Historic

Urban

Cultural

Design Museum Gent 

Experiencing Culture

Bibliothèque nationale de France Conservation Centre 

Workplace

London Wall Buildings

Urban Heritage

British Library, Boston Spa 

Research and Innovation

Residential

Covent Garden Apartment

Power Hall, Science and Industry Museum Manchester

469 Bethnal Green Road

ArtPlay Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery 

The Making Of: The ArtPlay Pavilion

Milan Giovenale 

Oliver's Yard

LSE Bankside House

Features

Design Museum Gent
The Guardian

ArtPlay Pavilion
The Financial Times

Covent Garden Apartment
Domus

Writing

Precise Approximations
Jerome Wren

Hill House Box

Permanence is a Privilege
Andy Groarke, Kevin Carmody

Carmody Groarke 
A+U 264

Adaptive Reuse
Lukas Barry 

Talks and Teaching

Continuity and Change
IAC Querétaro

Truman Brewery
Grow Places Podcast 

Scaffold, Episode 78
Architecture Foundation

Taking Care of Matters
The Berlage, TU Delft 

Special Exhibitions Gallery, Science and Industry Museum Manchester

Wandsworth Gasworks

Windermere Jetty Museum

Cabot Square

Decarbonising Spaces for Art
World Art Foundation Conference

Repurposing and transforming existing buildings

'Not Forever'
Yale School of Architecture 

BFI Southbank 

 7 July Memorial 

Two Pavilions 

University of Leeds Archive Building 

Playhouse Theatre 

Hill House: Not Forever 

Learning from Canary Wharf 
Peter Lee

Grossmarkt Theatre Pavilion

Studio East Dining 

Carmody Groarke A+ Bozar
Architecture in Belgium

The Filling Station 

Gormley Studio 

Research into Circular Building Materials with Imperial College 

Nea Paphos Mosaic Shelter 

Historic Sites and Contemporary Access
Design Museum London



Dock 10 

Aeschenplatz 6

Teatro Oficina
Harvard GSD

Gent Waste Brick 

Highgate House 

Carmody Groarke 
AMAG 23

Carmody Groarke Contacts Book
RIBA Journal 

Glass reinforced plastic: architectural uses for an industrial material
MIT Material Science Conference 

Fitzrovia House 

Maggie's Merseyside 

V&A Members Room 

Meaning through Making 
Edwin Heathcote 

Double Club 

Artist Studio, Hoxton 

Windermere Jetty Museum 
The Guardian 

Public Art and the Built Environment
Lisson Gallery

Reflections on Teaching
Andy Groarke 

7 July Memorial Tavistock Square 

Room, City, Building 
Kevin Carmody 

White Cube at Glyndebourne

Underground Spa 

Windermere Jetty Museum
Architectural Review 

Rectory Farm 

House and Studio Lambeth 
Wallpaper*

Surreal House 
The Barbican 

Steindamm Ensemble 

'An Incomplete Performance'
Harvard GSD

Carmody Groarke 
El Croquis 195

Bauhaus Art as Life 
The Barbican 

Milan Giovenale
Casabella 946

Frieze Art Fair 

Grossmarkt Theatre Pavilion
Architecture Foundation

Gent Waste Brick 
Architects' Journal 

Design Museum Gent: a Story of Necessity and Ambition
Pieter T'Jonck

Milan Giovenale
Architects' Journal 

Dulwich Picture Gallery 
In View 

Skywalk 

Blind Light 

A Sense of Time
José Manuel Pedreirinho

Saving the Hill House 
National Trust for Scotland 

Postmodernism Style and Subversion 
V&A

Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House 
The Observer 

Retain, Reuse, Reinvent
Cambridge University 

Scaffolding for Dinner
Abitare 

Norfolk House 

In Conversation with David Chipperfield
El Croquis

Designs of the Year
Design Museum London 

Basquiat Boom for Real 
The Barbican 

Abstract Expressionism
Royal Academy of Arts

Architecture Foundation 

Arquitectura Viva
Carmody Groarke 

Windermere Jetty Museum
RIBA Building Stories

7 July 2005 Memorial 
Antony Gormley

Artists and Architects
Antony Gormley

Special Exhibitions Gallery
Wallpaper*

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Amiens

Gent Waste Brick wins two Henry Van De Velde Awards 

Topping off Design Museum Gent, April 2025 

A Temporary House for a House
Andy Groarke

Sacred Spaces
Cornell in Rome

Tackle the Type: Filling Stations
EPFL University 

Since the beginning of our practice we have worked with artists, museums, galleries and institutions to design cultural spaces, buildings and places. From unusual 

