Submission by 6a architects.
Being a good ancestor
Practice
1. Do you have a clearly stated purpose aligned with the planetary emergency? We’re looking for a bold ambition here, and a culture which recognises the need for long-term thinking.
We believe architecture has the power to change cultures and behaviours, improve societies, and drive change to address the planetary emergency.
We recognise the urgent need to adapt and reuse buildings as a powerful tool to address the climate crisis. The lowest carbon structure is the one that already exists, and the designer’s skill lies in strategic adaptation and alteration to make what already exists meet the challenges of our future.
Our conservation and adaptive reuse work has given us knowledge of time-tested construction traditions, resourceful material strategies, and the careful reinvention of making processes to shape buildings that are circular, low-carbon and regenerative. We apply these processes and techniques to new buildings and contemporary architecture.
Our environmental plan sets out short and long-term ambitions to embed regenerative practice at every level of what we do, and to disseminate learnings with collaborators, clients and the wider industry.
2. Do you have a clearly stated purpose aligned with the planetary emergency? We’re looking for a bold ambition here, and a culture which recognises the need for long-term thinking.
Collaborative work and shared values are at the heart of creating architecture and sustaining a studio. Together we work to maintain and evolve our culture, finding opportunities and agency for everyone within the practice, through mentoring, training, and financial support for professional development.
We maintain an active design archive that recognises individual creative, technical and intellectual contributions to our collective work. Project completions are celebrated as a testament to shared labour, very often many years spent together as a team. Our work is recorded, credited and published to preserve the input of all contributors.
We keep longstanding relationships with collaborators, clients and contractors, deeply valuing their essential roles in the creation and future of our projects. On recent projects we have created biographies and records of the tradespeople who built them, joining a recorded history of those who are, and have been, a part of our practice.
3. Do you share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider world?
We share research and knowledge through publication, exhibition, lectures, teaching, and active collaborations. Site-specific tours and workshops share knowledge in situ, offering students, industry colleagues, and the public an opportunity to engage with the work and generate dialogues to inform our practice and others. We contribute projects, research and writing to international exhibitions and to periodicals on contemporary practice.
Academic engagement is prioritised in the studio, supporting team members to hold teaching and research positions at universities and providing opportunities to teach through design crits and shorter-term schools. A founding director is Professor of Architecture and Construction at ETH Zurich, leading research studios exploring the relationship between making and territory.
We actively invest in innovation through research and development within our projects. Current research includes a government-funded programme on low-carbon typologies for manufacturing buildings, and a university-led investigation into material cycles for regenerative, bioregional construction in Southwest England.
Project
1. Do you advocate for long-term thinking at the outset of work? Do you initiate work with long-term thinking and challenge clients? Also, can the organisation demonstrate that this approach has worked?
Championing long-term thinking is one of our core guiding principles. To support this, we’ve introduced a dedicated section in all early-stage (Stage 0-1) reports that prompts us to consider what the building might need to become in three and seven generations’ time and what can be done now to make that future adaptability easier. By embedding this thinking early in the design process, we ensure it becomes an integral part of the conversation.
2. Does your work take account of the future climate and the need for resilience?
We regularly engage our clients in conversations about resilience throughout the design process. Designing for climate resilience often opens up discussions around long-term value, helping clients understand and justify the importance of investing in future-proof solutions.
We have an ever-greater responsibility to make buildings that last, that are materially robust, and that can be adapted and reused. We introduce this position with clients at the earliest stage, challenging assumptions about programme, scale, and the need for new construction.
Forensic examination alongside archival research establishes a basis of knowledge about existing context, providing the confidence to assess interventions. Long-term thinking is the ability to open the imagination to what already exists, to find sources of renewal in what is already there.
Project resilience and futureproofing are design priorities from the outset. In over two decades working with historic buildings, we adopted early the techniques to retrofit with natural materials, breathable design, circular principles and lower embodied energy, now baselines for new build projects too. Our formal assessment gives clients the confidence to make informed decisions.
Public projects for the UNESCO City of Bath and Tate Liverpool respond directly to climate resilience, protecting visitors and collections whilst fully decarbonising. In Bath, a listed former Post Office is being transformed into the world’s first EnerPHit accredited museum. External fabric awnings will reduce emissions by 23%, vital to heritage stakeholders and planning consent.
At Tate Liverpool, water source heat pumps are introduced for the first time to the Grade 1 listed Royal Albert Dock. Alongside a comprehensive envelope upgrade, this will achieve low-carbon conditioning and is integral to Tate decarbonising their estate by 2030.
3. Does the majority of your work go beyond mitigating negatives and towards optimising positives?
All our work seeks to positively strengthen the material, historical, cultural and ecological conditions of the places we work in. By interrogating what is already there, its materials, spaces, social and cultural values, we find valuable opportunities for renewal. By applying design skill and supporting our clients we can together improve our shared environments.
In Milton Keynes, MK Gallery became a city landmark, its design reinterpreting the origins of the utopian town. Its new extension, biodiverse public realm, and careful continuity with the existing fabric helped the gallery attract a larger, more diverse audience, run more effectively and grow revenue to support educational programmes.
