Submission by shedkm.
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.
For three decades, our principles have centred in equity, inclusion and the idea of a wider common good. To safeguard these principles, in 2022 we became employee-owned and in 2023 became a B Corp.
Our Sustainability Manifesto etablishes our environmental approach, stating that: “we are signatories to Architects Declare and as such, we declare a climate and biodiversity emergency and call for immediate action within the construction and built environment industries to reduce our collective environmental impact. We take our role in this very seriously and in response have established an in-house ‘environment atelier’ to spearhead our implementation of the Architects Declare goals and to drive the development of our environmental design approach.”
The environment atelier have collectively considered the questions within the Regenerative Architecture Index, using it to review our strengths and areas for improvement.
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.
Founded in 1997, we are now an employee-owned trust, aligning our business model with our values and protecting its legacy for the future.
Initially majority founder-owned, we restructured in 2007 to give the Directors equal shareholding. Having doubled in size in the following ten years, the working shareholders felt it important to fully embed the founding philosophy that ‘those that contribute, gain’, and so we became an employee-owned trust in 2022.
This came well before retirement age for current Directors, giving time for them to contribute to the buy-out themselves, to nurture long-term succession, and to avoid placing undue financial pressure on the team.
As an EOT, we created eight ‘ateliers’ and three studio boards to include everyone in practice running and specialisms beyond project roles. Atelier leads are selected based on passion rather than seniority, empowering emerging talent and supporting individual growth.
3. Do you share research and knowledge for the benefit of society and the wider world?
We believe in social mobility through design. Our Education atelier leads and coordinates our activities to ensure effective impact.
We have hosted two Build The Way trainees through 9-month placements in London, and support PLACED and Regeneration Brainery with annual sponsorships, site tours, and workshops in the North. In Liverpool, we have a programme of school and college/T Level work experience placements and take part in careers fairs. We are actively involved in RIBA’s student mentoring programme, supporting 3-6 architecture students annually across our studios.
We speak at industry events and host tours, sharing our regeneration and retrofit expertise with Footprint+, The Concrete Centre, the Twentieth Century Society, Placed Collective, the RIBA North West sustainability group, Blackheath Society, Festival of Place, and Liverpool Architecture Festival.
Internally, our weekly CPD programme hosts diverse external speakers, and weekly knowledge share extends from carbon to AI and communications, and internal mentoring.
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 advocate for retrofit-first. Chimney Pot Park and Collegiate were both originally earmarked for demolition. We proposed radically rethinking the existing structures to adapt them for modern living. We think beyond the brief, working with overlooked structures such as multi-storey car parks, shopping centres and office blocks.
We designed a demountable sales pavilion for Urban Splash, originally located in Wirral Waters and now relocated to Croydon where it is used as a community hub. Lighthouse Church was designed for adaptability as the church grows and funds allow, with future mezzanine, stair, and lift to be added.
Our scheme at Zodiac challenged three common misconceptions: the quality of temporary accommodation, the quality of a permitted development, and the brutalist aesthetic. This thinking drove the design process: working closely with the client the delivered scheme successfully raises quality standards which have been recognised in awards and conference talks.
2. Does your work take account of the future climate and the need for resilience?
We follow fabric-first principles, reducing energy demand and embedding climate adaptation measures such as passive cooling and on-site energy generation, targeting LETI standards for operational/embodied carbon.
At Civic we developed a bespoke solution using the existing 1960s monocoque structure to deliver triple-glazing, reducing thermal bridging and improving insulation.
Our retrofit at Crusader improved thermal performance despite heritage requirements, retaining exposed brick walls by introducing colonnaded access walkways within the structure and new apartment walls forming the new thermal line.
Lighthouse Church features exaggerated canopy shading, air source heat pumps and rooftop PVs for energy generation, enabling future enhancements (PV extension, battery storage) as funds allow.
163 Cambridge Science Park used detailed carbon optioneering of façade and structure materials from early stage, with outcomes informing design choices. Orientation-sensitive façade design will carefully balance glazing ratios and integrated shading. A sawtooth roof is orientated to optimise energy generation from PVs.
3. Does the majority of your work go beyond mitigating negatives and towards optimising positives?
Our socially regenerative retrofit approach aims to both preserve materials and embodied carbon, and enhance the social fabric of place.
At Zodiac, a fenced-off car park was transformed into a 1,060sqm park and community pavilion providing employment and entrepreneurship skills.
Port Loop worked with a brownfield canal site, bringing people back to the waterside with new shared gardens and improved access to the canal for all. At Civic, significant public realm enhancements improved the streetscape with inclusive seating, and new shrub and tree planting achieving a biodiversity net gain of 515%.
Stockport 8 will see significant urban greening with 260 new trees to provide shade and help reduce urban temperatures. We will also provide 2ha of new public realm, set to achieve a biodiversity net gain of 385%.
At Wandsworth, significant wildlife habitat and biodiversity improvements will include unculverting the river and re-wilding the river banks.
