Submission by Harrison Stringfellow Architects Ltd.
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.
Sustainability is a driving principle of our practice.
Guided by Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, we run projects not as a linear process, but as a closed loop, open to iteration, to ensure that we create a safe social foundation without exceeding ecological limits.
By following regenerative design principles, we seeking to go beyond sustainability by actively restoring, renewing, and improving the natural and social systems we interact with. We use our Holistic Design Wheel (based on the RIBA PoW Sustainability Outcomes), to test key design moves against as projects develop.
We challenge conventional construction practices through low-carbon design, material innovation, and environmentally responsible thinking at every stage. Through research and collaboration, we create ambitious, site-responsive architecture that seeks to reduce environmental impact whilst contributing positively to people and place.
Ultimately, we advocate for immediate, sustained decarbonisation in building and construction, promoting a paradigm shift in architectural practice.
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.
In the same way we think creatively about how to deliver a project, we also take an entrepreneurial approach to how we operate the business. In the first six years of trading, the Directors had four periods of maternity leave, which influenced how we worked to ensure consistency and quality of service.
In 2024, we introduced Lumina Splash to help staff identify their characteristics across three Personas: Underlying, Everyday, and Overextended. This has strengthened understanding within the team and informed tailored training and progression planning.
We have Working Groups for Sustainability, Social Value, and Marketing, enabling staff at all levels to contribute to practice management and leadership development.
Moreover, we have adopted B Corp Articles of Association into the business structure, embedding social and environmental responsibility within the governance of the practice to help protect its values and legacy into the future.
3. Do you share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider world?
Team members both run and attend specialist training courses in hempcrete construction, clay plastering and low-carbon MMC prefabrication, ensuring that material stewardship informs both design thinking and practical delivery across projects.
Our director also co-founded a social enterprise group Growing Sudley, a nature therapy garden in a public setting. This stemmed from a piloted forest school holiday club as a solution to childcare for her own children and those that work in the practice and local area.
Now established, we have connected the organisation with other community clients across the city to encourage shared learning and resources. This includes: Park Palace Ponies, who supply their manure to neighbouring allotments in return for grazing space, The Bronte Youth & Community Centre, who have been to Growing Sudley to learn about outdoor play and horticulture and Gateway Collective, who are part of an innovative programme of activities at North Park Community Garden.
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?
On all our projects we guide and educate our clients into making choices for their long-term benefit, proportional to the brief, budget and ownership.
Our Holistic Design Wheel provides clients with agency by mapping their priorities at briefing stage all the way to project delivery. This visual tool provides a touch point for interdisciplinary reflection amongst clients, designers and the construction team. At Daresbury Amenity Centre, one key focus from this briefing exercise was around ease of maintenance, which paved the way for conversations prioritising quality finishes that would ‘wear in’ and not out.
For domestic customers with limited construction knowledge, we make sensible suggestions that go beyond the design life impact, such as using timber frame rather than brick and block (as this is also faster), or investing in triple glazing (which will also reduce their heating bills).
2. Does your work take account of the future climate and the need for resilience?
With the majority of our projects involving existing buildings, we are constantly designing for adaptive reuse. Working with clients in a Client Advisory Role ensures we input pragmatically into robust business plans, proposing flexible spaces that can provide income generation and thus stable stewardship of the building in relation to facilities management.
In heritage settings, the liminality of our interventions becomes a design driver in itself. Waterfront projects have considered both immediate and long-term disassembly. For the Sankofa Docks installation, we sourced local materials and planting, providing a site-specific anchor to the global issues under discussion, all underpinned by a re-distribution plan to local grassroots organisations once dismantled. Our design for the Hartley Hut micro museum resulted in a self-supporting exhibition structure that, should the space transition to another new use in the future, can be demounted and reused, with no impact on the restored historic fabri
3. Does the majority of your work go beyond mitigating negatives and towards optimising positives?
As part of our BCorp journey, we have reflected on how our projects can help address the climate emergency. All projects follow the RIBA PoW, providing a clear framework to prioritise adaptive reuse and embed practical sustainability discussions early with clients and consultants.
