Latest

16 08 2021

On Sunday 12th September 2021, 1-5pm, Eleanor Palmer Primary School Science Lab will open to the public as part of Open House. The design of the Lab is an example of AY Architects’ philosophy of a holistic approach to passive environmental design and designing for well-being for schools. It illustrates how architecture can help to reduce the reliance on energy-consuming equipment. As an integrated passive design approach, the servicing of the building is kept very simple and environmental control is provided within the building fabric, by the use of façade and roof openings and the use of natural light and air. The objective is to create a healthy and comfortable environment, easy to control, where environmental factors generate a meaningful part of the architecture. For more information and to book a tour by the architects, please access this link.

08 01 2021

Yeoryia’s project ‘Open Scoring in Architecture’ has been shortlisted for a RIBA President’s Award for Research 2020 in the Design & Technical Category. These awards celebrate the best research in the fields of architecture and the built environment in the world. Yeoryia’s project takes as a starting point the experimental workshop LATTICE that she run at UQAM in Montreal in 2017, exploring the possibilities that emerge within a group of designers who welcome plurality and performance in their practice via the use of an architectural score. One of the advantages of open scoring in architecture is the way in which it encourages both autonomy and collaboration, increasing the range of ideas, experiences and opportunities available to designers. As an architectural method, it grounds design on a condition of social experience and shared authorship. By foregrounding the process rather than the outcome in architectural design; by opening up this process to a social embodiment of time between actors, materials and tools; and by deliberately acknowledging its production within a collective, open scoring in architecture has the capacity to fundamentally change the ways in which architecture is taught and practiced as a social activity and understood as a social artefact.

08 12 2020

The 2020 RIBA Silver Medal (for the best design project produced at RIBA Part 2) was awarded to Anthony’s student Robert Beeny for his Devil’s Valley Geothermal Co-operative. This project is situated in an area of Tuscany, the Devil’s Valley, which has become known for its production of renewable and geothermal energy over the past century. To protect the livelihood of local communities relying on that energy source, Robert proposes a new rural self-build development, powered by a geothermal well, with a pipeline and manufacturing spaces cascading down the valley landscape. Robert was taught by Anthony Boulanger along with Callum Perry and Stuart Piercy at DS16 at the University of Westminster.

05 12 2020

Yeoryia has published a chapter in Arts & Dementia: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (De Gruyeter, 2021), a book edited by Ruth Mateus-Berr and L. Vanessa Gruber. Her chapter, titled ‘Performing the Architectural Plan’, examines the neurobiological perspectives of allocentric and egocentric spatial referencing, how they interplay in the human brain, and how their function changes during Alzheimer’s disease. It discusses a collaborative mode of drawing that reconsiders the gap between representation and occupation, incorporating in the architectural plan ‘lines of inhabitation’.

11 01 2020

We have recently completed a major extension and remodelling of the Main Building for Camden School for Girls. The intervention includes an entirely new entrance building, a gallery area, a dinning hall, a staff area and associated landscaping. The project adds to the School’s identity, providing significant improvements in terms of operations, security and quality of experience.

11 01 2020

We have recently completed an extension and remodelling of the Sixth Form Building for Camden School for Girls. We have improved spaces in the existing building and added a two story extension to accommodate a new common area, a quiet study room, and a new classroom. This is one of two building projects that AY Architects have recently realised for Camden School for Girls.

20 11 2019

Eleanor Palmer Science Lab has been Highly Commended in Wood Awards 2019 in the ‘Education and Public Sector’ category. The jury who visited the building commended the design of its wooden primary and secondary structures, internal linings and built-in furniture, and how all these elements make a children’s ‘haven’ in a challenging site next to a busy road.

06 08 2019

Eleanor Palmer Science Lab is shortlisted for a Wood Award 2019. ‘The Wood Awards is the UK’s premier competition for excellence in architecture…. The Awards aim to recognise, encourage and promote outstanding design, craftsmanship and installation using wood’. The Winners will be announced in November 2019.

28 06 2019

Eleanor Palmer Science Lab, built for Eleanor Palmer Primary School in Camden, has won a RIBA National Award. It is one out of only five school buildings awarded a National RIBA Award and the only state school building in the country that has won it. The RIBA National Awards ‘are given to buildings across the UK recognised as significant contributions to architecture’. A list of the winners with jury quotations can be found here.

