Purcell, Studio Knight Stokoe, Atelier Architecture and Design, BakerBrown studio and DSDHA are among the practices explaining how their projects will respond to the future climate, and how they are building in flexibility and resilience.
Being a good ancestor
Responses in this section were assessed by Architects Declare’s Alasdair Ben Dixon, Tom Gibson, Deepthi Ravi, Zoe Watson and Jacqueline Wheeler, with expert insight from Regenerative Architecture Index ambassador, social philosopher and author Roman Krznaric.
Projects Question 2
Do your projects take account of the future climate and the need for resilience? For example, do the projects demonstrate flexibility, design for adaptation, design for disassembly, non-deterministic solutions, or demountable structures?
Front-runner
Purcell
By prolonging the life of our existing buildings, advocating for adaptability, good maintenance, and promoting local skills and materials, we are reducing our reliance on virgin resources and fragile global supply chains, as well as creating a more resilient built environment. In addition, our projects are increasingly needing to respond to the adverse effects our changing climate is having on our existing building stock. As part of our open-source Heritage Building Retrofit Toolkit, developed with the City of London, we included a Climate Hazard Risk Assessment template, specifically to help building owners understand and prepare for the various climate hazards and the associated risks. In our Conservation Management Plans we incorporate this thinking, setting out clear mitigation measures that can be planned into the ongoing maintenance and stewardship of a site.
Runner-up
Studio Knight Stokoe
Our projects fully integrate future climate resilience through several key strategies. We implement climate-adaptive planting schemes capable of withstanding extreme weather events, while supporting local biodiversity. Sustainability is ensured through careful consideration of material and plant resource availability.
Our non-deterministic solutions, including green infrastructure and natural drainage systems, respond dynamically to fluctuating weather patterns.
Design for disassembly is incorporated through demountable structures that enable component reuse or relocation. Systems-based approaches create resilience throughout project lifespans.
Our process includes microclimate modelling with present and predicted climate data informing design decisions for future scenarios. Practical applications include modular furniture elements at Plant in Basingstoke, Hampshire, and advocating for sustainable on-site material harvesting and composting at a London school, reducing external dependencies and waste.
Ones to watch
Atelier Architecture & Design
Resilience is more than performance. It’s a mindset – one that considers both buildings and landscapes as evolving systems. In our recent projects on AONB and Green Belt sites, we’ve designed for changing climates through layered strategies: passive design, mixed-mode ventilation, timber structures, roof-mounted PVs, and fully electric energy systems. Biodiversity-led drainage, including rain gardens and bioswales, mitigates flood risk, while restoring ecological function.
A recent project demonstrates how adaptability works in practice. We developed a prototype cabin for a spa retreat in the New Forest, later reimagined for a remote site near Drammen, Norway. The building uses timber wall and roof cassette modules with embedded insulation, designed for efficient assembly, disassembly and reuse. The components can be assembled just 15 kilometres from site, minimising transport impacts. We design not for permanence but for continued relevance – where each building supports climate foresight, material stewardship, and deeper alignment with the landscapes it inhabits.
BakerBrown Studio
We never try to predict how a building might be used in the future, we just ensure that they are designed so that they can be easily adapted if needs be, and to be material banks for future buildings. For more than 30 years we have dedicated our energies to designing and delivering over 150 buildings constructed by ‘mining the anthroposphere’ and ‘harvesting a regenerative biosphere.’
We have many examples of buildings utilising material from site, such as spoil, clay and chalk, to create internally exposed heavyweight walls and/or floor finishes. These provide thermal mass, which helps to stabilise internal temperatures and reduce the need for mechanical cooling as the climate warms.
We also design our buildings to have a series of environmental buffer zones, which reduce the need for excessive heating and cooling.
Finally, we have been testing these ideas with both live research and ‘normal’ practice projects, and have been documenting them and the work of other pathfinder practices via the publishing of academic papers and three books.
DSDHA
Our Sheep Field Barn Gallery for the Henry Moore Foundation is a fully demountable, timber structure designed with regular and repeatable sections primed for re-use. The lightweight structure sits on steel screw piles which can be unscrewed and re-used, allowing the ground to return to its agricultural condition. The ‘lean-to’ extension provides a vast column-free area with internal partitions that can be reconfigured as all services are provided through a central spine, which can accommodate future connections and reconfigurations. Internally, the extension reuses the former external cladding – re-planed and re-treated – to give the 20-year-old timber a new lease of life.
As landscape architect for the Euston Tower, we have taken an ecological approach to resiliency by designing the public realm around the system services of a wetland. A wetland area is complemented by a ‘riparian’ bed within the central plaza, which is designed to act as a floodable landscape. The system utilises bioretention and is able to accommodate varying volumes of runoff during unprecedented rainfall events.