In London, the meticulous conservation and fabric repair of Skinner’s Hall, an historic Livery, was completed alongside site-wide decarbonisation and careful adaptations for equal access. The project demonstrates how the reuse and repair of heritage fabric can be low carbon, and socially and spatially regenerative.
Co-evolving with nature
Practice
1. Do you use biophilia within your premises and/or do you regularly gather in natural settings?
Garden making is an important aspect of our practice. For over a decade, our studio has created and managed a linear balcony garden. Established with the help of landscape designer Dan Pearson, the garden is a creative resource; to learn horticulture, to practice cultivation, for food, for habitat, and to appreciate its qualities.
It brings seasonal rhythm and natural life into the daily cycles of the studio. Collectively pruned in the springtime, this process acts as a reminder of the wider ecological ambitions of the office, as do studio walks organised throughout the year to actively engage with our surroundings, whether urban or rural, and as a forum for collective education and slow observation.
After our studio garden, two successive large-scale gardens were built by students at the ETH Zurich. The maintenance of a garden became a pedagogic method, with responsibility passed from one student cohort to the next.
2. Can you share examples of where you have considered nature in decision making?
Our competition winning project for the city of Malmo, Sweden approached the regeneration of the city’s former cement factory from an ecology first perspective. With the site earmarked for major new housing, our approach was to create habitats, considering human tenants within an ecosystem of other species. Housing will coexist alongside former cement silos rehabilitated for nesting birds and new climate resistant biodiverse landscapes.
3. Are you supporting nature locally and nationally?
Our support for nature begins at the site and moves outward beyond the “red line”. Every site can improve upon existing conditions and strengthen ecological life. At a new museum in Bath, this commitment led to the removal of floor space for a new biodiverse courtyard garden, expanding outward into an urban regeneration project establishing a new public square and planted city quarter.
In Holborn, a narrow alleyway to a refurbished community hall was repaved with new planting by volunteers using in-kind materials, bringing greater species diversity and a welcome microclimate to a busy neighbourhood thoroughfare.
At a broader scale, our material choices reflect a commitment to nature nationally and regionally. The specification of materials that are biogenic, reclaimed, or locally sourced leads to employment and supply chains that are short, traceable and embedded in the land, understanding each project as a deliberate contribution to a national ecological conversation.
Project
1. Can you demonstrate work that strives to match the performance of a mature ecosystem?
Every project offers opportunities to interrogate local ecologies in fine grain, translating environmental understanding into defining principles for the work.
For an off-grid residential project on the Suffolk coastline we have worked extensively alongside ecologists and landscape designers from the outset of the project to safeguard and actively enhance the sensitive natural landscape.
In Churchill College, Cambridge, sustainability, accessibility, and landscape transform the raw sensuality of the brick and board marked concrete courts of the original college into an innovative,
contemporary, low-energy timber building. The timber structure and reclaimed timber cladding keep carbon locked in the building fabric, while super insulation, passive ventilation, solar electricity and rainwater collection reduce dependence on external systems. The building is organised around densely planted birch trees in the centre of the courtyard, providing natural ventilation, shading and biodiversity.
2. Are you working on material stewardship?
Our practice has been steadily transitioning away from petrochemical and cement-based products toward natural alternatives, driven by an increasingly detailed knowledge of material performance and our own research and development. We are maintaining a material index to ensure office wide carbon literacy and monitor project performance relative to current benchmarks.
This material knowledge has expanded into bioregional strategies, that we should draw building materials from their immediate landscape rather than depending on global supply chains. Our investigations into using stone offcuts from local mines around Bath is one expression of this: a complete reframing of extraction waste as a viable, place-specific building resource.
3. Does the majority of your work demonstrate the use of biologically-inspired approaches such as Bioregionalism, Biophilia or Biomimicry?
Nature-positive design is deeply embedded in our work and begins with understanding our regional, material and ecological contexts. We remain open minded to opportunities for bio-oriented interventions that may not be apparent at the start of projects or in formal briefs.
Currently, we are working with Tate and a locally based artist to derive paints and stains from natural plants and materials harvested from the Mersey Estuary. Installed into the Liverpool galleries, the new colours and finishes are emblematic of a conscious shift away from petrochemical paints and narrow definitions within the ‘white cube’ gallery era, to more nature-positive relationships. The plants and natural materials selected hold many societal and cultural relationships, reflecting histories of human use, international trade and highlighting our place within a natural ecosystem.
Creating a just space for people
Practice
1. Do you have a progressive EDI policy and can you evidence many forms of diversity, which are welcomed and acknowledged, within your company/organisation?
Our EDI policies are proactive, cultivating a culture of inclusivity and equality embedded in recruitment, promotion, induction and training. Diverse views, cultures and education are greatly valued in our design processes. Our studio currently consists of 14 nationalities speaking 15 languages, reflecting our multicultural and globally connected base in London.
