If you happen to be in Plymouth on Tuesday evening…

Jonathan will be giving a lecture entitled ‘Space to Learn’ to @parcsplymouth – Plymouth Architectural Society – on Tuesday 11th November.

Jonathan will be talking about our approach to designing bespoke homes, innovative schools and impactful community projects across the South-West.

The Lecture will be at 5pm on the 6th Floor of the Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth.

See you there…!

#hayhurstandco #lecture #architecturelecture #plymoutharchitecture #devonsrchitecture @plymuni

Student Site Visit

It was great to welcome architecture students from Unit A Oxford Brookes University taught by @incrementalarchitecture with @rubysleigh and Ruth Cuenca to visit our retrofit and extension of Filwood Community Centre yesterday and observe the work in progress.

It is exciting times as the CLT frame goes up for the new library and just as the existing building as it is most stripped back before new materials start to be installed and to se retrofit in action.

Thank you to our super Project Architect Christina Agoston-Vas for leading the tour and our amazing contractors @brayandslaughter for facilitating the visit…!

@oxfordbrookes @unit_a_obu @filwoodcentre @bristolcouncil #retrofit #community #clt #crosslaminatedtimber #library

It was a pleasure to talk last week to the LSE’s Urban 95 Academy about the principles underlying the design of our Edith Neville Primary School: how it relates to the adjacent public open space and formed a central part of Camden Council’s Community Investment Programme.

We talked about entrances, boundaries, school streets, safeguarding, the idea of ‘bedroom to classroom’ and creating gathering points and community spaces within educational environments.

The LSE Urban95 Academy is a fully-funded executive education programme for municipal leaders from around the world to learn and develop strategies to make cities better for young children and their caregivers. It was fascinating to share experiences and best practice with such a wide variety of architects, landscape architects, urban designers and educationalists.

Thank you to @dinahbornat for the invitation. Thank you to Simon Battisti for the photos.

#edithnevilleprimaryschool @wemakecamden @lsecities @urban95br #centralsomerstown

Now into its sixth month on site, works at Filwood Community Centre have exposed many layers of the building’s history – including this period newspaper cavity closer from Friday 27th August 1937!

After months of carefully stripping back past modifications, linings and layers of paint to retrofit new thermal improvements, outside the ground works are now nearing completion, and later this week the site will see the first delivery of the CLT superstructure. An exciting moment to reflect on the historic form of the building, which over the next few months with be transformed with new layers and the creation of new spaces to serve the local community for generations to come.

@filwoodcentre @bristolcouncil @brayandslaughter @integral_engineering_design @greengaugebec @bd_landscape @youandme_archi #blackboxplanning #hayhurstandco #retrofit #community #bristol #filwood

North Sea East Wood goes international…!

We’re delighted that our remodelling and adaption of a 1980s bungalow in deepest Norfolk has been shortlisted for a @dezeenawards in the house extension category.

From 4,300 entries from 89 countries, the awards have shortlisted 92 projects of which only 5 are in the house extension category and North Sea East Wood the only project in the UK.

The project showcases vernacular materials used in contemporary manner in a rural setting. The irregular plan-form is designed to optimise outward views of North sea and East wood.

We are delighted to be up against practices from Australia, Switzerland Denmark and looking forward to the awards ceremony in November! Best of luck to the other shortlisted practices: @cerastribley @modo_arch @sara_gelibter_architecte #studiomarshallblecher #janhenrikjansenarkitekter

Photo credit: @kilianosullivan

@dezeen #dezeen #northseaeastwood #cromer #cromerhouseextension #norfolk #norfolkhouseextension #architecture #architectureawards #houseextension

We’re delighted to have won a Camden Design Award for our very special Edith Neville Primary School.

The judges complimented the scheme for its amazing light, sense of space and bringing the outside in with each classroom having its own outside space. A design process and outcome that reflects the schools own values (captured here).

Nick and Jamie were at the awards ceremony yesterday evening to pick up the award!

Photo credit: @kilianosullivan

#edithnevilleprimaryschool #camdendesignawards #hayhurstandco #schooldesign @wemakecamden

Nick will be one of 4 speakers talking at the AJ Webinar at 11am this morning about best practice in community engagement and getting the fee right.

The webinar will focus on the different engagement strategy that Hayhurst & Co has employed working with @youandme_archi on the development of Filwood Community Centre in Bristol for @bristolcouncil

Hosted by @hattiehartman from the @architectsjournal , Nick will be talking alongside Holly Lewis from @we_made_that Tim Forster from AWW Architects and Simon Berry from Fresh Projects.

Come listen…! Link in bio.

#hayhurstandco #community #engagement @filwoodcentre #bristol

Green House. September afternoons…

Thank you so much to our amazing clients Tom & Amandine for opening up their house again this year….!

