Submission by RUFFARCHITECTS.
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 architecture that contributes to a more sustainable and resilient future, recognising the planetary emergency as a defining context for every project. Founded on the belief that buildings should endure and adapt over generations, we embed long-term thinking into our design process from the outset.
We prioritise thoughtful, analytical design that balances beauty with performance, focusing on longevity, adaptability, low operational energy, and responsible resource use. Through collaboration and open dialogue, we challenge assumptions and support clients in making decisions that deliver lasting environmental and social value.
Our studio culture encourages innovation, accountability, and continuous learning, helping us contribute meaningfully to a low-carbon built environment. We are signatories of Architects Declare, align our work with the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard, and engage with LETI guidance to inform best practice in sustainable design.
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 are committed to the long-term stewardship of the practice through a structured succession approach that protects its values, culture, and legacy. This is supported by a collaborative leadership model where responsibility, knowledge, and decision-making are distributed across the team rather than held by individuals, ensuring continuity and resilience over time.
Leadership development is embedded within the practice, with senior team members actively mentoring emerging leaders and guiding design quality, sustainability, and delivery across all RIBA stages. This builds a clear internal pipeline for progression and ensures that core principles are consistently upheld.
Our commitment to clients extends across the full lifecycle of projects, including post-completion stages, reinforcing continuity of service and accountability. Co-created studio values provide a durable framework for decision-making, supported by our alignment with Architects Declare, LETI guidance, and the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard, helping ensure the practice evolves without losing its founding ethos.
3. Do you share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider world?
We actively contribute to the wider architectural and academic community through knowledge sharing, collaboration, and teaching. Our leadership engages in education as invited lecturers and critics, supporting the development of future practitioners and encouraging open exchange of ideas.
Within projects, we promote transparent collaboration with clients, consultants, and stakeholders, ensuring that lessons learned are reflected upon and embedded across teams. Working across diverse sectors and contexts allows us to transfer knowledge between projects, strengthening outcomes over time.
Alongside commissioned work, we prioritise research-led activity and shared thought pieces where we believe we can have greater impact on the industry and wider society. This R&D-focused culture supports innovation, reflection, and continuous improvement, ensuring that knowledge generated within the practice contributes beyond individual projects.
Through these activities, we aim to support a broader cultural shift, both inside and outside the office, towards more sustainable, thoughtful and enduring architecture.
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 embed long-term thinking from the outset of every project through early-stage feasibility studies and strategic briefing that align proposals with future environmental, social, and operational needs. This allows us to challenge briefs constructively, advocating for longevity, adaptability, and whole-life carbon performance.
We introduce alternative strategies around reuse, material selection, and spatial planning early in the design process, ensuring decisions are informed by long-term value rather than short-term efficiency. At the Barbican Cinemas refurbishment, this included a sustainability-led tender process prioritising retrofit, reuse, local sourcing, and incremental high-impact interventions over wholesale replacement.
This approach is evidenced at Buckinghamshire New University, where we advised the adaptive reuse of the existing Uxbridge Central Library into a Centre of Excellence, reducing environmental impact while delivering a future-ready educational facility within an existing civic context.
2. Does your work take account of the future climate and the need for resilience?
Our projects are designed to respond to current and future environmental conditions, with resilience embedded as a core design principle. We consider overheating risk, energy performance, water use, and long-term adaptability to ensure buildings remain functional, comfortable, and efficient over time.
Our commitment to sustainable design is reflected in our Passivhaus expertise and the high-performance fabric strategies applied across all projects, including airtightness and minimised thermal bridging, reducing operational energy demand while improving occupant wellbeing.
We use future climate scenarios, including 2030 and 2050 projections within SAP and SBEM modelling, ensuring early decisions respond to the climate emergency rather than historic baselines.
At strategic brief stage, we actively support clients in adopting low-carbon, low-energy approaches informed by LETI guidance and the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard.
3. Does the majority of your work go beyond mitigating negatives and towards optimising positives?
We aim to go beyond reducing negative impact by creating architecture that delivers lasting environmental and social value. Our work enhances the relationship between people and place, contributing to wellbeing, community, and long-term usability.
Through careful design and contextual awareness, we create buildings that are durable, adaptable, and capable of evolving with changing needs, reducing the risk of premature obsolescence.
We prioritise efficient use of resources and energy alongside design quality that encourages stewardship and care over time. At the Barbican Cinemas refurbishment, environmental upgrades delivered through a sensitive retrofit approach improved material circularity, reduced embodied carbon, and enhanced occupant experience through healthier materials and improved internal environmental quality.
Increasingly, we frame early design decisions around regenerative principles, seeking opportunities for projects to positively improve their environmental and social context.
Co-evolving with nature
Practice
1. Do you use biophilia within your premises and/or do you regularly gather in natural settings?
We recognise the importance of connection to nature in supporting wellbeing, creativity, and cognitive performance within the studio. While our environment is urban, we incorporate biophilic principles through natural light, planting, and material choices that create a calm and healthy workspace.
We also value direct engagement with natural systems through site visits, walking reviews, and landscape-led analysis, ensuring environmental conditions and seasonal change are understood and reflected in our work.
