Submission by Maccreanor Lavington.
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.
Our practice has a clearly stated purpose aligned with the planetary emergency, embedded within our business plan and strategies. Our mission is to be leaders in the transformation of the built environment, creating places and buildings that realise positive environmental outcomes, deliver value to communities, and ensure longevity. One of our core values is Planet, reflecting a fundamental commitment to addressing the planetary crisis and delivering regenerative solutions that actively support systems change.
In 2022 we developed a comprehensive sustainability framework to guide the practice. This provides a clear and structured approach to embedding sustainable and regenerative principles across all aspects of our work, including environmental performance, energy use, material selection and engagement.
Our commitments include requiring sustainable research components on projects, updating our articles of association to reflect our environmental purpose and long-term responsibility, and attaining B Corp certification, which we are now in the final approval stages of.
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.
This year we have refreshed our business plan focusing on the long-term transformation of the practice, with succession embedded at its core through an Employee Ownership Trust. The EOT plan is designed not only to support the current generation of leaders, but to deliberately shape and prepare a second generation, demonstrating long-term commitment to the practice’s values, culture and independence.
Our flattened organisational structures empower staff at all levels and create transparent and alternative pathways for progression across architectural, specialist and leadership roles. Staff are actively encouraged to contribute to task force groups, including EDI, sustainability, and social impact. This ensures a plurality of voices, empowering a shared responsibility and collective stewardship of the practice.
A new cohort of directors is now in place, supported by a defined transition period that actively identifies, mentors and enables future leaders, protecting both ownership and legacy over time.
3. Do you share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider world?
We actively share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider industry, in line with our Sustainability Manifesto. Our research focuses on the most challenging aspects of construction, particularly materials such as brick and traditional construction methods, to support meaningful and practical progress.
Recent initiatives include sharing learning with local authorities and industry partners on the successful integration of external shutters at Television Centre. We developed the Euston Estate Regeneration Toolkit, a structured framework to support early-stage and impactful decision making, informed by research, retrofit first approach, stakeholder engagement and delivery experience.
We are actively engaged in disseminating our Successful Neighbourhoods, and Regenerative Practive research, into the New Towns Programme, providing exemplar approaches for the wider profession. We have also contributed again to co-authoring the Architects Declare Regenerative Design Primer v2. Knowledge is further shared through university teaching and supported individual research, including sustainable farming studies.
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?
We consistently advocate for long-term thinking at the outset of projects. Our sustainability assessments focus on how buildings can be preserved, adapted and remain functional for as long as possible. We prioritise durability, low maintenance and long-lasting materials, reducing the need for costly and carbon-intensive retrofits over time.
Our approach is rooted in an understanding of causality and holistic systems thinking, using a multi-faceted design process that considers environmental, social, cultural, and economic impacts together. We look beyond operational carbon to the lifestyles our projects enable, designing buildings and masterplans that promote liveable and low-carbon dwelling, including car-free environments, nature-based drainage and avoidance of high-carbon infrastructure.
This thinking underpins our work on new towns, where we plan for multi-generational growth over a 150-year horizon. At City Edge, our programme looks ahead to 2080, supporting a zero-carbon, regenerative future through early provision for mass transit and active travel infrastructure.
2. Does your work take account of the future climate and the need for resilience?
We are acutely aware of the need for housing to be comfortable to live in with future warming weather and as such have developed inhouse environmental tools which we use to measure daylight, energy (through Passivhaus PHPP), wind and overheating on our projects. Our colleagues are empowered to use these iteratively from the outset on all projects to balance these critical factors ensuring health and wellbeing well into the future.
At Television Centre, we deliberately pursued passive solutions to avoid the carbon and energy costs associated with air conditioning, while future-proofing the buildings against climate change. Research into large-scale external shading led to the integration of over 400 electrically operated, resident-controlled window shutters within the building envelope.
Our work at Strangeways further demonstrates this approach, where new parks and wetlands are designed as resilient, multifunctional infrastructure that responds to climate risk while delivering social and environmental value.
