Audio streaming service Spotify has opened a listening lounge at its London headquarters, featuring a bespoke speaker system and a material palette chosen to enhance the room's acoustic properties.

The Spotify Listening Lounge is a purpose-built acoustic space designed to provide an immersive setting for users to experience the company's lossless audio offering.

The facility was designed in collaboration with local studio Cake Architecture and features a bespoke sound system developed by London-based loudspeaker design studio Friendly Pressure.

Spotify claimed that the listening room aims to celebrate listening as a communal, intentional experience, with access granted to artists' top fans and Spotify Premium users.

"The Listening Lounge is where technology, craftsmanship and culture align," said the company's head of marketing for the UK and Ireland Billie Baier.

"By bringing lossless audio into a purpose-built environment, we're demonstrating the full potential of streaming and fostering a deeper connection between fans and the music they love."

The project follows a trend for listening bars and other audio-centred spaces, such as a pink monochrome bar in Sydney and a hi-fi bar in London designed to provide a range of acoustic experiences.

Guests are welcomed into a reception area featuring warm lighting, slate floors and steel details that help to create a threshold between the bustling urban setting and the intimate lounge space.

The main listening room utilises a palette of brown hues and tactile surfaces that recede into the background to focus attention on the raised, backlit sound system.

The room is simply furnished with plump, upholstered pieces from furniture brand Afra and designer Tobia Scarpa's Soriana collection.

"Collaborating with Spotify and Friendly Pressure allowed us to treat the room itself as an instrument," said Cake creative director Hugh Scott Moncrieff.

"Every surface pattern and material choice was a functional decision to eliminate interference, ensuring that the craftsmanship of the speakers is matched by the precision of the architecture surrounding them."

New York-based acoustician Ethan Bourdeau helped to refine the space's acoustic design, with each wall featuring a calibrated surface pattern that disperses frequencies evenly around the room.

The audio system used in the lounge was created by Shivas Howard-Brown of Friendly Pressure and features custom-made cabinets along with a frosted glass version of the brand's signature waveguide horn.

"Growing up in and around recording studios exposed me to a whole heritage of craft," Howard-Brown said.

"Sound systems built in sheds, speakers designed for carnival stacks – these have always had the same ambition as anything you'd find in a high-end listening room. This new space is my attempt to make that argument."

The speaker system references a golden era of British audio engineering, utilising components including Alnico magnet drivers that would have featured in the famous Abbey Road recording studio throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

The Spotify Listening Lounge launched with an event hosted by UK artists Joy Crookes, Nao and Yazmin Lacey and will host year-round programming for music fans.

In 2021, Spotify began redesigning its offices to give them a more homely feel, with a focus on improving acoustics and introducing softer, cosier spaces.

Cake Architecture's previous work includes the design of a wellness facility featuring a sauna for 65 people and a late-night restaurant designed to evoke the moody atmosphere of an Edward Hopper painting.

The photography is courtesy of Spotify.

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The latest edition of our weekly Dezeen Agenda newsletter features an exclusive look at the exterior of the V&A East Museum in London. Subscribe to Dezeen Agenda now.

Irish studio O'Donnell + Tuomey unveiled the exterior of London's V&A East Museum ahead of its public opening later this month.

This week's newsletter also included President Donald Trump's plans for a presidential library skyscraper in Miami, an opinion piece on Zaha Hadid by Ingrid Schroder and news that The Tampa Bay Rays have restored the roof on its St Petersburg ballpark.

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Italian trattoria meets Irish country house in Day Studio's interior for Burro, a sister restaurant to London's popular Trullo.

The Covent Garden restaurant is the new offering from Belfast-born chef Conor Gadd, who is also Trullo's head chef and co-owner.

Drawing on both Gadd's Irish upbringing and the Italian cuisine that has shaped his career, Day Studio founder Lisa Helmanis aimed to create an interior that reflects the hospitality traditions of both nations.

Speaking to Dezeen, Helmanis said she wanted to make Burro feel welcoming, "like it has always been there", but without being overly nostalgic.

"Long-standing restaurants inevitably evolve; when they open, they must feel contemporary without becoming beholden to trend," she said.

"The aesthetic language sits between an Irish country house kitchen and a well-loved local trattoria in Rome or Sienna – familiar, yet reinterpreted through a modern lens."

The designer sought to make every seat in the 100-cover restaurant feel special, appealing to solo diners, couples and big parties alike.

"We wanted to make every table feel like the best seat in the house," she told Dezeen.

The layout of the dining room plays an important role in this. While many restaurants have banquette seating around the edges, Burro's are neatly arranged through the middle of the space to multiply the number of cosy corners.

The arrangement is supported by walls split into two colour bands; the lower band is a reddish-brown, complementing the wooden furniture, while the upper band is a soft yellow, reflected by golden-hued mirrors that neatly wrap the structural columns.

The bar is another key addition, combining burgundy marble and concave stone tiles with a curved timber edge designed to invite touch.

"Materiality underpins the atmosphere," said Helmanis. "Finishes are selected for their ability to age gracefully, gathering patina rather than polish."

The project is resonant for Helmanis, a former journalist who designed the interior for Trullo as one of her first commercial projects in 2010.

Gadd joined the restaurant the same year, before going on to become head chef in 2013 and, later, co-owner. With Burro, they wanted to create a restaurant with the same conviviality, but a distinctly more grown-up feel.

Art is a big part of this; the walls are full of paintings and photography, including an eye-catching canvas by Irish painter Dan Ferguson and various works by Helmanis, who trained as an artist.

The designer explained how she likes to add one discordant element into her interior schemes, which often ends up tying the whole thing together. Here, it was the patterned velvet chosen for the seating upholstery.

For the furniture, the designer achieved a rare feat; she sourced 100 matching mid-century chairs second-hand, courtesy of a convent in Czechia.

Other details include sculptural table lamps and sconces from Snelling, textured glass and floor-to-ceiling curtains.

"In a neighbourhood often characterised by spectacle and turnover, Burro positions itself as a true local – a place to return to repeatedly," added Helmanis.

Other recent London openings include the Peckham Palais nightclub and London Fields record bar Bambi.

The photography is by Helen Cathcart.

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Design studio Formafantasma and architecture firm Gonzalez Haase AAS worked with carmaker Ferrari to create the interiors of the London flagship store for its fashion brand.

The multi-level boutique, located on the corner of Old Bond Street and Piccadilly in central London, is the result of a collaboration between Ferrari Style's creative director Rocco Iannone, Gonzalez Haase AAS and Formafantasma.

The ground and first floors showcase women's and men's ready-to-wear garments and also house Ferrari's Tailor Made Atelier, which is zoned by floor-to-ceiling leather curtains and has a large circular table.

Here, customers can customise the brand's car-shaped Maranello clutch – a process the brand wanted to mimic that of ordering a Ferrari car, but at a smaller scale.

The basement level houses the Caveau, a private space the brand describes as a "chamber" where rare Ferrari components and collectibles are displayed.

These pieces were sourced from the northern Italian town of Maranello, where Ferrari was founded.

Regardless of function, the spaces share a cohesive visual language of hand-brushed stainless steel panels, concrete flooring, leather, aluminium and glass, with the materials used to create everything from display cases to seating.

According to Ferrari, these specific finishes were selected in homage to the Ferrari Officina, the brand's Spring/Summer 2026 runway collection released during this year's Milan Fashion Week.

Pops of bright red – Ferrari's accent colour – were picked out throughout the interior, from sweeping handrails, rugs and seat cushions to mannequins and packaging.

These punctuate the otherwise neutral-toned spaces and anchor the interior against a backdrop of transparent and reflective materials.

The wider building dates from 1905 and retains its Queen Anne-style facade made from pale Portland stone.

Its ornate exterior belies the contemporary aesthetic of the interior, which is glimpsed through floor-to-ceiling windows, giving the ground floor a gallery-like quality.

"With the London flagship, we wanted to create a point of connection between Ferrari's heritage and its forward-looking vision," said Ferrari Style's creative director Iannone.

"Every material and detail has been chosen to express the evolving language of Ferrari Style – London offers the perfect stage for this dialogue."

"More than a store, the Ferrari Style London flagship stands as a cultural statement – an immersive environment where architecture, materiality and storytelling meet, celebrating the enduring bond between Ferrari and the United Kingdom, from Silverstone to the streets of London," said the brand.

Other flagship stores published on Dezeen include a glass-draped Tiffany & Co store in Beijing, fashion brand Telfar's NYC flagship-cum-TV studio, and the gallery-like Helsinki flagship of Finnish jewellery brand Kalevala.

The photography is by Ed Reeve.

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Irish studio O'Donnell + Tuomey has exclusively revealed the exterior of the V&A East Museum in London ahead of its official public opening later this month.

Set to open on April 18, the distinctive building sits alongside the Allies and Morrison-designed London College of Fashion and directly opposite the Populous-designed Olympic stadium as the latest structure on the Olympic Park.

The angular, pyramidal building is cloaked in a facade made of concrete panels that are covered in lines that evoke the Vs and As of the V&A logo.

As the V&A East Museum was planned as the cultural centrepiece of the wider development, O'Donnell + Tuomey aimed to design a building that had a clear aesthetic and identity.

"It's different from a more everyday building," O'Donnell + Tuomey co-founder John Tuomey told Dezeen. "It has to be a special one – jewel-like, or certainly casket-like as it should look like things are safe in there."

"The museum has a need to have its identity expressed," he continued. "It is not an office block, it's not a school, it has hardly any windows, so what form will you recognise from across the park?"

The museum's multi-faceted facade is described by Tuomey as a "jacket" that protects the museum, but also can be inviting for visitors, with the facades facing the newly created square angled outwards.

"The museum by its nature needs all its contents protected and so the design brief is to create a sheltered space for everything that's in the museum," said Tuomey. "And the second part of the brief is to open the museum out and bring everybody in."

"We wanted to lift the jacket of the building up so that people could be drawn in from the square into the entry space and cafe on the ground floor," he continued.

"So in a way, the way the building stands on the ground on its toes, is very important to this idea."

Tuomey describes the five-storey museum as "a dead simple building" wrapped in the jacket-like facade.

All of the galleries are broadly regular-shaped boxes stacked around its core, with the entrance spaces and staircases placed in the space between the two.

"It's a rationally planned building with this piece of tailored clothing on it and you move in the thickness, and then everything is simple in plan," he explained.

"I got interested in the space in between the jacket and the body – what the Japanese call Ma– that feeling of being inside on the outside," he continued.

"I hope that people feel that when they're here – that they come from the thickness of the being held in the wall [and go] to the adventure of exhibitions, lose yourself in the exhibition and then come back out."

The museum's facade is covered in 479 unique, precast concrete panels that are each around two metres high and stretch to as long as 14 metres.

In keeping with the wider development, the facade is a cast material. However, O'Donnell + Tuomey wanted the building to appear solid, so the studio aimed to make it appear to be stone.

"This is the V&A," said Tuomey. "We want it to be like a solid object. So this is as close to stone sandstone as we could get."

Each of the angled cast-concrete facades was given linear decoration as Tuomey liked the idea of drawing on the exterior of the building.

"It's a design museum – so we thought, why can't we draw the surface?" said Tuomey. "So it started with me just drawing lines. Just sitting down and drawing lines, which was very enjoyable."

According to Tuomey these angular lines were derived from the V&A logo, which he learned was a pretty well-known motif.

"My son is a graphic designer and I rang him and asked if you looked at this V&A logo? – you know, this Pentagram logo?" recalled Tuomey. "And he said, 'Dad, that's like one of the most famous pieces of graphic design."

"So I used all the geometry and tried to transcribe it on the building," he continued.

While many of the facades contain this angled, linear decoration evoking the institution's logo, other facades contain panels where the logo was translated into a relief.

These panels contain a series of V-shaped indents and A-shaped peaks.

Within the museum, the gallery spaces are currently being prepared ahead of the opening later this month with the Why We Make galleries designed by UK studio JA Projects.

The museum is the sister site to the V&A East Storehouse by American studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, which opened last year.

The photography is by Hufton + Crow.

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A thin frame of Douglas fir timber brings a "sense of lightness" to this pavilion-like extension in London, recently completed by local studio Emil Eve Architects.

Named Talbot Road, the project adds a large kitchen and snug at the back of an Edwardian end-of-terrace in the Highgate Conservation Area.

Looking to strengthen the home's connection to its garden, Emil Eve Architects created a lightweight timber structure with a latticed roof that extends outwards to form a deep pergola.

"The owners wanted an inspiring addition to the house's period architecture, so we developed a deliberately contemporary design," Emil Eve Architects director Ross Perkin told Dezeen.

"This was centred on the idea of a pavilion which has real impact while still feeling elegant and light, and creates a sense of connection with the landscape," he added.

Stepping down from the level of the main home, the layout of the extension was led by a desire for it to face the garden in two directions – from the kitchen to the north and from a smaller snug to the south.

Rather than divide the space with walls, the snug area is demarcated by another drop in the floor level, as well as a circular skylight above and a section of low wall extending from a thin column to one side.

The latticed Douglas fir roof structure has been stained white, contrasted below by bespoke oak joinery and storage for the kitchen counters.

"The staggered form of the extension allows it to connect with the garden on two sides – feeling like you are really 'in' it, rather than just looking 'out' over it," Perkin said.

"Although the space is largely open plan, we have used level changes to delineate different areas – for instance the snug."

"The timber roof structure has been left exposed inside too and its pattern also creates a sense of different spaces within the plan, with light being cast through from the different-shaped roof lights," he added.

Outside, the large pergola both helps to prevent the glazed extension from overheating and shades a patio space, wrapped by thin Douglas fir columns atop cast concrete feet.

Ridged ceramic tiles made from 50 per cent recycled waste were used to clad the exterior of the extension, while thin metal frames surround a series of large sliding windows and doors.

"The small details are what make it stand out and for that we are grateful to our excellent contractor," said Perkin.

"Our close working relationship is what made bespoke elements – like the in-situ cast concrete feet which provide both weatherproofing and bring a sense of lightness to the pavilion – work," he added.

Emil Eve Architects was founded in 2009 by Ross and Emma Perkin. Previous projects by the studio include the expansion of a home in east London with terracotta tile-clad rear and loft extensions and its own office in a brutalist building in Hackney.

The photography is by Taran Wilkhu.

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As a landmark exhibition on avant-garde fashion house Schiaparelli opens at London's V&A, curator Sonnet Stanfill walks Dezeen through five highlights and hidden gems you won't want to miss.

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art is the first UK exhibition dedicated to the maison founded by the late Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927, known for interpreting the interwar surrealist movement through cloth.

Among the 400 objects on show are some of the Parisian fashion house's most celebrated yet little-seen pieces, including the only surviving Skeleton dress designed by Schiaparelli and artist Salvador Dalí in 1938.

"I think there could be a misconception that she simply took surrealist motifs and stuck them on her clothes, when in fact, she was an active collaborative partner in the design process," V&A senior curator of fashion Sonnet Stanfill told Dezeen.

"Her clothes were an expression of a surrealist aesthetic that reflected her role as an active protagonist in the surrealist movement. And in fact, people considered her couture salon in Paris as the beating heart of the surrealist movement."

At the V&A, this creative dialogue is visualised through more than 50 pieces of art, including Dalí's famous lobster telephone, placed alongside some 100 Schiaparelli garments.

The exhibition design by London studio Nebbia fosters a sense of surrealism by guiding visitors to double back on themselves several times throughout the show to see the same object from a different perspective and create a feeling of deja vu.

But, Stanfill also wanted to go beyond Schiaparelli's blockbuster collaborations to highlight some lesser charted parts of her work – her unexpected focus on practicality, for example, and her pieces for private clients at the house's historic London branch in Mayfair.

"Her most remembered garments, because they're the most notable and visually shocking in some ways, are her collaborations with Dalí and with Jean Cocteau," the curator explained.

"But I hope that that's not all she'll be remembered for in history books, and that's something that we work really hard to show, is that there's so much else aside from the surrealist collaborations," she continued.

"We are trying to highlight things that perhaps other exhibitions and other publications didn't delve into too deeply."

This also includes her leading work for stage and screen, which speaks to Schiaparelli's ability to capture the attention economy long before such a term even existed.