Special Exhibitions Gallery shortlisted for EU Architectural Heritage Innovation Award 

Testing Hot Dipped Galvanised Steel 

Architects' Journal
Climate Champions Podcast 


Carmody Groarke named on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies 2023

Developing circular materials with Local Works Studio at London Wall 

Modes of Production
Ruth Lang

Circular Building Design 
Design Fest Gent 

Our approach to making architecture stems from a broad understanding of climatic, social and economic challenges. We work closely with clients, creative and technical experts to find innovative and sustainable solutions to face these challenges. From a low-energy archive building for the 

 to new circular building materials at the 

LSE wins planning approval for Bankside student housing scheme

469 Bethnal Green Road named AJ Design of the Year

On site at London Wall 

Visiting Versailles
Porto Academy 

Rectory Farm: Depth of Field 
The Guardian 

Nuremberg Theological College design competition 

Our projects examine the physical and cultural history of urban buildings and spaces. We are inspired by the relationship between old and new, from working with and adapting historically significant or 

Olly Wainwright spoke to Carmody Groarke's design team at the opening of the renewed Design Museum Gent. His review in The Guardian reflects on reuse, innovation, and public procurement.

Founding Director Andy Groarke delivered a lecture entitled 'Continuity and Change' at the International Architecture Congress 2026 in Querétaro, Mexico.

The lecture discussed how architects can respond to the evolving and accelerating effects of our changing climate, from conservation to material innovation, drawing on some the practice's past and ongoing projects: the protective 

, and the refurbishment and extension of the 

Architect

Part II Architectural Assistant

Eddie Heathcote reviewed our work on the ArtPlay Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery on the occasion of its opening in 2025.

PA and Team Coordinator

Communications Assistant

The ArtPlay Pavilion reflects a rigorous commitment to sustainable construction. Its lightweight, low carbon frame is constructed entirely of UK-grown timber, processed in our partnering Sawmill in Wiltshire. The exposed reciprocal grid roof — crafted from Douglas Fir beams — is both structurally efficient and visually expressive.

The Pavilion's design prioritises natural ventilation, passive solar strategies, and low-tech, dry construction methods to minimise both operational and embodied carbon. All timber is fully traceable, with provenance tracked from forest to fabrication, ensuring environmental integrity across the supply chain.

With a new garden as the building’s centrepiece, the project transforms a post-war workplace into a contemporary office that responds to modern patterns of work and embraces low-carbon principles of reuse and retention.

Located close to Old Street, the building originally reflected the corporate ambitions of its time. Sixty years on, it has been reimagined to create a more convivial, tactile, and welcoming setting, quietly repositioning it within East London’s evolving urban landscape. The transformation combines architectural, landscape, and environmental interventions that balance tradition with innovation, working with the existing fabric to extend the building’s life while reducing its carbon footprint in use.

At the heart of the project is a new garden, designed in collaboration with Tom Stuart-Smith Studio. Transforming the original plaza, this new, vibrant central space provides a generous welcome for occupants and visitors. Accessed through the existing undercroft, the garden provides a calm counterpoint to the intensity of Old Street. Informal planting and a scattered canopy of birch trees instil this new social space with a lightly shaded woodland character. The garden acts as a focus of surrounding retail and workspaces, as well as the new building reception. Large sliding doors create a direct link between the reception and the green central space, allowing for an experience that feels more open, social, and connected.

The retrofit embodies a philosophy of retention and repair, introducing carefully targeted upgrades to the existing building to secure its future. The existing structure and majority of the original finishes have been retained, significantly reducing embodied carbon while extending the building’s lifespan. New, all-electric services enable long-term decarbonisation, while maintenance and enhancement works address structural issues that had accumulated over decades of use. This measured approach reduces waste, lowers impact, and ensures the building’s resilience for generations to come.

