A commission won in an invited competition.  A new dwelling sharing a borrowed landscape with a Regency villa. Planning and listed building applications approved under delegated powers following extensive community consultation.  Lifecycle carbon calculations help minimise the amount of concrete and steel used, with engineered off-site OSB cassettes offering a quick and quiet construction of a low carbon primary structure in a dense residential neighbourhood.

A house for philanthropy is a low carbon, lifetime home with a waterwise garden to echo the woodlands of the adjacent heath.

The building’s design reflects its rich pattern of uses, as a family house, a home to a unique library and a community gathering place. The house is at one with the landscape, with each space directly connected to the gardens beyond.

Digital manufacturing and traditional craftsmanship combine to clad a primary structure, made off site from ethically sourced British timber, with handmade brick. Windows are positioned to promote passive regulation of the internal environment.

Year: 2021 - 2024
Floor / site area: 375m2 / 2,280m2 
Service: RIBA Stages 0 - 4 
Location: North London 
Category: Home + 
51 team: Alice Bates, Catherine du Toit, Una Haran, Cesar Jucker, Emma Magnusson, Caterina Periera, Jordan Whitewood-Neal, Peter Thomas 
Structural Engineer: Price & Myers - Tim Lucas and Bedir Bekar 
MEP Engineer: Seneca - Mark Thompson 
Landscape Architect: FFLO - James Fox 
Planting Design: Noel Kingsbury 

Engineered Timber Cassettes: BlokBuild Bricks and glazed specials: Petersen Tegl Glazing: Cantifix, Skyframe and Sedak 
Daylight Analysis: Right of Light Consulting Floors: Britannicus Stone Stairs: Cake Industries CDM: Goddard Consulting - Marcus Goddard 

The Yard is the new headquarters for spectacle makers Cubitts – combining their workshop, archive, offices and events under one roof for the first time.

It occupies 13,000 sqft of former Victorian stables in the industrial backlands of Kings Cross. Working closely with the existing fabric, redundant layers were stripped away to reveal original brickwork and timber floors, alongside monolithic concrete from the 1980s.

A red-green colour shift distinguishes the laboratory from the rest of the spaces, subtle adjustments to levels and surfaces allow a complex work flow to feel natural and easy, and lush planting softens the tough industrial frame.

Dezeen: Cubitts' first dedicated headquarters… 
Wallpaper: A new home for spectacle maker Cubitts…
Financial Times: Why eyewear stores are taking over…

Year: 2025 - 6
Client: Cubitts
Location: Kings Cross, London
Category: Workplace
51 team: Gordon Au-Yeung, Alice Bates, Catherine du Toit, Peter Thomas  
Structural Engineer: Price & Myers
Photography: Moeez Ali, Felix Speller and Peter Thomas

“As far as I’m aware, Cubitts is the only place in the UK bringing together frame design, frame making, lens glazing, repair, training, and archive under one roof at this scale; and one of only a small handful in the world…It is a revival of the old manufacturing optician: the person who tested your eyes might also understand the lens, grind the glass, make the frame, fit it, adjust it, and repair it.”

Tom Broughton, in Dezeen

The Poet’s House combines a sensitive restoration of a listed cottage with the creation of a contemporary writer’s studio.

The studio invites the outside in, dissolving boundaries between inside and outside; a glass skylight scatters dappled shade from the plum tree’s canopy and a timber pivot window frames views of the pretty cottage garden. 

Natural and reclaimed materials, salvaged on and off site, have been carefully selected, cleaned and re-assembled to shape something new. Lime and hemp plastered cork insulation creates a warm interior, flooded with natural light.

Year: 2021-2026
Client: Claire Potter
Location: Hampstead Conservation Area, London
Category: Home
51 team: Alice Bates, Catherine du Toit, Una Haran, Emma Magnusson
Engineers: Price & Myers
Contractor: Triple Dot
Staggered Shelves: Charles Thomson
Photography: Peter Thomas

Hrōst is the Old English word for the wooden framework of a roof and origin of  “roost”. Hrōst is a prototype, informed by detailed research, wide ranging dialogues and published standards.

Hrōst offers adaptable site specific proxies for local wildlife. Some species will live together communally, others territorially. Some require the creation of unique conditions and are very particular, others less so.  

Alongside wider habitat restoration, new hedgerows, trees and water, the homegrown timber eaves, crawl spaces, cavities, gaps and hollows offer invitations to nest, roost, perch and shelter – a proxy barn, an architecture for other species. 

Hrōst is installed on the Hardy Way in Netherbury, Dorset, where monitoring is ongoing. To date it's being used and explored in various by species including tawny owls, bats, woodpeckers jackdaws, woodpigeons, great and blue tits, spiders and a host of insects.