Communication is key: we are trialling MESH’s EMBED operational energy tool, helping clients visualise the impact of renewable technologies and insulation upgrades against RIBA 2030 operational energy targets.
Our design approach is informed by permaculture principles of piloting, learning, feedback and knowledge transfer between projects. For funded projects, we support organisations in building long-term resilience through procurement and project management. At The Bronte Youth & Community Centre, we empowered the board to prioritise electric systems, fabric-first upgrades, durable materials, and flexibility for the next 50 years. The project is designed to achieve 76.4kWh/m²/year, aligning with the 2050 UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard “one-go retrofit” target.
Co-evolving with nature
Practice
1. Do you use biophilia within your premises and/or do you regularly gather in natural settings?
No.
2. Can you share examples of where you have considered nature in decision making?
All projects aim to be underpinned by eco-centric design, whether through design-life, material choice or the social sustainability of our proposals.
We intentionally chose to locate our office in South Liverpool, close to parks rather than the city centre – with 70% of our staff living within 2miles, this promotes sustainable travel and ready access to nature. Our flexible working policy allows staff to adjust working hours around daylight, school holidays, menstrual and seasonal routines Additionally, the office fully shuts down over Christmas in recognition of periods of rest and reflection.
Nature informs how we operate as a company through a permaculture and circular economy mindset, from plants and composting in the office, to recognising seasonal rhythms in enquiries and funding cycles. This is best exemplified in our Changing Rooms project, where providing nature-based holistic therapies influenced everything in the design from pilot projects through to natural material choices.
3. Are you supporting nature locally and nationally?
The practice supported the establishment of Growing Sudley, a local social enterprise focussed on health and wellbeing through nature, with community-led wellbeing, biodiversity and education at its heart.
The resulting landscape includes woodland zones, foraging edges, wildflower meadows, healing gardens and accessible boardwalks designed to increase biodiversity and public access to nature. The project also adopted hempcrete insulation, lime render, green roofs, air source heat pumps and salvaged materials, while community workshops trained local residents in these low-carbon construction skills and biodiversity-focused design.
Project
1. Can you demonstrate work that strives to match the performance of a mature ecosystem?
No.
2. Are you working on material stewardship?
We embed material stewardship in design, delivery, and training. We actively research and map materials on projects, pursuing reuse, local sourcing, and low-carbon innovation, often utilizing local waste streams. A key example includes the development and specification of oyster shell aggregate used within experimental “shellcrete” mixes and lime renders, helping to reduce embodied carbon while supporting circular economy principles.
The practice also explores modern methods of construction (MMC) through pilot projects that test low-carbon prefabricated systems, including timber panel construction combined with recycled denim insulation. These approaches aim to reduce waste, improve build quality and support more efficient construction processes.
Alongside project work, we invest in ongoing education and knowledge-sharing around natural and regenerative construction. Team members both run and attend specialist training courses in hempcrete construction, clay plastering and low-carbon MMC prefabrication, ensuring that material stewardship informs both design thinking and practical delivery across projects.
3. Does the majority of your work demonstrate the use of biologically-inspired approaches such as Bioregionalism, Biophilia or Biomimicry?
No.
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 innovative approach to practice was recognised in 2021 when we were designated a RIBA Practice Role Model. We strive to remain at the forefront of pushing what constitutes practice ‘norms’, and encouraging the widest section of society to be involved in the Built Environment.
As a female-founded and run organisation, the basis of our flexible working environment has evolved as we have grown, aged, and welcomed staff with differing caring responsibilities or disability needs.
Our EDI Policy has been led by key staff members, and like all our Employment Policies, we provide an opportunity for comment from everyone before full adoption.
2. Do you operate a no overtime culture, meet the living wage consistently, and stipulate a fair salary ratio between staff of all levels?
