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Hana's most recent article 'How do you do 'the right thing'?' for the RIBA Journal is available in the July/August edition, addressing the need to engage with communities in developing schemes to take to Planning, and how best to do it.
"Designing - and gaining support - for schemes that do represent what is best for 'the community' as a whole means using local engagement as a research tool (...) Build an evidence base for what local issues really are."
We're delighted to be part of the team appointed to develop a new masterplan for Colchester city centre. Working to make our locality as great as it can be, is at the heart of why we exist as a practice and we've been advocating for joined-up planning for Colchester for a long time, so it's great to see this project come forward. We are part of a team led by We Made That, and involving leading transport consultants Steer, socio-economic consultants PRD and Authentic Futures giving heritage advice.
Over the next few months the team will be consulting widely across our community and developing a strategic plan for the city centre along with site-specific recommendations and development briefs. A big part of the commission is developing a new transport plan for how public transport, cycling and walking can become the easy and natural first choice for everyone using the city centre. This is imperative to tackle our climate impacts and lower carbon emissions, as well as improving air quality and creating a healthier city for everyone.
This builds on our work over a number of years on public realm, independent business, culture, community development and, of course, investing ourselves in the town centre - and is part of our commitment to helping Colchester make the most of its new city status.
Read more on Colchester Borough Council's website.
Congratulations to director Tom Grieve, who has just passed the Certified Passive House Designer/Consultant exam. Tom embarked on this challenging course as a way to further develop his understanding of how to reduce carbon emissions, improve his understanding of construction physics, and develop the skill base of the practice. We are already benefitting from the knowledge and skills he has gained, and are excited about how we can continue to improve.
At HAT, we strive to be rigorous and responsible about reducing the environmental impacts of our buildings, in both operational and embodied carbon, material and resource consumption, and whole life impacts. There is always more for us to learn and this is just one of the steps we are taking.
We have recently been appointed to lead the design team bringing the amazing Lowestoft Town Hall back into action as the centre of community and civic life in the town. It's a fantastic Grade 2 listed building and the brief is for it to become the home for the newly created Lowestoft Town Council, a venue for all sorts of wonderful and creative activities and events, and more...
We are working with Richard Griffiths Architects as our conservation advisors, Max Fordham LLP, Momentum Engineering, and with Moss King as project managers.
We recently broke ground on the new affordable workspace, covered market and public realm project in Jaywick Sands. We've been working in Jaywick for a number of years, involved at both strategic and grassroots levels, so it's really exciting for us to see this moment arrive. The £4m project is on behalf of Tendring District Council, with additional funding from Essex County Council and the Getting Building Fund via SELEP.
The team includes Ingleton Wood LLP, Momentum Engineering and Potter Raper. TJ Evers are the contractor.
We're thrilled that our project at Ely Museum has won two awards from the Royal Institute of British Architects this year. We won both a RIBA East award and were also the winner of the 2022 RIBA East Conservation Award, in recognition of the approach we took to restoring, conserving and enhancing the Grade 2 listed building.
The judges said "HAT Projects have taken on a badly degraded historic building and lovingly restored and extended it to give new life and purpose to Ely Museum, creating a great resource for the town...The project exemplifies the rejuvenation of a civic building in a way that provides great community value." We're delighted for our wonderful client at the Museum, and the whole project team who worked so hard through the Covid-19 pandemic to achieve real quality in the finished building.
Read the full judge's citation.
We've been shortlisted for a wonderful project at the Henry Moore Foundation's site in Perry Green, Hertfordshire. The project will adapt and extend the Sheep Field Barn, to provide space for the Foundation's education and outreach activities as well as improved gallery spaces.
From 1940 until his death in 1986, Moore lived and worked in rural Hertfordshire where he acquired over 70 acres of land and set up various studios, creating the ideal environment in which he could make and display his work and cater to an international demand for exhibitions. Now open to the public, Henry Moore Studios & Gardens offers a unique insight into the artist’s working practice and showcases a large selection of Moore’s renowned monumental sculptures in the landscape in which they were created. It's wonderful for us to be considering how the site evolves for the next generation.
Hana has recorded the first video lecture in a new series for the Architecture Foundation and Whitechapel Gallery, linked to the gallery's current exhibition 'A Century of the Artist's Studio 1920 - 2020'.
The series highlights collective models of artist studio provision and was an opportunity to reflect on our work and what we've learnt over many years making spaces for artists - from our work with ACME on purpose-built affordable studios at High House Artists' Studios, to renovations of existing buildings including Gasworks and within Redbridge Town Hall for SPACE studios, as well as the development our own building Trinity Works.
The exhibition runs until 5th June 2022.
Hana has been commissioned to write a series of articles for the RIBA Journal on working with the planning system. The first, featured in the April 2022 edition is titled 'How you can help planners approve your scheme' and spells out what architects need to deliver to help planners say yes.
"When architects zero in on design, ignoring the other policies that need to be satisfied, they don't make it easy for planners to say yes."
We are proud that co-director Hana Loftus has been nominated as one of The Planner's Women of Influence for 2022.
This is the fourth year The Planner has produced such a list, featuring 50 of the most influencial women in and around planning, as nominated by their readers and selected by a panel of judges. The list is representative of the women whose commitment to support colleagues and the community, creativity, inclusivity and diversity, and achievement has most affected the planning profession over the last year - "a year of much discussion about levelling up, continued concern about health, inequality and the built environment, and an intense concentration on the climate crisis."
Her citation says that “Hana cares deeply about public participation in planning, has led major programmes of public engagement and consultation, and effectively co-designed large and small development projects. She also has an in-depth understanding of policy making – having written policy at local plan level down to supplementary planning documents, design guides and unadopted guidance. She is a confident and experienced voice when working with senior political leaders, civil servants and the private sector – sensitive to the political nuances and, importantly, able to build bridges between different interest groups.”