The design is informed by dialogues with species experts and published standards on ecology and nesting by the British Trust for Ornithology, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Barn Owl Trust, the Bat Conservation Trust and the Butterfly Trust and Edward and Mandy Mayer of Swift Conservation.

Year: 2025
Team: Alice Bates, Catherine du Toit, Cesar Jucker, Peter Thomas in collaboration with Tim Lucas and Robert Nillson of Price & Myers and Stuart Beagle, Dan Beardshaw, Millie Dernie, Caleb Driver, Jonathan Green and Andrew Slough of BlokBuild with support from Passive Purple, True Wool and the Zoological Society of London.

Hrōst was the first work to be shown in Lovelace Courtyard on the occasion of the Royal Academy 2025 Summer Exhibition.

The theme of Dialogues, set by coordinator Farshid Moussavi RA, saw architecture spread throughout the main galleries, and beyond, creating new conversations with other disciplines rather than remaining confined to its own space.

Fitting for a prototypical design informed by dialogues with species experts and published standards on ecology and nesting including the British Trust for Ornithology, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, ZSL and Swift Conservation.

Photographs on two preceeding pages of Hrōst relocated to the Hardy Way, Dorset: Hélène Binet

Architecture for Other Species champions the vitality of nature in public spaces and the role biodiversity plays in our own health.

Since 2010, 51 architecture has been developing small, species specific structures for wildlife in cities. Public commissions include rain gardens, insect gardens, swift refuges, bat roosts, hedgehog gateways and beehives.

Although our core business is increasingly tailored to specific sites, providing bespoke designs to landscape architects, our habi-sabi range of flatpack nest boxes are also available both to the public and to contractors.

Supported by the RSPB and Swift Conservation
Swift drawings by Jonathan Pomroy

Year: 2010—
Clients: University of Birmingham, Chelsea Barracks, GPB, Inmidtown, London Festival of Architecture, Lendlease, Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, Woking Borough Council, Zoological Society of London and private clients worldwide
Category: Wildlife conservation
Innovations: Designed to briefs by species experts for urban public spaces
Team: Peter Beardsley, Catherine du Toit, Jonathan Harker, Billy Sinclair, Thomas Smethurst, Matthew Smith, Peter Thomas, Carolina Vallejo

Camera Obscura is a 1930s villa whose dark hallway has been filled with light and pierced by views of lush planting.

51 architecture collaborated with artisans and craftsmen, drawing on the area’s architectural character to create a timeless family home with a finely detailed palette of new and rescued oak, hung clay tiles, brick, corten and glass.

The villa’s historic character is restored through careful refurbishment of original wood mosaic floors and carved panelling, with new joinery and an ash stair showcasing the synergy of digital and traditional craftsmanship. 

Year: 2022
Client: David Caden, Monica Ugidos and family
Location: Childs Hill, London
Category: Home
51 team: Catherine du Toit, Thomas Smethurst, Peter Thomas
Engineers: Price & Myers - Tim Lucas’ team
Contractors: Ben Weeks and Triple Dot
Landscaping: Peter Beardsley
Glazing: Cantifix and Skyframe
Oak Panel Restoration: Old Times
Services Engineer: Mike Popper and P3r
Photography: Jim Stevenson

Families often face a dilemma: stay in a house they’re outgrowing or move from a neighbourhood they have deep roots in.

To architect, in this case, means projecting and expanding the future use of an existing past, double exposing with light and air.

Merging redundant corridor space into a through room, replanning and raising the closet wing tower and creating a rooftop atelier reframes the relationship between the house and nature, bringing in light and garden views.

Materials already on site, such as cobbles, timbers and brick, were reused to honour our commitment to a circular economy. Traditional lime mortar lets new bricks be reclaimed in future too, just as Roman bricks still are to this day.

Year: 2020
Client: Anna Jobson and Andy Joslin
Location: Victoria Park Conservation Area, London
Category: Home
51 team: Catherine du Toit, Thomas Smethurst, Matthew Smith, Peter Thomas
Engineers: Price & Myers
Contractor: IC&T Projects
Kitchen Joinery: Vialle and Co 
Courtyard benches: Jeremy Pitts 
Photography: Jim Stephenson

“To bathe in the moonlight and shower under a tree is something I thought was only possible in the remote place I come from in Norway. With this inside-outside space, I can continue these elemental experiences in east London.”
– AK Dolven

Vicco’s Tower is a lightweight, light-filled, timber tower that was designed for Norwegian artist AK Dolven.

The design concept – “Inventive and modern without being formulaic” according to Grand Designs – celebrates nature in the city. In a dense urban environment, architecture becomes a lens on the natural world, focusing its beauty.

The house flows seamlessly into the garden, with windows framing particular private and public views. One vertical glass slot gives glimpses of a London plane, some 200 years old, on one of the original avenues planted in Georgian times.

