott in 2020, Jonathan has led major projects across office, life science and housing sectors. He also heads our Environmental Action Group. With long-held interests in safe, inclusive, accessible and sustainable design, Jonathan engages actively with statutory and environmental compliance as a means to spreading best practice and creating a better, more responsible built environment.

This recognition reflects Jonathan’s dedication to embedding and delivering design quality across all our projects.

We are pleased to announce that our proposals for Molkenmarkt in Berlin’s historic centre have been awarded joint-first prize in a competition run by WBM - Wir gestalten Berlin and Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung. 

Our submission was the product of an enjoyable collaboration with Duplex Architekten and Kim Nalleweg Architekten, designed as a cohesive group with a similar set of elements and themes. 

The residential courtyard building, designed by Gort Scott, is situated within the urban block and responds to the different character of two courtyards. A composed rhythm of projecting and inset loggia animate ‘Gartenhof’, and provide residents with access to green space in the heart of the city. While the more urban ‘Stadthof’ is conceived on a civic scale, with a gridded access gallery acting as a privacy screen for residents. 

The competition entries will be on display in a public exhibition opening January 2026. We look forward to sharing more soon. 

Congratulations also to our shared first prize winner, blrm Architekt*innen. 

Fiona will be delivering the 2025 Peter Rice Lecture at Queen’s University Belfast. 

This annual lecture commemorates Peter Rice, the structural engineer behind some of the most significant architectural works of the 20th century such as Centre Pompidou and the Sydney Opera House. The lecture is organised by Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) School of Natural and Built Environment and QUB Architecture, with support from Arup Trust.

We hope you can join us on Tuesday 2nd December. The lecture is free to attend and tickets can be booked via Eventbrite.

Location:
QUB David Keir Building
School of Natural and Built Environment
Belfast BT9 5AG

Paul Wild has been appointed to the Hackney Design Review Panel. Paul is a long-standing member of the Gort Scott team, bringing sustainable design expertise to the review process.

Paul is a Certified Passive House Designer and brings over a decade of experience delivering complex projects for public and private sector clients across London. He is passionate about creating healthy, regenerative places that enhance the way people live, work and connect, aligning with the panel’s mission to elevate design quality across the borough.

He will join leading built environment experts to advise Hackney Council and promote sustainable and socially conscious design approaches that support thriving, connected communities across the borough.

Director Fiona Scott has been appointed to the Camden Design Review Panel, run by Frame Projects. As a member of the panel, Fiona brings her expertise to advise on new development in the Borough during the pre-application stage, ensuring design excellence guides planning outcomes. With a commitment to high-quality placemaking across London, she is proud to contribute to shaping its future as a valued expert voice on design, architecture and planning.

We have completed the renovation and upgrade of Dome House, a heritage building in Spitalfields. The project restores and adapts the structure to provide flexible workspace in the City of London.

Dome House features a cranked roof with a glazed lantern atop to draw in natural light. The dome, previously hidden by a false ceiling has been revealed and restored.

Interiors are overhauled, including the reordering and re-imagining of internal spaces as well as upgrading the building fabric. The CAT A fit-out strategy embraces flexibility, accommodating multiple working arrangements and spatial configurations. This robust base-build approach ensures the space can adapt to diverse occupant needs and future fit-out scenarios while maintaining the integrity of the historic structure.

A modest rooftop extension accommodates a new staircase leading to a roof terrace, providing occupants with panoramic views across the Artillery Passage Conservation Area. The extension is constructed in a lightweight timber frame, which helps to minimise the structural loading on the existing building and reduces the embodied carbon impact.

Read more on the Dome House project page.

Forest Road is shortlisted for the AJ Architecture Awards 2025 in the Housing category. The panel of judges will visit the building in September, in a tour led by the project architect, Andrew Tam.

The project delivers 90 affordable one-bedroom homes for local first-time buyers in Walthamstow, on a prominent site opposite Lloyd Park and the William Morris Gallery. Inspired by the curved bay windows of the William Morris Gallery, lintels are gently concave to catch soft shadows that animate with changing light. The material palette contains a mix of warm white, grey, plum, pink and red tones acknowledging the diverse colours of surrounding buildings.

Forest Road has won a Completed Scheme Award in the 2025 Housing Design Awards. 

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. 

Congratulations to Gort Scott Associate Sela-Jaymes Taylor on her recent accreditation as a Specialist Conservation Architect.

