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Selected buildings

Buildings that get better with age

Vision

One idea per building, carried down to the door handle

Studio

A bureau of two, in one room

Enter →
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Vision

One idea
Repairable
Oriented

& finished down to the handle

Principles
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01

Site

We start on the plot: sun, wind, water, what the neighbours can see. The plan follows that before it follows anything else.

02

Brief

How you live now, what you want to change, the budget you actually have and the date you want to move in.

03

Sketch

The first plan and the massing at 1:200. Cheap to change, so this is where we argue and change things.

04

Permission

Drawings for the council and the months it takes to get them through. We do the arguing there as well.

05

Drawings

The technical set: every junction the builder will price, order and put together on site.

06

Tender

Three builders, one set of drawings, one honest comparison — same scope, same words, same page.

07

On site

Weekly visits, questions answered within a day, every change written down and priced before it happens.

08

Handover

The keys, the manual, and the door handle you touch every morning — drawn by the same hand as the roof.

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Works

Houses
Workshops
Public rooms

& the drawings behind them

Featured
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Fen House
01

Fen House

/ Private house

A single-storey house around a walled garden, on a plot that floods twice a year. The floor sits 600 mm above the fen; everything below that line is brick that can dry out.

Suffolk · 2025 · In design
Sawtooth Workshop
02

Sawtooth Workshop

/ Workshop

North light over the benches, a blank wall for the timber store. The saw-tooth roof is the cheapest way to get even light across forty metres without a single south-facing window.

Kent · 2024 · On site
Marsh Pavilion
03

Marsh Pavilion

/ Public pavilion

Twelve columns, a flat canopy and nothing else. Built in eleven weeks so the birdwatchers kept their season, and detailed so the whole thing can be unbolted and moved.

Norfolk · 2024 · Finished
Row of Four
04

Row of Four

/ Terraced houses

Four houses under one roof line, each with its own door on the street. The party walls carry the load, so the fronts are free to change without asking the neighbours.

Cambridge · 2023 · Finished
Quarry School
05

Quarry School

/ Village school

Two wings around an open yard, on the floor of a worked-out quarry. The stone of the retaining wall came out of the same hole a hundred years earlier.

Derbyshire · 2022 · Finished
Lake Boathouse
06

Lake Boathouse

/ Boathouse

A shed for two boats and a deck to sit on. Larch, untreated, left to go silver at the same rate as the jetty it stands on.

Windermere · 2021 · Finished
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Studio

Alva
Mira

& one room in Cambridge

People
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Studio

Two people, one room, forty buildings

We keep the bureau small on purpose. Every drawing that leaves this room has been through both of us.

Alva
Founding architect · concept, site, permits — everything before the first line and most of what comes after
Mira
Interiors and materials · from the stair rail down to the door handle
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Say hello

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