3. Does the majority of your work go beyond mitigating negatives and towards optimising positives?
At the outset of projects, we collaborative with clients, and design teams, to identfy wider opportunities and befits, challenging industry norms to deliver enhanced social and environmental outcomes, focusing on long-term positive impacts.
At Colville Estate, a large social housing scheme, we developed a load-bearing stone façade using ‘waste’ Portland stone bricks. This reduced façade embodied carbon by 18%, eliminated masonry support angles, reduced thermal bridging and supported the achievement of Passivhaus space heating targets, delivering both embodied and operational carbon benefits.
At Besson Street, we integrated Passivhaus principles into a scheme already in development. Through targeted thermal modelling and a fabric-first approach, the project is targeting a 76% on-site carbon reduction, significantly exceeding policy requirements while improving comfort, resilience and spatial quality.
At Television Centre and Macfarlane Place, we addressed overheating through large‑scale external solar control shutters, avoiding mechanical cooling and establishing a UK precedent for low-carbon, climate-resilient housing.
Co-evolving with nature
Practice
1. Do you use biophilia within your premises and/or do you regularly gather in natural settings?
Our offices are in urban settings; however, they are in close proximity to mature trees and green spaces, offer opportunities for colleagues to engage with nature within work hours.
Our office premises have generous windows opening up toward mature greenery. Our office is naturally cross-ventilated to maintain fresh air and encourage contact with the outside world. We carefully selected materiality within the office to maximise the use of natural wood, and select calming nature-derived colours for other surfaces.
We encourage our staff to bring their dogs into the office, and have three dogs regularly in the office, and particularly favouring our meeting rooms.
We offer our staff opportunities to maximise active participation in nature, and regularly organise sport activities and social events in local parks and green spaces.
2. Can you share examples of where you have considered nature in decision making?
In our projects, we adopt an ecosystem and renaturalisation approach, ensuring sites are designed to restore ecological balance. Our approach is to understand the contexts, the value it holds, how do build with it, and ultimately how do we deliver enhancement and positive impacts.
Our approach is dogmatic – we integrate nature, health, quality, and play into our designs, even when met with resistance. Projects like Romford Town Centre embody this ethos, renaturalising the River Rom, while Red Bank’s “Wild Urbanism” seamlessly blends nature with urban life by bringing the Irk Valley into the cityscape.
City Edge, creates a renaturalised network of rivers and significantly increase green cover, applying sponge city principles for sustainable water management inspired by natural systems. Our Stirling Prize-winning project at Accordia was conceived around the garden city concept, with masterplanning focused on preserving existing trees—a testament to our belief in designing with nature.
3. Are you supporting nature locally and nationally?
We are supporting nature at both local and national scales through a New Town project that places landscape, ecology and long-term stewardship at its core. The proposal seeks to fold a new National Forest into the settlement, creating a forest city identity that embeds people directly into nature and allows the town to be in synergy with its context.
The forest is conceived as both everyday infrastructure and a regional destination, supporting forest schools, natural play, exercise, wildlife watching, foraging, employment and cultural activities. Extensive woodland and healthy living soils improve flood resilience, carbon sequestration, air quality, wind reduction and shade, while enhancing beauty and biodiversity across seasons.
The project delivers new green and blue infrastructure of regional significance, including wildlife corridors linked to the river, a regional park and wetlands, regenerative agriculture, national cycle routes and a long-term environmental stewardship model to support nature recovery and Biodiversity Net Gain.
Project
1. Can you demonstrate work that strives to match the performance of a mature ecosystem?
Our way of thinking is rooted in restoring natural processes within urban environments and designing places that function as integrated ecological systems over time.
At Red Bank, this is expressed through our Wild Urbanism approach, drawing the Irk Valley into the city and allowing nature and urban life to interweave. The project prioritises habitat creation, ecological connectivity and long-term adaptability.
Similarly, the Romford Town Centre Masterplan seeks to re-naturalise the River Rom, creating a continuous ecological corridor that supports biodiversity, manages water naturally and delivers a resilient, nature-rich public realm.
