North Sea East Wood, 2023
RIBA East Award, 2025
RIBA East Small Project of the Year, 2025

Located at one of the highest points in the North Norfolk town of Cromer, ‘North Sea East Wood’ sits in a unique location between views of the North Sea to the north and East Wood to the south.

Originally part of the garden of the neighbouring house, the 1980s, H-plan, pattern-book bungalow sat on a flat piece of land where the tennis court to the neighbouring house was once located: the only flat piece of land on a site that has a 7m difference from top to bottom and at a fall of up to 1 in 6.

The bungalow’s design didn’t acknowledge its site. The living spaces were located on the southern wing of the plan that looked into the rising ground, and its northern wall – with the promise of a view to the sea – was solid, broken only by a miserly vision panel in the Utility Room door.

The design radically re-structures the house. It breaks the room-based, orthogonal order of the bungalow and enmeshes within and around it a new, spatially-fluid, site-specific and contextual order structured around views to the sea, the church and the woods.

The extension to the house is finished in local flint and re-uses clay roof tiles from the demolished garage. To the North Sea, it’s hobbit-like elevation with stepped picture windows on inward-facing planes around a central chimney a counterpoint to the archetypal coastal typology of wrap-around verandas reaching for views.

To the East Woods, the ribbon glazing carves an inverted form that creates a panoramic view of the foot of the woods from all of the key living spaces. The high-level window in the kitchen helps get light deeper into the plan whilst providing structured views where the rigidness of the original bungalow meets the spatial ambiguity of its extension.

Location: Cromer, Norfolk
Design Team: Nick Hayhurst, Tony Berongoy, Marina Konstantopoulou
Contractor: AJ Cooper Builders
Structural Engineer: Iain Wright Associates
Planting: Stark Garden Design
Photo Credit: Kilian O’Sullivan

#northseaeastwood #cromer #ribaaward #flint #norfolk @ribaeast

Edith Neville Primary School, 2022
RIBA National Award, 2023

The re-building of Edith Neville Primary School forms the first phase of Camden’s new £89m Central Somers Town regeneration masterplan. Located between St. Pancras station, the Crick Institute and Euston station, Central Somers Town is a short walk from some of London’s busiest landmarks yet also one of its most deprived and neglected neighbourhoods.

The design of the new building was developed around the idea of a family-scale courtyard ‘oasis’, which welcomes families into the heart of the building. This provides parents with access to its various facilities, whilst also accommodating pick-up and drop-off of multiple siblings simultaneously.

The new school is conceived as part of the surrounding parkland landscape and its building and boundary are designed to extend the park, both physically and perceptively. The white, filigree site enclosure and building envelope provide a multi-layered backdrop to the public spaces they face. Planting is strategically placed to grow up and through the façade, creating pieces of vertical park, whilst carefully considered openings through the bespoke perforate fencing allow visual permeability without compromise to the school’s sense of protection.

Internally, the main route between the entrance and the hall was widened to become a ‘gallery’ for large-scale hanging artwork and parents to mingle in the heart of the building. Similarly, classroom storage walls are punctured to create a ‘shopfront window’ for each class to present their work, and windows and rooflights mediate long and short views to make teaching spaces feel part of the extended landscape and wider city.

Client: London Borough of Camden
Design Team: Jamie Wakeford, Amy Waite, Bronya Meredith, Rory Lean, Mariko Whittaker, Antonis Papamichael, Jonathan Nicholls, Nick Hayhurst
Project Manager: Urban Logik
Landscape Design: Howard Miller Design
Quantity Surveyor: Currie & Brown
Structural Engineer: Price & Myers
M+E Engineer: Max Fordham
Photo Credit: Kllian O’Sullivan

#schooldesign #learningspaces #londonarchitecture @wemakecamden #edithnevilleprimaryschool #ribaaward @ribalondon

Green House, 2021
RIBA London Award 2023
RIBA House of the Year 2023
RIBA London Project Architect of the Year 2023 (Claire Taggart)

Green House is located on a small back lane once surrounded by coach houses, orchards, greenhouses and market gardens: a small area of re-wilded woodland opposite the house remains. The design for Green House draws on this natural history and verdant character of the site: providing a contemporary re-imagining of a domestic greenhouse. A design that blurs the boundaries between inside and outside spaces and re-greens a once unloved site.

