Press & publications

Huge numbers of vital workshops have been lost to more lucrative housing. But one architect is creating budget spaces by building upwards – with wood. We meet the busy tenants of his £5m Workstack

As business and practice leaders, we spend a lot of our time talking about the importance of “collaboration”. We spend less time, however, defining exactly what it means.

Sheppard Robson has been replaced by dRMM on a controversial redevelopment of Peckham’s Aylesham Shopping Centre following a local backlash.

The past few weeks have delivered a rather unwelcome reminder of how much our workplace practices still need to be monitored and reckoned with. The scandal that has erupted from years of alleged misconduct at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is a serious caution against resting on our laurels when it comes to workplace conduct.

The Earls Court Development Company (ECDC) has revealed the first details of its fresh masterplan for the redevelopment of the former exhibition centre in west London.

Sadiq Khan has revealed the architects on the new Architecture and Urbanism (A+U) framework intended to boost diversity in the design process and help London’s zero-carbon post-Covid recovery.

Landsec’s Shaping Successful Future Cities white paper maps out the possible scenarios cities will face over the coming 10-plus years, based on how decision-makers act today. It was developed in collaboration with strategic foresight consultancy The Future Laboratory with input from experts from, among others, Google and architectural practices BIG and dRMM.

A team featuring Lendlease, Homes England, the Greater London Authority and affordable housing firm The Guinness Partnership have submitted plans for 6,500 homes at the Silvertown site in east London.

When Hastings Pier won the Stirling Prize in 2017 I was glassy eyed and numb from five brutal years in practice. I chanced across the headline while flipping through the culture section of a national newspaper. Won by an established, London practice; hardly groundbreaking. Romantic, bijoux and picturesque; plus ça change. Yet a little part of me, a deeply buried optimistic part, was revivified that day. dRMM won the prize, according to the jury, not for its zeal, innovation or sense of humour, although these were evident in spades. It won because it ‘evolved the idea of what architecture is’.

The browny-pink elevations of dRMM’s ingenious double-branded hotel for edyn Group add a welcome note of colour to the chalky-buff conformity of Cambridge University’s 150-hectare Eddington development. The project brings interest to the last urban block in Eddington’s emerging town centre, on Cambridge’s northwest fringe close to the M11.

The world is not faring too well on its goal to combat climate change and avert the catastrophe of exceeding a 1.5C level of warming. At the time of writing, the US’s legal stance on climate change is hanging in the balance, with voices urging President Biden to declare a national climate emergency and help secure a climate action legislative agenda in congress.

I have always been invested and interested in new models for residential development. From growing up on a cooperative commune, to designing houses with sliding roofs or made entirely as prefab flatpacks, to helping meet national housing targets as a board member for Homes England.

The practice, which won the 2017 Stirling Prize for its timber-constructed Hastings Pier, will work with Edinburgh Napier University and the Quality of Life Foundation in a bid to create a reliable method of assessing the impact on carbon emissions and quality of life from using wood in buildings.

dRMM, Adam Khan Architects and JA Projects have put forward a masterplan for a 700-home regeneration of a housing estate in Southwark, south London.

The devastating impact of climate change is now widely known but the gradual degradation of our planet’s biodiversity is just as detrimental to its health.

Stirling Prize-winning architect and timber pioneer dRMM has set up a European outpost in Berlin.

The University of Oxford has shortlisted five teams for the next round of its international competition to masterplan a £1 billion residential-led development at Begbroke Science Park in Kidlington.

Stirling Prize winners dRMM and Haworth Tompkins are joined by RCKa and up-and coming local practices Intervention Architecture and Minesh Patel Architects on the massive project to redevelop the home of Birmingham’s historic markets.

Architects often say that the best buildings they have made have strong client leadership at the helm. This needs to be qualified. What makes a great client?

A comprehensive look at the reach of Maggie’s Centres and the positive impact they have had on the lives of those who have used them, featuring dRMM’s Maggie’s Oldham

A team led by dRMM and featuring emerging practice Okra has won Southwark Council’s competition for a mixed-use regeneration scheme on Old Kent Road.

A team featuring dRMM, Adam Khan Architects and AJ 40 under 40 star JA Projects has won a competition to redesign the Tustin Estate on Old Kent Road in Southwark.

You won’t find any little rows of government-sanctioned classroom cells at this new Cambridgeshire primary school, whose bright, timber-built design lets the outdoors in.

The Covid crisis, Brexit hurdles and surging construction activity have combined to create a ‘huge’ timber shortage across the industry, architects have told the AJ.

dRMM has revealed its proposal for a timber pavilion to be erected at autumn’s COP26 summit in Glasgow by an alliance of timber trade groups.

