Submission by Orms.
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 purpose is to design functional and forever generous buildings, which place people at the heart of the narrative. Recognising that the planetary emergency is one of the greatest threats to humanity, we commit to regenerative design. As a Certified B-Corporation, we amended our Articles of Association to recognise environment and society as legal stakeholders, embedding long‑term stewardship into our governance. Shaped by our Ultrapractical principles, we combine Deep Assignments with Custodianship: prioritising retrofit over demolition, undertaking forensic analysis of existing structures, and piloting open‑source materials passports and supplier take‑back schemes to close material loops. Across the practice, we’ve set up climate‑literacy training and a sustainability roadmap to align projects with planetary boundaries. These steps aim to reduce embodied carbon, extend building lifespans and create adaptable, community‑centred spaces. We design for flexibility so buildings can be adapted and loved by future generations, recognising we have more to learn and implement.
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.
We’ve built succession into the core of our practice. In 2018, we transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust model, honouring our founders’ vision and creating an equitable pathway to senior leadership. Today 80% of shares are held by employees through the EOT, ensuring ownership remains with those who contribute. Our 2024 B-Corp certification marks a further commitment to accountable, values-led governance. We distribute annual profit shares to all staff with 12+ months’ service via a transparent points system, and our Employee Ownership Council empowers collective decision-making on EDI, benefits and culture. We invest in developing leadership through mentorship, CPD, and cross-generational working, ensuring institutional knowledge transfers to emerging leaders. We continuously review our governance to ensure it remains fit for purpose as we evolve. Together, these structures protect the legacy of those who built the practice while enabling new voices to shape its future.
3. Do you share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider world?
We share knowledge to accelerate industry-wide change. We actively contribute through the Architect’s Mental Wellbeing Forum and cross-practice Sustainability and Technical Leads peer groups. We supported the development of the UK Net Zero Building Standard, sponsoring the work, advocating for its use with clients and internally benchmarking all projects against its limits and targets. We lead a hybrid Materials Passports working group for UK and international practitioners, fostering wider adoption through open-source templates, and released a white paper with Lancaster University on accelerating implementation. We are a founding signatory of Circularity in Practice, a nationwide reuse initiative inspired by His Majesty King Charles III, as well as the first architecture practice in the UK to join. Knowledge sharing extends through conference presentations, university lectures and annual volunteering for Open City programmes including Open House and Architecture in Schools, making architectural thinking accessible to diverse audiences.
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?
Long-term thinking and circularity are embedded at project outset. We challenge conventional assumptions about design life and demolition by balancing upfront carbon costs against embodied impacts, circularity potential and lifecycle performance. Our project 75 London Wall exemplifies this approach. Through early strip-out strategies and forensic analysis, we achieved significant reuse—372 tonnes representing over 85,000 items. Our client described the outcome as a “Super Prime offer,” demonstrating how material reuse and extended building life become key factors in investment decisions. The investment case showed a compelling differential between market average rental returns and Super Prime figures, proving that regenerative thinking creates measurable financial value. Our Circularity in Practice commitment and Materials Passports methodology reinforce this: we design for future disassembly, establish supplier take-back schemes, and advocate for adaptability at every stage, resulting in buildings with extended useful lives, reduced waste and improved long-term returns.
2. Does your work take account of the future climate and the need for resilience?
All projects undergo our sustainability toolkit process, tracking outcomes through design stages using our climate framework. We are developing a climate resilience risk register to assess projects against future scenarios and identify adaptation opportunities. We are beginning to implement daylighting and overheating software to equip architects with data-driven tools for informed early decisions. Our approach integrates design for disassembly and non-deterministic solutions: Materials Passports and supplier take-back schemes enable component replacement or reconfiguration as climate challenges evolve, while loose-fit layouts and adaptable systems allow buildings to respond to changing use and conditions, exemplified by our Custom House project. After discovering archival evidence of external blinds and identifying remaining blind-boxes on-site, we reintroduced this adaptable passive cooling feature. Through rigorous testing we determined 35-degree angled blinds covering 50% of windows deliver optimal shading. This heritage-sensitive solution demonstrates flexible, adaptable design that builds in climate resilience and future-proofs buildings against uncertain conditions.
3. Does the majority of your work go beyond mitigating negatives and towards optimising positives?
We push beyond mitigating negatives to optimise positive outcomes. We benchmark all projects against the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard—equivalent limits to the RIBA 2030 Challenge—ensuring our designs are future-ready. Our circular economy achievements demonstrate this shift: 32,019 tiles from four projects returned to SAS for reuse, 243 tonnes of high-grade glass recycled with Saint-Gobain, 9,325 light fittings salvaged, and reclaimed raised access flooring implemented across nearly all projects. We recently held a Social Value Fortnight practice-wide to deepen staff engagement with optimising community, health and wellbeing outcomes alongside environmental performance. We’ve established a toolkit process for cross-project knowledge sharing, ensuring successful innovations become standard practice. Each project team identifies and tracks “one big thing” they’re doing differently, embedding continuous improvement and collective learning. This approach ensures regenerative thinking evolves from aspiration to measurable action across our portfolio.
Co-evolving with nature
Practice
1. Do you use biophilia within your premises and/or do you regularly gather in natural settings?
Our practice has integrated biophilic principles into our workplace design and operations. Our office features natural materials like timber joinery and strategically placed plants throughout shared spaces, enhancing air quality and wellbeing. Acoustic materials and soft curtains create a gentle, comfortable atmosphere with designated quiet areas for focused work.
We cherish our visual connection to nature through windows overlooking neighbouring parks, positioned just above the tree canopy—allowing us to witness seasonal changes throughout the year. Our outdoor terraces serve as social and working spaces, with plans to enhance them with additional plantings this year.