A series of discreet architectural interventions achieve maximum impact through the smallest means, creating a workplace environment that is convivial and welcoming. New amenities include end-of-trip cycle storage and high-quality changing rooms in the basement, along with enhanced on-floor facilities. These upgrades improve wellbeing and encourage sustainable modes of travel, while strengthening the building’s social character.

The project works sensitively to understand and scrape back layers of past refurbishments to reveal more of the building’s original mid-century fabric. New interventions reinterpret, relate and amplify this character through a contemporary lens, introducing tactility, lightness, and generosity. By doing the most with the least, the retrofit not only improves environmental performance but also redefines the building as a sustainable and welcoming workplace at the heart of East London’s creative economy.

Associate, New Business and Communications

The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester is housed within some of the most historically significant buildings and structures from the modern industrial era. As part of a site-wide development plan, the museum's existing buildings are being sensitively restored to repair their historic fabric, while orientation and access between buildings, which are separated by a network of Victorian railway viaducts, is being enhanced and galleries are being transformed.

The new gallery is situated in the west end of the Grade II heritage listed New Warehouse, built in 1882 by the Great Western Railway company. The Special Exhibitions Gallery creates a new visitor route, which improves access to the New Warehouse building, linking the Lower Yard with the busiest levels of the museum above.

A generous ramped entrance at Lower Yard rehabilitates the vaulted under-croft of one of the railway viaducts, which for several years has been a dark and uninviting space for visitors. Full height fibreglass panelled walls transform the visitor welcome from outside to inside, alleviating the visual weight of the brick structures above. Each new fibreglass panel has been hand-cast and tinted with a terracotta hue to complement the surrounding weathered Victorian brickwork.

The panels are subtly back-lit, revealing the maker’s marks in their surface and gently illuminating the spatial and decorative qualities of the historic cast-iron and brick jack-arch structures.

The front-of-house area has been transformed into a bright and welcoming open plan space that provides a point of orientation for visitors. At the same time this aids the museum in resolving a series of functional requirements of circulation, accessibility, staffing and environmental control.

New interventions within the Power Hall are transformative yet discreet, so that the heritage of architecture and collections are foregrounded. Entirely new visitor circulation improves accessibility and legibility; improvements to the existing building fabric optimise energy efficiency; and new interventions into the historic facades open up new views between the city outside and the collection inside.

The project establishes a clear and accessible new route across the site from the New Warehouse, through the newly landscaped Upper Yard, and into the Power Hall. Visitors now arrive through a new central entrance that aligns this journey along the east–west axis of the original goods shed. From this point, they can look west towards the railway rolling stock and east towards the steam engines, immediately revealing the working logic of the building.

Once a shipping shed for the world’s first inter-city steam-powered passenger railway, the Power Hall now houses the UK’s largest working collection of steam, gas, and electric engines. Carmody Groarke’s project returns the Museum’s biggest single-space gallery to its original clarity, reinstating a 108-metre-long hall spanned by distinctive timber roof trusses that divide the space into two parallel bays. This creates an intuitive and inspiring environment for visitors to engage with industrial heritage.

Updated lighting, circulation, heating and control systems place sustainability at the forefront of this transformation, preserving the hall’s historic character while significantly reducing its environmental impact.

The project restores key architectural features to their original form, reinterpreting them for accessibility and clarity. Re-laid cobbles and timber floor finishes are easy to navigate and echo the building’s industrial history, and the original timber roof structure has been faithfully restored. New structural interventions – kept deliberately minimal – sensitively integrate significant repairs into the historic fabric of the building, and a high-quality, consistent material palette creates coherence between old and new.

The reconfiguration of the hall was instrumental in enacting a reorganisation of the collections and exhibition experience. A new entrance has been placed at the centre of the building, designed to enhance visibility and draw in visitors from the newly landscaped Upper Yard and the New Warehouse.

Inside the hall, the layout of the exhibition space has been reimagined. At its centre is the reinstated raised central platform, which historically allowed goods to be loaded and unloaded between trains and carriages. Reintroducing this platform restores the shed’s original working diagram and provides a powerful organisational anchor for the visitor experience. Flanked by railway rolling stock to the west and steam engines to the east, the platform creates a clear central spine for movement and interpretation.

