Giles Quarme Architects

22/08/2025

We are delighted to share a series of photos of the recently completed GQA project located at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

The Master’s Lodge, Peterhouse is a remarkable Grade I Listed 18th Century Queen Ann town house in the heart of Cambridge, which serves as the centre for Peterhouse Cambridge college and is an important surviving example of this period.

Giles Quarme Architects was invited by Peterhouse, to develop a scheme that would focus on the replacement of the late 19th Century south facing closet wing, for a new closet wing that is designed in a traditional style to reflect the early 18th Century architecture of the Masters’ Lodge, but so that it can also still be read as a new and subservient addition.

The woodland inspired landscape was designed by Thomas Hoblyn Garden Design, and it provides much needed level access pathways into the Masters’ Lodge, where a variety of events are held by the college community, along with a new accessible DocM WC.



It was a pleasure to work with Peterhouse and Thomas Hoblyn Garden Design, along with our other Design Consultants and Contractor Team, to create a truly unique space in an urban setting.

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📸 Images courtesy of

Client – Peterhouse

Contactor – F.A. Valiant & Son

Landscape Designer – Thomas Hoblyn Garden Design

Quantity Surveyor – 3G Construction Consultants

Structural Engineer – Wright Consulting

Lighting Design – Roger Parker Associates

External Lighting Design - Lighting Sensations

25/07/2025

We’re pleased to share that Bletchley Park, The Block E Learning Centre and Fellowship Auditorium, designed by Giles Quarme Architects on behalf of The Bletchley Park Trust, has been nominated for the Retrofit & Reuse Awards 2025, in the category of Adaptive Resue into Other (£5 million and over)!

Block E is a unique educational and community facility within a British museum site and former 1940’s WWII base, funded by the Milton Keynes Town Fund and Private Philanthropic Donors.



✨The Block E Learning Centre: The retrofit of the vacant North & East wings into: eight fully accessible classrooms; a large communal lunchroom; a fully certified Changing Place; and two new coach bays to ensure the safe arrival of students. Designed as a reflection of the historic WWII photos using colours and bespoke PET acoustic panels that are beneficial to learning environments, including those that are calming for SEND students.

✨The Fellowship Auditorium: Located where a negative post-WWII structure once was, the new SFS airtight Auditorium’s design is in keeping with the Park’s wider typology and includes: Morse Code detailed into the brickwork; a new modern link corridor to connect to Block E’s event space, the Radley Room; detailed acoustic tiles with the Bletchley code; and the retrofit of the Engine Room into a welcoming reception area.



Block E’s overarching philosophy of combining new technologies and structures to sit in harmony with the retrofitted surviving heritage assets has allowed The Bletchley Park Trust to continue being at the forefront of its field. Since completion, the Block E project has delivered learning sessions to over 50,000 students, along with featuring on the international stage as the media centre for the very first Global AI Summit 2023.

The Block E Learning Centre and Fellowship Auditorium is a testament to the impact the Bletchley Park Trust has had and continues to have on the worldwide stage.

Giles Quarme Architects and The Bletchley Park Trust are thrilled to see Block E make the AJ’s Retrofit & Reuse Awards 2025!

Fingers crossed! 🤞

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27/02/2025

GQA are delighted to be working with and who have been shortlisted to design the national memorial for Queen Elizabeth II.

Our team was selected, along with four other firms, following the first stage of a two-stage open competition.

The new national memorial for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will serve as a lasting tribute to the monarch’s extraordinary life, decades of dedicated service, and profound impact on the nation and the Commonwealth. Situated in St James Park, on the site of the popular Blue Bridge, the memorial will provide a space for reflection, remembrance, and inspiration for future generations.

Thomas Heatherwick, founder and design director of Heatherwick Studio said: “We’re excited to be shortlisted for the memorial. Queen Elizabeth II was a remarkable leader, and our job as designers is to now capture her particular form of leadership and commitment to community, in an extraordinary place that millions of people can visit.”

The final design will be formally announced in April 2026, to coincide with what would have been Queen Elizabeth’s hundredth birthday year.

As part of the team, we are thrilled to be working with:


MRG Studio


Host
Montagu Evans







The other shortlisted teams are:

Foster + Partners with Yinka Shonibare and Michel Desvigne Paysagiste

J&L Gibbons with Michael Levine RDI, William Matthews Associates, Structure Workshop and Arup

Tom Stuart-Smith with Jamie Fobert Architects, Adam Lowe (Factum Arte) and Structure Workshop

WilkinsonEyre with Lisa Vandy and Fiona Clark, Andy Sturgeon Design, Atelier One and Hilson Moran

Image: © Kirill - stock.adobe.com

06/12/2024

Congratulations to Mark, Julie and the entire team on their recent LIT Lighting Design Awards win!! It was a pleasure to work with such an expert team on the restoration work of the Grade II* listed Speech Room.