Our commitment extends to composting systems and encouraging outdoor activities through softball tournaments, football matches, and summer outings like our trips to Norwich and Leeds. We’re cultivating a workplace that actively celebrates our connection to nature.
2. Can you share examples of where you have considered nature in decision making?
We integrate biophilic principles into our workplace and culture. Our office features natural materials—timber joinery, acoustic finishes, soft curtains—and strategically placed plants throughout shared spaces, enhancing air quality and creating a comfortable atmosphere. Designated quiet areas support focused work and stress relief. We cherish our visual connection to nature: windows overlook neighbouring parks positioned just above the tree canopy, allowing us to witness seasonal changes year-round. Our outdoor terraces serve as social and working spaces, with plans to enhance planting this year to deepen biodiversity and sensory richness. Our commitment extends beyond the office: we compost organic waste, encourage outdoor team activities through softball tournaments and football matches, and organise summer outings including trips to Norwich and Leeds. These practices ground our work in natural rhythms and foster a workplace culture that actively celebrates our connection to living systems, reinforcing that we are part of nature, not separate from it.
3. Are you supporting nature locally and nationally?
No.
Project
1. Can you demonstrate work that strives to match the performance of a mature ecosystem?
The majority of our projects are central London sites with very little existing biodiversity. Our designs strive to significantly improve on-site greenspace whilst prioritising viable urban ecosystems. At 75 London Wall—an existing building we are retrofitting in the City of London—baseline biodiversity is minimal (0.04 habitat units). Our proposals generate a remarkable 3026% biodiversity increase, equating to 1.08 habitat units, through extensive biodiverse green roofs, intensive roof gardens and strategic tree planting. These interventions are carefully designed to create layered habitats supporting diverse species and providing ecosystem services including urban cooling, water attenuation and pollination. We work with ecologists to inform our biodiversity strategies, incorporating native planting schemes, microhabitats and interconnected green spaces that facilitate wildlife movement through the urban landscape, contributing to broader ecological networks. Our approach acknowledges urban constraints while demonstrating that regenerative biodiversity outcomes are achievable even on challenging city-centre sites.
2. Are you working on material stewardship?
We champion material stewardship through our pioneering Materials Passports initiative, creating a scalable, open-source approach for existing and new materials. This framework de-risks reuse through comprehensive data collection during design and construction. Since publishing our initial methodology in 2021, we established an industry working group, secured UKRI funding in 2023, and launched freely available resources in January 2024 alongside a policy paper. We maintain a material library prioritising reused materials—recognising reuse as the lowest-carbon strategy. We actively collaborate with suppliers on practical take-back schemes. Our partnership with SAS established methodologies for ceiling tile reuse, resulting in their formal refurbishment programme with new warranties—we’ve returned over 32,000 tiles. We’re developing similar programmes for glass, ironmongery, aluminium and stone reclamation, demonstrating material stewardship at scale and eliminating waste through closed-loop systems that fundamentally shift how materials are valued and kept in productive use.
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 continuously updated EDI policy is introduced at induction, covering equal opportunity across age, disability, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, pregnancy, marriage and ex-offenders. We deliver training for all staff on bias, gender, neurodiversity and mental health, while senior leadership receives Inclusive Leadership training. As active Architecture Race Forum members, we participate in regular industry discussions. Our practice of 119 people speaks 22 languages, reflecting our international reach and diverse perspectives. We offer flexible working on request to support caring responsibilities and work-life balance. We’ve improved recruitment diversity by expanding our interviewer pool and agency relationships, offering sponsorship and visa support. We’ve created multiple pathways to architecture: as founding partners of the LSA, supporting apprenticeships and Part III candidates, and redesigning our Work Experience programme for students from underrepresented backgrounds. Our Employee Ownership Council researches and advises leadership on EDI, ensuring diverse voices inform practice direction and design approach.
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 create a positive, healthy working culture through active engagement with our elected Employee Ownership Council. We’re running a working hours trial with a key objective to prevent overtime by tackling upstream causes culturally rather than through policy. All staff and leaders are encouraged to discuss workload openly, share best practice and raise issues to mitigate additional working. Where overtime cannot be avoided, we have measures to limit duration and ensure time off in lieu follows. We pay above the London Living Wage across all roles. We monitor our salary ratio between highest and lowest paid staff to ensure fairness and equity across all levels. We offer flexible working on request and remote working one day per week to support work-life balance and caring responsibilities. Our Employee Ownership Council researches fair-pay, benefits and working patterns, advising leadership to ensure our approach remains equitable and supports staff wellbeing alongside project delivery.
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 community engagement through our dedicated Giving Back team, organizing fundraising for Whitechapel Mission, Felix Project, Ukrainian schools and Shelter. As foundation donors to the Architects Benevolent Society, we provide financial support alongside additional fundraising initiatives. We were founding partners of the LSA and maintain our commitment through annual financial contributions, student work placements and design think-tank leadership. Through Designing for the Future and Architecture in Schools programmes, we connect with local schools for career talks and hands-on workshops, reaching over 1000 students in the past 5 years. We’ve implemented an equitable work experience programme broadening access to architectural careers beyond traditional networks. Our pro-bono contributions extend to community action, with a director volunteering for a temporary accommodation action group in Newham focused on improving user experience for those facing homelessness. This balanced approach combines financial support, knowledge sharing, in-kind donations of time and expertise, and direct community involvement.
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?
No.
2. Does your work create connected and resilient communities which positively contribute to neighbourhoods and allow equality of access?
No.
3. Does the majority of your work promote equity in society, and consider all people, not only building inhabitants
No.