AJ Small Projects 2023 shortlist revealed – part one - اخبار معماری آریانا

A gridded roof structure is filled with a frieze of patterned green panels and rests on cruciform steel columns, forming a sheltered colonnade where the canopy oversails. Both frames and foundations have been designed to be demountable.

A readers’ poll to select the public’s favourite project will be open from tomorrow, when the final 10 shortlisted projects will be revealed.

Lloyd Eist House

£295,000

The structure, comprising three timber portal frames, is raised off the ground on cast concrete columns and charred using the shou sugi ban technique to protect against termites and rot. A large truss spanning the frames supports the roof, while the cladding consists of a variety of local natural materials.

The project utilises cost-effective, low-carbon materials, with extensive use of timber, which forms the main new element – a cloister lining two sides of a courtyard garden. Designed as an outdoor room, its external façades are enlivened by deep red fins sitting on a pigmented blockwork plinth with contrasting silver larch boards. The timber frame extends to form a bench to catch the midday sun.

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

This new nursery school for Hatching Dragons, a bilingual Mandarin-English nursery provider, is the first phase in the site’s development. It comprises two main spaces for children of different ages, one in an existing room, the second in a room constructed in the main hall. The latter space is conceived as a room-within-a-room, using lightweight construction that can be taken down and re-used and employs full-sheet materials, mechanical fixings and simple, durable materials. These include naturally finished plywood – painted black in places as an integrated blackboard, exposed timber wall studs used for shelving and polycarbonate cladding for windows.

This project in Camberwell, south London, involves the refurbishment of a former light industrial building to provide a compact, three-storey family home with a new second floor and side extension.

This project sits within a courtyard of the existing Igus Headquarters factory in Cologne, Germany, which Bryden Wood originally designed in 1990. The café has been created as a breakout or respite space for employees and is a pilot project for replication across all eight courtyards of the building.

This is the 28th year of the award, which celebrates the best in built architecture and structures realised on a small budget: this year up to a contract value of £350,000, the limit increased to reflect inflation.

Bogor Musholla

£14,280

The project consists of one main space adjacent to a small, covered veranda and washrooms. It is designed to maximise natural daylight and ventilation internally while using locally sourced materials chosen for durability and low maintenance. The structure combines rigidity with flexibility to enable it to withstand seismic activity.

The surrounding three-acre site has been planted with more than 700 native trees and shrubs and over 2,000m² of wildflower meadow to help absorb the carbon emitted during construction. FW

Ferguson

£35,000

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Igus Courtyard Café

£341,000

Lavender Pumphouse

£180,000

The award is the AJ’s annual showcase of the best in low-cost design from the best designers. Previous winners include Rashid Ali Architects, Carmody Groarke, Haworth Tompkins, David Leech Architects, HawkinsBrown, Kate Darby Architects and Mole Architects.

Interiors were fitted out using UK-grown elm flooring, reclaimed timber windows as screens, recycled drylining and second-hand furniture. Heating is provided by a small air source heat pump via an MVHR system which also monitors CO2, ensuring high air quality. This low-energy approach is also supported by a 20kW PV array and the building’s envelope achieves an airtightness of 0.3ACH at 50Pa.

This building is used as a prayer room and for community events and training at the Center for Community Development and Social Entrepreneurship at Bogor in West Java, which is part of an Indonesian developmental NGO.

This ‘small place to stay’ in Glasgow was born out of an unusual collaboration between three practitioners – Duncan Blackmore, Simon Harlow and Lee Ivett – during Covid lockdown, blurring the lines between developer, architect and maker.

AJ Small Projects is sponsored by

Through making use of the nascent Scottish CLT industry, manufacturing waste was minimised in the sizing of the elements that form the bench and carbon emissions for their transport were significantly reduced. RGW

Circular openings cut into the exposed ceiling joists allow in natural light. A sensory garden, created with Jacqueline Dodman, uses reclaimed olive barrels, railway sleepers and masonry and boasts a sandpit, bee hotel, seating areas and soft play surfaces made of recycled tyres. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

This project converted an equestrian barn into a sustainable rural workplace for Charlie Luxton Design’s studio, plus a music recording space.

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

The six-week build involved 17 international volunteer participants from architecture and engineering schools and practices, working alongside members of the local Indonesian community. RGW

Offering shelter and a place to rest, the design draws inspiration from two precedents in the Scottish Isles – the Brutalist concrete bus shelters found on Lewis and the enveloping shape of the traditional Orkney chair – reinterpreting these in contemporary form.

This boathouse provides shelter for a single boat and, in the manner of a folly, is not strictly required for that purpose.