Co-evolving with nature
Practice
1. Do you use biophilia within your premises and/or do you regularly gather in natural settings?
All of our studios (Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Hastings) are full of plants and natural light. Roof terraces are regularly used for relaxing and socialising: for communal lunches, yoga sessions, after-work socialising, and some internal meetings. The Liverpool studio roof terrace has bee hives and a thriving bee community.
Our whole practice gathers quarterly in one place, with time outside weather-permitting.
2. Can you share examples of where you have considered nature in decision making?
Wirral Waters gave all residents shared gardens with fruit trees and edible planting, linked across the docks creating new nature corridors. At Greenwich Housing, modular construction protected trees by minimising surrounding site work. At Port Loop we worked with the Canal and River Trust to improve the waterway, using the regeneration as a catalyst for nature enhancement.
Ruskin Square R04 outline masterplan envisaged removing almost all existing trees on the site. When we were appointed, our designs tested retaining as many existing trees as possible while achieving the required number of homes. We were able to retain 36 out of 48 existing trees; those removed were either diseased or of poor quality.
Our proposals for Grappenhall Woods in Cheshire and Windermere housing were centred around creating edge-of-urban extensions rooted in place and countryside, allowing nature to permeate through with large swathes of natural landsape including woodland, wetland, glades and meadows.
3. Are you supporting nature locally and nationally?
Last year we planted 100 trees through Treeapp. The trees are located at a children’s activity centre in the West Midlands, near our Port Loop project. The large-scale planting has introduced a rich mix of native trees and shrub species, creating natural boundaries and shelter belts around the activity centre. We are also aiming to design in new tree planting on every project.
This summer each of our studios are planting sunflowers in our outdoor space – for wellbeing and team bonding, as well as to support nature locally.
Last year our Liverpool studio held a volunteering day at Festival Gardens. 16 members of the team volunteered half a day each to maintain the gardens, clear invasive vegetation, and add planting for biodiversity.
Project
1. Can you demonstrate work that strives to match the performance of a mature ecosystem?
Our Wandsworth housing scheme will unculvert the River Wandle, adding 225 linear meters of naturalised river banks, creating a 9000sqm riverside park with 6500sqm habitat creation. It includes 450sqm rain gardens for sustainable drainage, rainwater harvesting and blue roofs, biodiverse roofs, native climbing plants on lower level walls, and 175 new semi-mature trees.
Grappenhall Woods scheme for Urban Splash was designed for the woodland to permeate the housing site. Existing unmanged and poor quality woodland was to be extended, removing poor specimens and encouraging understory to develop with new native planting. New woodland and scrub planting was proposed to create wildlife corridors, and foraging opportunities for small mammals, birds and invertebrates. Soft hedges were proposed in lieu of hard fences.
Our proposals for Lake District Hub for National Trust focuses on touching the ground lightly, rewilding the former farmsted site and restoring native planting and hedgerows.
2. Are you working on material stewardship?
As retrofit specialists we promote re-use of existing structures that would otherwise be demolished. At Zodiac, much of the structure and façade was retained, and where panels were removed they were reused elsewhere on-site.
Our House typology (New Islington, Port Loop, Northstowe) utilises modular timber construction. The MMC approach allows inhabitants to customise their homes while fixed parameters enable standardisation and efficiency. The factory construction reduces waste by up to 50% and allows for the careful sorting and recycling of residual waste.
We advocate for timber construction and innovate new solutions. Brent Cross used a hybrid CLT and pre-cast concrete frame, reducing embodied carbon by 30%. Mansion House used a full CLT structure, exposed on walls and soffits that would typically be covered in plasterboard – this realised significant materials savings. All timber specified is FSC or PEFC. We continue to innovate and are looking into harvest maps and material passports.
3. Does the majority of your work demonstrate the use of biologically-inspired approaches such as Bioregionalism, Biophilia or Biomimicry?
Many of our sites are on post-industrial landscapes. Wirral Waters was built on brownfield land at Wirral docks, adding shared residents’ gardens, with buildings arranged to help shelter the gardens from prevailing winds from the docks.
Biophilia is an important aspect of all projects. Karparc – the adaptive reuse of a multi-storey car park into flats – will feature a new planted atrium. Civic, Wigan, features new street planting and roof terrace resulting in a 515% BNG. At Stockport 8 each apartment will have a tree in view. Ruskin Square includes a new residents’ garden surrounded by existing mature trees, and an improved outlook with new native climbing plants to be added to the side of an adjacent multistorey car park.
Our hybrid CLT office building at Brent Cross uses exposed timber to enhance tenant wellbeing, and homes at New Islington feature exposed CLT walls and soffits.
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 review our EDI policy annually and in 2025 included an additional day of annual leave for those with a religious practice wishing to observe festivals outside the UK bank holidays and our Christmas closure.
We set up SWIP (shedkm women in practice) as a forum to support all genders. Activities include financial resilience training, and presentation and networking training. The forum is a safe space to ask for and offer advice, as well as increasing all gender’s awareness of the obstacles some members of society experience in their career progression. Activities are arranged based on staff feedback for the kind of training they feel would be beneficial.
