AJ Retrofit Awards 2021 winners revealed
with Pearson Lloyd has been named AJ Retrofit of the Year 2021
The conversion of a warehouse in Hackney, east London, not only found a new use for a building that faced demolition but reused as many materials as possible – both from the site and reclamation yards.
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The AJ’s Rob Wilson and Fran Williams, who chaired the various judging panels, said the winning project was ‘notable for having transformed some previously unremarkable and ramshackle commercial structures into a rather poetic and beautiful whole’.
The scheme, which also won the Workplace under 2,000m² category, was revealed as the overall winner at the AJ Retrofit Awards virtual awards event held on Wednesday 24 February.
Another six weeks of homeschooling? Here s how to add star quality to lessons at home
With schools shut until March, how can parents prevent their lockdown school timetable from getting stale? Try these bright ideas
29 January 2021 • 11:49am
If home-schooling is getting tiresome, here s a few ideas to jazz it up a little
Credit: Inti St Clair/ Tetra images RF
If parents were to attend an online English lesson right now, there’s a strong likelihood that they would be urged to expand their vocabulary beyond the words “frazzled”, “bored” and “exhausted”.
Even the personification of positivity, Joe Wicks, must have tugged his glossy curls in frustration at the thought of having to come up with a slew of innovative moves to energise a nation of jaded parents and frustrated kids through another lockdown, especially now we know that schools will not reopen until 8 March.
AJ 40 under 40 stars shortlisted for £20k William Sutton Prize
1/5 Shortlisted: Assemble. This submission addresses the interlocking challenges faced by rural communities in Dorset and the rest of the UK: a lack of affordable housing, economic decline and loss of livelihoods and environmental issues linked to climate change
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2/5 Highly commended: Editional Studio. This team has proposed a project to work with housing associations and residents to retrofit and upgrade their homes by providing access to knowledge, skills and training from an expert design and build team
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3/5 Winner: Ecomotive and SNUG Homes. The duo propose a vibrant hub of community participation that co-produces housing in response to local needs
AJ 40 under 40: Surman Weston
10 December 2020 By Rob Wilson, illustration by Simon Hayes
A hands-on experimental streak marks out this materially inventive AJ 40 under 40 practice, which constructed its first five projects itself
Despite a year of on-off lockdowns, the past 12 months have seen the completion of two key projects for Surman Weston which have cemented its reputation as a materially and spatially inventive practice.
Ditton Hill House, its first new-build home, is a striking white house-as-gable that combines a steel exoskeleton with masonry infill panels, creating ghostly references to its Tudorbethan surburban setting together with large-span interiors.
At Hackney School of Food, its highest-profile community project to date, Phase 1 has seen the transformative retrofit of a primary school caretaker’s cottage into a light-filled specialist educational kitchen, its kit-of-parts repeatable at other schools.