RIBA Award winner, 2006
Grand Designs Award finalist, 2007
Shortlisted for Georgian Group Architectural Award, 2007

Year: 2006 
Client: AK Dolven
Location: Queensbridge Road Conservation Area, London 
Category: Home
51 team: Catherine du Toit, Siniša Rodić, Peter Thomas
Engineers: Price & Myers
Photography: Vegar Moen & Nigel Rigden
Agents: The Modern House

“A near-perfect architectural piece – the muted driftwood-grey boxes are weathering beautifully.”
– Helen Davies, The Sunday Times

The Experimental Station is an artists’ coastal retreat, comprising modest living quarters and north-lit studios.

The worn concrete and masonry interiors recall the property’s industrial heritage, with windows oriented to local landmarks. It is overclad with locally sourced rough-sawn cedar, while the library repurposes a small brick generator building.

51 architecture minimized the environmental impact of this new family of insulated structures on rare plant species by constructing rafts directly on the existing hardstanding, precast structural elements.

AIA Excellence in Design Award winner, 2013 RIBA Conservation Award winner, 2013
RIBA Regional Award winner, 2013
Chosen as one of the best new homes in Britain by Helen Davies, The Sunday Times, 16 June 2013

Year: 2013
Client: Johnson Naylor
Location: Site of Special Scientific Interest and designated Special Area of Conservation, Dungeness 
Category: Artists’ retreat
Innovation: Architecture on the beach – only uses what is essential
51 team: Catherine du Toit, George Metcalfe, Peter Thomas
Engineer: Tim Macfarlane

“Just because you’re living on a low income, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the best facilities. We need a building that helps people feel good about themselves.”
– Aaron Barbour, Director of KLS

Katherine Low Settlement is a community centre that groups four historic buildings around a shared courtyard.

The future plan for these buildings, co-designed with KLS, will create better visibility, more accessible space and improved natural opportunities for networking between the more than 45 charitable groups that use the facility.

The design connects with the particular architecture of Battersea – which the community centre has been serving since 1924 – using brick, lightweight short-span timber and architectural ceramics that resonate with the location and give the buildings a personal and intimate feel.

Year: 2015– 
Client: Katherine Low Settlement (www.klsettlement.org.uk)
Location: Battersea Square Conservation Area, London 
Category: Community centre
Innovations: Tying location to materials 
Team: Catherine du Toit, Viva Ruggi,Thomas Smethurst, Matthew Smith, Peter Thomas
Access Consultants: Proudlock Associates
Building Control: MLM Group
Engineers: Price & Myers
Services: P3r
Quantity Surveyor: Measur
Budget - £2,340,000 (Cost Plan 5 August 2019 ex VAT and Fees)
Area: 907m2 (Cost Plan 5 August 2019)

“The interior is scattered with unexpected, one-off details, just like the great modernist houses of the last century. The staircase is a mini design wonder. On the top floor, the house opens to the sky.”
– Caroline Roux, The Guardian

The Greenhouse is a family home that showcases the 51 ethos: heritage, technical innovation and quiet aesthetics.

The home of 51 architecture’s Catherine du Toit and Peter Thomas, the Greenhouse ascends from a concrete ground floor through a first floor fashioned largely from wood to a top floor that is predominantly glass.

“We’ve lived in our house for 20 years. We love the way it changes as we change, and how the garden has matured. It’s still magical walking up and down the staircase we designed, feeling the rightness of it for the human body.”

Year: 1999
Client: Catherine du Toit, Peter Thomas
Location: Dartmouth Park Conservation Area, London 
Category: Home
Innovations: Rotating the building through 90 degrees to release potential of a tight urban site
Team: Catherine du Toit, Geoff Makstutis, Peter Thomas
Engineer: Tim Macfarlane
Contractor: Triple Dot

“A simple renovation made special by a showpiece staircase.”
– Eleanor Gibson, Dezeen

Casa Vota is an environmentally responsible, technically innovative and elegant family home.

Created using sustainable materials, including the crowns of local trees felled by strong winds, Casa Vota evokes the textures and light of its owners’ childhood in Italy. A new roof terrace gives panoramic views over London.

We collaborated closely with enthusiast engineers and site carpenters who were keen to work across their own limits: the ash-ply stairway, for instance, combines boat-building techniques and digital fabrication.

Year: 2018
Clients: Daniele Antonucci, Alessandra Vota 
Location: Priory Road Conservation Area, London 
Category: Home
Team: Catherine du Toit, Rob Newman, Thomas Smethurst, Mathew Smith, Peter Thomas
Engineers: Price & Myers
Contractor: Triple Dot
Press: Dezeen

“Social Cinema was as memorable as it was fugitive…”
– Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain

Social Cinema was a series of outdoor cinemas in neglected spaces around landmark buildings.

Through playful and subtle architecture, buildings became screens, steps seating, houses projection booths, and unbuilt spaces auditoriums. Screenings began after sunset, with the public spaces shared by the audience and passersby.