This achievement builds on her leadership of our Heritage and Retrofit Group and her praised work on numerous historic buildings and structures, including those at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and 3 Mills Studios, with the latter earning her a shortlisting for the 2024 MJ Long Prize. Currently, Sela is utilising her expertise on complex refurbishment heritage projects, such as transforming the Grade II listed Woolwich Old Town Hall & Library into artist studios and reimagining the Vestry House Museum in Walthamstow. Additionally, she is overseeing a significant expansion of the Grade II* listed Girton College, Cambridge.

Sela’s accreditation exemplifies thoughtful heritage stewardship, creating dialogue between historic architectural fabric and contemporary community needs through sensitive intervention and adaptive reuse.

This summer we’re undertaking significant improvements to our Bermondsey office, including enhanced acoustics and switching to air source heat pumps to provide the building with a more sustainable heating and cooling source, in addition to a new roof terrace featuring PV panels and bio-diverse planting with views across the City.

The terrace will also serve as a social area for our studio community, providing space for team gatherings and events that strengthen our collaborative practice.

Our retrofitted office is self-designed to support our collaborative and social studio culture: An opportunity to live out our values and commitment to retrofit.

The original three-storey warehouse dates from the end of the 19th Century. The building had retained its commercial use but fell into a state of disrepair. Following a reuse and retrofit approach, we chose to sensitively repair and optimise the existing building over demolition and re-build. During strip out, we revealed the original striking red brick under poor-quality black render. The original structure was restored, and the ad hoc top floor volume was replaced and extended using matching brick to form a cohesive, bold building. Read about the project here.
 

We are proud to support Young City Makers, Open City’s brilliant initiative that pairs architecture practices with primary schools to bring spatial learning to life through collaboration and hands-on model-making. Our team partnered with Lyon Park Primary in Brent to deliver a series of workshops to Year 6 students, centred around this year’s theme: ‘Play’.

The workshops began by asking students “How can we make our spaces more playful?” - sparking conversations and drawings that became the foundation for hands-on model-making sessions where ideas took three-dimensional form. The workshops were followed by a field trip across the Kings Cross masterplan, exploring the inclusion and design of playful spaces in the public realm.

The programme culminated in an awards ceremony at Brent Civic Centre, where students invited their parents and teachers to show all models out on display. Awards were given for Landscaping, 3D modelling, Creativity, Engineering, Community and the Overall ‘Champions of Play’. 

It was our pleasure to collaborate with such creative and enthusiastic students!’

Thank you to the Gort Scott team: Megan Thacker-Brooks, Fraser Leach-Smith, Pamela Snow and Ameli Vidanearachchi for their work in organising such thoughtful workshops.

Our client, The Portman Estate, hosted a Supplier Charter event last week at One Great Cumberland Place, the location of our new office fit-out project. Project Architect Joe Mac Mahon was invited to present insights into the design process, focusing on key sustainability drivers and achievements.

We collaborated with Bioregional throughout the project to ensure the office fit-out was as sustainable as possible. The project aims to set a benchmark for other commercial developments across The Portman Estate in Marylebone and London’s West End.

Joe shared positive lessons learned about green products, sustainable processes, and creating new, inclusive working environments—achievements to be proud of.

Jess Daly from Bioregional also presented the Estate’s One Planet Living strategy developed specifically for this fit-out to achieve carbon neutrality with minimal offsetting.

Read more about this low-carbon workspace project here: One Great Cumberland Place.

This month we launched the Tomorrow’s Market Good Practice Guide, a resource designed to help market managers, regeneration teams, and consultants develop effective market strategies.

Working with the Greater London Authority (GLA), this Good Practice Guide is an outcome from our pioneering research and advisory programme – Tomorrow’s Market 2.0 – setting out how Local Authorities can deliver resilient street markets that maximise their social and environmental impact. 

The launch was part of the Mayor of London’s ‘High Street Classroom’ series of events organised by JA Projects and Architecture00. The launch began with a tour of Walthamstow Market with Market Manager Adbul Komor explaining lessons-learnt from market improvement works. Megan Dean (GLA) launched the guide by speaking about the importance of markets in London’s economic framework with Susie Hyden (Gort Scott) and Abdullah Elias explaining the guide and the key ways that it is useful to Market Managers and Regeneration Teams. There followed a Marketplace Workshop where participants from Local Authority teams contributed to thematic roundtable discussions with facilitators. These covered ‘Enhancing the Market’ (with Susie Hyden), ‘Developing an Identity and Offer’ (with Abdullah Elias), ‘Business Support’ (with Sally Williams from Retail Revival) and ‘Environment and Sustainability’ (with Kate Howell, GLA) and fostered lively and useful discussions on the ways to safeguard the future of some of London’s key markets.

Thank you to all who joined us on the day, and to all who gave their time and contributions to the project.

Read/Download Tomorrow’s Market Good Practice Guide 2025 here.