In a series celebrating BD’s Architect of the Year Awards finalists, we look at the Refurbishment and Reinvention Architect of the Year shortlist
Earlier this year BD announced all the architects who made it on to the shortlists for our prestigious annual Architect of the Year Awards.
Now we are shining the spotlight on each category in turn and publishing a selection of the images that impressed the judges.
This year’s judges include: Yẹmí Aládérun, head of development, Meridian Water (Enfield Council); Amr Assaad, director, Buckley Gray Yeoman; Lee Bennet, partner, Sheppard Robson; Sarah Cary, chief development officer, White City at Imperial; Ben Derbyshire, chair, HTA Design LLP; Martyn Evans, creative director, U+I; Dicle Guntas, managing director, HGG London; Gavin Hale-Brown, director, Henley Halebrown; Tanvir Hasan, director emeritus, Donald Insall Associates; Lee Higson, board director, Eric Parry Architects; David Kohn, founder and director, David Kohn Architects; Oliver Lowrie, director and founder, Ackroyd Lowrie; Anna Mansfield, director, Publica; Jo McCafferty, director, Levitt Bernstein; Ian McKnight, director, Hall McKnight; John McRae, director, Orms; Andrew Mellor, partner, PRP; Sadie Morgan, director, dRMM; Setareh Neshati, director of regeneration and development – delivery and operations, Westminster City Council; David Partridge, co-founder, Senze; Manisha Patel, director, kpk Studios; Sarah Robinson, associate director, The King’s Foundation; Simon Saint, principal, Woods Bagot; Philippa Simpson, director for buildings and renewal, Barbican Centre; David Stansfield, senior partner, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios; Amin Taha, director, Groupwork; Magali Thomson, project lead for placemaking, Great Ormond Street Hospital; Ola Uduku, head of school, Liverpool School of Architecture; Tatiana von Preussen, co-founder, vPPR; Richard Wardle, director, Stanton Williams.
Today’s shortlist is for Refurbishment and Reinvention Architect of the Year.
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM)
AHMM’s entry demonstrates its belief that smart adaptations and intelligent additions can ‘transform buildings into attractive, efficient, and future-proofed places’. Its masterplan for the Norton Folgate development on the City of London fringes combines a variety of approaches including restoration, extension, remodelling and façade retention. In Bristol, the practice has reinvented two Victorian sheds in the University of Bristol’s emerging innovation campus. Ongoing projects include the residential reinvention of the former London Chest Hospital site in Bethnal Green.
Corstorphine & Wright
Corstorphine & Wright’s diverse submission features built projects The Scoop, an office reinvention with a distinctive concave façade in London’s Southwark, and the transformation of a WW2 transmitter bunker into a luxury holiday home on the Dorset coast.
Construction is underway on the £80 million life sciences hub conversion of the Grade II listed Victoria House in Bloomsbury. The £250 million reinvention of the Grafton Centre shopping mall in Cambridge as an innovation district is at planning stage.
Fathom Architects
Revitalisations of buildings from three different centuries comprise the entry from Fathom. In London’s Farringdon it has completed the regeneration of The Waterman, which brings together four Victorian warehouses. An extension and reconfiguration of Christ Church Woking, a Grade II listed building dating to 1889, is currently on site. More recent buildings include the completed LOMA retrofit of a 1990s building on Lower Marsh, and interventions to the reception and rooftop of 2 Pancras Square, a building just a decade old, both in London.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
The practice describes itself as transforming existing buildings into ‘resilient, low-carbon and socially impactful places for the future’.
In Basingstoke, Plant is a retrofit (delivered by Twelve Architects) of the modernist office building formerly known as Mountbatten House, reinstating its iconic rooftop gardens. The practice has also completed an adaptive reuse of the University of Plymouth’s 1979 Babbage Building. The entry includes ongoing projects Watford Town Hall and Colosseum, and the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool.
Harrison Stringfellow
The Liverpool practice’s entry showcases four projects in its home city. These include The Changing Rooms, which reimagines a derelict park facility at Mossley Hill as a nature-connected wellbeing centre, co-designed and built by community members, and the Bronte, a retrofit of a 1960s youth centre in the city centre.
In the Baltic District, The Flint transformed a taxi repair garage into a retail and exhibition space, while The Hartley Hatch and Hut creates a café kiosk in a former watchman’s hut in the Royal Albert Dock.
Haworth Tompkins
The practice describes itself as delivering projects that are ‘both culturally resonant and technically innovative’. In the Swedish city of Malmö, it has revitalised a nationally listed 1898 circus hall theatre with increased capacity and improved connections to the surrounding streetscape. In Cambridge, its expansion of Pembroke College combines refurbished existing and new buildings. The entry’s two London projects include the refurbishment of the Warburg Institute research centre for the University of London.
Squire & Partners
Regenerations of two Richard Seifert-designed buildings feature in the entry from Squire & Partners. The retrofit of Space House adapts and extends the Grade II listed Brutalist building while meeting RIBA 2030 targets for embodied carbon. The BREEAM Outstanding refurbishment of 7 Devonshire Square extends the lifespan of an office building completed in 1982. The submission is completed by the reuse and regeneration of 65 Gresham Street, which gained planning consent in 2023.
Wright & Wright Architects
The practice describes its approach as founded on how ‘the considered assessment of existing structures can unlock complex programmes’.
Its entry features two University of Oxford projects: proposed student accommodation at St Edmund Hall, and the Passivhaus standard Spencer Building at Corpus Christi College, completed in 2024. In London, it recently finished a three-year decarbonising refurbishment of Lambeth Palace, and transformed the lower floors of the British Academy at John Nash’s Carlton House Terrace.
Postscript
The Architect of the Year Awards are on Wednesday, 15 October 2025 at the Marriott Grosvenor Square, Grosvenor Sq, London, W1K 6JP.
Book your place here.
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