Having founded the practice to provide a human-friendly alternative to overtime culture, this is thoroughly embedded in our Employment Handbook, which include Family Friendly, TOIL, and Flexible Working policies, with a number of staff working hybrid and part-time. We have been a Real Living Wage Employer since 2021, and review our Salary Bandings each year against the RIBA Benchmarking reports.
Salary Bandings are distributed to all staff, along with an internal Benchmarking Report which aligns with the RIBA metrics to demonstrate where we sit against our peers in relation to Practice, Team, and Finances.
Our intention is to develop a HR structure which recognises the wide skillset needed for practice but which isn’t necessarily a reflection of ‘time served’ post-accreditation, to ensure parallel professional progression is possible at all ages.
3. Do you support charities, community groups, social enterprises, action groups and others through pro-bono work, charitable giving or in-kind donations?
75% of our fee-earning projects either started or completed within the last 2 years (based upon m2) were for non-profits.
We structure our business to allow a fixed amount of pro-bono work and staff volunteer hours each financial year. This varies from regular activities such as being an annual collection point for ‘Shoebox Full of Love Homeless Appeal’ since 2017; providing Work Experience and Mentoring; through to one-off pro-bono projects such as The Penny Lane Art Trail, whom we supported in obtaining Advertisement and Listed Building Consent for, keeping our impact hyper-local.
We participate in numerous action groups including: ACAN; RIBA Presidential Taskforce “Change is Coming”; RIBA NW EDI Group; and Homes that Don’t Cost the Earth.
4. Do you use an ethical framework to assess opportunities and/or supply chain partners and is them team consulted on these decisions?
No.
Project
1. Does your work demonstrate deep engagement with local stakeholders and end users?
Over 60% of our projects started or completed in the last two years involved a Collaborative Public Process.
We tailor our meaningful engagement strategy to each project, adapting to suit the client and stakeholders. We are very hands-on with any engagement sessions, using the opportunities to listen and absorb incidental information as well as facilitating formal feedback and input.
Our work on the Bronte Youth & Community Centre, funded by the Youth Investment Fund, exemplifies our co-design approach. Engagement has been central to our role with user groups, the local community, and wider stakeholders. We partnered with local creatives to document narratives that preserve the neighbourhood’s identity. Young people co-produced the new branding, including a bespoke font created with a design agency. Simultaneously, we built partnerships with stakeholders including universities, councillors and housing associations, connecting The Bronte with social enterprises across the city to pilot new uses for the space.
2. Does your work create connected and resilient communities which positively contribute to neighbourhoods and allow equality of access?
We design inclusive, sustainable, and future-focused environments whilst actively supporting employment pathways, creative education, and community wellbeing.Our collaborative team is deeply invested in our projects – which are often in underrepresented or overlooked contexts – bringing lived experience of working with schools, charities, and local partners to deliver impact beyond architecture.
We always look for opportunities for embedding meaningful Social Value; integrating low-carbon design solutions; and creating deliverable, resilient projects. In this way we can maximise the possibilities of circular economies, often hyper-local, but beyond the ‘red line’ of the site.
Of our projects either started or completed within the last 2 years (based upon m2):
– 85% included designs to improve the safety of pedestrians
– 93% were designated ‘transit orientated’ and within easy access of bus or train stations
– 35% were based in low income neighbourhoods.
3. Does the majority of your work promote equity in society, and consider all people, not only building inhabitants
Our B Corp submission demonstrates that we are an organisation that’s legally committed to considering the impact of every business decision, including:
- Fair and ethical business practices
- Environmental responsibility
- Looking after our team and paying fairly
- Making a difference in our community
- Being transparent in how we work
- Using ethical suppliers
Over 50% of our ‘Significant Suppliers’ are independently owned and located within 50 miles of our office, meaning we get personal oversight and insight into their businesses. One of our aims is to develop a robust Supplier Code of Conduct to improve transparency in our supply chains.