51 architecture

51 architecture 51 is an AIA and RIBA award winning London based practice providing a full range of architectural and urban design services.

We have considerable experience working in historic and listed environments, on sites of special scientific interest and areas of outstanding natural beauty, both in the UK and abroad. We enjoy working with artists and arts organizations, as well as private clients. We aim to deliver excellence through our close attention to detail and collaborative, iterative working practice, often with large co

nsultant teams. Clients, fellow consultants and end users work as part of the design team to ensure the final product is beautiful, efficient and fit for purpose. As stewards of the natural environment and our client’s resources, we are committed to creating thoughtful and responsible buildings. We deliver highly crafted solutions on time and on budget and are known for providing innovative solutions where budgets are tight or sites constrained. We shape each project with empirical environmental knowledge and energy modeling resulting in sustainable strategies that artfully respond to each site’s unique character. Our projects often take non standard forms and have diverse teams. Clients choose us because they require the high degree of lateral thinking that we can bring to any project.

Hrōst | 3. 51 architecture was invited to present Hrōst at the 2025 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition by RA, coordinator ...
21/07/2025

Hrōst | 3. 51 architecture was invited to present Hrōst at the 2025 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition by RA, coordinator of the exhibition . In keeping with the theme of Dialogues, for the first time architecture is displayed in all of the main galleries, creating new conversations. Hrōst is on view in the Lovelace Courtyard, a shady space used by staff and students of the RA Schools for outdoor working, lunches and ping pong.

A wing of 51 architecture’s practice @ habi-sabi has been creating architecture for other species in collaboration with species experts and makers since being commissioned to create a legacy project for the birds of Bankside by @ Architecture Foundation in 2010.

The idea of building for wildlife has a long heritage - from medieval Tuscan swift towers to early 20th century bat roosting towers in the US. Historically we have shared our homes with livestock and our lofts with nesting birds. In many cultures their presence is celebrated as a good omen - barn owls, starlings and barn swallows have for centuries reared their young in agricultural buildings.

Hrōst is a proxy barn that provides shelter in regenerating landscapes.

Hrōst is visible to the public from the Weston Bridge viewing platform until the end of August 2025.

Installing in the Lovelace Courtyard would not have been possible without the support of , Summer Exhibitions Manager, along with Phillip Pearson and David Pepper. Thanks to RA’s Tom Emerson and Stephanie MacDonald for inviting 51 architecture to present Hrōst as part of the panel of speakers for the RA’s Architecture Afternoon and to Sinta Berry, Summer Exhibition Managing Curator and Hana Nilson from the Architecture team.

📷 2 ‘The Summer Exhibition 2025 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 17 June - 17 August 2025, showing ‘Hrōst’ by 51 architecture, in collaboration with Price & Myers and BlokBuild: © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry’.


-sabi

Hrōst | 2. Permission is currently being sought for 27,000 hectares of English land to become solar farms. Much of the ...
21/07/2025

Hrōst | 2. Permission is currently being sought for 27,000 hectares of English land to become solar farms. Much of the land has been under intensive arable farming for the last 60 years, creating what George Monbiot has described as “The Chemical Desert” - areas where the combination of overgrazing, climate change and agricultural chemical inputs have removed most of the biodiversity.

The new Biodiversity Net Gain legislation passed in February 2024, requiring solar farms and other developments, including housing, to improve the biodiversity of the existing sites is a transgenerational opportunity for nature recovery, but one for which at present there are very few successful examples to follow.

To realise new habitats will involve rewilders, ecologists, architects and engineers together with landowners and clients. 51 architecture’s contribution is a multi species roost : a platform for butterflies, bats, hedgehogs, owls, kestrels and a wide range of communal and other species to rest, hibernate and breed within these new richer habitats.

Informed by detailed research, wide ranging dialogues and published standards, Hrōst offers site specific proxies for local wildlife. Alongside wider pesticide free habitat restoration, restored hedgerows, trees and water, Hrōst’s homegrown timber eaves, crawl spaces, cavities, gaps and hollows offer invitations to nest, to roost, to perch and shelter.

The prototype is on view in the Lovelace Courtyard at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2025 until the end of August.

🙏
-sabi

Hrōst | 1. Hrōst is the Old English word for the wooden framework of a roof and origin of “roost” as both a noun, a plac...
21/07/2025

Hrōst | 1. Hrōst is the Old English word for the wooden framework of a roof and origin of “roost” as both a noun, a place where birds and bats settle to sleep or rest, and a verb, the act of doing so. Building on a 15-year body of research and experimentation, this roost is a prototype that explores how a trans-species reciprocity might be achieved in places where nature is threatened by, or recovering from, over-intensive land use.

The primary structure is oriented strand board cassettes, made from home grown forest trimmings, protected with a water based inert paint-on membrane ‘Passive Purple’, and clad in local Western Red Cedar. The roof timbers and bat roosts are made from British Oak. Roof cassettes are packed with untreated Welsh wool to keep the structure warm in winter and prevent over-heating in summer.

The design is adaptable, to cater for the unique species that each specific site could attract. Wide overhanging eaves offer attractive shelter for migrating birds, rough sawn oak boards create crevices for roosting bats, the hollow interior has nesting spaces for barn owls, little owls and kestrels. At the base a woodpile provides an enticing environment for invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians and hedgehogs.

Hrōst developed from dialogues with species experts and in collaboration with and , with additional support from , and . The materials used are natural, inert and biodegradable, to leave the lightest trace on the land.

📷 1-6 & 8-9 51 architecture
📷 7 BlokBuild

Thanks to for inviting us to develop this project for the RA Summer Exhibition 2025
-sabi

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