At Strangeways, new park and wetlands are conceived as multifunctional infrastructure, responding to climate resilience, flood mitigation, cooling and habitat creation. At Colville, a wetland landscape is integrated, supporting biodiversity, water management. In Belfast we are collaborating with Ulster Wildlife Trust, trialling the use of oyster beds to purify the water quality of a former dock area, to allow swimming.
2. Are you working on material stewardship?
Material stewardship is a core focus of our practice, particularly in sectors where materials are difficult to decarbonise, such as tall residential construction. We are actively researching the environmental impact of brick, including its full lifecycle, and exploring alternative approaches that reduce embodied carbon while remaining compatible with high-rise construction and current regulations. This includes investigating opportunities for local and lower-carbon manufacturing methods.
On a social housing scheme, we pioneered a low-carbon façade system by replacing conventional fired brick with ‘waste’ Portland stone bricks. This approach demonstrates how material reuse, combined with careful design, can deliver meaningful carbon reductions using scalable, mainstream construction techniques rather than bespoke solutions.
Alongside this, we are applying cross-laminated timber on school projects and actively exploring alternative materials such as rammed earth. While not yet realised on site, this work reflects our commitment to challenging conventional material choices and advancing more responsible, long-term material stewardship.
3. Does the majority of your work demonstrate the use of biologically-inspired approaches such as Bioregionalism, Biophilia or Biomimicry?
We are working to embed a bioregional approach into the design of our projects, particularly within masterplanning and strategic planning work.
At Clarendon Dock in Belfast, the dock presents a major opportunity to enhance water quality and improve public access to the waterfront. Works are already underway to improve water conditions through aquaculture, planting, and natural filtration methods aiming to transform the dock into a safe and inviting space for swimming and recreation.
At Heathrow, our research indicated a high likelihood of significant ground contamination. In response, we proposed a phytoremediation strategy involving trees that would both detoxify the site and contribute to the creation of a functioning ecosystem.
Our New Town project seeks to fold a new National Forest into the settlement, creating a forest city identity that embeds people directly into nature and allows the town to be in synergy with its context.
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?
The practice has a progressive EDI policy and can evidence multiple forms of diversity that are actively welcomed, supported and embedded within our culture. EDI is fundamental to how we operate, with the aim of ensuring our workforce reflects the breadth of society, feel respected, empowered and able to progress. We require all staff to undertake EDI training and provide guidance on inclusive and diverse representation in our image-making.
Recruitment processes are designed to minimise bias, including anonymised shortlisting, diverse two-stage interview panels and transparent criteria for selection and promotion. We actively encourage applications from underrepresented groups and make reasonable adjustments to ensure equal access.
We carry out regular EDI surveys to understand lived experiences and barriers, using the findings to drive change. An active EDI task group is embedding this thinking into projects through EDI reviews, while our social impact fund supports alternative routes into architecture for underrepresented groups.
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 have a policy to reduce the amount of overtime worked across the practice. The policy has already been successful in reducing overtime hours and is continuously monitored to ensure it remains effective.
We are actively trialling a 37.5-hour working week as part of our wider commitment to staff wellbeing, sustainable working practices and long-term productivity. This trial is being closely reviewed to understand its impact on workload management, project delivery and staff experience.
We offer flexible working to all staff, including the option to work reduced hours. Many staff have taken up this option and use the additional time to pursue personal projects and professional development outside the practice.
We are a London Living Wage employer we strive for fair pay, set within a transparent process. We published salary bands, and criteria so staff can self asses where they are and can have informed open discussions.
3. Do you support charities, community groups, social enterprises, action groups and others through pro-bono work, charitable giving or in-kind donations?
This year we created our Social Impact Fund to bolster the work we already do with local organisations and charities. Everyone in the office is allocated 12 hours of time per year to support programmes to improve access to, progression within, and retention of talented people from under-represented groups working in architecture and the built environment. As well as our core collaborators who are established organisations, we support emerging organisations mainly run by volunteers as well as organisations which have been selected by staff members which meet the mission statement of our Social Impact Fund.
