01 New Technologies
Four tools, one working method
Reality capture, BIM, visualisation and AI aren't run as separate specialisms. Together, they're how a project moves from an uncertain site to an accurate, coordinated model — and from that model to something a client can actually see and judge before it's built.
A Reality Capture
Laser scan survey with partner surveyors · in-house drone capture
Before a line is drawn, the existing building or site is recorded as accurately as possible. Laser scanning is carried out with specialist surveying partners, producing point-cloud data precise enough to model existing conditions with confidence rather than assumption.
An in-house drone extends that record further — roofscapes, sites and surrounding context that are slow, difficult or unsafe to survey from the ground, folded into the same set of information the design is built on.
B BIM
Coordinated modelling · clash detection · documentation
Projects are developed as a single three-dimensional model carrying geometry and data together, rather than a set of separately maintained drawings. A change made once updates every plan, section and schedule that depends on it.
Clashes between structure, services and existing fabric are caught on screen — before they become a problem, and a cost, on site.
C Visualitation
Real-time rendering + AI Enhancer · VR walkthroughs
Design models are turned into real-time, walkable visualisations , with AI Enhancer used to lift render quality for client presentations without the wait of traditional offline rendering.
The same models can be experienced in VR — a more direct way for clients, consultants and planners to judge scale, light and material than a drawing or a static image allows.
02 Conservation
Two different starting points, one discipline. Some buildings arrive with legal protection and a defined set of obligations attached; others carry no formal status at all, and the case for keeping them has to be made before it can be designed. Both depend on knowing, precisely, what's actually there.
Value in what’s already standing
A Protected Structure is a building, or part of one, that a local planning authority considers to be of special architectural, historical, archaeological, artistic, cultural, scientific, social or technical interest, and has entered onto its Record of Protected Structures. Once listed, works that would materially affect its character — inside, outside, or within its curtilage — need planning permission.
As RIAI Grade 2 conservation-accredited architects, this is core to the practice's work: an accurate survey and model of the structure as it stands is the basis for every decision about what can change and what has to be retained
RIAI Grade 2 conservation accreditation
A Protected Structures
B Other structures
Building assessments on merit, no assumptions.
Most existing buildings carry no protected status and no formal obligation to keep them at all — which is exactly where the risk of unnecessary demolition is highest, and where the practice's approach still applies in full.
A building without protected status isn't assumed to have no value. Often the opposite is true: what looks unremarkable is where the most interesting opportunities lie, and an accurate model of the existing structure is what makes that potential possible to argue for, rather than assume away.
03 Sustainability
Often, the lowest-carbon building is the one already standing
Environmental performance is treated as part of the design, not a report added at the end. Three checks run alongside it throughout: what a scheme costs in carbon, what's already standing and worth keeping, and how much of its performance the building can get for itself.
Whole-life & embodied carbon assessed alongside the design
A Embodied carbon
Embodied carbon is the carbon emitted in producing, transporting and constructing a building's materials — distinct from the operational carbon it uses once occupied. It's calculated and checked against the design as it develops, not only once at the end, while there's still room to act on it.
Existing structure, fabric & services assessed for genuine reuse potential
B Retention & reuse assessment
An honest, technical assessment of existing stock — structure, fabric, services — to establish what can genuinely be reused, rather than assuming demolition is the only option. Retaining what's already built is very often the lower-carbon choice over rebuilding, which is why this sits so close to the practice's conservation work.
Passive design, reducing reliance on mechanical systems
C Natural ventilation & lighting
Genuine passive design — orientation, opening sizes and detailing that let a building ventilate and light itself, reducing reliance on mechanical systems rather than just claiming to.