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Journal

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 …

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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 …

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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 - …

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Sutton Churches Tennis Clubhouse: a pavilion for sport and community

Architectural render of the Sutton Churches tennis clubhouse: a timber pavilion with an exposed glulam roof structure and red fascia cantilevering over a glazed clubroom and terrace. Players are on red clay courts beyond, with people seated at tables under the canopy in evening light. RISE Design Studio.

The new clubhouse at Sutton Churches Tennis Club does more than store rackets and pour drinks. It's a compact timber pavilion of around 100 square metres, lowered into its site and designed around the social side of a tennis club as much as the playing of tennis. The structure is cros …

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The case for the walkable city

Illustration of Norman Foster delivering a keynote speech on sustainable, walkable cities at a design conference. His words highlight the importance of compact urban design that prioritises people, health, and the environment.

The world is going to keep building cities whether we plan them well or not. The UN expects around 2.5 billion more people to be living in urban areas by 2050, taking the urban share of the global population from roughly 55% to about 68%, with close to 90% of that growth in Asia and A …

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Crafting with earth: Sean Ronnie Hill in conversation with Adam Weismann of Clayworks

Adam Weismann of Clayworks sits on a low ledge against a curved pink wall, between two tall textured green clay artworks resembling layered sediment, speaking to two people seen from behind in the foreground of a gallery space with a cobbled floor. RISE Design Studio.

Clayworks makes clay plasters we've used on a number of projects, including Birch & Clay Refugio, Douglas House and Herbert Paradise. Adam Weismann founded the company with his wife Katy, and also makes work as an artist through Claymoon Studio. We sat down to talk about how they …

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A different kind of map: the architecture of Notting Hill

Trellick Tower in North Kensington against a clear blue sky: a tall Brutalist concrete residential block with a separate slender service tower linked by walkways, balconies along the main façade, and green treetops at the base. RISE Design Studio.

Notting Hill is one of the most architecturally mixed parts of London. Walk from Westbourne Grove to Ladbroke Grove and you'll pass Georgian terraces, Victorian townhouses, hidden mews that were once stables, post-war social housing and the odd modernist insertion, often within a few …

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How to design a modern tennis clubhouse: inside RISE's new pavilion for Sutton Churches

Plain timber-coloured architectural study model of a tennis clubhouse with a sweeping pitched roof, a tall glazed gable opening, an internal bench and a covered terrace with tables and chairs. A latticed court fence runs along the left. RISE Design Studio.

Every clubhouse starts as a conversation before it starts as a drawing. At Sutton Churches Tennis Club, that conversation began with a straightforward question: what does a tennis club actually need from its building today?

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Building with earth and fibre: the case for bio-based architecture

An aged eighteenth-century engraved plate showing earth and timber building techniques: two gabled house elevations with round openings and exposed framing, arch geometry studies, and detailed drawings of timber formwork and a rammed-earth wall. RISE Design Studio.

Some of the most useful ideas in architecture aren't new. We tend to assume progress means adding complexity, when often it means going back to something that already worked and bringing modern rigour to it. Building with what the land provides, soil, stone and plant fibre, is one of …

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A museum for David Hockney: a concept

Concept interior of a contemporary David Hockney museum featuring minimalist architecture, reflective water channel, natural daylight from rooflights and colourful artworks inspired by landscape and colour studies, designed as a sustainable cultural building by RISE Design Studio.

This is a thought experiment rather than a commission. We set ourselves a question: if you were to design a museum for David Hockney, what would it need to be? He's an artist who keeps reinventing how he works, from photo-collage to the iPad, so a building to hold that work can't be a …

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