"If you take, for example, a theatre production on the West End in London in the 1930s, if it was a long run and all the seats were full, that could reach a quarter of a million people," Stanfill explained.

"And if your name as the fashion designer is in the programme as costuming the leading lady – gowns by Schiaparelli, with the address of where you can buy the clothes – that was the equivalent of a kind of Instagram account."

In many ways, Stanfill says, this talent is mirrored in Schiaparelli's current creative director, Daniel Roseberry, who has led the fashion house since 2019.

Through pieces such as his trompe l'oeil and faux taxidermy gowns, the American designer has managed to bring a new generation of famous fans to the label, who epitomise the social media generation, whether Bella Hadid or the Kardashians.

"Daniel Roseberry has captured the imagination of the social media world," Stanfill said.

"Schiaparelli is celebrating its 100th anniversary next year, and across the century, there is this incredible shared skill at communicating the creative process to a wide audience. They may not even be clients or particularly knowledgeable about fashion. But I think one doesn't have to be, to understand it."

Read on for five key pieces to look out for in the exhibition.

Evening suit by Elsa Schiaparelli, Autumn 1937

"This suit was one of several Schiaparelli ensembles from the Autumn 1937 season to feature jackets with intricate embroidery around the collar and down the centre front, a nod to the habit à la française – the most formal and luxurious man's attire of the late eighteenth century.

"Such complex surface decoration epitomises the highly skilled embroidery executed for Schiaparelli in the workshops of the specialist firm Lesage. The suit was worn by Lady Alexandra Haig, who chose to wear it in a portrait published in society magazine The Tatler in January 1938."

Shocking perfume bottle by Lenor Fini, 1937

"Schiaparelli commissioned her friend, artist Leonor Fini, to design the bottle of her most famous perfume, Shocking. Its shape was modelled on the dress form of actress Mae West, then in Schiaparelli's atelier, and featured a measuring tape around the shoulders.

"Fini, whose surrealist artworks often referenced clothing, was disappointed by the addition of small flowers to her design by Schiaparelli's commercial director."

Skeleton dress by Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí, Summer 1938

"This is the first Elsa Schiaparelli dress you will see in the exhibition. It's significant because Schiaparelli collaborated with artist Salvador Dalí to create it. Together, they brought a skeleton to life using the trapunto quilting technique, stitching the outline through two layers of fabric with wadding.

"The sheer material, combined with the padded spine, ribcage, collarbones and hip joints, implies we are seeing the wearer's own flesh and bones. It is the only known original of the Skeleton dress."

Lobster telephone by Salvador Dalí, 1938

"Lobsters were a prevailing motif for Salvador Dalí, who considered them sexually charged. For Schiaparelli beachwear, he drew a lobster among parsley, which was transferred to silk by designer Paul Sache. For Schiaparelli's Summer 1937 collection, he then proposed applying the design to a simple high‑waisted dinner dress, suggestively positioning the creature on the skirt.

"When poet Edward James commissioned Dalí to make the Lobster Telephone, which the artist created in 1938, it reflected the free flow of ideas between artist, designer and writer."

Custom gown for Ariana Grande by Daniel Roseberry, 2025

"Nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her role in the musical Wicked, Ariana Grande took centre stage in this glittering gown at the 2025 Oscars.

"The heel at the back pays homage to Dorothy's ruby slippers from the original 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. It also alludes to Elsa Schiaparelli's Shoe hat, created in collaboration with Salvador Dalí."

Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art takes place from 28 March to 1 November 2026 at the V&A. For more up-to-date events in architecture and design around the world, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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Design studios Yes Make, Resolve Collective and Material Cultures have overhauled a warehouse in London to create Tipping Point East, the UK's first dedicated circular construction hub.

Yes Make, Resolve Collective and Material Cultures worked with Newham Council and the Greater London Authority to open Tipping Point East, which will organise construction waste materials to be reused for other buildings.

Yes Make led the transformation of the warehouse in Newham's Royal Docks, which had been left derelict for nine years.

"By harnessing our skill set and our access to materials, we were able to deliver a remedial plan, electrical fit out and full factory control process to ensure it remains a great building for years to come – one that can serve the material revolution that we are driving at Tipping Point East," Yes Make founder Joel De Mowbray told Dezeen.

Tipping Point East is divided into zones that help facilitate the material sorting process.

For waste materials coming into the hub, there are initial loading zones, a quarantine area for pre-inspection, and an area for inspection, inventory and material passporting.

After the materials are inspected, they are then brought into the building and placed in storage areas, ensuring contaminants do not enter the hub.

The second half of the warehouse is used for processing materials according to client specifications, including cleaning, respraying and cutting, and preparing them to be distributed for reuse.

Elsewhere in the hub is a community workshop, events and training spaces, an electrical testing facility, a collective office space, a materials store run by Resolve Collective, and an assembly space for large-scale group builds.

According to De Mowbray, London produces 10 million tons of construction waste a year, and construction and demolition make up 62 per cent of the UK's waste.

He believes that preventing this waste from going into landfill will reduce the construction sector's carbon impact and make the cost of building materials more stable.

"The scale of available materials can and will have a significant impact on domesticating the means of production," he said. "In short, we have all the materials we need; we just need to stop smashing them into bins and skips."

"At a national scale, this can have a stabilising influence on the price volatility in material markets that has arisen from global political instability," he continued.

Following the launch of Tipping Point East, De Mowbray hopes to see more circular construction hubs established across the UK.

"Physical space, the risk appetite to take on this immense challenge, and the practical mindset to overcome barriers, are fundamental to successfully establishing reuse hubs," he said. "The problem is national, so the solution must be, too."

"Five years ago, Yes Make was a small box of tools and a travelcard," De Mowbray continued. "In five years, we will absolutely be leading the charge nationally to scale out this infrastructure and normalise reuse, much in the same way that recycling has been normalised."

Tipping Point East forms part of the first phase of a Circular Economy Village in the Silvertown district, and aims to support the London mayor's goal for the capital to be a zero-carbon city by 2030.

Recently on Dezeen, architect and writer Smith Mordak criticised circular economy strategies for being too vague.

Other warehouse transformations that have featured on Dezeen include a youth centre located in a group of disused Victorian warehouses in Grimsby, and a London warehouse complex that was expanded to form a creative hub.

The photography is by Henry Woide.

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Tate Modern has launched a landmark exhibition of British artist Tracey Emin's work, shown in this one-minute video produced by Dezeen.

In partnership with fashion house Gucci, Tate Modern presented the largest ever survey exhibition of Emin's work to date.

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Tracey Emin's exhibition at the Tate Modern is open to the public now

Titled Tracey Emin: A Second Life, the exhibition spans 40 years of Emin's practice, comprising over 100 works across the mediums of painting, video, installation, textiles and sculpture.

The show traces Emin's early works from her first solo exhibition at the White Cube, and through the height of the Young British Artists (YBA) era in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Included in the exhibition are some of Emin's most notable works from this period such as My Bed, a 1998 artwork which recreates Emin's bedroom during a depressive episode, with objects like underwear, condoms and medicine scattered around the bed.

Emin worked often in textiles, with several quilt and calico pieces on display within the exhibition.

A 2002 textile work "The Last of the Gold", embroidered with advice for women undergoing abortions will be shown publicly for the first time.

The exhibition continues through Emin's career, up to her contemporary work in sculpture, photography and painting.

Exhibited recent works address Emin's experiences of disability and cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 2020.

A bronze sculpture titled Ascension explores Emin's relationship with her own body after undergoing major surgery, and in the Tate Modern courtyard an imposing bronze sculpture of a folded female body can be found.

Previously Tate Modern has hosted exhibitions on notable figures in art and design such as performance artist and designer Leigh Bowery and architecturally-informed artist Do Ho Suh. 

The photography is by Jai Monaghan, Sonal Bakrania and Yili Liu, courtsey of Tate. The top image is courtesy of Tracey Emin. 

Tracey Emin: A Second Life is on at Tate Modern until 31 August 2026. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Gucci as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen's partnership content here.

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London studio Office S&M has used cork as cladding, insulation and flooring in this mansard extension to a house in Walthamstow, which is enlivened by bright yellow details.

Aptly named Cork Loft, the extension has created space for an additional bedroom and bathroom, marking the first phase of a wider renovation of the Victorian terraced home.

The homeowners tasked Office S&M with prioritising sustainability in its material choices, which led the studio to "exploring how far cork could go" and using it to replace traditional building materials wherever possible.

"Through detailed research, we explored how cork could replace conventional materials," founders Catrina Stewart and Hugh McEwen told Dezeen.

"[Cork] is harvested without felling trees, supports biodiversity and sequesters carbon. It is biodegradable, recyclable and formed without synthetic glues. It also provides strong thermal and acoustic insulation, resists moisture and mould, and requires minimal maintenance," they continued.

"The intention was to prove that low carbon construction can be expressive, colourful and full of character."

The exterior of Cork Loft is clad in a striped pattern of light and dark shades, created by prototyping several different cork treatments with consultants Materials Assemble to understand how they would age differently over time.

This is also reflected in the interior, where the bedroom floor has been finished in a diagonal pattern of alternating dark and light cork stripes.

Rough plasterwork on the walls echoes the rough finish of these cork surfaces, contrasted by a datum of pale blue paint that runs throughout the interior, expanding to cover entire walls of the bathroom, accompanied by mosaic tiling.

A large window in Cork Loft's bedroom frames the tree canopies outside, while the bathroom features a porthole-style window and a rooflight above the shower for an "open sky bathing experience".

These openings have been finished with bold yellow frames, matched externally by the extension's guttering and internally by a bright yellow staircase connecting it to the main home.

"A large rectangular window acts like a cinema screen overlooking the garden, while a circular bathroom window introduces a playful moment," said Stewart and McEwen.

"Yellow detailing draws light and movement upwards through the house, creating a strong vertical link between old and new," they added.

Elsewhere in London, ROAR Architects previously upgraded the thermal performance of a 1970s home in Tottenham by completely wrapping its exterior in mottled panels of expanded cork.

Other architecture projects that make use of cork include House in Valongo, which Atelier Local designed to "feel larger than it actually is", and the Casa Pádel apartment block by Núñez Ribot.

The photography is by French + Tye.

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Local studio Proctor & Shaw looked to Mallorcan villas to create a feeling of calmness at Stone Brick House, a London home extended with walls of pale limestone brick.

The terraced house was updated for a young family in Clapham and expanded with a new kitchen and dining space overlooking the garden.

According to Proctor & Shaw founder John Proctor, "airy Mallorcan villas" were a key influence on the design, informing its pale, natural material palette, which revolves around the use of low-carbon limestone bricks.

"The Can Lis house in Mallorca by Danish architect Jørn Utzon became a key precedent, and we sought to achieve a similar purity with material restraint and craft using muted natural clay plaster tones, oak and limestone brick," he told Dezeen.

"The stone brick was pivotal. It honestly expresses the construction, gifts a light reflective tone to the space and importantly provides high levels of thermal mass that assist the environmental temperance," he added.

"But perhaps most importantly, it is an ultra-low carbon construction product using about 93 per cent less embodied carbon than fired clay bricks."

Sinking the floor level of Stone Brick House's extension enabled a generous 2.9-metre ceiling height, which creates a feeling of spaciousness in tandem with a full-height sliding door into the garden and a large skylight above the dining table framed by thin oak beams.

The steps down into the extension are framed by bespoke oak storage containing a pantry. This wraps around the corner to become a backdrop to the kitchen, a long counter and a wooden island.

Opposite, a custom dining table sits alongside a built-in bench against a brick wall. The bench extends to become a window seat overlooking a planted bed in the garden.

Complementing the expanses of limestone brick are walls of natural plaster and a terracotta tiled floor underfoot, which extends out to become the garden patio.

"Providing space for entertaining was a key brief requirement, so the dining table, associated seating, kitchen counter and kitchen island are all generous," Proctor said.

"All the elements come together here; volumetric generosity, high levels of natural light, and serene material authenticity create a powerfully tranquil space," he added.

"Of particular note is the custom kitchen island with expressed simple timber frame construction and open shelves and drawers creating an airy, joyful central piece of furniture."

In the existing home, the front room and hallway have been opened up through the introduction of sliding wooden doors, allowing light and views along the entire depth of its plan.

Other London extensions completed by Proctor & Shaw include one in Peckham, which is topped by a tiered allotment, and another in north London designed as a timber-framed "sanctuary for wellbeing".

The photography is by Ståle Eriksen.

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Local practice Architecture for London and interiors studio Hamish Vincent Design have revamped a neo-Georgian house in London, organising its interior around a triple-height stairwell.

Located in the Canonbury Conservation Area, Islington House has been updated with a skylit rear extension containing a kitchen and dining room and an additional ensuite bedroom on the second floor.

The home sits within a Georgian-style terrace built to replace bomb-damaged historic structures, meaning it was not heritage-listed like many of its neighbours. This gave Architecture for London and Hamish Vincent Design creative freedom to establish an open-plan layout that the homeowners desired.

However, throughout, elements have been designed to honour the original building's neo-Georgian style, including the cantilevered staircase at the home's entrance and a large brick archway that opens the rear extension onto the garden.

"The terraces on St Paul's Road are unique as modern replacements for bomb-damaged historic terraces, although they were built with Georgian-inspired design details," said Architecture for London founder Ben Ridley.

"Our refurbishment and extension develop this theme further, incorporating contemporary detailing that might make a Georgian craftsperson proud: structural arches, a cantilevered staircase, natural stone, and high-quality joinery," he added.

Entry to Islington House is via the new triple-height stairwell, which was introduced to pull more light into the formerly dark front of the home. The staircase itself has been finished with Douglas fir treads with stone details.

On the ground floor, a set of sliding double doors leads from the stairwell into the living area, which subsequently steps down into the rear extension.

Here, two exposed-brick walls frame the dining and kitchen space, where a solid wooden table with bench seating sits beneath a glass ceiling framed by timber beams.

Doors set within the large arched opening connect the dining area to a paved patio in the garden, which is flanked by grey-brick walls to match the extension.

Inside Islington House, the areas of exposed brickwork are contrasted with full-height timber storage areas and clay-plaster walls in the kitchen spaces, as well as stone-topped counters and an island.

"As a studio, we are always exploring materials, their texture, and how they are not just pleasing to look at, but also purposeful," Hamish Vincent Design's creative director Daniel Jones told Dezeen.

"The clay plaster used in the kitchen and entrance hallway void is a perfect example of this. It almost acts as a living wall, with colour and texture shifting throughout the day, while functioning as a diffuser that disperses sunlight," he added.

On the first floor, the main bedroom and bathroom sit alongside a guest room at the front of the home, while a study and bathroom space above was tucked beneath the home's roof by adjusting its floor levels.

Elsewhere in London, James Alder Architects recently revamped a terraced home with an extension for bicycle maintenance and gardening, while DGN Studio used sandstone bricks to add textural walls to a family home.

The photography is by Leighton James.

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London studio Archmongers has injected new materials, colours and details in the renovations of three homes from the 1950s and 60s, all located on the Dulwich Estate in southeast London.

The three projects follow on Little Brownings, another refurbishment on this renowned mid-century estate, which won Archmongers the top prize at the Don't Move, Improve awards in 2022.

Each project has unique details and quirks, relating to both the varying characteristics of the properties and the tastes and requirements of the owners.

But in all three, Archmongers founders Margaret Bursa and Johan Hybschmann aimed to improve the sense of space and flow. This meant reconfiguring layouts, opening up ceilings, or adding internal windows or voids between floors.

"Houses often require a complete retrofit, which can be a significant financial commitment," Bursa told Dezeen.

"However, an extension is not always necessary; simply rethinking the layout of the existing space can be effective."

The architects introduced hard-wearing materials, particularly in areas that experience the most wear, and used splashes of colour to create visual connections between different elements.

"It's important to respect the original feel of these well-considered houses as much as you would in significant period properties, but it can be achieved while still thoroughly updating every aspect of the house," said Bursa.

"We've studied the heavy-weight examples of this era of houses for years, including those built by Arne Jacobsen, Alvar Aalto and Friis & Moltke," she continued.

"By learning from some of these past projects and mixing our own design agenda, we've injected a detail level and quality that these houses simply couldn't afford when originally built."

The Dulwich Estate includes over 5,000 houses, many of which were designed by architects Austin Vernon & Partners and mass-built by construction company Wates between the 1950s and 1970s.