26 05 2019

Eleanor Palmer Science Lab, built for Eleanor Palmer Primary School in Camden, has won a RIBA London Award. This is a model building for flexible and adaptable STEM/STEAM teaching for young children. The RIBA jury noted: ‘this small wooden structure answers its programmatic and architectural brief with aplomb… An empathetic client/architect relationship has resulted in the creation of a delightful, multi layered, beguilingly fresh new building typology for primary school children to engage their curiosity and enjoyment of the sciences. An excellent example of simple, thoughtful passive environmental design and a notable achievement for everyone involved.’ For their full quotation, please access the RIBA webpage.

Selected

27 07 2018

We are pleased to announce that Dartmouth Park House is in the RIBA’s selection of finalists for the 2018 Stephen Lawrence Prize awarded to the best new project in the UK with a construction cost of under £1 million. The building is also a contender for this year’s RIBA House of the Year Award and has already received a RIBA London Regional Award. The design challenges and reinvents the Victorian house with brave spatial moves that carve the building and with intimately crafted insertions that entirely transform it. In 2013 AY Architects were Winner of the Stephen Lawrence Prize with Montpelier Community Nursery. The winner of this year’s Stephen Lawrence Prize will be revealed at the RIBA’s Stirling Prize awards ceremony on 10 October.

18 05 2018

Dartmouth Park House is Winner of a RIBA London Award. The RIBA Awards are regarded ‘as the most valued architecture awards’ in the UK, reflecting an unrivalled ‘commitment to designing buildings for the improvement and enhancement of people’s lives’. The jury which visited the building praised it as ‘a very successful reinvention of the Victorian house’ and an ‘unusual and exotic home’ reflecting the clients’ personal interests. Beginning as a modest conversion of an over-developed terraced house, the project became an ambitious redevelopment of the entire building, including a courtyard, a 3-floor void with a theatrical staircase, and a sense of warmth and continuity achieved by using crafted timber elements throughout interior and exterior spaces. For the jury’s full commentary after visiting the building, please visit this RIBA link.

21 06 2016

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‘Losing Myself’ represents Ireland at the 2016 Venice Biennale. The project, created collaboratively by Yeoryia Manolopoulou and Niall McLaughlin, involves a multimedia installation and ongoing research about architecture and dementia. The Pavilion was opened by the Irish Ambassador for Italy Bobby McDonagh, followed by an introduction by Raymond Ryan, Curator of the Heinz Architectural Centre, Carnegue Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. It will be open to the public until 27 November 2016. For more information visit our website, documentation on vimeo, coverage by ArchDaily and WIRED.

08 06 2016

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AY Architect’s Flutes is exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2016 in a twofold display of a prototype and a drawing study.  A 248-year-old institution, the Summer Exhibition presents ‘art created by everyone from emerging artists to the biggest names in contemporary art and architecture’. 13 June – 21 August 2016.

13 02 2016

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We are pleased to announce AY Architects’ inclusion in New Architects 3, the ‘definitive survey of the best emerging architectural practices in Britain today’, edited by The Architecture Foundation and published by Merrell. Copies can be ordered here.

30 11 2015

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We are delighted that Yeoryia has been appointed Curator of Ireland’s representation at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition in the Venice Biennale 2016. Yeoryia will work closely with the Commissioner of the project Niall McLaughlin Architects to explore architecture’s role in understanding, representing and designing spaces for people with Alzheimer’s. The project, entitled ‘Losing Myself’, responds to the Biennale’s overall theme REPORTING FROM THE FRONT, set by Alejandro Aravena. It will comprise a central architectural piece for Venice, an on line project bringing together different scientific disciplines, and a social media campaign extending the influence of the Biennale piece to a broader audience.

29 03 2014

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We are participating in the exhibition ‘Letters to the Mayor’, which runs from 29 April to 24 May in the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. The exhibition presents letters written by a group of international architects who address 10 key political leaders around the world.

09 02 2014

Montpelier Community Nursery has been Highly Commended in the 2013 Camden Design Awards.

15 01 2014

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Yeoryia’s book Architectures of Chance published by Ashgate as part of the ‘Design Research in Architecture’ series is now out and will be formally launched in the autumn. Copies are sold on Amazon and the RIBA.

01 01 2014

Montpelier Community Nursery is short-listed in the ‘People’s Choice’ category of the 2014 Camden Design Awards.

06 10 2013

AY Architects is one of the six finalists in the Small Project Architect of the Year category of Building Design Magazine’s 2013 Young Architect of the Year Awards.

27 09 2013

Montpelier Community Nursery is the Winner of the 2013 RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize, awarded at last nights Stirling Prize ceremony for the best building in the UK with a construction budget under £1m. Congratulations to everyone who was part of this enduring project!

10 06 2013

Montpelier Community Nursery is one of the 20 buildings in the UK mid-listed for the coveted Stirling Prize!