Threaded around this platform, gently ramped walkways unlock the possibility of experiencing the museum’s collections at different levels, and are key to appreciating how the original working building operated—with trains entering at the west and carriages taking goods into the city of Manchester to the east.

New rooflights above the entrance ensure a seamless transition into the exhibition space, bringing in light while minimising solar gains and UV exposure. These units extend the spine of rooflights that illuminate the central platform, casting it in daylight and emphasising its architectural significance.

Nuanced repairs and forward-looking infrastructure upgrades create a transformative visitor experience that unlocks access to the full scope of Power Hall’s unique architectural heritage, and produces an optimised environment for collection care.

Environmental upgrades are all invisible – from the new (fully insulated) roof to the site-wide water source heat pump, to transitioning the steam engines off coal power to green-sourced electric.

Carried out in partnership with Max Fordham, the new carbon-minimising measures are part of a wider decarbonisation scheme expected to save approximately 515 tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually, bringing the museum into alignment with the Manchester’s 2038 net-zero carbon target. The new, low carbon heating is concealed under the adapted central platform, and the open-loop heat pump and electric steam boiler provide a highly efficient, sustainable energy source to run the historic engines.

Inside and out, historic brickwork walls and decorative stone dressings have been restored. New interventions into the historic facades open views between the city outside, and the collection inside. The vast existing window openings receive new large-format glazing to improve daylight and views, flanked by smoky grey oiled Douglas fir natural ventilation panels that recall historic timber sliding doors. The new roof construction features natural wood fibre insulation above the rafters, making it vapour permeable and compatible with its historic ‘breathable’ condition.

The Power Hall is the second project Carmody Groarke have delivered for the Science and Industry Museum as part of its multi-million-pound regeneration project, following the success of the award-winning Special Exhibitions Gallery completed in 2021. The transformation of the museum site seeks to situate it within a wider cultural narrative. It builds upon Manchester’s broader cultural regeneration and makes connections to other cultural institutions, notably via direct access to OMA’s multi-use cultural space Aviva Studios, which opened its doors in 2023.

Precision in architecture is an uncertain concept—there is always a degree of approximation required. Approximation bridges gaps, both literal and metaphorical. Approximation bends and breaks to cater to circumstance. Used carefully, it can recognise the potential for chaos and wilfully integrate this within an ideal whole (perhaps the closest thing possible to precision). Used artfully, it can generate fresh meaning and reveal unexpected opportunities.

To be approximate is to be tolerant. Bethnal Green Road is a tolerant site, born from messy circumstances in a part of East London that was heavily bombed during the Second World War. The resultant context is pluralistic and ad hoc. It can tolerate architecture of various scales, forms and materials.

469 Bethnal Green Road is a utilitarian building, both in conception and construction. Originally designed as a warehouse, the building is speculative by its very nature. Its functional needs, whether loads, spans or spatial configuration, are tolerant anticipating any form of future use. Unlike its neighbour—a bank—it is not representational but innately approximate. 

In its construction, the building is also ad hoc. Grey brick and block walls delineate the plot. Punched ribbon windows draw the façade. Hollow clay pots span between T-beams to define the interior carcass. Concrete piers carry the weight of it all. It is a building that is thick and thin, plain and intricate. It deserves our curiosity.

The proposed intervention extends and doubles the existing volume. Externally, the new façade is a paraphrase of the existing. Its grid is inherited from the incumbent order which regulates everything from the height of the vertical piers to their width (and the space in between). Internally, the new floors are free-spanning to match the constructional logic below but shrink in plan to align with a new structural column line. The result is a completed whole, which takes approximate measurements from the grammar of the existing condition.

Within this logic, an infinite number of permutations are possible. The building envelope, dressed in thin folded sheets of galvanised steel, consists of a careful interplay between horizontal and vertical orders. Each component operates at multiple levels (structural, environmental, spatial, contextual and/or aesthetic). Deep projecting fins are placed directly above large sliding windows and hold the outer edges, compositionally suggesting the outline of the whole. Vertical fins provide a secondary order, which corresponds to the structural load bearing system and contains perhaps the most important generative element—the bay. The bay is subsequently repeated and adjusted in a game of precise approximations across each façade.

