A planning application has been lodged for two new parsonage houses for St Mary’s Church Wimbledon. The site is within a conservation area and next to the Grade II listed churchyard wall of St Mary’s church which dates from at least the 11th century and possibly earlier, grade II* listed. The development will provide two new highly sustainable houses accessed from a garden courtyard, and improvements to the pedestrian route leading to the church from the south.

Our new Rackets court at Harrow School is working well. A rackets court is one of the most testing technical projects in architecture, the hard, black, playing surface, designed to create its own thermal cracks is good, the subtle underfloor heating, the gallery sight lines, the natural light,  and the soft wrapping to the gallery handrail is in place so that a stray hard, white, 120 mph ball, if the protective netting is drawn back, is less likely to cause injury. In the successful delivery of this project we were privileged to get the advice of Howard Angus a Wyckehamist and former Rackets champion, a well as John Eaton, Rackets pro at Harrow who has inspired a generation of quick witted players.

In 2021:

New collegiate, public and commercial projects including at Oriel College Oxford and Merton Priory.

New uses for landmark historic buildings and urban design including researching and expressing the heritage significance of Oxford’s Covered Market.

New good quality housing in protected sites including developments at Colliers Wood and Mitcham, London.

A new pandemic-resilient arts centre in Tower Hamlets.

Completion of our new care home at Beulah Hill.

Core architecture skills coming even more in focus, building on our trusted networks of consultants and collaborators.

Evidence based conservation – doing imaginative, smart new things in old and new places. Here’s to 2021.

2020 taught. We quipped at the beginning ’20-20 vision’. By March accepted modes of work were fragile and just-about adaptable: we could work at a distance. The role of a design director became, as a rhetorical joke, that of ‘a conductor with members of the orchestra in different houses’. And then the videos of choirs and orchestras doing exactly that – the limitations a-synchronicity. Construction is based on coordination and networks of trust. One brick on top of another. Persevering to principles of conservation, research, evidence, peace-making, professionalism and fairness. This is the basis of all business relationships, especially when tested. Construction cannot be stopped: as most of our economy ground to a halt, construction continued throughout. To our colleagues in this great Industry, and to everyone, we wish you a holy, peaceful Christmas and a creative and prosperous new year 2021.