A central, top-lit, riad-style atrium connects all living spaces, upstairs and downstairs, and brings daylight into the heart of the house. The atrium assists in cooling the house on hot days through natural stack ventilation with solar glass windows fitted with temperature and rain sensors.

Developed closely with the clients, the living spaces are open plan to maximise the sense of space and flexibility of use. The curtains wrap around the whole atrium to allow the central dining space to be separated off as an awesome, double-height dining hall as well as providing acoustic absorption to the inside spaces.

The simple ‘block’ form of the house was chosen for its simplicity and efficient use of the Cross-Laminated timber (CLT) frame. The end grain has been deliberately exposed and growth rings displayed to visually express how the material has grown. The internal doors are made from CLT notched into the frame avoiding door frames and architraves.

The south-facing front façade is planted with bamboo, with sliding polycarbonate screens that reference the greenhouses that once stood on the site. The plants and screens softly filter the daylight whilst maintaining privacy and provide solar shading on hot summer days.

Location: Tottenham, London
Design Team: Claire Taggart, Holly Crosbie, Jonathan Nicholls, Nick Hayhurst,
Contract Value: £550k
Contractor: Rebuild London
CLT Contractor: Eurban
Structural Engineer: Iain Wright Associates
M&E and Energy Consultants: Mesh Energy
Steelworks: Surrey Steel
Photo Credit: Kilian O’Sullivan

#greenhouse #houseoftheyear #newhouse #sustainablehouse #tottenham

Grain House, 2019
RIBA London Award, 2021
RIBA House of the Year Longlist 2021

Grain House is a remodelled and extended Victorian, semi-detached property in the de Beauvoir Conservation Area in Hackney, north London. Designed for a young family, the house connects original and new living spaces and creates a visual link from the entrance, through the family spaces to the garden and on to the new artist’s studio at the back of the site.

Prior to the works, the house was arranged as a series of small, cellular spaces with only a narrow servant stair connecting the living spaces on the lower and upper ground floors. The new design dramatically reconnects these living spaces with the creation of a 2-storey courtyard at the heart of the house that is home to a new Japanese privet tree.

Both the grand staircases, the original one leading upwards and a new one leading downwards, present a threshold between the formal spaces to the Victorian property and the contemporary living spaces below.

The new staircase wraps around the courtyard providing views of the upper branches of the tree and different views through the house and garden as one moves from one level to the next. At the lower ground floor level, the extension helps define the relationship to the garden, with a picture window from the kitchen and a window seat to the dining space.

The palette of materials includes hand-made tiles, natural lime plaster, pre-patinated copper and charred larch. Native timbers were sourced, where possible, and were combined to create a distinctive kitchen made by Sebastian Cox.

The materials have been sourced to mature over time, providing a rich texture of weathered and patinated finishes. The studio, shaped in response to the profile of an old summer house, takes the form of a magical imaginary woodland creature nestling amongst the trees like a piece of inhabited sculpture.

Location: Dalston, London
Design Team: Jonathan Nicholls, Holly Jean Crosbie, Rory Lean, Nick Hayhurst
Contractor: Rebuild London
Kitchen: Sebastian Cox
Structural Engineer: Webb Yates
Photo Credit: Kilian O’Sullivan

#grainhouse #home #house #newhome #architecture

Torriano Primary School, 2018
RIBA London Award, 2019
RIBA London Small Project of the Year Award, 2019

The brief for this STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) ‘Activity Lab’ for this school in Kentish Town, north London was to provide a ‘space like no other’. The response was to convert a two-storey ‘turret’ at the top of the school and create a small, shiny and shingled roof-top extension with an external learning terrace.

The extension provides a space where primary-school aged children can engage in active and physical experiments and testing of technology-based subjects. The designs were developed through workshops with the school’s pupils and Artist in Residence, Jack Cornell, to explore, test, draw and model the future uses of the space.