A ban on constructing with timber is one of the more misguided responses to Grenfell writes Rowan Moore.

Alex de Rijke talks to the Wood Awards about a favourite wooden object – a tulipwood CLT sample.

Director Jonas Lencer talks to Archivibe about timber and sustainability.

One day, the virus will subside. It could be eradicated. But even then, life will not simply return to the way it was before Covid-19. Spurred on by the coronavirus crisis, architects have been rethinking the buildings we inhabit.

How best to spend the government’s £1bn school building bonanza? Four sets of priorities range from better access and bigger spaces to flexibility and promoting hygiene.

More than 100 sign letter to Boris Johnson over concern for small and BAME-led practices.

Designs need to adapt to mitigate the stresses highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic, says dRMM director and Quality of Life Foundation founder Sadie Morgan.

Architects must stop following style or theory, writes Jonas Lencer.

Stirling Prize nominees call for structural timber to be excluded, while RIBA argues for more buildings to be covered.

Choosing high-quality, robust materials that lend themselves to future adaptation should be the starting point for any project – new-build or retrofit, says dRMM’s Saskia Lencer.

New infrastructure projects should consider four key principles covering not just value for money but also fostering a sense of local identity and cutting carbon emissions.

dRMM founding director among 2020 recipients.

The RIBA has named an all-female list of recipients for its honorary fellowships for the first time since the awards began. Recipients include Sadie Morgan.

Alex de Rijke admires the creativity and commitment in a self-built experimental house by Matthew Barnett Howland with Dido Milne and Oliver Wilton.

Proponents of cross-laminated timber were up in arms when the government announced its plans to ban combustible materials from the external walls of high-rise buildings.

Design guru Sadie Morgan has been appointed to the board of Homes England.

Architecture needs to make its voice heard in government and client circles – and that’s exactly what the first winner of BD’s Female Architectural Leader Award is doing, says Elizabeth Hopkirk.

dRMM celebrates modern timber construction at the Building Centre.

Sadie Morgan has created the Quality of Life Foundation to drive improvements in the way life-quality and wellbeing are factored into the development process.

The co-founder of Stirling Prize-winning practice dRMM has taken on a broader role, ensuring that design is valued on major public projects writes Pamela Buxton.

Architects on project include AHMM, dRMM, PTEa and Maccreanor Lavington.

Practitioners hope ‘common sense’ will prevail on cross-laminated timber.

Pre-fabricated homes tipped to be the solution to London’s housing shortage.

Strong, clean and versatile, engineered timber is the ‘new concrete’. With wooden skyscrapers in the offing, could it be the answer to the global housing crisis?

Sadie Morgan tells Robert Bevan about how we need to get some joy back in our lives.

Alex de Rijke of RIBA Stirling Prize-winning practice dRMM talks to the AJ’s Richard Waite about its Hastings Pier scheme, describing it as ‘less of a building and more of a platform for future architecture’.

Drop the jargon and charge for your ideas, adds Alex de Rijke

Sadie says the pier has risen, phoenix-like, from its all too real ashes thanks in large part to local craft and ingenuity.

Nicknamed the Plank, de Rijke Marsh Morgan’s stark wooden wonder – using timber reclaimed from previous fires – was praised for changing ‘the idea of what architecture is’.

The Royal Institute of British Architects has awarded its annual Stirling Prize to an example of an enduring British archetype: the seaside pier.

dRMM wins the biggest prize in UK architecture for transforming a century-old, ruined pier into a new attraction for the seaside town.

This, the 21st of the cancer centres begun by Maggie Keswick-Jencks, stays true to the group’s founding mission to create spaces of calm and light to help support patients and their families.

The lessons of the past 20 years will shape British architecture going forward – and could even solve the housing crisis. Sadie Morgan of progressive, wood-loving architecture practice dRMM talks about flatpack housing, her passion for placemaking and pick’n’mix homes.

Architect and government adviser Sadie Morgan has called on the UK government to stick to its infrastructure investment plans as it prepares to leave the European Union.

Multi-coloured bricks cover the facades of this residential scheme by architects dRMM, which is built on the site of the former brutalist Heygate Estate in south London and has been shortlisted for this year’s Stirling Prize.

A beautiful new seafront register office is one of the gems of Blackpool’s regeneration.

The new, improved Kingsdale comprehensive is such fun the pupils won’t want to leave. Jonathan Glancey reports.

Timber, despite being the world’s oldest construction material, is now the most modern.

Design innovations are showing that houses – and cars – can have flexible shapes, says Stephen Bayley.

It sits in a scrapyard and there’s a railway line outside the window. My dream place, says Jonathan Glancey.