#greenhouse #hayhurstandco @opencity_uk

Always lovely to see Green House in print and included in Top 10 sees for this year’s Open House.

They’re ‘weird and wonderful’ … Yesterday, it was the pin-up project for the Evening Standards “10 best homes to visit at this year’s Open House festival”

* Please note that this is pre-booked tours only through the @opencity_uk website.

https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/ interiors/open-house-festival-top-picks-private-homes-b1245787.html

@opencity_uk #openhouse #openhouse2025 #greenhouse #hayhurstsndco #houseoftheyear #ribahouseoftheyear #houseoftheyear2023 #ribahouseoftheyear2023 @eveningstandard_in @carocomms

Studio Outing…!

We had a great studio outing last week centred around Stratford, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and Hackney Wick seeing a great array of buildings and landscapes.

Photos in slightly rambling order from the Hayhurst & Co team – itinerary included;

1. Saddler’s Wells East by @odonnell_tuomey
2. @lcflondon_ by @alliesandmorrison
3. @londonaquaticcentre by @zahahadidarchitects
4. @hackney_bridge by @turner.works
5. V&A Storefront by @diller_scofidio_renfro
6. Chowdhury Walk by @aljawadpike
7. @cratebrewery aka The White Building by @officedka

Especially big thanks to Michael Fostiropoulous & Katie Nelson from @turner.works for the show & tell and tour of the amazing and resourceful Hackney Bridge.

#hayhurstandco #studioawayday #awayday #studioouting

Last week we welcomed Hana and Stevie, Y10 students from Charter School North Dulwich into the studio for work experience.

They took part in the studios activities – visiting site, sitting in on design sessions, Architectural Assistants Julia and Carl shared their portfolios and Dovile showed them some of her first year students work from the Bartlett.

They also had their own project – a home and garden for an artist of their choice on the roof of our Spitalfields studio. Stevie chose artist Damien Hirst and Hana chose music producer Zack Nahome.

They carried out a survey, developed a brief and a design using hand-drawing, sketchup and enscape concluding with a presentation of their proposals to the team on our Friday show & tell.

Well done Stevie & Hana 👏👏👏

@tcsnorthdulwich #workexperience @charterdesign #hayhurstsndco

Last week Ruby Sleigh – Hayhurst & Co’s sustainability and regenerative design lead – participated in ICSA2025, the 6th International Conference on Structures and Architecture, which focused this year on reuse.

Ruby presented in the special session ‘Kind Structures and Architecture’ with a paper on adaptive reuse in non-human worlds, specifically the adaptation of industrialised structures used to farm animals. Uniting biodiversity and climate crises with contemporary ethical and social crises, her paper explored the reimagination and expansion of co-design towards multispecies partnerings.

Excited by innovative material studies to reuse demolition concrete; making reuse of structural timber standard practice and learning how computational analysis and design could facilitate localised earth constructions, Ruby will be further developing the practice’s sustainability road map over the coming weeks. In particular, how to anchor these academic knowledges into professional practice and the built environment into our London & Bristol studios.

Ruby’s paper is part of the Special Issue published by Springer Journal – available Open Access for the next 5 weeks here: https://link.springer.com/collections/dcaffihijf

The main conference proceedings can be accessed here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.1201/9781003658641/structures-architecture-mario-rinke-marie-frier-hvejsel?context=ubx&refId=7d0abd4e-8bce-4f43-8182-193cf9033d75

#icsa2025 #kindstructuresandarchitecture #sustainability #regenerativematerials

Nick had the pleasure of being in Hong Kong this last week as Chair of the RIBA Validation Panel at the Chinese University in Hong Kong (CUHK) along with Athina Moustaka, James Lai, Michael Ng and Tracy Flanagan.

Highlights included an amazing array of physical models and the school’s own roof-top allotments. The architecture school is located in its own purpose-built building on the steeply-sloped CU campus in the Sha Tin district of the New Territories.

#riba #ribaeducation #cuhkarchitecture

Whole House has been featured on the AJ as part of their ‘First Look’ series. To read more about our RIBA House of the Year shortlisted project click here

Our project Barn-ish Brighton-ish has been shortlisted for an AJ retrofit award for houses under £250,000. Constructed within the confines of the existing buildings shell, the design provides new single and double- height spaces in this long, thin plan building. The new spaces are opened up and sculpted around the existing structure to enable the new elements to be clearly read against the historic fabric.

Whole House has been shortlisted in the residential project category at the Blueprint awards 2017. Whole House is a house full of contradictions: a house with large ideas on a small garage site. A house with no windows that is flooded with light. A unique house for a speculative developer client.