We support work to advance EDI outside the studio, backing charitable organisations that widen participation and access to architecture and education, including the LSA’s Part 0 programme, the Architecture Foundation and Open School East. We work with state schools across London’s boroughs to offer annual work placements for KS4/5 pupils and career advice, encouraging the uptake of architectural studies by school leavers from wide socio-economic backgrounds.
Our EDI policy was developed through a dedicated working group and studio-wide consultation. It will be audited annually to ISO 9001 standards
2. Do you operate a no overtime culture, meet the living wage consistently, and stipulate a fair salary ratio between staff of all levels?
We discourage overtime and overworking. This supports both responsibility and care towards our team, but also an imperative to combat the industry’s harmful culture of overworking and devaluing of architectural services.
We make sure that projects are appropriately resourced, and there is a close communication within project teams, so that anyone at any level can feel comfortable asking for help. At the same time, we respect different working patterns and routines by allowing flexible working hours.
On occasion when overtime is required, we have a well-established and equitable TOIL policy.
We meet the London Living Wage for all employees and operate a salary banding system that maintains transparency, sets expectations and supports career pathways. We maintain fair and responsible pay across all positions and monitors wage distribution and performs annual industry benchmarking.
3. Do you support charities, community groups, social enterprises, action groups and others through pro-bono work, charitable giving or in-kind donations?
We support charities, self-funded collectives and community initiatives working to widen access to the arts and careers in the built environment, strengthen communities, and amplify work by underrepresented groups, through donations and active participation.
Each year we facilitate work placements through state schools and the LSA’s Part 0 outreach programme, providing training and mentoring to students. We make annual charitable donations to the Holborn Community Association and the Architecture Foundation, and support staff to offer pro-bono time including charitable volunteering and academic reviews.
We work pro-bono for charities providing expertise and support to fundraise for public capital projects. Since 2012 we have provided pro-bono advice on Building Regulations and accessibility to individuals with life changing illness or disabilities, supporting design adaptations at home.
We have ongoing relationships with charities in the arts, most recently supporting Open School East, a free independent art school, by hosting trustee days at our studio.
4. Do you use an ethical framework to assess opportunities and/or supply chain partners and is them team consulted on these decisions?
The work we do/apply to do is always assessed ethically according to standards that we evaluate our own practice against. Is this work/company actively contributing to social change? Is environmental sustainability at the core of their work? How and by whom is the project to be funded? Does working in the sector align with our values? Where these are deemed ethically problematic, we choose not to provide our services.
As part of our Anti-Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy, we interrogate the safety and health of our supply chains for its impact on the environment and people involved in them. This involves research into company ownership and funding, the byproducts or waste involved in production. We champion reuse and retrofit, which forms a large proportion of our work.
New business decisions are discussed with the studio’s senior management team and in depth every quarter.
Project
1. Does your work demonstrate deep engagement with local stakeholders and end users?
All our projects are deeply rooted in their cultural and ecological contexts, designed with empathy for all users and visitors. Our method prioritises research and consultation so that proposals are formed from deep-seated knowledge and connection.
Our research values both formal channels, such as archives and drawings, and less formal ones: oral testimony, lived experience and intangible heritage, uncovering the depth and significance of a place rather than a surface reading.
Consultations are designed to be creative and involved. Drawing exercises broaden what local stakeholders can express: sounds and smells, imaginations of what a place could be, or memories of past histories.
In both research and consultation we work with specialists, often our clients and their existing networks and communities.
By emphasising reuse and retrofit we take seriously the stakeholders in construction. Intelligent, practical and restrained design are natural outcomes when we engage with those who will build our designs.
2. Does your work create connected and resilient communities which positively contribute to neighbourhoods and allow equality of access?
Our projects seek to be deeply rooted in their place, strengthening communities and better connected to their surroundings through improving access, outdoor amenity, and supporting the long-term viability of community spaces. We design spaces where voices can be equitably represented, amplified, nurtured and sustained.
At CARA, New York, a former factory was transformed into a non-profit art centre and publisher. Expanding public discourse on art and its dominant narratives is central to the organisation, with equal access a key architectural driver. The ground floor bookstore opens to the sidewalk as an invitation to enter, and a pocket garden extends views through the building into the West Village.
In Holborn, a former basement gym is transformed into a low-energy, fully accessible home for the Holborn Community Association, increasing their reach from 1000 to 1500 people a week through a multigenerational programme of studios, workspaces, clubrooms and a sports hall.
3. Does the majority of your work promote equity in society, and consider all people, not only building inhabitants
We are privileged to work on significant public projects, important vectors for meaningful change for individuals, communities and society. We are conscious the built environment speaks strongly of inclusion or exclusion, and we take great care to establish the ground for equity in our buildings, through briefing, listening, participation and design.
Equity is often a lens that shapes project decisions and resourcefulness a means to make change happen. At the South London Gallery, the introduction of an artist’s garden into a former yard brought exceptional public art and opened a new entrance from the neighbouring estate. As a result, the gallery is more physically open to a community it has served for generations, giving agency to its neighbours that this is their space and all are welcome. Happily, it is also a short cut to the bus stop.