The new space features a double-height activity zone with irregular, CNC-cut, laminated ply portals to define the space. The portals include openings that facilitate activities to enhance practical teaching such as where pulleys can be hung or fabric suspended. Constellations are etched into the faces of the timber.

The space also includes fold-down demonstration desks, floor projection equipment and a mezzanine to enable students to gain additional height to undertake practical physics experiments. Externally, the project has an external, south-facing terrace which includes plants in bespoke growing troughs.

Location: Torriano Primary School, Kentish Town, London
Client: London Borough of Camden
Design Team: Claire Taggart, Alex Boyce, Nick Hayhurst,
Project Manager: LB Camden (Paul Greatbatch)
Structural Engineer: Iain Wright Associates
Services Engineer: Edward Pearce LLP
CDM Advisor: Goddard Consulting
Contractor: Bolt & Heeks
Photo Credit: Kilian O’Sullivan

@wemakecamden #torrianoprimaryschool #schooldesign #stem #architecture #education

Whole House, 2016
RIBA London Award, 2017
RIBA House of the Year Longlist 2017

Whole House is a home full of contradictions: a house with big ideas on a small site. A house with no windows that is flooded with light. A unique house for a developer client who wished to maximise the development potential of this unloved site.

Bounded by back gardens to Victorian and inter-war housing and a super-sized 1990s mews development, Whole House is a 92m2 house organised around a central courtyard: an exemplar for contemporary, back-land, urban living.

The entrance to the house sits in a wide, deep reveal accessed via a large sliding gate. A smaller gate to the side provides access to the bin store and adds to the sense of depth to this small domestic elevation. The circulation and day-lighting strategies were developed together to create a light, delightful and picturesque promenade as one walks around the house.

Walking around the central courtyard provides views in each direction and a visual connection to the sky and the surrounding roofs and tree-tops. As the stair wraps from bottom to top the scale of the stair varies to provide a faster pace, a slower pace, a wider stair or a narrower stair: design moves that reflect the level of implied privacy and openness of the house.

The main bedroom and bathroom are located at basement level and lit from the pavement light over the central courtyard with a curtain integrated into the cabinetry. At the upper level, the kitchen, dining and living spaces benefit from south light and access to the central courtyard. Each of the four corners of the house has a skylight that extends the length of internal views.

Client: Bramfield Property
Location: Clapham, London
Contract Value: £375K
Design Team: Amy Waite, Jess Lyons, Bronya Meredith, Jonathan Nicholls, Nick Hayhurst,
Structural Engineer: Toynbee Associates
Contractor: Rebuild (London) Ltd.
Photographs: Marcus Peel & Kilian O’Sullivan

@bramfieldstudio #house #home #ribaaward #londonhome #newhome

Pegasus Academy, 2013
RIBA London Award, 2014
Architectural Review School of the Year, 2015

The remodelling and expansion of Pegasus Academy brings together a fragmented site with a series of interventions and extensions that thread new teaching spaces through a complex fabric of existing buildings. The result is a striking transformation of the school that clearly marks the civic pride and significance of a school at the heart of its community.

The concept of a ‘responsive roofscape’ informs a site-wide strategy to revitalise the different learning environments and provide a controlled sense of scale to the new development. Conceived as a series of room-scaled extensions, the design assimilates the pitches and proportions of the Victorian school but plays with the scale and repetition of the roof forms: the language of the Victorian school is adapted to animate and excite a playful and stimulating set of learning environments.

A new ribbon of timber slats at ceiling level within the circulation routes brings the two schools together and connects the new with the old. The miniature peaks of the nursery mimic the Victorian dormer windows of the adjacent Infant Hall. The scale of the pitches vary from one room teaching area to the next, growing in size in response to the age of the children and defining the form of the room beneath.

