The practice's founder designed Lost House in London's King's Cross, characterised by glossy black wall and floor treatments, exposed concrete and a swimming pool in one of the bathrooms.
Delve Architects has transformed a 19th-century haybarn in Surrey into a family home, revealing the original stone structure and complementing it with two cedar shingle-clad extensions.
The single-storey dwelling, called Woodthorpe Stables, is located in a residential area outside the market town of Goldaming. It was previously converted into a home in the 1950s but had not been updated since, before being left vacant in 2015.
Delve Architects transformed a 19th-century stone barn into a home adding a cedar-clad extension
Appointed to redesign the building to accommodate a two-bedroom home, London-based Delve Architects stripped away the 1950s additions and finishes in order to reveal and celebrate the original form and materiality of the barn.
"The stone walls were in good condition and the roof had been recently re-tiled, so to reduce the carbon footprint of the project we went for a retrofit, rather than knock everything down and start again," director Edward Martin told Dezeen.
The extension adjoins to the existing stones walls of the structure
The rough stone and brick walls of the barn bear the marks of previous openings and alterations, which Delve Architects has used as a backdrop for exposed modern fittings and two new extensions built with Douglas fir frames.
The L-shaped structure of the original barn surrounds a walled courtyard to the north, and a key aim of the project was to improve the connection between this garden and the home.
The studio left the original stone walls exposed
At the barn's western end, a former mezzanine has been removed to expose the gabled roof structure in a large living space, with a small extension housing a kitchen and dining area overlooking the garden.
A glazed corridor has been added alongside the bedroom block to the east, providing circulation alongside the rooms that can be completely opened to the garden through sliding wood-framed doors.
In the centre of this block is a new bathroom, finished with blue terrazzo and hexagonal floor tiles.
The Douglas fir frames of the modern additions have been left exposed to echo the original wooden roof beams visible in the barn. Externally, they are clad in cedar shingles informed by the hanging clay tiles of the neighbouring properties.
"By exposing the structure internally, you can see a clear definition between new and old," said Martin.
The interior used stone, brick, wood and plaster
The interiors feature a mix of exposed stone, brickwork and paved floors in the living areas. Lime and clay plaster are used to create contrasting ceilings and a warmer feel in the carpeted bedrooms.
Aiming to reduce waste as much as possible, materials saved during the construction of the project will be used in the construction of an additional extension to the home, for which planning permission has already been granted.
The shingles were informed by clay tiles
South London-based Delve Architects was founded in 2017 by directors Edward Martin and Alex Raher.
UK practice Zaha Hadid Architects has become an employee-owned studio in response to a growing demand for a "more accessible and egalitarian" profession.
The studio, which was founded in 1980 by the late British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, has transferred ownership after establishing an employee benefit trust (EBT).
Zaha Hadid Architects said that the trust, which has no external shareholders, will allow it to reinvest all of its profits back into its studio.
Employee ownership gives all staff "a voice"
"We can now reinvest all profits back into the business, into our people, equipment and facilities to the benefit all our employees; allowing us to prioritise our work with visionary clients, communities and industry experts around the world to advance the quality of the built environment," the studio said in its announcement.
Zaha Hadid Architects added that its shift from a hierarchical model also reflected a new generation of architects' desire for a more equitable architecture sector.
Zaha Hadid Architects (above) has become an employee-owned studio
"Younger generations of architects are demanding our profession become more accessible and egalitarian," the studio added.
"Supported by independent and transparent organizational systems and structures, employee ownership of ZHA will cultivate the skills and diversity that drives our decision-making and give every member of our team a voice in shaping our future."
Studio will "embrace new ideas and technologies"
Zaha Hadid Architects has offices in both China and the UK, across which it employs more than 500 staff. To make its move to employee ownership, it has established an EBT in which assets are held on behalf of employees.
The aim of an EBT is to reward and incentivise staff by owning shares, which in turn, can encourage loyalty.
"Building upon the experimentation and pursuit of discovery that Zaha so championed, we embrace new ideas and technologies to deliver a repertoire of projects that become more spatially inventive, more structurally efficient, more technologically advanced and more sustainable with each new design," the studio explained.
Zaha Hadid Architects is not the first architecture studio to transition to employee ownership.
He added that "if more founding partners harnessed the value of empowerment and delegation as positives, it would facilitate growth and enable them to work on large international projects".
Following Hadid's death in 2016, Schumacher was named an executor of her will, alongside the late architect's niece Rana Hadid, former Serpentine Gallery chairman Peter Palumbo and artist Brian Clarke.
Schumacher began an unsuccessful High Court action in a bid to remove the other executors of her will to allow independent, professional executors to be appointed.
This video by photographer Jim Stephenson sheds light on the design of the David Brownlow Theatre, which London studio Jonathan Tuckey Design has created for a boarding school in Berkshire.
The theatre, which sits boldly within the tree-lined grounds of Horris Hill School, is designed by Jonathan Tuckey Design as a versatile space for assemblies, drama productions and music recitals.