The first of Archmongers' new trio, Little Brownings II, follows a similar format to its award-winning neighbour.

The scheme centred around the replacement of the front extension, which facilitated the relocation of the kitchen. This opened up the ground floor of the three-storey 1960s townhouse, creating an enlarged living room that is newly separated from the entrance hall.

Terracotta tiles clad the exterior of the extension, which also boasts windows on two sides, exposed timber ceiling joists and a circular skylight.

The interior palette includes square terracotta tiles, Douglas fir, linoleum-clad kitchen cabinets, and splashes of blue, matching the colour of the front door.

The second project, Oakfield Terrace, focused on simplifying the layout of a two-storey 1950s row house and better connecting it with its garden.

An old rear extension was removed, allowing the ground floor to frame a new patio. Aluminium-framed glass doors lead out from the living room, matching a box window that projects outwards to create a seating area.

At the front of the house, a subtle extension created room for a contemporary kitchen. This space features exposed glulam timber joists and steel columns, plus a generous skylight and terracotta floor tiles.

A wide concrete step opens up the base of the staircase, leading up to first-floor bedrooms that have been opened up to the rafters.

The third and most recent renovation is Tylney Avenue, a refurbishment of a three-storey 1960s townhouse that involved converting a ground-floor garage into a kitchen and extending the loft to add an extra bedroom.

The building's thermal performance was improved with extra insulation in the walls, floors and roofs, and new triple-glazed windows, and the interior was given more texture by exposing brick walls and timber joists.

A new opening was created between the ground-floor kitchen and the first-floor living room, while a poured and polished concrete floor connects the ground floor with the terrace.

Cabinets were built into the balustrades, combining different timbers with marble and glass, and a new loft bedroom features a dormer window neatly wrapped in lead.

The projects follow numerous other mid-century renovations in Archmongers' portfolio, reinforcing the studio's expertise in sensitively modernising properties from this era.

"It's nice to see that more people are now sharing our love of mid-century architecture and choosing to invest in sensitively updating and transforming the UK housing stock," added Bursa.

The photos of Oakfield are by Jim Stephenson, the photos of Little Brownings II are by Megan Taylor, and the photos of Tylney Avenue are by both.

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Full-height windows framed by sculptural panels of glass-reinforced concrete overlook two stacked courtyards at Mozart House, a London home extended by local practice Studio Dera.

Located in the Belgravia Conservation Area, the Georgian terraced home is famous for being both the site where Mozart composed his first symphony at eight years old and later as the home of author Vita Sackville-West and politician Harold Nicolson.

Studio Dera was asked to create additional living space for the client, expanding an existing one-bedroom extension at the end of the home's garden.

This included transforming the volume of a former basement pool into an additional bedroom, excavating further to create a small lounge overlooking a sunken courtyard.

"The deep rear garden gave us the opportunity to think of the project as part of the landscape, rather than as a conventional extension," Studio Dera co-founder Marcel Rahm told Dezeen.

"Matching the volume of the former pool for the extension allowed us to get bold and creative with the extension while still allowing the Georgian house to retain its presence," he added.

Studio Dera described the layout of the home, moving from the living area of the main home into a glazed link corridor that runs along the edge of the garden, as an "episodic journey".

Full-height sliding doors open onto an upper courtyard, with a staircase leading down into the lower courtyard. This sunken space sits adjacent to the ne lounge space and the dining room within the original home opposite.

Above the excavated area, the ground-floor bedroom volume was designed to feel like a garden pavilion, with a narrow, deep-set frame surrounding a large set of sliding glass doors that link it directly to the courtyard.

"We were interested in the new work feeling like an extension of the domestic garden landscape, at moments almost becoming a landscape itself," said Rahm.

"The excavation grounds the project in the site, and the lighter pavilion elements bring openness and repose," Rahm added.

"The sculptural glass-reinforced concrete (GRC) intervention – particularly the light pavilion of the new bedroom at the rear – helps balance the weight of excavation with a more delicate architectural presence."

Both courtyards are paved, with large round planters potted with trees and shrubs. In the upper courtyard, areas of translucent walk-on glass provide natural light for the lounge and bedroom below.

Inside, finishes have been chosen to feel "timeless, tactile and robust", with travertine, timber and textured lime plaster echoing the sculptural GRC elements of the exterior.

Elsewhere in London, architecture studio Pinzauer recently extended the former home of Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, adding similarly pavilion-like, concrete-framed spaces overlooking its rear garden.

Other London house extensions recently featured on Dezeen include Komorebi by ConForm, which uses perforated floors to filter light, and Druid Grove by CAN, which features cave-like openings and green timber tendrils.

The photography is by Lorenzo Zandri.

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Local architect Pablo Sanchez Lopez focused on the idea of thresholds for this London house extension, creating a timber-framed porch at the entrance and a large pivot door leading to the garden.

Named House in Walthamstow, the Victorian terraced home had been subject to what Pablo Sanchez Lopez described as an "insensitive redevelopment" in the 1970s, leading to an awkward layout and incongruous PVC windows.

Aiming to improve the sense of connection between the home, the street and its rear garden, Lopez created a single, uninterrupted route through its ground floor, beginning with a timber-framed porch and ending in a large pivot door that opens onto a patio.

"Rather than reconstructing lost Victorian details, the project focuses on the idea of the threshold," Lopez told Dezeen.

"It rethinks the house's relationship with both the street and the garden, and how one moves from outside to inside," he added.

"Through contemporary design, the project explores physical and atmospheric transitions, interpreting the threshold as a spatial and experiential device."

House in Walthamstow's staircase, which had previously bisected the dining and living areas and blocked the axis to the garden, has been repositioned to the eastern edge of the plan, where it now faces the entrance.

This gave rise to a singular, large ground-floor space, beginning with a dining area overlooking the front yard through the new porch windows. This leads through a green-toned central kitchen into a skylit lounge created by expanding the rear of the home to the side.

On the first floor, the relocation of the staircase also allowed for a reconfigured two-bedroom layout, alongside a larger bathroom and a home office.

A full-height red curtain allows the dining room to be closed off from the entrance area and porch windows, while at the back of the home, the pivot door opens out onto a concrete-paved garden patio.

"This curtain acts as a 'soft hallway' between the entrance and living space," explained Lopez.

"Instead of building rigid partitions, the curtain's ephemeral nature allows merging or dividing the space, creating openness or intimacy, introducing light and views, or providing shading and privacy," he added.

The porch, staircase, window frames and exposed ceiling rafters were all made using the same red grandis timber used to clad the entrance porch, complemented on the ground floor by terrazzo flooring.

This is contrasted with additional green details that pick up on the tone of the kitchen, including a painted steel I-beam above the lounge and a datum of green tiles in the first-floor bathroom.

Other London extensions recently featured on Dezeen include the renovation of a home in Dulwich by ConForm Architects, which features a central, skylit void, and Nimtim Architects' playful transformation of a Victorian terrace house for Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft.

The photography is by Lorenzo Zandri.

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Photographer Robbie Lawrence has designed a news kiosk with Sean Thomson, which was installed at London's ICA art centre to showcase a zine made with fashion designer Thom Browne.

Created for the Thom Browne x Asics collaboration, The Working Hour zine features Lawrence's photography of models dressed in Thom Browne clothing.

Ranging from young to old, all were shot on Tokyo's busy streets in Thom Browne's suits and in situations commonly associated with Japanese businessmen – running to catch a train or disappearing in a throng of similarly suited office workers.

"With this project, I was particularly interested in creating something holistic – a body of work that began with the initial design idea and extended through to its execution and physical presentation," Lawrence told Dezeen.

"From the outset, I imagined that the work would ultimately be exhibited," he continued.

"As the project developed, I began thinking about places where the suit still functions as an everyday uniform, and Tokyo immediately came to mind."

The Working Hour was designed to resemble classic brand magazines from the 1980s and also references Japanese historical photography.

For its unveiling, Lawrence worked with set designer Thomson to create a fitting display for the zine at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA).

"Together we constructed a newsstand inspired by those commonly found in Japan," Lawrence explained.

"Installing it within the ICA – a very classical building – created a compelling juxtaposition between the architectural setting and the project’s visual language."

The rectangular metal building was decorated with the Thom Browne tricolore at its top and given added Tokyo streetscape details, such as vents and a satellite dish antenna, on its roof.

Lawrence wanted to push the level of detail as far as it could go, also adding a phone booth and a lamppost to the space to complete the feel of being in a city.

"We printed elements of the work and pasted them onto the sides of a phone booth attached to the newsstand, deliberately weathering and roughing them up so they felt lived-in," Lawrence explained.

"We also installed a lamppost and other small details that echoed the visual language of the photographs. In a way, I wanted to transport a fragment of the world I had created photographically into the exhibition space itself."

The Working Hour newsstand marks Lawrence's first physical installation, but he says his work has been focusing on creating more physical media for a while.

"Although this is the first time I’ve really considered installation as part of my practice, it doesn’t feel entirely separate from the rest of the work," he said.

"Everything I’m making at the moment seems to be moving in the direction of emphasising the physical nature of the work as much as possible."

To the photographer, it's a way of reminding people of the tangible aspects of his work.

"At a time when so much imagery is experienced digitally, it feels essential to remind people that the work exists materially – and to present it physically in the strongest and most considered way possible," Lawrence concluded.

After being unveiled in London at an event this weekend, the installation will now be moved to be shown in New York later this month.

The photography is by Jonathan Daniel Pryce.

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Architecture office Nikjoo and interior design studio Fare Inc have transformed a former department store in south London into a cocktail bar and events space featuring nods to the venue's heyday.

Located within a heritage-listed building that was constructed in 1897 as the Jones and Higgins department store, the Peckham Palais nightclub was revamped after being vacant for nearly 15 years.

Working for Nightlife specialist Night Group, architecture studio Nikjoo was responsible for adapting the derelict building into a multi-room cultural destination that reached modern acoustic and fire safety requirements.

Fare Inc oversaw the interior design, layouts, finishes and furnishings, which aim to retain a sense of the building's evolution while evoking the period when the original Palais nightclub was established in 1980.

"Our approach was not to erase what had come before, but to work with it, to preserve the details people feel connected to and allow the building's history to remain visible," said Fare Inc founder Annie Harrison.

"We wanted Palais to feel like it had always been here; layered, atmospheric and alive again."

Customers enter the building through a lobby and box office on the ground floor, where peeling plaster and chipped paint enhance the sense of faded glamour. The main venue is in the basement.

In contrast to the lobby's rough-and-ready aesthetic, the first-floor Ballroom bar displays a more refined sense of style informed by 1980s interiors.

"We explored a tonal yet layered design to ensure there was a polished look to the rooms," Harrison told Dezeen. "[The materials] "seem to have always been there, which makes them feel discovered rather than added."

The 270-capacity cocktail bar features deep-raspberry coloured walls, along with banquettes upholstered in leather and PVC that contribute to the warm and playful atmosphere.

Harrison introduced a statement bar with a backlit linen gantry and a stepped timber element at the top that recalls the original coving.

Integrated lighting softens the overall look and introduces an unexpected texture to the bar.

In order to maintain a connection with the past, the designers preserved the original windows, with their graffiti still intact, and maintained the original diagonal pattern of the flooring, adding slate tiles between some of the planks to create a patched-up feel.

The room's red hue changes as natural light entering through dual-aspect windows shifts during the day.

Different tones used for the walls, upholstery and tiled surfaces accentuate this dynamic effect.

"The tiles reflect the red brand signage, LEDs and natural light from the large windows," said Harrison, "ensuring surfaces reflect the low, soft lighting throughout the room and instil that after-hours, nightclub feel to the room."

The bar's counter and kick plates are made from aged zinc that will patina quickly and enhance the space's authentic, timeless feel.

The venue also features a 470-capacity nightclub located in the basement, where a bespoke five-way Funktion-One sound system will be utilised by local and international DJs.

Fare Inc was founded by Harrison in 2019 and works on projects in the hospitality and residential design sectors. The studio collaborates with specialist craftspeople to create elegant and tactile interiors with a unique sense of style.

London-based practice Nikjoo is led by Alex Nikjoo. The studio regularly works with old buildings, including its renovation of a derelict post-war home with added rear and attic extensions, and the transformation of a former chapel into an artists house and studio.

The photography is by Milo Hutchings.

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Perforated metal floorplates allow sunlight to filter deep into the interiors of Komorebi, a terraced home in London renovated by local architecture studio ConForm Architects.

Named after the Japanese concept of Komorebi – the uplifting feeling of dappled sunlight filtering through leaves – the dwelling in Dulwich was updated to create a more interconnected layout for a father and his two sons.

ConForm Architects introduced new living spaces at the rear of the home, while creating a large void crossed by areas of perforated floor to help "amplify" an existing skylight at its centre.

"For us, this project was about moving away from static rooms to create a better-connected home," the studio told Dezeen.

"The real opportunity lay with an existing, unusual central rooflight. Instead of erasing it to gain floor space, we leaned into it, extending the void upwards to create a mechanism that draws daylight deep into the plan," it added.

"By using perforated steel floorplates and open voids, we allowed light to become both structure and atmosphere, filtering it through the home so the spaces feel alive and intrinsically connected rather than separated."

The central daylit void of Komorebi separates the largely unchanged front of the home from a series of entirely new concrete-framed spaces at the rear, which the studio says "unfold in unexpected vertical and horizontal layers".

Alongside the exposed concrete frame, the brickwork that lines this daylit void was given a finish of slurried, whitewashed mortar to enhance the feeling of light and space.

On the ground floor, a newly opened-up axis passes through the central void to unite the dining, kitchen and living areas, with a lounge at the rear opening onto the garden through a large glass pivot door.

Above, a first-floor bathroom and a study sit behind the home's bedrooms, topped by an inverted-pitch roof and finished inside and out in pale brickwork.

An additional "pod room" next to the central rooflight on the second floor offers additional living space for the client's teenage boys, ending in a large timber-framed window overlooking the garden and surroundings.

A timber staircase with open treads alongside the home's central void connects each level, with its landings also given perforated metal floors.

"We utilised the existing split-levels to our advantage, knitting these zones together vertically with open stair treads and voids," said the studio.

"It means that even when doing different things on different floors, the family remains visually and audibly connected," it added.

ConForm Architects was founded in 2017 by Ben Edgley and Eoin O'Leary.

Previous projects by the studio include another extension in London that opens a flat up to its garden and a "homely" office in the brutalist Smithson Tower.

The photography is by James Retief.

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Koko designer Archer Humphryes Architects has renovated the upstairs bar at London's iconic Ronnie Scott's jazz club to balance old-school glamour with the space's contemporary musical offering.

Upstairs at Ronnie's is an eclectic music venue at Ronnie Scott's, the famous jazz club on Soho's Frith Street, which was founded by saxophonists Ronnie Scott and Pete King in 1959.

Local studio Archer Humphryes Architects renovated the 140-seater bar to be a fully immersive setting for its two regular shows a night, as well as extra late shows hosted four nights a week.

"Our ambition is that the space acts as a kind of time machine, so that guests enjoying the early show lose their sense of time and orientation once lost in the music," said studio founders David Archer and Julie Humphryes, who previously led the renovation of music venue Koko in Camden.

This intimacy was achieved through a reworked floor plan. Subtly tiered cabaret seating was arranged around the central stage, which is framed by plush red velvet curtains and hosts a striking grand piano.

"In Upstairs, the relationship between the stage and the dance floor/circle is immediate," the duo told Dezeen. "So guests are within touching distance of the singer and performers, and the relationship of on stage and off stage is virtually dissolved."

Among the features designed to maximise the venue's acoustics is a large domed ceiling clad in richly patterned Zimbabwean textiles finished in red and orange hues.

Overhead tilted panels, also covered in textiles, allow natural light to filter in during the day and can be sealed to provide a more cocooned atmosphere in the evening.

Each of the venue's gleaming circular tables is topped with a traditional, jazz club-style lamp as a subtle reminder of the main auditorium downstairs.

"It is important to remember that Upstairs at Ronnie's has its own specific identity," Archer and Humphryes said, noting the venue's diverse musical billing that has ranged from gospel to Cuban salsa.

"The management team has launched the venue with a combination of R&B, jazz and classical music, giving depth, breadth and variety to the overall venue without in any way cannibalising the 'jazz Mecca' that is downstairs."

