The Apple House, a completed education and wellbeing hub made made almost entirely from natural materials, recently photographed by Nick Dearden

Our designs for the Community and Education Hub at Woodoaks Farm have received planning permission and next stage delivery funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

We’re returning to Buckinghamshire this March with Open City to visit some brilliant community housing schemes and meet their residents. We were immensely privileged to meet Peter and Margaret Aldington at Turn End last year. Tickets are available via the Open City Website.

Design for a temporary lectern for Kate Macintosh’s 2022 keynote lecture, Architecture for Society. The design references blockwork details at her sheltered housing project Macintosh Court.

In Pollards Hill we’ve been testing community developed options for the future use of a disused building, through an installation and three week programme called Pollards Pop-Up!

Our collaboration with Build Up Foundation, Hortus Collective and artist Op.x has been shortlisted in the NLA’s Revive Bramcote Park competition.

Okra were finalists in Archiboo and UPP’s pitch competition to create a new model for the future of student accommodation across the UK.

We gave a presentation on community engagement-led architecture and supported an ideas workshop at Hoxton Gardens with 13-16 year olds, as part of the LSA’s free National Saturday Club’s “(Un)Building” programme, led by Ya Ya Chen and Roy Coupland

We’ve recently been selected by Southwark Council to develop designs for the mixed-use Folgate Yard site, in collaboration with DRMM. We’re researching how a timber barn can provide affordable workspaces for light industry and manufacturing on the Old Kent Road.

We collaborated with the South London Gallery in 2022 to deliver a short-course in architecture. Workshops took place in unique locations across South London, each with rich, modern architectural legacies, including Dawson’s Heights, Walter’s Way, 6A’s Clore Gallery and the Orozco Garden

We’re running free workshops for young people at the Sky Garden in Dalston alongside the project team at Brunswick East & Urban Organic. RSVP via this Resy link.

The Wetland Project, our entry for the Architecture Foundation’s Antepavilion competition

We’re collaborating with The Moasic Rooms, exploring The Role of Heritage in Community Resistance on the Central Hill Estate, Lambeth as part of their public programming for DAAR’s Stateless Heritage Exhibition. Find out more at the Mosaic Rooms event page

Aidan presenting our pitch for UPP and Archiboo’s Future of Student Accommodation competition. Our proposal addressed endemic social isolation in flat-based accommodation, through sequences of privacy and communality arranged around generous shared common spaces and gardens

Emerging designs for our Orchard educational space project. The building intends to integrate low-carbon thinking, utilising infilled hemp between the structure and leaving this exposed as an interior finish.

Tiered seating for garden performances at House of Noise Community Arts Centre, Lewisham

Aidan and Roz in discussion with Merlin Fulcher, focussing on their research into Modern Camden Housing and their walking tours of radical social housing. Scheduled for Week 8 of the Architecture Foundation’s online lecture programme.

Okra has been delivering workshops in primary schools, as part of the Barbican Box educational project. The project seeks to inspire a new generation from diverse backgrounds to feel empowered in the fields of architecture, arts and mathematics.

Close up from our recently completed structures workshop with Architecture students at the CASS. Students explored using a single material to create a framed belvedere structure projecting from the landscape.

Join us as we cycle to radical 20th century public housing, taking easy, medium and hard routes through West, North and South London. We meet residents who tell their stories of past, present and future. Tickets are available at: https://open-city.org.uk/events

Our presentation as part of Glasgow School of Art's Critical Catalyst lecture series is now available to watch back at the following link

Construction sequence of Nokishita-Barn, our runner-up entry for a competition organised by Grizedale Arts in the Lake District. We proposed a simple, lightweight and flexible timber structure that synthesised Japanese and Cumbrian building traditions

We're collaborating with the Architecture Foundation on a walking tours programme, visiting radical 20th century public housing in the London Borough of Camden. Tickets are available at www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/tours

We collaborated with Open City Learning during lockdown and made an online architecture workshop for children. In Stories of Your City, readily available materials can be used to make a theatre to perform the stories of your local neighbourhood. The workshop can be found at learning.open-city.org.uk/stories-of-your-city/