This ethos is reinforced through projects such as the Hearst UK fit-out in Soho, where sustainability, material circularity, and wellbeing shaped the design approach. The project reused and repurposed existing fabric where possible, introduced low-impact materials, and created a more open, daylight-led environment that improves occupant experience while reducing embodied carbon.
Together, these approaches support a consistent focus on human-centred, environmentally aware design.
2. Can you share examples of where you have considered nature in decision making?
Consideration of nature is embedded within our design approach and decision-making processes. We assess sites as ecological systems, understanding patterns of light, water, vegetation, and habitat alongside their built context.
This informs decisions around orientation, material selection, and landscape integration. Our Passivhaus and low-energy expertise reinforces this approach through solar gain, shading, ventilation, and high-performance fabric design that reduces reliance on mechanical systems.
This is demonstrated in Palace Gardens in Enfield, where green infrastructure and improved connections to Town Park and the New River embed nature into a civic masterplan. At Lion Green Road in Croydon, residential pavilions sit within extensive parkland with sensory trails and allotments integrated throughout. At Hearst UK’s Institute in Soho, a retrofit-first approach reused over 95% of existing building materials, accounting for 76% of all materials used within the scheme.
Across these projects, nature is treated as a driver of design, not an afterthought.
3. Are you supporting nature locally and nationally?
We support nature through our project work and wider professional engagement. At project level, we aim to protect and enhance biodiversity through sensitive site planning, landscape integration, and long-term stewardship of buildings and their surroundings.
This includes strengthening green infrastructure, improving permeability, and embedding landscape-led strategies that connect developments to wider ecological networks. At Palace Gardens in Enfield, links to Town Park and the New River reinforce the town’s natural systems, while at Lion Green Road in Croydon, extensive parkland, sensory trails, and allotments shape the residential environment.
We also contribute to wider industry conversations around sustainability through collaboration, education, and knowledge sharing, helping promote more ecologically informed approaches across the built environment sector.
Alongside individual projects, we consider adjacent sites and boundaries of ownership, seeking opportunities for our work to positively influence wider environmental systems.
Project
1. Can you demonstrate work that strives to match the performance of a mature ecosystem?
We embed long-term thinking from the earliest stages of every project, learning from natural systems and prioritising efficiency, adaptability, and interconnection. While buildings cannot fully replicate mature ecosystems, we aim to align performance with their logic by reducing resource demand, enhancing biodiversity, and strengthening ecological relationships over time.
This is achieved through passive design strategies, high-performance building fabric, integrated landscape design, and long-term adaptability that reduces future material and energy use. Our Passivhaus approach supports very low operational energy demand, helping balance the relationship between buildings and their environment.
In East Hoathly, a 55-home masterplan on a former agricultural site reinterprets the landscape as a productive ecological framework. The scheme introduces green finger parks, integrates existing footpaths, and delivers a 57% biodiversity net gain through new habitats, natural play, and SuDS-led water management.
Across projects, we treat landscape, ecology, and building performance as interconnected systems.
2. Are you working on material stewardship?
We take a considered approach to material selection, recognising the environmental impact of construction and the importance of long-term stewardship. Our designs prioritise durable, low-maintenance materials that support longevity, adaptability, and reduced whole-life carbon.
We advocate for responsibly sourced, low-impact, and circular material strategies alongside construction methods that minimise waste and support future disassembly or reuse.
This approach is demonstrated in the Barbican Cinemas refurbishment, where existing furniture and seating were refurbished and reused, reducing embodied carbon and avoiding unnecessary replacement. Suppliers were prioritised locally or within the UK to reduce transport emissions, while materials were selected for whole-life performance, including natural, low-toxicity products such as Marmoleum flooring made from 100% organic materials. Reusing existing lobby armchairs alone delivered a saving of 35.242kgCO2e per chair compared to purchasing new.
Across our work, material stewardship shapes both specification and design intent from the earliest stages.
3. Does the majority of your work demonstrate the use of biologically-inspired approaches such as Bioregionalism, Biophilia or Biomimicry?
Our work is informed by principles aligned with biophilia and bioregional thinking, responding carefully to context, climate, and local environmental conditions. We design buildings that maximise natural light, ventilation, and connection to outdoor space, supporting wellbeing while reducing energy demand.
Each project is shaped by its setting, ensuring architecture responds to local ecological and climatic conditions rather than applying universal solutions.
While not always explicitly framed as biomimicry, our design philosophy reflects principles found in natural systems, including efficiency, adaptability, and responsiveness. These ideas shape projects from landscape-led strategies through to internal remodelling. At Hearst UK’s Institute in Soho, the refurbishment introduced more than 150 plants to enhance wellbeing, biodiversity, and the connection between people and their environment.
Nature, light, and wellbeing are considered from the earliest briefing stages and embedded throughout design development.
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?
We are committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive working environment where diverse perspectives are valued and respected. As a small practice, we promote equality through an open, collaborative, and non-hierarchical culture, ensuring all team members can contribute meaningfully to discussions and decision-making.