The substructure, which presented a challenge to find a material that wouldn’t warp when wet, is formed of end-of-life scaffold poles hand-driven and jointed to give the required depth and strength. Built to last 60 years, it is hoped the scheme will become an established part of the River Cam scene at Ferry Lane in Cambridge, much like the nearby bridge, from which it can be viewed. FW

The Boathouse

£98,457

In plan, all functions have been pushed to the edges, forming one ‘main’, unprogrammed space, arranged laterally to capture light from two large, south-facing windows. Contrasting with the simplicity of this open space, function is signified through intense use of colour, formal architectural tectonics and material experimentation – particularly in the patterned shower room, cast red concrete and yellow fibreglass detailing. FW

The judging will be followed by a celebratory event where the winner will be announced. This year it will be held at the offices of Morris+Company in Hackney: join us there. It’s free to attend but tickets are allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Drawing on expert advice from Peter Wilson of Timber Design Initiatives/Mass Timber Academy and BE-ST (formerly Construction Scotland Innovation Centre), it uses Scottish-sourced Douglas fir-based cross-laminated timber, grown near Perth and fabricated at BE-ST’s facility in Hamilton.

Black Barn Studios

£340,000

AJ Small Projects is sponsored by Marley

Sitting in a prominent location passed by up to 1,000 people a day, including pedestrians, cyclists and rowers, the project had to be both beautiful and low in environmental impact.

On 3 May, the 20 shortlisted architects and designers will present their projects to our judges: Esther Everett, head of design development at the London Legacy Development Corporation; Pedro Gil, director at Studio Gil; Ross Keenan, director at Akin Studio and the winner of last year’s award; and Fiona Scott, director at Gort Scott.

This practical, playful extension overhauls a 1980s single-aspect, ex-local authority home in Islington, extending its life, improving insulation and creating cross-ventilation while maximising daylight to its north-facing elevation.

Initially it was designed as a live-work unit for the Lloyd Eist Foundation charity but, when the organisation decided not to proceed with the project, it was bought by the practice, which founded its own development company to build out revised designs.

The pattern and colour scheme were developed with graphic design studio Objectif and were inspired by the site’s history as a rural hamlet. Outside the building, a terrazzo floor acts as a welcome mat, while the canopy, with its oversized signage, forms a gateway. FW

This bench on the Isle of Bute was one of four pieces commissioned by Design Exhibition Scotland for its Sitting Pretty exhibition.

Existing structural openings have been raised and new ones inserted to create a three-dimensional layout that can be ‘strolled around’. A mezzanine level containing a sleeping area with high-level views across the apartment sits in the existing 3.4m-high volume.

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

The spaces are enclosed and heated in the winter, but sliding and pivoting glazed perimeter partitions allow them to be fully opened up in the summer months. RGW

Monolith

£3,000

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Internally the kitchen, dining and living spaces ‘pirouette’ around a triangular blue column. This, together with other elements in primary colours – a yellow bookshelf and terracotta-red stair – animate the interior spaces, which are also given warmth and character by Douglas fir beams and boarding and diamond-shaped skylights casting patterns of light. RGW

Greenhill Place

£300,000

All entries to AJ Small Projects 2023 are free to browse in the AJ Buildings Library.

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Harrow Council’s brief called for kiosks to create new town-centre opportunities for an emerging food business sector, plus a showcase for art. The scheme combines kiosks and ancillary space into a single building shaping a new public space. A cranked volume creates a new edge to the square with a covered seating area for customers, open by day and secured at night behind patterned shutters.

Its design consists of four glazed ‘pods’, which divide up the courtyard and are formed by a lightweight ETFE canopy on a steel frame. Their form echoes that of the skylights of the original building. Following the existing grid, the new envelope works around a central yellow pylon in the courtyard, its transparency intended to dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior.

Taking its name from a found nameplate, Ferguson is a 25m² single-room apartment occupying part of the ground floor of a Victorian tenement that had fallen into disrepair. The project aimed to create movement and flexibility within a small space.

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Located on a busy pedestrian route between Harrow town centre and outer residential areas, this site was previously a dead end, used for car parking and bounded by run-down buildings and service yards.

It is made of local British larch and, except for the roof and substructure, not a single screw or metal bracket has been used. The primary frames have been constructed using Japanese timber joints while the floorboards and sarking boards are fixed using wooden nails. The larch was rough-sawn and left undried, minimising the energy required to prepare it. Untreated copper used for the roof is 100 per cent recycled.

The existing barn’s steel frame, structural slab, foundations and concrete yard have been retained. A pre-cut, 300mm timber I-beam structure was erected over five days within the steel frame, which was then re-clad using black corrugated metal and larch, with repurposed industrial walkways as solar shading.

The material palette is both sustainable and tactile and includes reclaimed timber and brick surfaces, bespoke sapele timber window and door frames sourced and fabricated in Bethnal Green, and quartz worktops. Timber from the original floor structure has been reincorporated to create terrace fencing, exterior floor and wall linings and for retaining the external sliding entrance shutters.

The initial open-plan layout of the middle floor has been tweaked with bespoke bi-folding walls to make the space more flexible by splitting it into two smaller areas, as well as with the addition of a ground-floor bathroom. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Pirouette House

£237,000

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See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

The ‘pods’ are entered by double doors from all four sides, giving the café flexibility as a multipurpose, reconfigurable space.

This year we received more than 170 entries from all around the country, which were whittled down to a shortlist of 20. They range from a boathouse to a bench, a prayer room to a workplace-cum-recording studio, and a bridge to an urban garden and play structure.

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