In Alex Farquharson’s words, 51’s improvisatory approach made “delicious juxtapositions between London landmarks and films related to modernist thinking on architecture, urbanism and social progress in post-war Britain”.

Supported by the Architectural Association, Arts Council, Big Lottery Fund and the Photographers’ Gallery; for a film about Social Cinema 3, see www.neilcummings.com/content/social-cinema

Year: 2006
Client: London Architecture Biennale (now London Festival of Architecture)
Locations: Berthold Lubetkin’s Finsbury Health Centre, Millennium Bridge, St John’s Square
Category: Public programme
Innovations: The art of borrowing: no additional material (other than a screen at Millennium Bridge) used to create the cinemas
Team: Catherine du Toit and Peter Thomas, in collaboration with Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska
Related Public Collection: Warsaw Museum National Archive

Play it Again! Use it Together is a listening booth and production facility for the IPM’s Open Music Archive.

This acoustically intelligent installation is a production site for digitizing vinyl records and a booth for close listening to the Open Music Archive, an exceptional public research resource gifted by collectors and enthusiasts.

Self-supporting and fully demountable to allow it to travel anywhere, from a Grade I-listed gallery to former shops, Play It Again! was supported by events at which guest artists remixed the evolving collection of 80,000 records.

'Play it Again! Use it Together: Open Music Archive feat. 51 architecture' was curated by Rose Lejeune; for more details, see www.openmusicarchive.org/.

Year: 2018
Client: University of Liverpool’s Institute of Popular Music 
Locations: Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool, former high-street shops
Category: Public programme
Innovations: Acoustic damping of the fully demountable screens using recycled cotton
Team: Catherine du Toit, Thomas Smethurst, Peter Thomas
Engineer: Anderson Inge

The retrofitting and transformation of the existing housing stock of the UK is one form of practice where both additional housing provision and reduction in carbon footprint can be achieved – the transformation of a terraced house on Rona Road by doubling a single dwelling into two is a key strategy. The achievement here is this to do this within an existing urban street form and a conservation area.

In this case the additional accommodation was provided with the rebuilding of the plot level rear two storey element as throughspace to the floor levels of the house and by extending the cellar into a slightly larger habitable basement.

Year: 2018
Client: Brendan Massam
Location: Mansfield Conservation Area, London
Category: House
Innovations: remodelling a half landing rear extension so that it connected to the main living levels to give more usable space
Team: Catherine du Toit, Matthew Smith, Peter Thomas

“51 architecture excelled in site- and culture-appropriate design considerations, creativity and flexibility for a very reasonable price within a short six-week time frame.”
– Jenny Inge, President, Mineral County Fairgrounds Association

Creede habitat required a flexible masterplan for 18.6 Hectares of donated land in a remote Colorado mountain community.

51 architecture worked with the local non-profit to secure state and county funding for a functional wetland landscape, a wildlife habitat of native willows coupled with an outdoor arena with spectacular mountain views.

Year: 2008
Client: Mineral County Fairgrounds Association
Location: Creede, Colorado
Category: Functional landscape 
Team: Catherine du Toit, Anderson Inge, Atsushi Iwata, Peter Thomas

Prototypical media workshare space for Mumsnet at that time rapidly growing from 6 to 60, and now 200. The approach was later developed for curators workspace at the Whitechapel Gallery, London and as a format for rapidly deployable edit suits for post-production company Cut + Run in Soho, New York.

Mumsnet London Floor area: 2992 sq ft / 278 sq m
Cut + Run New York 10,000ft2 / 930m2

Year: 2008 
Client: Mumsnet
Location: Kentish Town, London 
Category: Workplace
Innovations: Quick cheap privacy in an open-plan workplace 
Team: Catherine du Toit, Matthew Smith, Peter Thomas

Related: https://cutandrun.com/about/ xxxSC

Year: 2017
Clients: Tracey Joseph, Jane Withers
Location: Shoreditch, London 
Category: Landscape
Innovations: Use of existing materials in new relationships
Team: Peter Beardsley, Catherine du Toit, Thomas Smethurst

Bath House is a historic house, revived by 51 architecture working alongside specialised restoration artisans.

The interior of the house – in one of Bath’s later Georgian terraces – was cluttered and fussy. We stripped it back, cleaned it out and breathed new life and light into what had previously been dingy spaces.

In a world of machine and digital crafting, 51 made the renovation of this listed property a study in exposing the hand of the maker. Our design revealed rough-hewn limestone, offset by jute runners and bespoke cabinetry.

Year: 2018
Client: David Childs, Joyce Childs 
Location: 14 Prior Park Buildings, Bath
Category: Home
Innovation: Insulated Bath stone floor
Team: Catherine du Toit, Thomas Smethurst, Peter Thomas