<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=1083252946034219&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

Journal

Digital Twins: Building Smarter, More Sustainable Futures

Architect holding iPad showing 3D BIM architectural model with section views, alongside timber scale model and material samples on an oak desk in a concrete and glass studio interior.

A digital twin is a virtual model of a building or site that's connected to real-world data and updates as conditions change. It's not a static 3D render or a BIM model in the conventional sense. It's a live representation of a physical asset, populated with information about how that …

Read Story

How to Design a Paragraph 84 Home in the English Countryside

Single-storey contemporary countryside home beside a lake, featuring dusty pink precast concrete walls, zinc roof, and full-height glazing reflecting in the water, designed for sustainability and harmony with nature.

Every great home begins as an act of belief To design and build a Paragraph 84 home is to take a leap of faith. Faith in your vision. Faith in the process. And faith in the power of design to move people – and planning officers – beyond what they thought possible. A low-energy Paragra …

Read Story

Reflections from the Brent Agents Forum

Contemporary pale stock brick infill house by RISE Design Studio on Hazel Road, Kensal Green, with a tall arched first-floor window, zinc roofline and clipped hedge frontage, set beside a traditional pitched-roof terrace, with a Hazel Road street sign in the foreground.

We attended the Brent Agents Forum this week, and it turned out to be one of the more useful planning conversations we've had in some time.

Read Story

Building Regenerative Cities Through Public Housing

Sustainable courtyard housing development in pale brick with timber louvred balconies, planted communal garden, stone path and flowering trees. Low-carbon residential architecture demonstrating design-led public housing.

The UK has a target of 1.5 million new homes. The debate around that number focuses almost entirely on how to reach it. The more important question is what those homes will be like to live in, what they'll cost to run, what they'll be made of, and what they'll do to the neighbourhoods …

Read Story

Big Roof: A Tennis Pavilion and Café in the Park

Architectural render of a pale brick tennis pavilion and café with a long cantilevered flat roof projecting over a paved terrace, full-height glazing, café tables and chairs, clay courts on both sides, mature trees and cherry blossom, with a Victorian building beyond. RISE Design Studio.

A roof is rarely just the thing that keeps the rain out. At its best it becomes the architecture itself, shaping the climate inside, defining the space, and pulling people together underneath it. Our tennis pavilion and café in the park started from exactly that idea: one very large r …

Read Story

Why most building problems are decided before planning is submitted

Construction site of a new build mid-build, with grey concrete blockwork walls, an exposed timber stud frame, a pitched slate roof and chimney, scaffolding, an excavator, stacked blocks and timber, and a waterlogged foundation under an overcast sky. RISE Design Studio.

By the time a building problem becomes obvious, it's usually too late to fix it cheaply. That's uncomfortable to hear, but it's one of the more reliable truths in the work. Most projects don't fail because of bad construction or poor workmanship, or even because costs ran away. They f …

Read Story

Could harvesting rain reshape how the UK uses water?

Rear garden of a Victorian brick house with a contemporary curved white extension and full-height arched glazing. A wooden water butt on the left collects rain from a white downpipe, beside a paved terrace, lawn with stepping stones, an olive tree and planting. RISE Design Studio.

Water rarely comes up when people talk about sustainable homes in the UK. Energy dominates the conversation and carbon takes the headlines. But water is quietly becoming the next real constraint on how we design and build. We've built our homes to do one thing with rain, which is to g …

Read Story

CarbonLite, clearly: how the AECB's standards help us design low-energy buildings that work

Architectural render of a contemporary low-energy extension to a Victorian brick house, with a deep oxblood-red rendered frame, full-height glazing to an upper room and a glimpsed lower-ground living space, black vertical screen, paved terrace and planting. RISE Design Studio.

CarbonLite is the AECB's framework for buildings that are genuinely low-energy, comfortable and healthy. It takes Passivhaus thinking, modelling in PHPP with a focus on fabric, ventilation and airtightness, and turns it into standards that UK designers and builders can actually delive …

Read Story

My Queen’s Park: A Community of Quiet Trailblazers

Interior of Queen’s Park House by RISE Design Studio, featuring an open-plan kitchen and dining area with exposed brick walls, natural timber cabinetry, a polished concrete floor, and large skylights that flood the space with natural light, blending sustainable design with timeless craftsmanship.

When Domus Nova came calling to explore the people and places shaping Queen’s Park, we were honoured to be featured alongside some of the neighbourhood’s most inspiring voices. Their piece, My Queen’s Park: The Trailblazers at the Heart of the Neighbourhood’s Soul, captured the unique …

Read Story

Hopefield Avenue, Queen's Park: arches, light and living with nature

Rear garden view of a Victorian brick terrace in Queen's Park with a contemporary white-framed extension featuring tall arched and U-shaped glazing. A curved pond sits in the lawn, with an olive tree, ornamental grasses and planting along brick walls in evening light. RISE Design Studio.

The Victorian terraces in Queen's Park have a quiet dignity to them. At Hopefield Avenue, our proposal reworks one of these houses with that character intact, keeping what's good about it and adding a few clear moves of our own. Rear garden view of Victorian terrace in Queen’s Park - …

Read Story

Subscribe by email