These approximations account for localised variations that occur at all scales and at every step. In some cases, they can be quantified and anticipated. In construction, an inherently complex and unpredictable process, they can be harder to define. Constant improvisation (or approximation) is required.

The brick, as a building unit, is approximate. It is a means of achieving an overall dimension unlike frame and panel construction, which can afford to be much more precise. At 469 Bethnal Green Road, what appears regular is irregular—chaos is very near. The width between each brick pier is slightly different. No two bays are exactly the same. These variations may be anticipated and captured within the construction drawings for the façade panels which are accordingly distorted. The new is adjusted to match the incidental nature of the old. Disorder is continued in an orderly manner.

In turn, hot dip galvanising demands precision. It is an archaic process—part art, part science. Before being dipped in molten zinc, the mild steel panels are propped, dangled and stripped to allow full adhesion. When dipped, temperature and speed are key—very hot and very quick. Once dipped, the time spent in the bath correlates to the number of microns of zinc coating and so, to the longevity of the panels. Afterward, the panels are lifted, dried and carefully packed to make their way to site.

Rather like glass, it is a dry form of construction (and also very fragile). It cannot be adjusted, sawn or chiselled on site like brick. Anticipation is required to bring order. Gaps and shadows create tolerance which is crucial. Such tolerance occurs at every joint between the façade panels. These are set to a minimum where flush, and to a greater threshold where interrupted—either vertically or horizontally. The shadows resulting from the articulation of the facade soften any perceived error arising from the fabrication process and allow for supple adjustments to be made on site. Chaos is kept at arm’s length within an evolving set of rules.

Beyond repetition, anticipation, and adaptation, there is exception. Exception is a form of approximation that generates its own set of rules, gives in to the possibility of something new and invents. The corner is an exception. Here, the rules are broken as circumstance takes over. The space between the verticals is stretched. The window is narrowly avoided. The sill is omitted. The brise-soleil is contorted and axially reoriented.

The corner—an invented piece—is more approximate and more precise (and more ambiguous, too). It embodies uncertainty and imagination. Always and already surprising. Allowing for the possibility of something completely different, which has everything to do with that from which it was born.

In search of precision, it is only natural to find approximation—from the number of microns of galvanic coating to the number of folds of metal that make up the façade. Rules exist to be pushed, pulled and (exceptionally) broken. This caters for circumstance, absorbs the mess and provides the basis for invention. And if, after each and every approximation, order is still in sight, then there can be greater certainty in the whole.

Project Director

Senior Architect

Through our collaboration with artists and material experts we have tested and experimented with the possibilities that hot-dipped galvanising can provide, to reveal a material finish which offers exceptional longevity and a unique visual appearance.

Unlike ‘applied’ finishes to metal, such as polyester powder coating (PPC), hot-dip galvanising creates a metallurgic reaction which effectively fuses the molten zinc to the base steel, and becomes integral to the steel. The primary benefit of this is to increase the corrosion resistance of the steel, but it also creates a highly unique visual finish, created by the ‘spangle’ of crystalised zinc that forms on the surface of the steel.

 furthered our material research into galvanising, in the form of a small workshop building which was entirely clad in galvanised steel, extending the artist’s existing studio facilities in London.

The use of hot dipped galvanised steel as a cladding material was chosen because of its ability to be both robust as well as create an intriguing aesthetic appearance. This was achieved through a rigorous research and prototyping process, with direct engagement with galvanising plants to understand how the process of hot dip galvanising could be controlled to achieve the desired precision of panel junctions and visual appearance.

To reach the desired material finish, each galvanising test refined the base steel specification and optimised the pre-folded form of the panel, so that the finished result yielded long lasting corrosion protection and an elemental, sculptural like quality to the finished building. Newly galvanised steel appears initially bright and reflective, but slowly softens as the surfaces oxidises, increasing its atmospheric resistance over time and mellowing into its setting. The research and development of this material technique has been applied to our project in Bethnal Green, which applies the same principles on a larger, city scale. 

 has been featured in Domus' April 2025 issue which focuses on the theme of 'Metal'. Entitled 'Leggero Equilibrio/Lightweight Equilibrium', the article explores the project's innovative use of aluminium and was selected for the issue by Domus' 2025 guest editor, Bjarke Ingels. 