The new facade brings the two schools together by adopting the pitches and massing of the Victorian buildings at either end. The resultant form leads the eye towards the Victorian Junior Gym building; reinforcing its prime position in the group of buildings that make up the frontage of the school

Client: London Borough of Croydon
Stakeholder: Pegasus Academy Trust
Location: Thornton Heath, London
Design Team: Howard Miller, Anna Ludwig, Jonathan Nicholls, Andrew Ensslen, Ardi Rexhepi, Jess Tettelaar, Nick Hayhurst
Quantity Surveyor: SENSE
Structural Engineer: Iain Wright Associates
M+E Engineer: Hurley Palmer Flat/ MSL
BREEAM: Bianco Sale
Acoustician: Cass Allen
Contractor: Kier/ Morgan Sindall
Photo Credit: Kilian O’Sullivan & Anthony Coleman

#hayhurstandco #school #schooldesign #education #croydon

Hayes Primary School, 2012
RIBA National Award 2013

The expansion of Hayes Primary School provides an exciting and vibrant new extension to a tired and out-dated school building; an extension that flickers and glimmers with the reflection of the adjacent trees providing a renewed energy to a building at the heart of its community. The new accommodation is located at the front of the school site providing the opportunity to create the appearance of a new school.

The extension provides new accommodation for an additional 105 pupil spaces, comprising 4 new infant classrooms, ICT Lab, a small hall and new administration facilities.

The building uses an engineered, cross-laminated timber system. This material is also used to form a central storage wall that runs through the new school: a 650mm thick wall, made up from horizontally stacked timber panels that give an internal elevation of exposed timber end-grains.

The solid-timber pieces are cut and stacked to form openings in the wall, through to the classrooms, and with recesses on alternating sides that form shelves for the school library, seats and reading alcoves as well as storage for classroom equipment and teaching materials. When stacked and biscuit-jointed, the end grain of the pre-fabricated element appears as a substantial and solid core at the centre of the school.

This mirror-finished screen, positioned at high-level on the building’s façade, reflects the canopies of the mature trees at the front of the school site, giving the illusion that the mass of the building is reduced. Walking or driving past the building gives the sense of a dynamic elevation: a variable, enlivening and visually-engaging elevation.

Client: London Borough of Croydon
Stakeholder: The Hayes Primary School
Location: Kenley, Surrey
Design Team: Jonathan Nicholls, Graham Parton, Lizzie Ruinard, JessTettelaar, Ardi Rexhepi, Nick Hayhurst.
Quantity Surveyor: Davis Langdon (now Aecom)
Structural Engineer: Crofton Design
CLT Engineers and Supplier: Eurban
M+E Engineer: Crofton Design/ MSL
CDMC: GEP Safety
Contractor: Kier
Landscape Consultant: PIP Partnership Ltd
Photo Credit: Kilian O’Sullivan, Richard Nicholson

Hairy House, 2011
RIBA National Award 2012
RIBA London Small Project of the Year Award 2012

Hairy House, named because of the wildflower turf roof, is an extension to a Victorian end of terrace house. Replacing a dilapidated lean-to, the extension provides a new family kitchen, dining and play space. The simplicity of the brief was combined with the opportunities afforded by the site’s unusual geometry and topography to create a unique architectural response.

The design of this room – a simple rear extension – is conceived as an architectural negotiation between the order of the existing Victorian house and the patterns of modern domestic life.

The lower ground floor level is dropped to provide a 2.8m floor-to-ceiling height that matches the proportions and sense of space of the existing house. The ceiling line is angled up towards the south-west and the afternoon sun which defines the angle of the slate cladding on the rear elevation.

As one enters the house, the hall connecting the staircase to the existing house widens to provide ‘shuffle-space’ for someone coming out of the utility room with a laundry basket whilst the conventional timber floorboards used on the long stairs reduce in module size as they approach the original tiling in the entrance hall.

Inside the new kitchen and dining space, the formality of a space for dining is combined with the informality of a window seat. The seat itself is sculpted and lined in vertical timer boards to emulate traditional Victorian panelling. A curtain to the rear window is housed within the timber lining.

Client: Lucy Carmichael and Gareth Langdon
Location: Hammersmith, London
Design Team: Anna Ludwig, Richard Macrae, Nick Hayhurst
Structural Engineer: Iain Wright Associates
Kitchen Design: Gareth Langdon
Contractor: Rebuild London
Photo Credit: Kilian O’Sullivan

#hayhurstandco #houseextension #ribaaward #architecture #house