The Social Impact Fund supports organisations and charities advancing equity in the built environment, including Open City, RIBA, Placed Academy, Waltham Forest College, Beyond the Box, Part W, Architecture LGBT+, DisOrdinary Architecture, Built By Us, POC in Architecture, and the Architecture Foundation, delivering education, mentoring, advocacy and inclusive design initiatives across the UK.
4. Do you use an ethical framework to assess opportunities and/or supply chain partners and is them team consulted on these decisions?
We take a clear ethical stance on who we work with, where we operate, and the type of work we undertake. There are regions and countries where we have actively chosen not to work, based on our ethical considerations and principles. Staff are empowered to raise concerns around opportunities from an ethical compatibility perspective, resulting in open discussions with management as to whether we purse these.
To strengthen this position, we are developing a “what not to do” guide to support staff in making informed decisions in new or complex contexts. When collaborating with other design teams, we use a values-alignment tracker to assess ethical compatibility.
Our commitment is reinforced through our B Corp process, which includes a pledge not to work with certain industries. We also maintain specific material policies, including a decision not to specify certain products following Grenfell, reflecting our responsibility to public safety and trust.
Project
1. Does your work demonstrate deep engagement with local stakeholders and end users?
Our projects demonstrate deep and sustained engagement with stakeholders and users, treating communities as active partners. We begin all projects by listening carefully to understand lived experience, local knowledge and collective priorities. This informs approaches from the outset and builds trust in the process.
At Euston, we led workshops that informed a regeneration toolkit, explicitly focused on improving the quality and effectiveness of engagement. At Winstanley, we worked closely with residents through workshops, surveys and detailed analysis of current homes, enabling direct comparison with proposed standards. A resident ballot gives genuine agency, shifting decision-making power to the community, with ongoing engagement shaping detailed design.
We have established community panels on projects including York Way and Dock Branch, and in Birkenhead helped create an urban room hosting co-design activities. At Holloway Women’s Prison, we are working with and upskilling women and girls to co-design the scheme from their perspective.
2. Does your work create connected and resilient communities which positively contribute to neighbourhoods and allow equality of access?
Our projects are designed to create connected, resilient places that contribute positively to their neighbourhoods and support equality of access.
We have worked with Homes England to develop guidance on Local Centres and Mobility Hubs. Mobility Hubs promote active travel, shared transport and public transport through a user-centred approach to infrastructure, buildings and public space. Local Centres guidance was informed by a structured workshop convened by Homes England, bringing together 31 consultants from across the country, and reflects shared learning on what delivers successful, mixed-use neighbourhoods in practice. The guidance supports Homes England’s ambition to reduce car dependency and deliver walkable communities aligned with Building for a Healthy Life principles.
This thinking underpins our work on New Towns, where we design compact urban neighbourhoods with integrated social infrastructure. These neighbourhoods enable people to live, work and access services locally, strengthening community resilience and ensuring inclusive access to everyday amenities.
3. Does the majority of your work promote equity in society, and consider all people, not only building inhabitants
We consider material selection to be critical in influencing wider societal impacts, labour practices, socioeconomic opportunities, environmental responsibility and supply chain transparency.
At Colville, when selecting stone, we deliberately chose a British supplier. While imported stone from countries from further afield may appear cost competitive, the environmental impact of long-distance transport is significantly higher, and supply chains can offer less assurance around labour conditions and human rights. By sourcing locally, we reduced transport emissions while supporting a more transparent and accountable supply chain.
The same principles inform our approach to brick selection. As a practice, we avoid specifying bricks sourced outside Europe, where regulatory standards, oversight and labour protections may be weaker, and transport emissions substantially higher.
More broadly, we actively interrogate supply chains across all projects, prioritising localised and regional materials wherever possible. This approach reduces environmental impact, strengthens accountability and supports fairer, more resilient construction practices.