Smooth marble was selected for the drinks bar, positioned in front of dark timber cabinetry and lined with wooden slats.

Vibrant floral carpets and bar stools add to the liveliness of the space, while tasselled pendant lamps bring gentle illumination to the low-lit venue.

"What is important is that within the whole, each part sits within a hierarchy that informs an overall guest experience of anticipation, excitement and seduction, creating a memorable night out," Archer and Humphreyes said.

Upstairs at Ronnie's reopened last month following a year-long closure for the renovation.

Over in east London, designer Nicola Weetch recently expanded the Hackney listening bar Bambi with an updated interior and a bespoke stainless-steel-and-wood wall cabinet for vinyl records.

The photography is by Taran Wilkhu.

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British architecture studios Allies and Morrison and Asif Khan Studio's plan to renew the Barbican Centre have received planning approval from the City of London Corporation.

The £231 million upgrade will involve restoring and improving accessibility in the brutalist landmark, including in its foyers, lakeside terrace and conservatory.

Named the Barbican Renewal Programme, Allies and Morrison and Asif Khan Studio designed the intervention to be focused on conservation while also introducing alterations that would ensure the Grade-II listed building's long-lasting future.

Working with engineering studio Buro Happold, the revamp is expected to commence in 2027 in preparation for the Barbican's 50th anniversary in 2032.

The Barbican Centre is set to close most of its activities between 2028 and 2029 to allow for building works.

It is hoped that the retrofit will attract a greater audience and help facilitate the performing arts centre in hosting a wider range of events.

"The Barbican is special," Allies and Morrison partner Daniel Elsea told Dezeen. "It's many different kinds of art, it's public, it's landscape, outdoors and indoors – it's a beauty."

"Since winning the competition in 2023, with every milestone, we only feel even more lucky as we deepen our engagement with the rehabilitation of modernist architecture for a new age and new audiences."

The Barbican Renewal Programme will involve improvements to maintenance and accessibility in the Barbican Conservatory, allowing it to open to the public full-time.

A new stair and lift will be added to give access to the conservatory's raised balconies, and a climate-controlled plant habitat will be installed.

A lift will also be added to the Barbican Centre's main foyer, providing step-free access to the concert hall, theatre and surrounding areas.

Restoration works will be carried out on the building's foyers and lakeside terrace.

The Barbican Centre, which originally opened in 1984, was designed by UK architecture studio Chamberlin, Powell and Bon. It gained Grade II-listed status in 2001 along with the wider Barbican housing estate.

Conservation group Twentieth Century Society was consulted when developing plans for the brutalist building's renewal.

"The Barbican Centre is an incredibly important part of this listed, post-war mega-structure and we're delighted it is receiving significant investment ahead of its 50th birthday," said Twentieth Century Society director Catherine Croft.

"Twentieth Century Society has been closely involved in the development of the renewal scheme and welcomes the sensitive, heritage-led approach," she continued. "It balances the need to widen access to the arts centre with carefully reinstating and replicating original design features from 1982."

In 2021, plans for a concert hall designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, set to be built near the Barbican estate, were scrapped in favour of revamping the brutalist landmark.

The London Wall West office development, designed by Diller Scofidio & Renfro, is planned to be built at the edge of the estate, which would involve razing the 1970s Museum of London and Bastion House. However, the demolition plans are to be challenged at the High Court following environmental concerns raised by the Barbican Quarter Organisation.

The images are by Kin Creatives.

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Collectible design gallery Spazio Leone has opened a larger showroom in east London, with a neutral interior that "allows the works to breathe".

Spazio Leone founder Gennaro Leone wanted to keep the existing industrial feel of its Dalston showroom, which features structural pillars and polished-wood floorboards.

"The space was previously a Victorian textile factory, a working building with a raw, industrial character, an amazing wooden floor and a special energy," Leone told Dezeen.

"We didn't want to over-design it; the idea was to preserve its atmosphere and work with what was already there. Our interventions were minimal: we updated the lighting and electrics, painted the walls and redid the kitchen."

The gallery will be open by appointment during the week and to the public on Saturdays, and shows a small part of Spazio Leone's collection, which is available for sale and private hire.

Among the pieces on show are historic designs by architects Carlo Scarpa and Alvar Aalto, as well as contemporary works by designers including Grace Atkinson.

"The selection happened quite intuitively," Leone said. "We didn't approach it with a fixed checklist."

"Some pieces had been with us for a long time, others felt right for this particular space," he continued. "Once everything was physically inside, we moved things around until the relationships felt natural."

The gallery space was kept deliberately clean and pared back to function as a background for the design pieces.

"The neutrality allows the works to breathe," Leone said. "We didn't want the space to dictate too much."

Spazio Leone Gallery was previously housed in a smaller space in the nearby Hackney Downs area.

But while the interest in collectible design has rapidly increased in recent years, this wasn't what drove the move.

"The larger space wasn't a direct response to the market," Leone said. "It was more about finding a place that truly reflected how we want to work and what spaces mean to us."

"Of course, the growing interest in collectible design creates energy and opportunity, but for us the move was more personal than strategic," he concluded.

Gennaro Leone was among the designers that Dezeen spoke to in an article that looked at the increased interest in collectible design last year.

Recently, fellow London gallery Max Radford Gallery showed emerging designers at Collect, where designer Jihyun Kim was also showing gloopy ceramics.

The photography is by Celia Spenard-Ko.

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Patchwork timber, frosted glass and fine horsehair are among the materials used to create the furniture displayed in the Max Radford Gallery debut exhibition at London's Collect fair.

The presentation is part of Collect, the annual craft and design fair at Somerset House, which opens today.

East London-based Max Radford Gallery brought together eclectic pieces by 11 emerging UK and European designers to highlight the breadth of materials that up-and-coming practitioners are experimenting with.

"For our first display at Collect with its relationship with the Crafts Council, we were very keen to bring a roster of British based designers whose work aligns with craft or has some sort of commentary on it," Radford told Dezeen.

Among the furniture is a chunky dining chair by local designer Lewis Kemmenoe. The timber seating is a melange of walnut, cherry, oak, elm, brown oak and plywood, arranged in a patchwork like a pair of jeans.

Kemmenoe applied the same patchwork technique to a plywood cabinet clad in painted pieces of copper.

British-Brazilian designer Tessa Silva is showing a statement Smock Lounge Chair upholstered with coconut fibres, horsehair, wool, hessian, cotton and calico.

Silva is known for her tactile creations, which are made over hours spent pleating and smocking deadstock textiles. A wool-clad floor lamp and stool, also part of the Smock series, feature in the show.

Self-taught London creative EJR Barnes is another exhibitor who has made a name for himself with his humour-inflected designs.

Barnes is presenting one wooden and one frosted glass table alongside a pearwood armchair, which is supported by playful croissant-shaped feet made from sandcast aluminium.

A striking floor lamp by Austrian designer Flora Lechner is also on display. Lechner used anodised aluminium and stainless steel to create the lighting, which features a shade shaped like a flower despite its harsh materials.

London designer Georgia Merritt is also showing metallic lighting in the form of a sculptural table lamp formed from pieces of stainless steel and nickel.

The lamp is on display alongside Merritt's equally sculptural table, rendered in stainless steel and glazed fibreboard.

Among the smaller-scale pieces is a spindly wall-mounted candelabra by local furniture maker Barnaby Lewis, whose steel creations recently formed the debut rotating gallery show at London's APOC Store.

Called Seven Fingers, the asymmetric candelabra features alongside another gothic-style mirror by Lewis, also formed from steel.

Since Max Radford launched his eponymous collectible design platform in 2021, the gallerist has hosted a series of exhibitions celebrating the work of emerging designers.

For last year's London Design Festival (LDF), Radford collaborated with British furniture maker Ercol to create a show in an old fire station featuring fresh takes on wooden furniture from six designers.

The photography is courtesy of Max Radford Gallery.

Collect 2026 takes place from 26 February to 1 March 2026 at Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA, UK. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

Project credits:

Curator: Max Radford
Participating designers: EJR Barnes, Tom Bull, Samuel Collins, Carsten in der Elst, Lewis Kemmenoe, Flora Lechner, Barnaby Lewis, Georgia Merritt, Eddie Olin, Freddy Tuppen and Tessa Silva

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London studio Cake Architecture aimed to distil the "atmosphere of the Thames and its embankment" inside this coffee shop, which features a carved ceiling void and a monolithic espresso counter.

Located in the Millennium Bridge House, a building on the Thames alongside the Foster + Partners-designed Millennium Bridge, the 190-square-metre WatchHouse cafe was designed to evoke the nearby St Paul's Cathedral and Tate Modern.

"We have tried to distil this atmosphere of the Thames and its embankment," Cake Architecture founding partner Hugh Scott Moncrieff told Dezeen.

"The starting point was the contrast between the monumental London skyline; St Paul's, Tate Modern, Tower Bridge and the fleeting, atmospheric quality of the Thames," he continued. "That tension between permanence and movement, solid form and shifting light, became the core idea of the space."

The surrounding architecture influenced both the scale of the space and specific architectural details in the WatchHouse cafe, which has a dramatic circular ceiling void.

"The carved ceiling void references the geometry and procession of St Paul's dome, while the monolithic espresso counter draws from the industrial language of the Tate Modern and the infrastructural character of the river," Moncrieff said.

"The interior translates these external forms into a more intimate spatial experience."

The wood-clad interior, made from timber and cherry veneer, also features plenty of contrasting stainless-steel details, as well as a concrete floor that Cake Architecture introduced in a nod to the nearby river.

"Timber and introduces warmth and tactility, while the metals provide reflectivity and diffusion of light," Moncrieff explained.

"The concrete floor is reminiscent of the Thames river bed and inspired by the practice of 'mudlarking'. We have tried to create a space that responds dynamically to its context and to the changing light through the day."

Like another recent store for the coffee brand in the City of London, the colour palette has been kept natural and is dominated by the wooden panelling.

"The palette is drawn directly from the immediate context; the tonal shifts of the Thames, the muted stone of the embankment, and the changing sky," Moncrieff said.

"Subtle back-painted finishes introduce soft iridescence, enabling colour to diffuse and evolve as light conditions shift."

The latest WatchHouse store, which has 60 seats, will serve special and rare coffee, as well as breakfast, viennoiserie and bakery options.

Cake Architecture has previously designed a "hedonistic" spa with the UK's largest sauna and a late-night London restaurant informed by Edward Hopper's paintings.

The photography is by Felix Speller.

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A raspberry-red spiral staircase connects communal areas at this office development in London, designed by local studio SODA to reference the art deco style of the building it occupies.

SODA was commissioned by developer Great Portland Estates (GPE) to transform the ground and lower-ground floors of its latest workspace in Fitzrovia, called Nineteen Wells Street.

The workspace is set within a heritage-listed art deco building constructed in 1929 by wallpaper and fabric design company Sanderson to house its design studio, offices and showroom.

The building retained its striking facade but had been completely stripped back internally, so SODA designed a series of spaces that reintroduce references to this art deco heritage.

"Throughout the project, we worked hand-in-hand with GPE to embrace the defining spirit of art deco, which includes strong lines, bold gestures and expressive forms, while ensuring the overall language remains timeless," said SODA lead architect Mel Athanasiou.

The client's brief called for a welcoming, timeless and considered space with unexpected moments, prompting a proposal that blends residential and hospitality influences to create a relaxed atmosphere with the required robustness.

A pared-back palette of warm, neutral materials provides a simple backdrop for more expressive elements featuring saturated colours and sculptural, custom-made details that evoke aspects of art deco.

"Hand-crafted joinery and bespoke detailing root the design firmly in the tradition of London craftsmanship," Athanasiou pointed out.

"The result is a workplace deeply connected to its context: past and present, building and neighbourhood, elegance and ease. A landmark reborn with a contemporary edge, yet unmistakably Fitzrovian."

The building's large, street-facing windows reveal glimpses of a workspace on one side of the ground floor and a shared lounge and reception area on the other, which is enveloped on two sides by a monumental bookcase.

The bookcase extends across both levels, creating a sense of visual cohesion in partnership with the red staircase that spirals down to the lower ground floor.

The staircase's punchy red hue recurs across other metalwork elements and in the kitchen areas, providing a consistent element that ties the scheme together.

The lower ground level has a darker, moodier atmosphere, with a palette centred around a deep green hue that helps to create a more intimate feel in spaces such as a snug intended for focused collaboration.

A large existing column clad with red tiles anchors a bar counter with a large stone worktop. Next to this kitchen space is a shared boardroom that receives natural light from one of several newly introduced light wells.

SODA worked with manufacturer Floor Story to create custom rugs for the boardroom and the ground-floor social space. Their geometric patterns combine art deco forms with nods to the interior scheme's colour palette and other details.

SODA was founded in 2012 by Laura Sanjuan and Russell Potter.

The practice previously converted a 1970s office block into a residential building with co-living style amenities, and used a colour palette informed by spices for the interior of a cafe that specialises in serving chai tea.

The photography is by David Wilman.

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A scalloped facade of white brickwork overlooks a public square at Albion Street, a housing block in east London by local architecture studio Bell Phillips.

Located on the site of the former Albion Street Civic Centre in Rotherhithe, the 3,027-square-metre project provides 26 homes for social rent and shared ownership, alongside retail spaces and a public square.

For the housing block's design, Bell Phillips sought a "common language" between two distinctive Grade-II listed churches that bookend the site – the 1920s St Olav's Norwegian Church and the 1950s Finnish Church in London.

To the northeast, the older church informed a larger, five-storey red-brick block, which sits on a large plinth containing retail spaces to complement the existing shops on the opposite side of the street.

By contrast, the smaller southeastern block nods to the more modernist style of the Finnish Church, finished in white brickwork with a distinctive scalloped facade overlooking the public square.

"The two-storey red brick plinth responds to the horizontal banding of the traditionally-styled Norwegian Church, while white brickwork is used to tie together with the tone of the Finnish Church," explained Bell Phillips co-founder Tim Bell.

"The materials palette suits a building that seeks to achieve a strong civic presence, and enabled the creation of a distinctive scalloped façade that sits comfortably alongside its similarly characterful neighbours," Bell added.

"Both of these architectural elements are new, unexpected, and intriguing, but simultaneously harmonious with the existing architecture."

Albion Street contains a mix of one-, two- and three-bed apartments, with the building's shallow depth meaning that the majority are dual-aspect.

Living spaces have been positioned away from the north of the plan and the busy Rotherhithe Tunnel Approach, instead overlooking the street to the south from white-steel balconies atop the red-brick block's two-storey plinth.

At the southeastern end, balconies are deep-set into the scalloped white-brick facade to provide privacy from the public square below, which was upgraded with the area's popular Scandinavian markets in mind.

Where the block steps back at the fourth floor, a shared roof terrace has been created for residents.

Albion Street marks the first stage of a two-phase project by Bell Phillips for Southwark Council, which will be followed by a second block of 50 homes on the neighbouring Renforth Street.

The studio, founded by Bell alongside Hari Phillips in 2004, recently completed a housing block in Marylebone, which featured a similarly scalloped facade in pale brickwork, and added a series of mirrored pavilions to a science campus in Oxfordshire.

The photography is by Kilian O'Sullivan.

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Architecture is the discipline at the core of creative Simone Brewster's multidisciplinary projects, she tells Dezeen in this interview following the opening of her debut exhibition at London's Design Museum.

North Londoner Brewster has a meandering portfolio that spans architecture, furniture, jewellery, clothing and painting.

A varied selection of these works is currently on show at the Design Museum in a free display. Speaking to Dezeen, Brewster explained that the starting point for almost every project in the collection, from totemic planters to a faux fur jacket, was her architectural training.

Architecture is "the thing that makes you understand"

"Architecture has informed all the ways I approach design," said the creative, who studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture before completing a master's in design products at the Royal College of Art.

"It's the thing that makes you understand how to approach it," she told Dezeen. "It might not even be the thing that defines the outcome."

Brewster said that the architecture discipline established her understanding of scale and proportion, which can be applied to "objects as much as jewellery and designing clothes".

She explained how her broad creative education expanded her horizons and led to her eclectic practice, including a pavilion designed to mimic ancient architecture and wooden combs influenced by the hairstyles of members of different African tribes.

