DSDHA’s work spans from crafting beautiful and sustainable buildings, welcoming landscapes and whole new neighbourhoods, through to writing the brief that will shape how a space might be used long into the future.
The studio’s aim is to foster positive change and empower communities through its projects, creating social value through collaboration and meaningful engagement, often looking at how relationships and partnerships can make the best use of the city’s latent spatial potential.
Blurring the boundaries between infrastructure, landscape, architecture and art, the studio’s work is the result of extensive dialogue with communities, as well as stakeholders and collaborators, to deliver projects that have the broadest impact.
DSDHA’s architecture is always evolving: for us each project is a bespoke response to a unique brief, which develops through dialogue with our clients, stakeholders and collaborators as well as with the ultimate users of our designs.
Our projects span from macro-scaled urban strategies and infrastructure studies through to highly acclaimed individual crafted buildings, which celebrate the act of making and materiality within architecture. These projects have evolved through a unique design methodology that deploys tactics developed across 15 years of parallel research in academia and on the ground.
Known for our high-profile urban strategies, landscapes and innovative buildings, often in complex and sensitive environments, as well as widely-acclaimed research, DSDHA have been recognised with 20 RIBA Awards to date, shortlisted for the RIBA Stirling Prize, and twice nominated for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. The studio is heavily involved in education, currently teaching at a number of institutions, at the RCA and LSA in London.
Recent Awards:
City Building of the Year Award 2023 for Exchange Square
Pro Landscaper Sustainability and Biodiversity Awards 2023 for Exchange Square
WCCA City Building of the Year Award 2023 for Exchange Square
[d]arc awards Spaces High Budget 2022 for Exchange Square
Building Awards, Delivering Social Value, 2020 for Central Somers Town
RIBA/Colchester 2020 – Best Contemporary Building 2008 for St Anne’s Community & Sure Start Centre, Colchester
National Urban Design Awards 2019 for Central Somers Town
NLA Awards 2019, Public Spaces for West End Public Realm
Published on April 29, 2024