We are 50% male, 50% female (41 permanent staff; 21 female). We report our details annually to the RIBA and D3 annual surveys.
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 a living wage employer and has operated as an Employee Owned Trust (EOT) since 2022. This structure is designed to provide continuity and long-term assurance to retain our strong and inclusive culture, and embeds a profit share scheme so that all staff are rewarded for the success of the business. We benchmark salaries against other practices and the RIBA guidelines.
We discourage a culture of long working hours, and take care to resource projects appropriately. Monthly management reporting flags cases of overwork to trigger an urgent resource request. In 2025 we hired a new Head of People + Culture to ensure this culture is embedded structurely throughout the business.
We have a flexible working policy to accommodate individual needs, with core office hours of 10am – 4.30pm. All staff are offered an optional working from home day each week.
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 James’ Place, a mens’ suicide prevention charity in Liverpool, through pro-bono design work; designing new staff facilities for their team. We also gave Lighthouse Church pro-bono support with fundraising, website development, meanwhile enhancements to existing buildings, and donated plants for their outside spaces.
We have supported various charities across the UK through sponsorship and donations including Placed Academy, Regeneration Brainery, Treeapp (funding the planting of 100 native trees), and LandAid. We have an annual budget for charitable giving, with all staff voting on which organisations the donations are made to.
We hold an annual Christmas foodbank collection each year in our Liverpool office, and have supported our client Lighthouse Church with their regular foodbank donations. We also donated to their Ukraine support mission.
We regularly support education groups including Placed, Regeneration Brainery, Build The Way, and local schools and colleges through mentoring, work experience, and site workshops.
4. Do you use an ethical framework to assess opportunities and/or supply chain partners and is them team consulted on these decisions?
As an EOT we have established the Studio Board (our employee council) which provides a forum for staff to voice their opinions on management decisions, including clients we work for, types of projects we undertake, supply chain and ethical policy. The chair of the Studio Board can report any concerns directly to the Managment Board and Trustee Board.
Many of our long-term clients are B Corps themselves and share our ethical and social stance. We also have long term relationships with consultants and put forward those who share our values when we can.
On projects we created a sustainability framework that measures 12 environmental design goals at every stage of each project: reuse, regeneration, placemaking, density, biodiversity, wellbeing, adaptability, materials, embodied carbon, performance, climate resilience, and innovation. This is voluntary process helps us assess each of our projects at every stage, communicating our impacts clearly to clients.
Project
1. Does your work demonstrate deep engagement with local stakeholders and end users?
We engage with communities throughout project stages. At Lighthouse Church we held public meetings throughout design stges, inviting input from the congregation, neighbours, and adjacent businesses.
At Stockport 8 we held high street public consultation events, and design workshops with local secondary school children, gaining valuable insights into what they wanted from the new public spaces.
Circus Street involved public design workshops and consultation at masterplan level. The dance studio design was driven by detailed workshops with studio users (South East Dance, not-for-profit).
At Mayfield Park, a series of large-scale engagement events were organised to coincide with the RHS Urban Show. To encourage local participation, 300 free tickets to the RHS Show were distributed in the community through schools and grassroots community groups. 5000 people attended the exhibition over 4 days.
We are developing a new POE structure, trialling this September on Civic, our retrofit of Wigan’s 1960s civic centre.
2. Does your work create connected and resilient communities which positively contribute to neighbourhoods and allow equality of access?
Our work actively enhances place for existing and new communities.
At Port Loop, Birmingham, we created a new community on a brownfield site, beginning with a new park and regular programme of events. Shared gardens create neighbourly connections and equal access to outdoor space.
Civic transformed a vacant landmark in the heart of Wigan into a community destination, bridging between commercial opportuity and public facilities. The workspace prioritises local, micro businesses, while a public cafe at the entrance provides a welcoming threshold. The street is improved with inclusive seating, pathways, and new planting.
At Zodiac, the provision of a new park and community pavilion ensured the benefits of the scheme would be felt by the wider community.
During the development of 3 Copper Square, a hybrid CLT office building in Brent Cross Town, we hosted two Build The Way trainees from Brent, providing unique in-depth training opportunites for local people.
3. Does the majority of your work promote equity in society, and consider all people, not only building inhabitants
From our origins in Liverpool, we’ve built a reputation for transforming overlooked places into thriving, people-first neighbourhoods. We work across the regions, often in post-industrial towns, with a socially regenerative retrofit approach that places significant value on the emotional importance of the urban fabric.
Our belief in championing social mobility through design is both in how we work and in our projects. We provide mentoring, workshops, and site visit opportunities to schoolchildren and students across the country (Stockport, Liverpool, Wigan, Brent Cross).
Our social housing schemes have had a transformative impact on surrounding communities as well as building inhabitants. Greenwich Housing delivered 86 homes while enhancing the urban fabric for existing and incoming communities with new play spaces, animated streets, and improved connectivity, repairing various brownfield and infil sites.
Our MD, Hazel Rounding, is a founding member of Place Collective UK, championing placemaking nationwide.