Stephenson's film captures the building's distinctive features, such as red composite cement panels and a cross-laminated timber structure that reference Renaissance ecclesiastical architecture.
Interspersed with architectural shots is footage of the theatre in use, alongside commentary from architect Jonathan Tuckey as well as Chloe Anderson, the school's head of drama.
Together Tuckey and Anderson discuss the purpose and design of the theatre, which Tuckey said is intended to be "entertaining to an inquiring mind".
"It was always going to be a theatre principally for the pupils of the school, pupils whose age ranges between five and 12," Tuckey explained. "So we were very mindful of the age group and the curiosity of their minds in how we put together the building."
The most climate-friendly of these projects are net-zero or even carbon negative, meaning they will remove as much or more CO2 from the atmosphere as they will emit throughout their expected lifespan.
This is possible by making use of carbon-sequestering biomaterials, circular design principles and passive, renewable technologies for heating, cooling and energy.
As a result, the buildings not only minimise operational emissions but also the embodied carbon from materials and construction.
Read on for 10 projects that showcase how to incorporate these sustainable strategies.
Raw local clay was 3D printed in 350 layers to form this prototype home, which fuses ancient building techniques with modern technology.
The clay provides natural thermal insulation and can be recycled time and time again, with the aim of providing low-cost emergency housing for climate refugees without contributing to global warming.
This cultural centre in Skellefteå designed by White Arkitekter is the second-tallest wooden tower in the world, sequestering more carbon in its timber construction than it will emit throughout its lifetime.
Highlighted as an "exemplary sustainable project" by the UK Green Building Council as part of its COP26 virtual pavilion, the carbon-negative complex is heated by a geothermal pump and powered by 1,200 square metres of solar panels, supplemented with renewable energy from the grid.
Fast-growing bamboo is bent into 14-metre-high arches to form the self-supporting, double-curved roof of the gymnasium at Bali's Green School, which was engineered to use minimal material while providing maximum floor space.
Vents at the canopy's apex allow warm air to escape while openings around the base provide natural ventilation, eliminating the need for air conditioning in the island's tropical climate.
Made with salvaged materials such as recycled masonry and wood from discarded movie sets, the mass-timber Kendeda Building was conceived as both a learning centre and a teaching tool to educate students of Atlanta's Georgia Institute of Technology about sustainable design.
Described as a "regenerative building", it produces more electricity via its photovoltaic canopy and recycles more water than it uses, with purified rainwater funnelled into sinks and showers before once again being treated and channelled to support vegetation in a nearby wetland.
South African studio Counterspace designed this year's Serpentine Pavilion as a mashup of different migrant community spaces around London, rendered in plywood that was wrapped around a steel frame and finished with black-stained cork panels.
Although the project was criticised for its use of emissions-intensive concrete for the foundation, an AECOM report shared with Dezeen showed that the building still removed 31 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere through its biomaterials, making it carbon-negative up to the point of dismantling.
This wind-powered garden pavilion for the Glyndebourne opera house will make use of circular economic principles in order to minimise its carbon footprint, incorporating local waste materials and a reversible design that allows the building to be disassembled and its components reused.
Diseased ash trees will be salvaged to form the structure, with its interior panelled in the venue's own discarded champagne corks bound together by mycelium and the exterior clad in tiles made from waste oyster and lobster shells.
Shortlisted for the 2021 Stirling Prize, this mosque in Cambridge makes use of timber as a carbon-storing material to form its structural walls and tree-like pillars, which join to create the octagonal canopy holding the roof.
The place of worship is naturally lit and ventilated throughout the year, with solar panels covering all of the building's cooling and hot water needs as well as 13 per cent of the heating, while harvested rainwater is used to flush the toilets.
This mixed-use building, set in a former landfill site in Reykjavik, started construction in 2021 as one of 49 different net-zero urban developments which are being financed as part of the Reinventing Cities competition by global network C40 Cities.
Making use of a prefabricated cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure will reduce the building's embodied carbon footprint by almost 80 per cent compared to a typical concrete building, while operational emissions are minimised through an integrated waste-heat recovery system, comprehensive insulation and a renewable energy supply.
Algae textiles, 3D-printed sewage tiles and insulation made from reeds feature in this showhome built by Biobased Creations using 100 different biomaterials and showcased as part of Dutch Design Week.
All of its components, including the timber frame, are demountable and either already commercially available or coming to market soon, in a bid to show that plant-based materials are a viable option for new housing developments.
A disused railway site in Rome is set to be turned into a low-carbon neighbourhood as part of a redevelopment project by Arney Fender Katsalidis, which will combine retrofits and reversible biomaterial buildings running on a mixture of locally produced biomass power and rooftop photovoltaics.
By designing the neighbourhood as a car-free, 15-Minute City where locals can find all the essentials for their day-to-day life within a short walk or cycle, the scheme considers not just embodied and operational carbon but also consumption-based emissions generated by the lifestyles of building users.