"I ended up going on a very unconventional path because after I did my Part 1 and I worked in architecture for a bit, I did my master's in design products," she said.

"So then I wasn't technically a Part 2, but I had much more knowledge and experience than a Part 1, and then architecture practices didn't know how to deal with that," continued Brewster.

"In the end it meant that I ended up working more with designers, because designers don't get so scared of you having an architectural background and doing design."

Brewster's curiosity for architecture was ignited at an early age. At six years old, she visited her father's family in Trinidad and asked him how the temperature of the house they were staying in was so cool despite the hot weather. Her dad explained that his architect cousin had specifically designed it that way.

"I look back and I feel grateful for the moment when I was first understanding that space could make me and other people feel something," reflected Brewster.

"That design could help people feel comfortable, present, and at ease."

Design is "very grounding"

Brewster's fascination with space has led her to explore the body and deconstruct how it is represented in culture – themes that are integral to her portfolio.

Among her works on display at the Design Museum are three pieces of furniture created to examine historical objectifications of the Black female body, which she named after racist and obsolete stereotypes.

"The Negrita bench is a new piece, which follows on from one of the most important bodies of work that I've created – the Negress Chaise and the Mammy side table," explained Brewster.

Brewster crafted the bench from ebonised repurposed sapele wood. Like the chaise longue and the side table, the furniture is characterised by abstract shapes that represent fragmented body parts, including thighs and a breast with a gilded nipple.

"[The pieces] deal with really difficult subjects," she continued. "And it's very grounding, this idea of filling the void and talking about design and what it can offer, the barriers it can break down and the conversations it can open up."

Elsewhere, a selection of Brewster's "heritage necklaces" is on show. Finished in materials ranging from brass and aluminium to coloured paper and synthetic hair, the designer's jewellery was influenced by breastplates historically worn by warriors across Hawaii and Fiji.

As well as tracing back through time, Brewster remains keenly interested in the state of contemporary design, which she has partly explored through various educator roles.

"When I was teaching, I had a lot of students who weren't from the UK," she reflected.

"I was trying to get them to understand that their perspective on what design could be was valuable. And to enter our education system, they didn't have to lose that part of themselves."

Brewster said that students' preconceptions of what architecture should be often led them to limit their own ideas – something she always invited them to confront and question.

"We'd break it down first with drawings and paintings and collages," she explained of her teaching style.

"The moment the project became creating a space, [their work] became a white cube. That's what architecture is in their brain. It's nothing to do with the colours of their heritage, or the shapes from where they come from."

"It became a serious thing," she continued. "And the amount of conversations I had to have, asking them, why have you done that? Can't you see what you've done here? You've erased yourself."

"There was a lot of that, getting them to bring more of themselves into the spaces and objects that they were creating."

A creative career is "not a straight line"

One of Brewster's aims for her first museum exhibition is to "demystify" what architecture and design are, and vouch for the wide-ranging potential of both disciplines.

"One of the things I try and instil in students and people who want a creative career is that it's not a straight line," she said.

"So many visitors to the Design Museum are young," acknowledged Brewster. "So many teenagers visit who are really thinking about a career in design."

"And often what we see when we look at design is this idea that it's very straightforward, or that someone was always going to be an amazing designer," she continued.

"No, let's be real. It's that we like this thing, and we're going to explore it and see where it takes us."

"If we continue to ask good questions, we might make interesting things and continue to make products, objects and spaces that people engage with and find valuable and can become part of culture and society," she added.

This sentiment is echoed in a quote from the designer placed at the beginning of the show, which reads, "institutions never knew what to do with me... where to put me. I realised I would have to carve my own path to get anywhere".

"For me, I was filling my void, which was looking at the design world and thinking, where am I? I don't see it. I'm going to start making something," reflected Brewster.

"But your void is totally different from mine. So there's space for you and me."

Brewster's show is the second edition of Platform, an annual display series at the Design Museum dedicated to showcasing contemporary creativity. Last year's inaugural edition presented the work of British designer Bethan Laura Wood.

The photography is by Charles Emerson.

Platform: Simone Brewster takes place from 13 February 2026 to 25 January 2027 at the Design Museum, 224-238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG, UK. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world. 

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A built-in "cabinet of curiosities" housing a collection of records, books and artworks forms the spine of this outhouse extension in London by local studio Neiheiser Argyros.

Named Exeter Road Pavilion, the project involved converting the Victorian outbuilding in the garden of a north London residence into an annexe for the client, an art collector and DJ, where they could house their collection and host gatherings.

Neiheiser Argyros said it chose to approach these requirements as "a single architectural problem rather than two separate tasks".

The studio created a 20-metre-long built-in storage unit, described as a "contemporary cabinet of curiosities".

Beginning as wardrobes opposite the sleeping area, this cabinet extends to become the housing for a kitchenette and a storage space for records, artworks and books within the living area.

Once in the adjacent patio, the cabinet houses weights, a ping-pong table and garden games while also acting as a structural element, supporting a steel-framed canopy topped with sheets of corrugated polycarbonate.

"We started the project imagining the design as a kind of cabinet of curiosities, or wunderkammer, where a seemingly random collection of unrelated objects is collected and stored, allowing the visitor to curate their own connections and categories," the studio's co-founder Ryan Neiheiser told Dezeen.

"We wanted the cabinet to be both opaque, to create a quiet and unifying gesture in the space, and transparent – subtly revealing the curious objects contained within."

A long corridor alongside the cabinet connects the interior Exeter Road Pavilion, creating an open connection between the living room, study and sleeping area, which sits next to an enclosed bathroom.

The front of the cabinet has been finished in perforated steel.

This has also been used to create large doors in the garden area and smaller compartments in the living space, alongside a number of wood-lined niches for open storage and display.

For the garden canopy, one of the corner columns was removed and replaced by a block of green marble and tension rods that counterbalance the structure, representing what Neiheiser terms the "codependence" between the project's uses.

"There's a certain elegance and efficiency in the storage directly supporting the canopy, but we also wanted to introduce something a bit unexpected; a productive tension between them, holding them in relation through a sense of precarious balance," Neiheiser said.

"In this, we were inspired by the work of artists Fischli & Weiss, particularly their photographic series depicting carefully poised everyday objects, caught in the fragile instant before collapse."

"There is a provisional codependence between the different elements of the project – existing outbuilding, storage cabinet, canopy, structural column, and plinth," added Neiheiser.

Elsewhere in London, Neiheiser Argyros previously extended a Victorian terrace with a stained timber extension topped by a garden terrace.

The studio also used perforated metal to disguise London Underground vents at the faceted North Greenwich Sculptural Screen.

The photography is by Lorenzo Zandri.

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UK studio ShedKM has completed Zodiac, the transformation of a brutalist office block in Croydon, London, into temporary accommodation for families at risk of homelessness.

Located in Broad Green, the original office, Zodiac House, was built in the 1960s as part of a wider complex including the Zodiac Court tower block, which became a local icon after featuring as the home of Mark and Jez in the UK sitcom Peep Show.

When developer Common Projects acquired the office building in 2020 with a view to helping meet the Borough's need for temporary accommodation, it had stood derelict for over 25 years, but its concrete-framed structure remained intact.

Working with a steering group of locals, ShedKM set about transforming the former offices into a mix of 73 one-, two- and three-bedroom homes, accompanied by a new public green space and community pavilion.

"The building itself was the perfect opportunity for repurposing into housing; it was close to key transport links and amenities, and the building footprint, depth and structural grid lent itself well for conversion," ShedKM architectural lead Ella Flint told Dezeen.

"One of the key challenges we faced was changing the community's perception of the building without undoing or removing too much of the building's architectural and urban character," she added.

Adopting the U-shaped floor plan of the existing building, ShedKM organised the apartments on either side of a central corridor, looking either outwards towards the city or inwards towards a pair of revived courtyards.

The single-storey undercrofts that previously connected these courtyards have been turned into internal spaces, creating room for a communal residents' lounge and level access through to the newly landscaped green space at Zodiac's eastern entrance.

Aiming to retain the building's distinctive brutalist character, ShedKM kept its existing pebbledash spandrel panels and concrete fins, replacing the original single-glazed windows with double glazing and grey metal panels.

On its two entrances, the green tones of the building's distinctive zodiac plaques are referenced by a series of deep green metal panels.

This shade is carried through to the interiors, where blue-green accents have been used for communal areas, wayfinding elements and front doors, leading into the light, white-painted rooms of the apartments themselves.

"ShedKM's approach to retrofit has always been considered design moves that work with an existing building to enhance its original state – never to erode its historic identity," Flint said.

"From early stages, we knew that our approach to the building's facade would be to retain what felt sensible and introduce new materials that would enhance it."

The newly created green space, named Broad Green Common, was designed with landscape architects Planit and replaces a formerly neglected paved parking area.

At the centre of this green is a 70-square-metre community pavilion that is currently home to the Croydon Smile Hub, created by rehoming an existing cross-laminated timber structure that ShedKM originally designed as a sales booth for another of its projects.

"Broad Green long ago lost the Green in which its name is derived, and Zodiac seeks to repair that loss of public space and offer green space back to the community," Flint explained.

ShedKM is an architecture office based in London, Liverpool and Manchester. Previous projects by the studio include a church in Merseyside designed as a "physical and metaphorical beacon" for the local community.

Other recent adaptive reuse projects in the UK include John Puttick Associates' overhaul of listed warehouses in Grimsby to create a youth centre.

The photography is by Agnese Sanvito.

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Ola Jachymiak Studio has unveiled the Nora restaurant in the heart of London's Canary Wharf financial district.

Located within the Allies and Morrison-masterplanned Wood Wharf expansion, Nora was conceived as a counterpoint to the area's typically polished hospitality interiors.

"Rather than producing another chic, polished restaurant typical of the Canary Wharf area, our aim was to craft something more vibrant, characterful and cool," Jachymiak told Dezeen.

"The space is intended to evoke warmth from the moment guests enter. It is as if stepping into someone's generous, slightly theatrical home."

The London-based studio renovated the entire interior from the ground up as three separate units were merged into a single, continuous space.

According to Jachymiak, this proved to be "both uncertain and exciting" as the studio aimed to avoid creating "an expansive and soulless hall".

Instead, the studio created an open, unified environment, avoiding heavy partitions to delineate the space and anchored by essential operational components.

This includes seating for over 100 guests, staff areas, restrooms, open kitchen and bar which serves as the space's main anchor point.

With these key anchors in place, Jachymiak focussed on subtle spatial distinctions to further zone and humanise the three hundred-square-metre interior.

Nora's material and colour palette was built around warmth and softness, driven by what Jachymiak determined would be "a mid-century sensibility" as its core design language.

Tan-coloured zellige tiles cascade down in between the generous floor-to-ceiling windows while the ceiling's earth-toned glossy finish gently reflects light and movement.

"Mid-century vocabulary provides a sense of clarity and calm that we felt was essential in such a large, active restaurant," she explained.

Oak wood was used to create warmth and depth. It was used in the wall panelling, bar elevation, as well as the furniture and joinery – the latter all custom designed by the studio and produced by specialist team And Wood Craft.

Arranged in an intentionally irregular pattern, a series of ceiling spotlights were wrapped in bespoke spotlight tubes, produced in collaboration with Argot Studio, to add a touch of sculptural flair to Nora's ceiling.

With its mid-century vocabulary, Nora's Anatolian influence emerges more subtly in the softer layers of chairs, rugs, and the upholstery details – echoing the sensory richness of Istanbul's markets and domestic interiors.

The combination of mid-century profiles with Anatolian textiles and tactility afforded Jachymiak the ability to subtly imbue Nora with its spirit whilst avoiding "a literal interpretation of Turkish design".

"Textiles are able to carry more expression without tipping the interior into pastiche," she added.

The studio previously completed the orange-hued interior of Beam cafe for the same clients in west London.

While sharing similar design principles – namely the primacy of comfort and hospitality, clear visual anchors and warm lighting – Nora, represents what Jachymiak describes as a "more mature and atmospheric evolution" of this approach.

Nora's design-led approach complements a nearby Dishoom restaurant, which features an interior designed around a "financial fraudster from the 1970s".

The photography is by Ben Leigh-Anders.

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Hackney restaurant and listening bar Bambi has been doubled in size with a revamped interior and a custom-made stainless-steel-and-wood wall cabinet for vinyl records.

Designer Nicola Weetch led the interior design of the project, which came about after Bambi expanded into an empty venue behind the back wall of its London Fields space.

"The design challenge was to make a space that not only worked for music, but also as a restaurant and bar," Weetch told Dezeen.

"The DJ booth in the middle of the room and record wall were essential for the music side of things, but we ensured that we had a large open kitchen and large bar as you walked into the space, so all three aspects were given equal importance in the space."

The now 180-square-metre venue is located in a warehouse space that had also been used as a nightclub.

It was given a makeover with a simple material palette, while Weetch worked with a lot of existing finishes, so as not to discard materials that were still usable.

"We kept the palette quite simple, not wanting the space to feel overworked, through a combination of stainless steel to give reflections in the space – especially in the evening with lower, warmer lighting – oiled oak, cork and felt-linen curtains which give a warmth and richness of colour," Weetch said.

A custom-made DJ booth and record wall was hand-built on site for Bambi's resident DJs, who play exclusively vinyl.

A large, eye-catching record-storage unit, made from wood and stainless steel, stand behind the booth.

"We brought stainless steel into the space because we loved the juxtaposition with the wood finishes and how stainless steel reflects light within the space," Weetch explained.

"It also tied together the food, drink and music, as elsewhere we have a stainless-steel ageing cabinet, stainless steel wine fridges and of course, the disco ball!"

The surfaces in Bambi mostly have a warm, polished feel, which Weetch contrasted by leaving the existing scruffy, industrial floor intact.

"We wanted Bambi to feel lived in, almost like you had stumbled across an amazing hidden gem that had been in this warehouse building for years," she explained.

"We felt leaving the floor, with its years of use as a nightclub back in the day, achieved this feeling of being weathered and 'found' and avoided it feeling like a shiny new place dropped in."

Bambi's walls were decorated with playful artworks by illustrator Alec Doherty, who also created the bar's wine glasses, which feature two characters that kiss when the glasses are clinked.

"We have collaborated with Alec on all the artwork in the space as we love how his work focuses around human interactions, combining strong primary colours and playful themes," Weetch said.

As part of the expansion, Bambi now also features a wood-panelled mezzanine area that overlooks the main space, as well as a larger outdoor area.

The revamped Bambi is the latest bar to open in Hackney, with other recent additions to the east London nightlife including lesbian bar La Camionera and De Beauvoir listening bar Goodbye Horses.

The photography is by Beca Jones.

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British studio ACME's contentious design for the revamp of the UK's busiest train station, London Liverpool Street, has been granted planning permission.

Approved by the City of London's planning committee, the overhaul is being carried out to improve accessibility and accommodate an increasing number of passengers at the Grade II-listed railway station.

The design will require part of Liverpool Street station to be demolished, while a 97-metre-tall office tower with curtain walls and plant-filled terraces will be added overhead.

Design "ensures the station will be future-proofed"

ACME's proposal replaces an earlier dual-tower design by Swiss studio Herzog & de Meuron, which was abandoned after thousands of objections due to concerns about the impact on Bishopsgate Conservation Area.

The redesign remains highly controversial, with criticism from various heritage groups, including the Victorian Society, which accused the City of London of having "bowed to developer ambitions".

"This decision represents a key step towards the transformation of Britain's busiest station and marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Liverpool Street," said Network Rail managing director Ellie Burrows.

"Our plans focus on improving the everyday experience for passengers whilst respecting the station's unique heritage. With annual passenger numbers forecast to grow to 158 million, this approval ensures the station will be future-proofed for decades to come."

Liverpool Street station opened in 1874 and was last redeveloped in 1991. From this time, passenger numbers have tripled.

Key elements of the redesign include increasing concourse capacity by 76 per cent and introducing more escalators, lifts and step-free access to all platforms.

"Landmark accessible entrances" with vaulted brick roofs will be introduced, according to the team, with clearer wayfinding leading to bus stops, bike stores and taxi ranks.

ACME also said the design "will unlock new views over the Victorian architecture", though concerns about the project's impact on Liverpool Street's heritage remain.

Victorian Society describes design as "disfiguring"

Victorian Society president Griff Rhys Jones described the news as "a sad day for the City of London".