06/09/2024

We are thrilled to share images of a recently finished project at Bletchley Park, where we had the pleasure of working with the Bletchley Park Trust to restore the park so as to encourage and engage visitors to the museum whilst highlighting the Park’s relevance in the modern day.

Situated in Milton Keynes, the Government Code and Cypher School was stationed at the Park once it was acquired by the British government in 1938. It was there that agents from the Ultra Intelligence Project deciphered confidential communications during World War II. According to experts, the war might have been shortened by up to two years thanks to the BP codebreakers!

Our works comprised the complete restoration of Block E, a wartime building, to house a Learning Centre with eight classrooms, each with a unique colour scheme. This Centre was completed ahead of the global AI safety summit that took place at Bletchley in November 2023.

Constructing a brand-new “fellowship auditorium,” a 250-person event venue, was another aspect of the project. The auditorium features wooden finishes throughout the room, as seen on the balustrades, walls, and floors.

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Images courtesy of brothertonlock

05/07/2024

17/05/2024

The GQA team travelled to Portugal last weekend for an office trip, staying in the town of Villa de Castello. We managed to see much that the neighbouring towns of Guimaraes and Porto had to offer over the four days, and we had plenty of time to relax by the pool! Many thanks to Shelby and Orla, our colleagues, who worked hard to ensure the trip was a huge success…Obrigado!!

03/05/2024

GQA are delighted to announce that our new website Gilesquarmearchitects.co.uk has been launched. Our excellent new website features details on several new projects and updates on the GQA team members. This bank holiday weekend, click the link in our bio and have a look for yourself as well as sharing it with your friends!!

12/04/2024

The GQA team enjoyed a lovely office CPD trip to Cambridge to view one of our recently completed projects ‘The Brewhouse’, situated in Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge. It was wonderful to see it in excellent condition and used by university students as a rehearsal space!

Presently, we are working together with builders F.A. Valiant & Son at Cambridge’s Grade I-listed Masters Lodge, Peterhouse. Tom Austin kindly addressed all of the team’s questions while giving us a tour of one of their restoration and re-roofing projects!

Following this, we made a cheeky trip to King’s College to examine one of the finest examples of perpendicular Gothic architecture!

19/03/2024

We hope everyone is having a fantastic start to their week!!



We are delighted to announce that the Paisley Museum refurbishment has won The Architectural Review. Future Projects 2024 awards in the Cultural Regeneration category. This esteemed international award acknowledges the noteworthy contribution the project is making to the cultural regeneration of the town and the surrounding area.

As part of Renfrewshire Council’s once-in-a-generation investment, GQA has the privilege of acting as Conservation Architects for this £45 million refurbishment project. The largest cultural heritage project in Scotland, the museum restoration is being shaped by and for the town’s residents and will recognise Paisley’s heritage and global influence. We can’t wait to show the world our new museum when it opens!!

16/02/2024

Althorp House, a Grade I listed stately home in West Northamptonshire, has been home to the Spencer family for more than 500 years and Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer since 1992. The estate grounds comprise 28 listed buildings and structures, nine among which are planting stones!!

The house itself dates to 1508, replacing an earlier Manor house that was once visited by Charles I during his reign. The original 1508 building was cited as being a “classically beautiful” red brick Tudor building, however, its appearance has subsequently been significantly altered. The alteration began in 1786 when architect Henry Holland was commissioned to reface the house with mathematical tiles and matching brick quoins, reform the window and door openings within magnesian limestone architraves and construct a pedimented entryway with four Corinthian pilasters.


Amongst other projects, GQA was commissioned by Earl Spencer to advise on and execute the comprehensive repair and restoration of the exterior of the House. This project represented the most extensive works to Althorp House since 1786. Work included infra-red surveys to determine the cause of facade failure, re-moving and re-cladding the mathematical facades, full lead replacement of the roofs and the sensitive repair of severely eroded limestone dressings. What was exciting was the discovery of the original facade that had been hidden by Holland’s fashionable finish! The extent of the 18th-century fabric retained, and the house being preserved for future generations of the Spencer family are testaments to the project’s success.