We recognise that diversity strengthens design thinking and improves outcomes. Our approach to EDI is embedded in daily practice and supported by policies addressing equality, unconscious bias, inclusive language, and accessible working arrangements.
We promote fair pay structures, flexible working, parental leave, and wellbeing measures that recognise different life stages and needs, alongside supportive frameworks around mental health.
Beyond the studio, we engage in mentoring, outreach, and social mobility initiatives that support underrepresented groups entering the profession, reflecting an ongoing commitment to improving representation and accessibility within the built environment sector.
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 are committed to fair and responsible employment practices that support wellbeing and long-term sustainability within the team. We aim to maintain a healthy work–life balance and actively discourage a culture of excessive or routine overtime, recognising the importance of rest, flexibility, and capacity planning.
We are a Living Wage Employer and ensure that all staff are paid at or above the London Living Wage, with regular salary reviews to maintain fairness, transparency, and competitiveness across the practice. We also seek to maintain a considered pay structure that reflects responsibility, experience, and contribution, supporting equity across all levels of the organisation.
As a RIBA Chartered Practice, we align with professional expectations around ethical employment and responsible practice management.
By prioritising wellbeing, fairness, and financial transparency, we aim to create a working environment that is supportive, sustainable, and aligned with our wider values as a practice
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, community groups, and social initiatives through a combination of pro-bono input, knowledge sharing, and in-kind contributions where possible. As a small practice we focus our capacity carefully, but actively seek opportunities where our time and expertise can deliver meaningful social value.
This includes engagement with organisations such as Article 25, participation in fundraising and awareness initiatives including Charity runs with our clients, and support for mental health charities such as the Samaritans. We also contribute to wider community benefit through teaching, mentoring, and design review roles, helping to support the next generation of practitioners and broaden access to the profession.
Alongside this, we prioritise projects with clear social value outcomes, ensuring that community impact is embedded within our core work as well as our external commitments.
4. Do you use an ethical framework to assess opportunities and/or supply chain partners and is them team consulted on these decisions?
We approach projects and partnerships with a clear ethical framework, guided by our commitments to sustainability, social value, and long-term environmental responsibility. Opportunities are assessed not only on commercial viability, but on alignment with these principles, including the environmental performance of proposals and the values of clients and collaborators.
As a collaborative studio, key decisions are discussed across the team, ensuring shared understanding of both opportunities and constraints. This supports transparency, accountability, and a culture where ethical considerations are embedded in everyday practice rather than treated as a separate process.
All potential projects are reviewed by the Senior Management Team prior to engagement. Individuals are also given the option to opt in or out of specific work where appropriate, supporting autonomy and alignment with personal values.
Project
1. Does your work demonstrate deep engagement with local stakeholders and end users?
Our projects demonstrate deep engagement with local stakeholders and end users through structured consultation and ongoing dialogue from the earliest stages. We prioritise open, inclusive processes that bring together clients, consultants, communities, and end users to inform evolving design decisions.
This includes workshops, public consultations, and iterative feedback sessions that actively shape briefs, spatial planning, and key design directions.
For Buckinghamshire New University, early-stage engagement informed the development of a new Centre of Excellence through adaptive reuse of the Uxbridge Central Library, aligning spatial strategies with academic and civic needs before key decisions were fixed.
Similarly, the HAB projects at Dora Carr Close, Westlands Drive, and Barns Road included nine formal consultation events alongside additional engagement sessions, directly influencing the evolving design and strengthening its response to community priorities.
This approach ensures projects are shaped by the people and places they serve.
2. Does your work create connected and resilient communities which positively contribute to neighbourhoods and allow equality of access?
We aim to create architecture that contributes positively to its wider context, supporting connected and resilient communities. Our projects consider how buildings relate to their surroundings, promoting accessibility, legibility, and a strong sense of place.
We prioritise inclusive design principles, ensuring spaces are welcoming and usable for a wide range of people, with clear routes, active frontages, and improved permeability supporting equality of access and everyday usability.
In Enfield Town Centre, the Palace Gardens masterplan reconfigures an ageing retail environment into a more connected urban block structure. New pedestrian routes, including a strengthened north–south connection, improve movement through the site, while green links extend towards Town Park and the New River, reinforcing wider landscape and civic connections.
Across our work, we design with both users and neighbours in mind, aiming to enhance social interaction, accessibility, and long-term neighbourhood resilience through the integration of built form and public realm.
3. Does the majority of your work promote equity in society, and consider all people, not only building inhabitants
Our approach extends beyond the immediate building to consider wider social impact. We recognise that architecture influences not only occupants but also surrounding communities, neighbourhoods, and the public realm.
We consider accessibility, inclusivity, and long-term usability in all projects, ensuring spaces are designed to be welcoming and usable by a broad range of people. This includes careful attention to movement, thresholds, visibility, and the relationship between private, shared, and public space.
A significant proportion of our work is within social and affordable housing and education, where equity and access are central drivers. This ensures that considerations of fairness and social value are embedded at the core of our practice rather than treated as peripheral outcomes.
By taking this broader view, we aim to support more equitable environments that contribute positively to society, not only for building users but also for the wider communities they sit within.