"A disfiguring billion-pound office block on top of a major heritage asset is not essential to the city's development plans, it is doubtful whether it will easily provide the profit to 'improve' the concourse, and can only realise a small amount of extra space for the passenger," said Jones.

"It will destroy an existing conservation area. It demolishes listed buildings. It is harmful to the surrounding historic fabric," he continued. "It has been proposed on a false PR-led assertion that Network Rail is 'under instruction' to build on top of its London Stations. It is not."

Jones is also the president of the Liverpool Street Station Campaign (LISSCA), a coalition of organisations including SAVE Britain's Heritage, which was formed in the 1970s to oppose plans to demolish the station.

He said that improving the station's accessibility was "a statutory duty and should not require twenty storeys of office block", adding that the City of London had "bowed to developer ambitions".

"The City of London deserves better than this for its station – one of the busiest and therefore most important in Britain," he concluded.

Public reaction has "broken records"

Network Rail brought ACME on to design the proposal, which was submitted last April. It is set to cost £1.2 billion.

According to a report by The Times, the planning application received more than 3,700 objections and 1,100 in support.

"The proposals have broken records for the level of public reaction received, amassing the highest ever numbers of both objections and letters of support for an application in the City of London ahead of the council vote," read the report.

The approval of ACME's design follows an attempt by John McAslan + Partners to offer an alternative "light-touch" proposal, deemed more appropriate for the Victorian station and backed by SAVE Britain's Heritage.

Other controversial architecture proposals to have hit the headlines in London in recent years include Foster + Partners' design of the proposed Tulip tourist attraction, which was rejected by the UK government over concerns about embodied carbon and the quality of its design.

There were also plans for an MSG Sphere in the capital, but its creators withdrew plans for the venue after slamming the city's planning process as "a political football between rival parties".

The visuals are courtesy of Network Rail Property and ACME. 

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Crisscrossing planks of glulam timber form the sculptural roof of Arbour House, a family home designed by London-based architect Andrei Saltykov.

Saltykov, who leads the studio Andrei Saltykov and Partners, completed the two-storey, semi-subterranean house on a backland plot surrounded by residential gardens in Crouch End, north London.

Previously home to an industrial workshop, the site had been abandoned for decades following a fire.

A low-lying building was necessary to respect the neighbours, leading Saltykov to design a house with the feel of a woodland pavilion.

"Tucked away and well hidden, this former workshop site had considerable obstacles: restricted access, planning opposition and a long history of dereliction," said Saltykov.

"Yet its greatest asset was clear from the outset; an enclosed pocket of land surrounded by woodland in the heart of north London, offering a rare opportunity to create a home that feels both protected and deeply connected to nature."

The glulam timber diagrid roof gives the house a sculptural presence, with triangular eaves cantilevering out from the walls on all four sides.

The structure is exposed internally, with a zigzagging profile revealed in the slope of the plywood ceiling panels.

Underneath the roof, a split-level floor allows the ground floor of the house to follow the slope of the topography, dividing the plan into two zones.

A combined dining room and kitchen benefits from the high ceilings on the lower level, opening out to a west-facing courtyard, while the upper level includes an entrance lobby and a living room with a more intimate scale.

Staircases wrap the sides of the centrally positioned kitchen, leading down to a sunken bedroom floor that is equally split-level.

Rooms on this level feature east-facing windows, thanks to courtyards dug out beside the building.

"The plan reacts to the sun path," said Saltykov. "The 'morning side' with bedrooms and their intimate courtyards faces sunrise to the east, whereas the communal and open 'evening side' faces the afternoon sun to the west."

"A floating timber roof ties everything together, resulting in two different clear heights on the main level: low and intimate in the living room, generous and airy above the kitchen and dining space," he added.

Saltykov also designed his own home on a tricky site. Station Lodge is built on a site sandwiched between suburban houses and a railway track in south London.

But Arbour House proved especially difficult. Saltykov and former partner Tom Lacey, who together founded Lacey & Saltykov, first developed a concept for the site in 2015. They faced multiple challenges in both the planning and build stages.

"It took six years, three applications, two appeals and several amendments to win the permission that justified the huge emotional and financial commitment behind the project," said Saltykov.

"When it finally started on site, towards the tail end of the first Covid lockdown, we all thought the worst was over. Instead, inflation, Brexit, supply chain chaos and further lockdowns brought more challenges."

The concept remained largely the same throughout, although the original vision to have trees growing on top was abandoned.

The 220-square-metre house is now home to a family. The owners said it is "a brilliant party house", but also a calm retreat where they can "sit and watch the birds and squirrels with a cup of tea".

The photography is by French+Tye.

Project credits:

Architect: Lacey & Saltykov, Andrei Saltykov and Partners
Structural engineer: Foster Structures
Main contractor: Plan C

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Interiors studio El Departamento has designed the Covent Garden flagship store for Spanish trainer brand Hoff, which features handmade zellige ceramics and sculptural furniture.

The 163-square-metre London store was designed as an evolution of the Hoff flagship in Madrid, rather than a replica.

El Departamento, which is led by Alberto Eltini and Marina Martín, chose to work with warm materials such as wood and zellige to reflect the brand's approachability.

"We counterbalanced this with technical, industrial materials – such as stainless steel and metal grating – to introduce a sophisticated, contemporary edge," Eltini told Dezeen.

The studio used handmade zellige tiles in a warm butter-yellow colour to decorate a central display case and shelving.

"The palette is built on a neutral, serene base of sand and beige tones – seen in the stone and terrazzo – to provide a natural backdrop," Martín told Dezeen.

"Against this, we introduced singular colour accents to build identity and dynamise the customer journey."

As well as the tiles, El Departamento used stainless steel and industrial metal grating for the store's upper planes and for the technical ceiling.

"This introduces a current, industrial language that connects with London's specific urban character," Eltini said.

It also added a gridded floor to the Hoff flagship to create a dialogue with the ceiling symmetry.

While the floor and wall surfaces have clean, geometric lines, the store also features playful, sculptural furniture, including a glass table with bulbous blue shapes made in collaboration with artist Phoebe Collings-James.

"We were drawn to her practice for its organic, imperfect forms and the specific 'memory' she imprints on her pieces," Martín said.

"In this store, her sculpture is reinterpreted as a product display, effectively blending the retail experience with fine art," the studio added. "The piece breaks the orthogonal rigidity of the space, adding a unique, expressive layer that contrasts with the store's technical grid."

The exterior of the Hoff store, located in London's busy Covent Garden area, has tiles in a slightly darker hue that give the facade a welcoming feel and make it stand out against its neighbours.

"We used mustard yellow and deep blue specifically to inject warmth into the London context, which is often characterised by colder, greyer tones," Eltini explained.

"The mustard zellige also serves an architectural function, projecting towards the facade to visually connect the interior atmosphere with the street."

Overall, the designers aimed for the Hoff flagship store to be a neutral background that would help to enhance the product display.

"The envelope acts as a neutral, gallery-like space where textures and colours are perceived almost sculpturally," Martín explained. "By using bold volumes and architectural gestures, the design steps back to let the product take centre stage."

El Departamento has previously designed a Barcelona eyewear store in a pale seafoam green. Also in Covent Garden, interior studio North End Design created a colourful interior for the restaurant Town.

The photography is courtesy of Hoff.

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Local studio Nimtim Architects has playfully transformed a Victorian terrace house in London for Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft, adding an extension with exposed easi-joists and cork-clad walls.

Named Easi-House – in reference both to how easy the house is to live in now and the extension's distinctive easi-joists – the home was designed for Tom Ravenscroft, his wife Margaret Ravenscroft, who also works in the architectural sphere, and their three children.

"We wanted to improve the layout – it was squirrely and confused – to make it more open and brighter, but also super interesting and something we hadn't seen before," said Margaret and Tom Ravenscroft.

"Nimtim designed a floor plan that made sense. They opened up the important spaces – where we spend the most time – and encouraged us to leave these changes visible for simplicity and sustainability."

The family worked with Nimtim Architects to think up creative ways of using ordinary materials.

"There was a shared ambition to use everyday materials in unusual ways and to create spaces that were colourful, robust and flexible," Nimtim Architects founders Nimi Attanayake and Tim O'Callaghan told Dezeen.

"The clients wanted a distinctive and playful home that reflected their own busy and creative family life," the duo continued. "When we see the project now, we really see their spirit and playfulness reflected back at us."

Structure was exposed and celebrated throughout the ground floor, including in the rear extension, where low-cost easi-joists – a type of joist made from parallel timber chords with metal webs – were left exposed to add visual interest.

Nimtim Architects reused bricks demolished from the existing home to build the extension, which features corrugated metal wrapping the upper facades.

"There was an intention to use materials simply and honestly," said Attanayake and O'Callaghan. "It was also a project that wanted to be honest about its modest budget, but to do so in a creative and playful way."

"The corrugated metal's main benefit is that it can be found in almost any builder's merchant and doesn't require a specialist supplier or minimum order," they continued. "It is robust and long-lasting and provides an interesting play with light and reflection."

Illuminated from above by skylights, the extension contains a kitchen that runs along a cork-clad wall, where mint-green units were topped with a terrazzo-effect worktop made from recycled plastic.

Opposite the kitchen, a dining area was tucked under the upper floor level and features a built-in L-shaped bench made by Tom Ravenscroft and his brother, Ben Thornton.

Engineering bricks, typically used for foundations and structural walls, were reimagined as flooring in the open-plan kitchen-dining space and in the garden, which is accessed through glass doors.

The front of the house was opened up to create a flexible family living area, supported by pink steel columns and glued laminated timber beams.

According to Tom Ravenscroft, they presented Nimtim with numerous references, ideas and suggestions.

"I spend a large part of my time looking at architecture, including hundreds and hundreds of homes, so it's fair to say we had too many thoughts and ideas that Nimtim had deal with," he said.

These references included Frank Gehry's pioneering 1978 home in Santa Monica – both its unconventional use of materials and the colours of its kitchen.

"The Santa Monica House subverts a familiar house typology with playful, unexpected and low-technology interventions," said Attanayake and O'Callaghan. "It doesn't seek to change or reinvent the existing fabric but radically transforms its perception and use by juxtaposing it against new and contrasting materials and geometries."

"At Easi-House, we sought out robust and contrasting materials like the easi-joists and corrugated metal cladding – materials more familiar in non-domestic settings like Gehry's chainlink fence."

Overall, the family is extremely satisfied, not only with the fun and materiality of the home, but also the layout.

"The layout is really functional but for some reason we haven't come across it in other terrace extensions," they said.

"The long, narrow kitchen slicing between the two living spaces makes for an efficient ground floor plan with seamless flow, but still allows for distinct and practical spaces," they continued.

"We also love the kids 'clubhouse' under the stairs – a late addition inspired by a cupboard in Margaret's parents' home that the kids loved playing in when we stayed for five weeks during the renovation."

Other London house extensions by Nimtim Architects include an extension made from low-carbon materials such as hempcrete and an extension characterised by pops of ultramarine blue.

The photography is by Jim Stephenson.

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The original Hoxton hotel in east London has been given a refresh after two decades, featuring warm materials and second-hand furniture, as seen in our latest Dezeen Exclusive.

Opened twenty years ago, The Hoxton in Shoreditch was the international hotel chain's first hotel. When it was time to give its interior an update, the in-house design team aimed to create a more contemporary feel.

"The concept focused on refining the original spaces while keeping that familiar Hox warmth and homey character that regulars recognise instantly," said Charlie North, the global vice president of design at Ennismore, the owner of Hoxton Hotels.

"We wanted the interiors to feel more contemporary and calm, but still rooted in Shoreditch and its industrial and creative heritage," he told Dezeen.

The refurbishment saw the team update all 210 rooms at the hotel. It kept signature details such as the large circular mirrors and parquet floor, but updated others, such as the headboards in the bedrooms.

Overall, the update has a more mid-century design influence than the previous interiors, North said.

"We focused on materials that feel warm and easy to live with, while still elevated," he explained.

"Dark timbers and a mix of marbles add layers and depth, while velvet and bouclé soften the spaces and make them feel comfortable and lived-in."

To create a sense of "history and personality", much of the furniture chosen by the designers was restored or sourced second-hand.

The colour palette of the new interior was designed to balance out the high-energy of the surrounding Shoreditch area and offer a relaxed atmosphere.

"In the lobby, natural and monochrome tones are layered with dusty pinks and burgundies that complement the brickwork and stone, while in the rooms we leaned into muted greens with earthy yellows and browns, offering guests a softer, more settled environment," North said.

Overall, the update was intended to reflect the changes the neighbourhood has gone through in the last two decades, moving from an arty, up-and-coming area to a more established creative location.

"When The Hoxton first opened twenty years ago, Shoreditch was just starting to emerge as a creative hub, and the hotel was part of that early wave that helped shape the area as a place for culture and design," North said.

"Over time, Shoreditch has grown into a more established, internationally recognised neighbourhood, and that evolution influenced the refresh, with interiors reflecting a more confident, considered version of the area, while still holding onto its creative spirit," he concluded.

Other recent London hotels featured on Dezeen include a room at the Mandarin Oriental designed by Uchronia and a 12-storey Notting Hill-building that combines hotels and residences under one roof.

The photography is courtesy of The Hoxton.

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Soaring wooden ceilings frame the interiors of Vaulting Loft, a flat in Hampstead, London, renovated and extended by local studio Mata Architects.

The flat occupies the top floor of a detached Victorian property in a conservation area of Hampstead in north London, which required that any interventions were invisible from the street.

Using the "valley" created between the roofs of the two neighbouring properties to its advantage, Mata Architects worked with engineers Float Structures to create an entirely new roof that would transform the flat's interior while maintaining a discreet profile externally.

Reaching a maximum height of 4.8 metres, the revamped roof created space for a third bedroom and a mezzanine level, with a form that rises and falls to create a changing atmosphere throughout the interior.

"We saw that by infilling the valley between two parallel roof ridges, we could add substantial space and volume," studio founder Dan Marks told Dezeen.

"The new roof sits entirely within the building's existing footprint when viewed from ground level, respecting the conservation area while transforming the interior experience completely," he continued.

"We envisioned the apartment as a white, cathedral-like space defined by the ever-present dynamic roof form – at times soaring to nearly five metres, at others dropping to waist height to create more intimate, human-scale moments."

The interior of Vaulting Loft has been organised around an oak block at its centre, which contains storage and a bathroom while supporting the skylit mezzanine level above.

This block also separates the plan's three bedrooms from the living, dining and kitchen area, where a set of sliding glass doors framed by an arch-like pitch in the ceiling lead out onto a balcony.

White finishes were used throughout the interiors of Vaulting Loft to emphasise the geometry of the roof, with both the ceiling beams and Douglas fir floorboards treated with white oil.

This is contrasted by the exposed oak of the central block, as well as darker timber used in the bedroom areas and Taj Mahal Quartzite stone used for the kitchen counters and splashbacks.

"We wanted a restrained palette that would let the architecture speak. The white-painted surfaces throughout emphasise the roof structure and the volume it creates," Marks said.

"We treated the exposed roof beams with a strong white oil," he added. "Ii their natural stat,e they felt too chalet-like, but the oil preserves the timber's texture while keeping the space light and unified."

Marks founded Mata Architects in 2015, having previously been director of the eponymous Dan Marks Studio. Previous projects include the expansion of his own self-designed home in London and a timber-clad extension with windows concealed behind large shutters.

The photography is by Felix Speller.

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Architecture studio Turner Works has used "robust, hardworking" materials in its extension of an old textile manufacturing site in London's Harringay Warehouse District, transforming it into the Florentia Village creative hub.

Commissioned by developer General Projects, Turner Works added a 9290-square-metre extension to the 1970s clothes manufacturing facility to create a home for 50 creative businesses in north London.

In line with the site's industrial character, Turner Works added four steel structures in a space previously occupied by storage containers, more than doubling the complex's original footprint.

Florentia Village now offers businesses flexible workshops, studios and industrial units ranging from 46 to 1,400 square metres, alongside community spaces and a cafe, arranged around courtyards and walkways.

"Our approach seeks to offer a sense of character and playfulness, supporting serious and meaningful work, using robust, hardworking materials in an elegant way," Turner Works founding director Carl Turner told Dezeen.