Together with Shedkm and MAX Architects, we have been granted planning approval by Wandsworth Borough Council for a major redevelopment of the old Wandsworth Gasworks.

The project aims to transform the former west London gasworks into 620 homes, a riverside park and entertainment space. Drawing inspiration from Wandsworth's history, the new design will rejuvenate the site with environment, community and heritage in mind.

Within Shedkm's wider masterplan, Carmody Groarke will contribute 178 homes and 789m² of retail space, reviving the previously derelict site.

Nestled into the bankside of a riverbend beside a railway bridge, the design is shaped by the confluence of natural and infrastructural components. The tall, multi-residential building aspires to nurture a place-making quality in response to its unique setting, while retail spaces tucked into the railway arches further encourage community activation.

Carmody Groarke has transformed a former 1970s textile workshop on Bethnal Green Road into a contemporary, low-carbon workspace, offering a compelling model for urban reuse. Once slated for demolition, our client Unity Land recognised the potential to retain, reuse and reinvent the building. The result is a deep retrofit strategy that prioritises sustainability, structural retention, and architectural clarity.

This part of East London was heavily bombed during the Second World War, resulting in streetscapes characterised by fine-grain plots that vary in height, style, and age. Its urban tapestry— born from the speculative development of irregular plots— is unquestionably part of London’s high street character but it also recalls parts of other cities such as New York’s Soho district, with its skinny-framed buildings jostling for attention.

The project preserves and extends a grey-brick warehouse, doubling its usable area with a lightweight galvanized steel and Douglas fir addition. Adding three new storeys to the height of the existing structure increases the presence and improves the proportions of the corner building. Set on a narrow site above a Central Line vent tunnel, the design for the corner site retains the full concrete frame and foundations which now support a materially distinct but spatially consistent structure that replaces concrete with more sustainable components.


The result is a building that balances robustness with adaptability. Approximately 2,200 sqm of flexible workspace has been created, with minimal intervention and a focus on long-term efficiency. A striking new galvanised steel façade — just 3mm thick — is shaped into deep window reveals and horizontal fins, providing passive solar shading and a sense of depth to the façades, giving the whole ensemble a new elegance and gravity with very sparing use of material. This new façade responds to and complements the retained grey-brick base, yielding a coherent architectural expression that is both contemporary and contextual.

Internally, the layout is designed for future-proof adaptability. Free-spanning floors, modular fit-outs, and restrained finishes contribute to reducing lifecycle costs while maximising flexibility. Natural light is prioritised throughout, achieved through the use of sliding doors as windows. Exposed galvanised steel and Douglas fir timbers reference the site’s industrial past while simultaneously creating a warm, modern working environment reminiscent of a contemporary warehouse.


The ground floor has been opened up to reengage with the street, transforming a once-closed frontage into an active edge. Designed with flexibility in mind, the commercial unit can support a range of tenants, creating a vibrant threshold between the building and its urban context.


The entrance sequence has been completely reimagined to promote accessibility and visibility. A newly introduced staircase links all levels, while provisions for active commuting — including secure bike storage, showers, and changing facilities — reflect the project’s sustainability ethos.

The environmental strategy combines passive and active measures. By retaining the entire concrete frame, the design avoids the significant embodied carbon of new construction, instead focusing on low-carbon materials and reversible construction. The extension's components are bolted and demountable, allowing for future disassembly and reuse. Passive measures such as internal insulation, optimal glazing, and natural ventilation support year-round energy efficiency, supplemented by electric and renewable energy sources.


A BREEAM Excellent rating is being targeted, with post-occupancy evaluation planned to assess real-world performance. Designed with a 50-year lifespan in mind, this project provides a replicable model for workspace regeneration in dense urban contexts.


As a project, 469 Bethnal Green Road is a strategic act of addition rather than erasure — redefining the role of the existing building within East London and extending its life and civic presence with minimal material use. It becomes a prototype for buildings found on every high street.