"The design draws directly from the industrial vernacular of the existing maker's spaces – we borrowed elements such as the sawtooth roof forms, varied roof pitches, clerestory windows and the use of colourful metal accents already on site," he said.

According to Turner Works, a material palette of corrugated galvanised steel, green fibre cement panels and polycarbonate glazing was chosen with durability, sustainability and industrial character in mind.

Bolted steel frames were utilised to give the new structures geometric forms, while helping to reduce construction waste and allowing for components to be dismantled and recycled at the end of their life span.

The buildings are enlivened by accents of bright pink and orange, combined with playful signage, intended to echo the site's original aesthetic, which featured bright colours around window openings.

Crowning the extension are sawtooth and monopitched roofs, oriented to maximise natural daylight and enable on-site solar energy generation.

"Colour is a central component of the project – it ties together the old and the new, and fills the campus with personality," project architect Raphael Arthur told Dezeen.

"Inside the four steel structures, each of the ground-floor workshops is equipped with a mezzanine level, intended to provide space for a combination of studio and production work", he said.

Above, smaller attic studios offering flexible workspaces are interconnected via colourful external raised walkways and courtyards.

The interiors are finished in concrete, blockwork and oriented strand board timber (OSB) panels.

"For most of the units, the goal was deliberately not to impose a fixed interior design – instead, we wanted to create an adaptable backdrop to allow businesses to personalise their spaces and leave their own mark over time," explained Arthur.

"In contrast, for the reception and co-working space, we drew from the same industrial material palette, used in more refined and crafted ways," he said.

As well as the new additions designed by Turner Works, General Projects restored and upgraded the fabric of the existing 7,400-square-metre warehouse and factory space to the northeast of the site.

Turner Works is a London-based architecture and design studio established by architect Carl Turner and Suzi Winstanley in 2019. Elsewhere, the studio has converted a Dutch barn into a holiday home and creative retreat in the Cotswolds and extended a barn in Norfolk that is lined with oriented strand board.

The photography is by Tom Fallon.

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The latest edition of our weekly Dezeen Agenda newsletter features BIG employees in London protesting planned layoffs. Subscribe to Dezeen Agenda now.

Earlier this week, employees at BIG's London office staged a demonstration against proposed mass layoffs at the firm. Up to 72 of the 160-strong workforce at the office are said to be at risk of redundancy.

This week's newsletter also included Dezeen's launch of an exclusive section that features projects never before published online, images of Snøhetta's Busan Opera House and an opinion piece on retaining decommissioned airport terminal buildings.

Dezeen Agenda

Dezeen Agenda is a curated newsletter sent every Thursday containing the most important news highlights from Dezeen. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Agenda or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features the hottest reader comments and most-debated stories, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design.

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Employees from Danish architecture studio BIG along with Unite union members have held a protest in London to demonstrate proposed layoffs at the firm.

Taking place earlier today outside the Broadgate offices of BIG, the group of 40 gathered to protest the redundancy process currently taking place at the studio.

According to the Unite union, 72 of the studio's 160-strong workforce are at risk of redundancy following the loss of a major project.

The demonstration aimed to encourage BIG to offer improved redundancy terms and meet with union officials to explore other options to redundancy.

Protestors joined in chants aimed at studio founder Bjarke Ingels and referencing the reported £7 million in dividends the company's shareholders received.

Chants included "Bjarke Ingels shame on you" and "Seven million Bjarke has stowed, give your workers what they're owed".

Speaking at the protest, a representative for Unite claimed that over 80 employees at BIG had joined Section of Architectural Workers – the architectural workers branch of the Unite union. However, he claimed that BIG had declined to meet representatives from the union.

"We couldn't reach out to every employee who's joined the union because it's been over 80," said the representative.

"This is one of the first architectural workplaces in the country to reach this kind of union density and yet the employer has repeatedly refused to meet with us and repeatedly refused to engage with what their employees want to talk about."

The representative also suggested that the option of BIG offering to relocate employees to other offices in Europe had not been discussed.

"This company is hiring, mass hiring at other offices within Europe, and yet they are trying to push through over 70 redundancies and the shortest possible timeline," he said.

Ahead of the protest the managing director of BIG's London firm, Henriette Helstrup, confirmed to Dezeen that the studio had lost a major project and was in the process of carrying out redundancies "in full accordance with UK guidelines and due process".

"It is correct that a major project in our London Studio has been terminated end of November last year due to circumstances beyond our control," Helstrup told Dezeen.

"The project employed roughly half the office and we immediately informed our entire team of the project termination. Our leadership team is engaging directly with those affected in a thoughtful and constructive manner, in full accordance with UK guidelines and due process."

BIG was founded by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels in Copenhagen in 2005. Today it has studios around the world, including in New York, Barcelona and London.

It is not the only major architecture firm to come under fire in recent weeks due to employee dismissals. Snøhetta was recently accused of laying off pro-union employees at its New York office.

The photography is by Tom Ravenscroft.

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Employees from the London office of Danish architecture studio BIG are planning to demonstrate today in response to proposed mass layoffs at the firm.

The protests are planned outside BIG's Broadgate office, where up to 72 of the 160-strong workforce are said to be at risk of redundancy.

It follows the termination of a major project at the firm, which employed half of its London staff. Job cuts were first announced to staff in November.

Many employees moved countries for terminated project

The managing director of BIG's London firm, Henriette Helstrup, confirmed to Dezeen that a key contract had fallen through, but she did not name the specific project.

However, the trade union Unite, which is supporting BIG employees, has said it was one in Saudi Arabia.

"It is correct that a major project in our London Studio has been terminated end of November last year due to circumstances beyond our control," Helstrup told Dezeen.

"The project employed roughly half the office and we immediately informed our entire team of the project termination. Our leadership team is engaging directly with those affected in a thoughtful and constructive manner, in full accordance with UK guidelines and due process."

 

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BIG employees are being supported by trade union SAW

The protests are being held by BIG employees with the support of trade union Unite and its architectural branch SAW.

According to the group, the demonstration is being held to encourage BIG to meet with union officials and "enter meaningful consultation exploring all alternatives to redundancy".

In an anonymous statement shared with Unite and seen by Dezeen, a BIG employee said many people had "moved from their countries with their families" to deliver the project and are now left with "no alternatives".

Unite describes BIG's behaviour towards its staff as "disgusting"

Unite's general secretary Sharon Graham described the situation as "disgusting".

"BIG's behaviour towards its staff is nothing short of disgusting," she said. "It is trying to rip workers off to protect profits after luring many of them from overseas with promises of secure work."

According to Unite, BIG has so far refused "to take part in meaningful consultations or meet with Unite".

It also claimed that the union's officials had put forward a "workable solution to the company" that included offering employees voluntary redundancy with reasonable severance pay. However, it said that BIG has since withdrawn "the option for voluntary redundancy entirely".

BIG was founded by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels in Copenhagen in 2005. Today it has studios around the world, including in New York, Barcelona and London.

It is not the only major architecture firm to come under fire in recent weeks due to employee dismissals. Snøhetta was recently accused of laying off pro-union employees at its New York office.

The main photo is of BIG's Copenhagen office by Laurian Ghinitoiu.

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Local architecture studio Anomaly has designed the Apex co-working space with textured materials including leather, timber and a bespoke rammed-earth welcome desk.

Set within the Bennetts Associates-designed concrete Tribecca development in London's King's Cross area, Apex is a waterfront co-working space that was interior designed by Anomaly to eschew harsh and unwelcoming office environments.

"Introducing and playing with a variety of textures that are tactile and soft created a welcome contrast to the firmness and solidity of the basebuild architecture of Apex," said Anomaly head of interior design Lucy Hillyer-Riley.

"The aim was to create a space that feels just as good once it's been properly used and occupied as it does on day one," she told Dezeen.

When entering the workspace, visitors are greeted by a rectilinear welcome desk made from dusty pink, brown and orangey slabs of low-carbon rammed earth, designed in collaboration with British natural finishes specialist Clayworks.

Hillyer-Riley explained that the team originally planned to salvage earthwork from the site excavation, but were met with constraints during the project.

"What we love about rammed earth is that you can read how it's made," said the designer.

"The layers, the texture, the slight imperfections. It is built up using natural pigments and aggregates, compacted to create a solid, monolithic form," she continued.

"No two rammed-earth elements could ever be the same, which felt right for a building that's meant to have its own identity."

Timber-clad stairs lead to a similarly textured cafe dressed in chocolatey brown hues, which overlooks the canal.

Wishbone chairs were paired with marble-topped tables, while terrazzo grey flooring offers a cooler antidote to the panelled wood behind the long coffee counter.

"The palette is tonal, soft and embracing, drawing on the canal frontage and making the most of daylight and long sight-lines," said Hillyer-Riley.

Other work and meeting spaces were designed with a similarly homely feel. Rather than rigid desks, communal tables were placed alongside a selection of chairs finished with materials including leather and upholstery.

"Leathers introduce softness and comfort, particularly in seating, and were chosen because the material wears in rather than wearing out," considered Hillyer-Riley.

"In addition to soft, plush zones, this adds a sense of ease and familiarity, helping the space feel relaxed rather than overly formal."

"Texture plays a big role," she added. "Softer seating, layered materials and generous planting sit against the hardiness of the existing building, creating a space that feels comfortable and aims to have a positive impact on the workers' wellbeing."

"Overall, it's a space designed to be used, enjoyed and returned to over and over again."

Co-working spaces have soared in popularity over the last decade as global working patterns have become more varied, especially post-pandemic.

Other recently designed co-working spaces featured on Dezeen include Forum, a space in Melbourne by Foolscap Studio dubbed as the Australian city's Silicon Valley and Spaced Agency's design for the New York City headquarters for non-profit Welcome to Chinatown.

The photography is courtesy of Anomaly.

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An exhibition exploring a brutalist social housing complex in Paris by Algerian-French architect Renée Gailhoustet has opened at the Architectural Association in London.

Titled Renée Gailhoustet: A Thousand and One Ways of Living, the retrospective exhibition explores the work of the late architect, who was awarded the Royal Academy Architecture Prize in 2022 for her lifelong commitment to improving French social housing.

The exhibition was curated by Architectural Association (AA) tutor Nichola Barrington-Leach, who wanted to spotlight the 1970s Le Liégat social housing project – Gailhoustet's former home and best-known project.

Held within the AA's Front Members' Room and Bar, the exhibition centres on a 1:1-scale installation of one of the complex's apartments, crafted from draping paper walls that reinterpret flexible internal partitions.

"The ambition of the exhibition was to really bring one of the flats into the AA," Barrington-Leach told Dezeen at the exhibition opening.

"How can we attempt to show her space rather than just her ideas?"

Located in Ivry-sur-Seine, Le Liégat was built in the early 1970s during the post-war period, which is reflected in its austere, 10-storey-tall concrete exterior.

Its angular form is composed of intersecting hexagonal volumes lined with planted external terraces.

Inside, Gailhoustet designed each apartment's layout to optimise light, openness, and adaptability for their respective residents, Barrington-Leach explained. This layout was often organised around a generous central space, off which additional rooms are accessed through adaptable, wooden partitions.

"Gailhoustet doesn't just think of it as you deserve a box, or seven square meters, or, let's standardise everything," Barrington-Leach said.

"She starts to question, well, what can we provide that's more and how can we give them as much as we can?" she continued.

"Every single person has something, and it might be different, but they have something."

Keen to highlight this quality of Gailhoustet's work, Barrington-Leach modelled the installation on a series of apartment floor plans, using hanging paper walls with cut-out openings to reflect the apartments' "extremely light" partitions.

"I wanted to start with this idea of readaptation and very flexible space," she said. "The idea of hanging was a loose way to do that."

"I also call her partitions 'cardboard partitions', so you have a strong infrastructure, but actually the partitions are extremely light."

"People change them, they open up, they change the wallpaper on them," she continued. "And so the paper is not only a symbol of like just paint hanging, but it's also this idea that it could change very quickly."

Alongside the installation, thin, metal tables were used to display maquettes, drawings and detailed studies of Le Liégat, which are complemented by photography by Sacha Trouiller and Valerie Sadoun.

Barrington-Leach, who is founder of London-based architecture studio NVBL, hopes that Gailhoustet's people-centred approach can offer insight into designing with care in what is now largely a profit-led industry.

"I think that often what we do in a developer world that's profit led is think we have to meet certain ways of living, and that's been regimented into a typology that actually never existed before," she said.

"You end up working with the market rather than working with the people," she continued. "And I think that we can learn a lot from [Gailhoustet's] philosophy, and her value and position in how she saw how people live."

The exhibition, which is on display at the AA until 21 March, builds on work undertaken by Barrington-Leach as part of the Royal Academy of Arts 2023 Residency at the Parisian housing complex.

It also precedes the launch of Renée Gailhoustet, a book edited by Barrington-Leach and published by AA Publications, which celebrates the late architect's career.

Elsewhere, the Palais de Lomé showcase in Togo featured objects and installations that demonstrate the scope and diversity of west African design and Kwangho Lee created anime-informed chairs from sponge pipes and nylon ropes for his Ghost in the Shell exhibition in Tokyo.

The photography is by Philip Dale Nogare unless otherwise stated.

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Mexican studio Lanza Atelier has released visuals of its design for this year's Serpentine Pavilion in London, which references an English brick garden wall.

Aptly named A Serpentine, the sinuous brick structure will be installed outside of the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens from 6 June to 25 October 2026.

Lanza Atelier's design specifically references a serpentine – a one-brick-thick wall with a snake-like shape, otherwise known as a crinkle-crankle wall.

They are often found in English gardens, but originated in ancient Egypt and were brought to England by Dutch engineers. They are celebrated for their structural efficiency, which means they require fewer bricks than a straight wall for stability.

"We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to share our work with a wider public and to contribute to the pavilion's ongoing legacy of experimentation and collective encounter," said Lanza Atelier.

"Set within a garden, an evocation of the natural world, the project takes the form of a serpentine wall, conceived as a device that both reveals and withholds: shaping movement, modulating rhythm, and framing resholds of proximity, orientation, and pause."

Like a traditional crinkle-crankle wall, the pavilion will be constructed from red brick. This also pays homage to the facade of the Serpentine South Gallery.

The studio's design is divided into two halves. One of these will be the pavilion's main habitable space, which will be topped with a transparent roof, and a second will be an outdoor gathering area bordered by a winding brick bench.

"Inspired by the figure of the serpent as a generative and protective force, we draw a parallel with England's winding fruit walls, which are structures that temper climate, create shelter, and enable growth," said Lanza Atelier.

"From this idea emerges a pavilion built of simple clay brick, foregrounding vernacular craft and the elemental capacity of architecture to bring people together."

Lanza Atelier was founded in Mexico City in 2015 by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo. During the pavilion's installation, the Serpentine Gallery will publish the studio's first monograph.

Previous pavilions by the studio include a circular platform cloaked by water-dripping chains on the plaza of a Mexico City shopping centre and a temporary wood-and-steel structure to function as a gathering space in a Mexico City courtyard.

In an exclusive interview with Dezeen marking the pavilion's announcement, Lanza Atelier said "its time to bring new Mexican architecture to the table".

This year's pavilion marks the 25th edition of the Serpentine Pavilion, which began in 2000 with Zaha Hadid. To mark the anniversary, the gallery is collaborating with the Zaha Hadid Foundation on a series of talks.

"Over the last 10 years, the Serpentine Pavilion has increasingly focused on giving opportunities to younger architectural practices," said Serpentine Gallery's artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist.

"We are excited to announce that Mexican architects Lanza Atelier will design the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion. Lanza Atelier's architecture always involves a deep engagement with the local context, materials and lived experience," he said.

"As always, the pavilion will be a content machine with lectures, film screenings and performances," added Obrist.

"We will also remember Zaha Hadid, who gave us our motto that 'there should be no end to experimentation'."

Lanza Atelier is the second Mexican architect to create the Serpentine Pavilion, following Frida Escobedo in 2018. Escobedo's design took the form of a secluded courtyard framed by decorative, latticed walls.

Last year's pavilion was crafted by Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum from wood and polycarbonate panels.

The renders are by Lanza Atelier, courtesy of Serpentine.

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Openings coloured in ultramarine blue were used to create visual connections within this London home, which has been renovated and extended by local studio Nimtim Architects.

Named Peek-a-Blue, the project by Nimtim Architects sought to transform the home's small and fragmented ground floor living spaces into a series of interconnected spaces for its residents.

Integral to this was the addition of an almost double-height snug at the centre of the home, which links to the newly-added kitchen and dining room extension at the rear.

The studio lowered the floor in the snug to address a one-metre-drop from the front of the home to the garden, allowing this space to be accessed directly from the kitchen.

"The main concept of the project was to create a new living space/ plane for the family that reflects the way they want to live," project architect Pippa Grayson told Dezeen.

"The design dropped part of the front of the existing house to meet the rear garden level," she continued. "This created a new living space that was more appropriate in scale for the needs of the family and had a direct connection to the garden."

At the back of the home, the Peek-a-Blue extension has been finished externally in an earthy clay render, which is set off by full-height openings and a porthole window outlined in ultramarine blue.

Meanwhile, inside, the kitchen and dining space have been lined with light blue-coloured cabinetry, paired with recycled plastic worktops and gridded clay tiles that extend through the home.

A benched seating area crowned with a semi-circular skylight runs along the length of the space.

"Overall, the project adopts a rich and textural material palette of reds and ochres the unites and grounds the new living spaces," Grayson said.

"The visual connections are identified and highlighted in the bold ultramarine frames and reveals of these new openings."

A steel-framed opening connects the extension to the two-storey snug, which Nimtim Architects designed as a "focal point" for the home.

Boxy windows wrap around the space and, on one wall, look onto the home's staircase as a way to link the home's spaces, Grayson explained.

"The sense of disconnect that still existed between the spaces and the staircase was addressed with the bright blue punched openings between them."

The home's bedrooms are on the upper floors, where other updated spaces include a bathroom clad entirely in pink tiles.

Other London homes recently featured on Dezeen include a "mystical and grounding" renovation of a townhouse by local studio CAN and a timber-framed extension of a south London home by James Alder Architects.

The photography is by Jim Stephenson. 

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Design retailer APOC Store has reconfigured its London boutique so it doubles as an informal gallery where emerging creatives can showcase their work amid "incredibly challenging" industry conditions.

APOC Store is a "curated marketplace" that stocks fashion and furniture by young, independent designers, from Harikrishnan's blow-up latex trousers to Ying Chang's cardboard stools.

Founders Ying Suen and Jules Volleberg opened their first permanent shop in London Fields, Hackney, last year, which has now been pared back to provide a minimalist white backdrop for a changing roster of collectible designs.

"We will collaborate with a new artist as and when it feels right to completely redesign the store and produce custom works that will also be for sale," Suen told Dezeen.

"Making a living as an independent designer is still incredibly challenging," he added. "With our store, we wanted to give designers a space where they can stay true to their vision and have full control over their work."

"Some produce one-off pieces each month, so even we never know exactly what will appear."

The debut designer showing at the shop is Barnaby Lewis, a southeast London furniture maker who works predominantly with steel.

Among Lewis's bespoke pieces are a gothic-style desk anchored by spindly legs and a wiry black chair with a fishbone-shaped back.

One of his intricate room dividers, characterised by illustrative cutouts of a sun, moon and stars, also features in the space, finished in the same dark-hued metal as the rest of the furniture.

Suen and Volleberg explained that while the store's exhibition will change twice a year, its understated, gallery-style backdrop will remain in place to allow each of the rotating designers' pieces to speak for themselves.

"If I'm being completely honest, going into the store every day, I got bored of the space staying the same," Suen reflected.

"I'm the same with my home – I move and change things every few months. It didn't take long for the original interior to stop provoking new feelings for me. That boredom pushed us to rethink the store not as a finished design, but as an ongoing framework that could evolve whenever we wanted."

"The gallery series was conceived as a way to treat the store as a living, evolving space rather than a fixed backdrop," she added.

"Each iteration introduces a different world. We think this creates a more engaging interior because visitors aren't just encountering products, but a specific moment in time. It encourages repeat visits and allows the space to remain curious and relevant rather than static."

In recent years, emerging designers have been up against rising costs and red tape when attempting to exhibit across London. But young creatives are finding new and innovative ways to get their work seen.

At last September's London Design Festival (LDF), for example, non-profit collective Design Everything presented a touring exhibition from the back of a van.

The photography is by Studio Adamson, courtesy of APOC.

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Architecture studio Bureau de Change has updated a 1980s apartment block in London, revitalising its facade with pink concrete panels made from demolition waste.

Named Trace, the building in Euston was revamped for developer HGG to provide five apartments across its six storeys, which include two floors added as part of the project.

Bureau de Change sought to reuse as much of the existing structure as possible, retaining the building's original foundations and primary structure, and using bricks from its original facade to create a new frontage of glass-reinforced concrete panels.

"The existing building was clad with '80s red brick, so we felt that retaining a reference to that would be fitting for the new building," studio co-founder Billy Mavropoulos told Dezeen.

"We collected the facade demolition material – brick and mortar – and we crushed it down to a maximum six-millimetre-thick aggregate," Mavropoulos added.

"That was then reconstituted in the new panels we cast for the new facade."

The concrete panels, which were hand-cast individually, are organised across the exterior in a gridded pattern that ranges from a reddish to pale pink shade.

They are set off by dark-framed, arched windows at each level and a matching top-floor extension.

A shared entrance, updated with a similarly arched form and concrete-clad frame, sits beside the large archway at ground level and opens up to a circulation core.

"The glass-reinforced concrete panels are unique on each level and each one of them consists of various colour and aggregate density layers," Mavropoulos explained.

Inside, the block contains three two-bedroom apartments on the first, second and third floors, while two one-bedroom apartments occupy the newly added fourth and fifth floors.

Each of the apartments gains daylight from large openings on both facades, with terraces on the building's top floor.

The interiors feature bespoke designs by London-based studios Jan Hendzel Studio, Sedilia and A Rum Fellow.

Other projects recently completed by the studio include a yellow-brick extension to a Victorian house in Fulham.

Also in London, EBBA Architects founder Benni Allan recently used timber to renovate his own apartment in a former tea factory and Uncanny Studio revamped a 1930s penthouse to create a flow between its rooms.

The photography is by Gilbert McCarragher.

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Curved walls and porthole windows add character to this brick home built on an infill site in north London, which has been completed by local architecture studio Nikjoo.

Designed in collaboration with London-based developer Flawk, the three-bedroom family home, named Runda, is composed of a rounded volume that sits on the corner plot of a former brickworks.

Nikjoo and Flawk drew on the curved edge of the existing site for the home's sculptural form, which sees a curved motif repeated throughout the design.

"The existing site and its context have heavily influenced the design," studio founder Alex Nikjoo told Dezeen. "The site has a gentle curved form at its edge, which has been incorporated into the home."

"This curve is further incorporated into the design of the home through playful porthole windows, gentle curved partitions and ceilings, giving the home a uniquely sculptural form," he added.

The studios employed a timber frame with brick cladding for the home's structure, which bookends a row of 1960s terraced houses.

According to Nikjoo, its two-tone brick facade was chosen to both situate the home within the existing context and reduce the building's massing.

"The design of Runda acts as a bridge between the various [neighbouring] typologies, connecting them in a meaningful and purposeful manner which resolves the somewhat contorted streetscape," he explained.

The three-storey home is composed of a main rectilinear volume that sits flush with the neighbouring house, along with a shorter, protruding curved volume that shelters an entrance at ground level.

Inside, Runda opens up to a skylit central corridor, which leads into an open-plan kitchen, living and dining area, where a large opening overlooks the home's front courtyard.

Wooden floors and plaster walls unite the home's spaces. Elements designed and fabricated by Flawk include the kitchen, which pairs pine, oak and cherry cabinetry with a stainless-steel worktop and bespoke concrete corner counter.

Connecting the home's three floors is a staircase crafted from curved oak and stainless steel, complemented by a porthole window.

Upstairs, two bedrooms and a bathroom occupy the first floor, which is finished with polished plaster walls and pale timber, paired with metal fittings and ceramic knobs.

An en-suite main bedroom is held on the top floor and gains daylight from a circular roof light and full-height glazing that opens onto an external terrace.

Previous collaborations between Nikjoo and Flawk include a redbrick townhouse built on a parking space in London and the renovation and extension of a post-war home in east London.

The photography is by Jasper Fry unless otherwise stated.

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Creative developer Flawk has revamped a townhouse in London's Holland Park to evoke the effortless "je ne sais quois" of homes in the south of France.

Before the renovation, the three-storey property had gone untouched for years and was largely in a state of disrepair. The floorboards were worn, mould lined the walls, and the ceiling was shoddily insulated with old jumpers and t-shirts.

When asked to renovate the interior, Flawk founder and Bartlett alumnus Ashley Law made the decision to veer away from the archetypal aesthetic of a west London home. Instead, she drew inspiration from residences in southern France.

"The 'je ne sais quois' and effortless nature of French spaces is something I've envisioned for myself when I'm a proper 'adult'," Law joked.

"I was almost designing this home for myself in 10 years, making the process quite fun and approachable," she told Dezeen.

This concept, together with the tall ceilings on the upper floors, inspired Law to name the project Alta.

"Alta is adapted from altus, a Latin word that means high, deep, or elevated," she explained. "It can also mean 'to nourish' or 'to grow'."

"It captures a sense of a grown-up, sophisticated design sensibility that has created a home which we hope its owners will thrive in."

Flawk began the renovation by updating the home's insulation system and other services to enhance overall energy performance and comfort.

A staircase that originally ran through the middle of the ground floor was torn down and then rebuilt towards the rear of the plan, allowing more natural light inside and forging a better connection between the living spaces.

Its handrail is crafted from stainless steel, while the balustrade is composed of twisted iron stems.

In the kitchen, dark-stained oak floors contrast against white lacquered cabinets made custom by Flawk, with doors featuring a square depression at their centre.

A medley of furnishings selected by vintage dealer Myakin and a large surrealist artwork by south London artist Kate Burling populate the nearby living room.

Upstairs, the bathrooms were given terracotta tile floors and bespoke vanity units topped with pale marble offcuts. Their doors feature square cutouts that recall the kitchen cabinetry downstairs and help to create a sense of spatial coherence.

The principal bedroom is dominated by a sapele wood headboard that spans from one side of the room to the other.

Flawk was established in London in 2022 and has since transformed a number of neglected sites around the capital.

Earlier this year, the small-scale developer collaborated with architecture studio Nikjoo to construct a redbrick townhouse on a former parking lot in Stoke Newington.

The pair have also overhauled a derelict house in Whitechapel together, filling its interiors with fittings crafted by emerging designers.

The photography is by Jasper Fry. 

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American fashion brand Kith has collaborated with Porto Architecture to create the interiors for its flagship store on London's Regent Street, complete with a classic New York bistro.

For Kith's first standalone store in the UK, founder Ronnie Fieg aimed to create a space that showcased the brand but was unique to London. It also includes the brand's first restaurant, named Ronnie's after its founder.

"With every new space, I want to evolve and elevate our design language while maintaining a red thread through all of our flagships," Fieg told Dezeen.

"The experience you have in our London store will feel distinct from the one in New York, Seoul or Paris, yet each will still feel distinctly Kith. Most importantly, it's the best of everything we have to offer in one space."

The Kith store occupies two floors of a large, neo-baroque building on Regent Street that dates from the 1920s. New York firm Porto Architecture and Fieg were informed by the block's remaining original fixtures for the design of the flagship.

"When I first walked into the unfinished space almost two years ago, I immediately fell in love with its existing elements and how the interior resonated with the history and architecture of the street it was on," he explained.

"So the core concept of the design was rooted in working backwards from the beautiful trims and bones of the raw space, and figuring out how to incorporate our palette and materiality into the history of the building."

Each of the store's main spaces was defined by its own material and colour palette, with Kith's crest integrated throughout the interiors along with satin brass trimmings.

"Existing elements like the ceiling gave us the opportunity to design into the foundation in a way that makes it feel like we've always been there," said Fieg.

"Incorporating our K&K crest into the ceiling and adding brass inlays along the moulding are examples of how we were able to weave our DNA into the space in a cohesive and seamless way."

The store's main entrance is flanked by a pair of original, curved glass windows that overlook the Kith Kids and Kith Treats spaces on either side.

Both spaces are united by a custom fan mosaic, with the children's areas arranged around an Estremoz marble seat and lit with cloud-like lamps. Kith Treats has a muted pastel palette with a Volakas marble-topped bar.

The ground floor contains the bright Kith Women area and dark spaces for seasonal collections and jewellery.

The Kith Women space combines an oak herringbone floor, Estremoz marble-lined walls, white oak millwork and Crystal Tiffany marble. In contrast, the other space combines dark herringbone floors, Belvedere marble walls and walnut millwork.

"Our men's section blends dark and light with black and white marble, which then transitions into the women's section – a much brighter area that pairs white oak with shades of pink, blue, and white marble," explained Fieg.

Accessed from the street and from the store, Ronnie's is the brand's first restaurant. Designed to have an "elevated bistro atmosphere", it is lined with booths and features red marble and fabric paired with dark wood.

"As a born-and-bred New Yorker, the city is woven into the fabric of the brand and shapes my perspective on everything," explained Fieg.

"You can feel that through the product, but I wanted to connect with London on a deeper level and let people experience that influence through food and culture."

"Ronnie's is the culmination of this idea," he continued. "The menu is inspired by all of my favourite hometown and childhood dishes, reimagined through a fine dining lens."

"The space reflects that by elevating a classic New York bistro into what I believe is one of the most beautiful restaurant spaces to open in London in recent years."

"I can't wait to see Londoners enjoying a New York-style pastrami sandwich," he concluded.

Other stores on Regent Street featured on Dezeen include a gallery-like store for luxury luggage brand Carl Friedrik, Swiss brand On's first UK store and an Apple Store by Foster + Partners.

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Stepped arches define the facade of Studio Weave's latest building, a brick pavilion containing a cafe, public toilets and market facilities.

Woolwich Market Pavilion is part of the rejuvenation of Beresford Square Market, a square next to the gatehouse of the historic former munitions factory, Woolwich Arsenal, in southeast London.

With its deep stepped arches and monumental chimneys, the pavilion was designed by London-based Studio Weave to echo the architectural details of the gatehouse and other surrounding buildings.

Its brick walls sit above a plinth of polished red concrete-aggregate blocks, while the window and door frames were made from solid oak.

Other distinctive features include a butterfly roof, defined by a ridgeline that runs diagonally between two corners. This gives an angled roofline to all four facades, while also framing the turret of the gatehouse.

The southwest and southeast facades both feature a trio of arches, creating windows and entrances for the yet-to-open cafe facing the market and a newly installed garden.

The northwest facade features just one arch, giving the cafe another entrance on Beresford Street, while a larger arch on the northeast elevation integrates entrances to the two public toilets and a utility room for the market.

"The architecture has to work hard – it provides an important social gathering space in the café, a backdrop for the life of the market, while offering dignity for the public who use the space," said Eddie Blake, co-director of Studio Weave.

Blake pointed out the importance of providing public toilets, " a public good", in urban centres.

"Ultimately, without accessible public toilets, we are excluding many people from places like Beresford Square," he said.

The Beresford Square Market transformation was delivered by the local authority, Royal Borough of Greenwich, with funding from the UK government's Levelling Up Fund, an initiative launched in 2020 under former prime minister Boris Johnson.

Studio Weave developed the wider landscaping in collaboration with landscape designer Tom Massey, continuing a partnership that has produced two gold medal-winning gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The garden occupies the northwest corner of the site, designed to form a "soft green buffer" to the adjacent dual carriageway. Its planting areas are interspersed with gravel paths and stepping stones.

"These designs will transform Beresford Square into a haven for people and wildlife right in the middle of Woolwich for many decades," said Blake.

Massey and Studio Weave have teamed up on numerous projects since first working together on Hothouse, an installation for the London Design Festival in 2020.

They previously transformed Jubilee Gardens in the City of London, while upcoming schemes include a redesign of nearby Finsbury Circus and a new pavilion and landscape for the British Museum.

The photography is by Jim Stephenson.

Project credits

Client: Royal Borough of Greenwich
Architect: Studio Weave
Structure: Webb Yates
Building services: Webb Yates
Horticulture: Tom Massey Studio
Contractor: Elite

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