Jestico + Whiles

Save the dates!   Following on from the success of our LABORATORY talk series last year, we're excited to announce two new talks this autumn at our studio in Clerkenwell.    On Thursday 24th October, we'll be joined by George Pope of the social enterprise MATT + FIONA, and the artist Emily Speed, for a talk focused on ways of nurturing engagement with the built environment.    On Thursday 7th November, we'll be hosting a discussion between Pierre Bidaud, creative director of The Stonemasonry Company, and Paola Garnousset, co-founder of Blast Studio, focused on materials old and new.    Stay tuned for more details next week.

We're really pleased to announce that our second school design for Reach Academy Trust has received unanimous approval from the London Borough of Hounslow's planning committee. Following the success of Reach Academy Feltham, this next project will again support the trust's innovative teaching and learning model, where the school is arranged according to age-based clusters, each with an adaptable central space at its heart. The school will nurture children throughout their education, from age 3 through to 18. We're looking forward to sharing more about this exciting project.

Huge congratulations to Dion, who we first worked with on our award-winning project Village Stories last year. It's been great to continue our collaboration since then, most recently on our follow-up project School Stories. Richly deserved!

Great to see Harshal Gulabchandre, who joined us for work experience last summer, has been awarded a Gensler Diversity in Design Micro Prize. Congratulations Harshal! 

Brighten up your day: watch School Stories! <Sound on> Our short film captures why all of us involved in this fantastic design sector are motivated to do what we do. Jestico + Whiles will soon be completing our 100th school. A milestone, building over 800,000m² of space, in schools of all different types: primaries, secondaries, special schools, UTCs, colleges in the UK and overseas. But most importantly providing quality learning environments to nearly 200,000 young people and their teachers. And that is what is important. Not the architecture. But what goes on inside it. The community and how it supports young people and teachers in their learning. We often talk about post-occupancy evaluation and the need to do more of it. Inherently this is usually metric-based, examining the physical performance of the building, the environment, the data. With School Stories we wanted to capture something different. Each year, each term, each day, there are thousands of experiences – stories – which play out inside the buildings which we have designed. Renewing our collaboration with filmmaker Dion Barrett and audio producer Flo Lines, we have recorded a fraction of those stories by revisiting a selection of our schools to hear directly from their communities in their own words. A vignette into the world happening every day inside each one. #architecture #schooldesign #educationdesign #education

Continued sponsorship of UK Architects Declare is a no-brainer for us at Jestico + Whiles. Their publications and webinars are an invaluable resource for our sustainability team

A massive thank you to everyone who joined us for the launch of School Stories Wednesday evening to celebrate this great milestone!    School Stories is the result of more than two decades of school design work by Jestico + Whiles and we will soon be completing our hundredth school. We wanted to showcase the communities within schools and how it supports young people, teachers and parents in learning, and through captivating testimony, we were able to display why all of us involved in school design are motivated to do what we do.   A special shout-out goes to Dion Barrett for the masterful filmography and Flo Lines for skilfully conducting the interviews and photographic portraits.    Do stop by and enjoy the full exhibition if you missed it! Open until the 11th October 2024, Monday - Friday from 10am-6.30pm at our studio in Sutton Yard, 65 Goswell Road. 

The NLA’s David Taylor in conversation with our director Ben Marston on what he has learnt in his four-year tenure chairing the NLA Education Expert Panel. As David mentions, tonight we are launching ‘School Stories’ reflecting on the communities that have formed in the 100 schools Jestico + Whiles have designed. Do join us from 6.00pm in our Clerkenwell studio.

In the past week I've attended three great conferences - of different complexions and different cohorts - on the challenges of delivering housing, and particularly affordable housing, in the UK. - Architects' Action for Affordable Housing's workshop to agree priorities to take to the new Labour Government. - Housing Today's Building The Future Conference - where HAs and experts discussed the challenges in delivering new affordable housing and maintaining and improving their existing stock. - London Real Estate Forum - which saw panels tackle the government's ambition (or perhaps dream!) to deliver a whopping 1.5 million new homes within the next Parliament. What was so interesting from my perspective was seeing these three very different groups - architects and designers, affordable housing providers and local authorities, and funders and developers - address these issues from their own perspectives. No one could mistake the challenges we face as an industry, nor the hopes we have to meet them. Across the three conferences, one phrase came up again and again. By the architects under Chloë Phelps' chairing; and spoken by Graham Kauders of EDAROTH UK and by Fiona Fletcher Smith of L&Q: HOUSING (AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING) IS INFRASTRUCTURE. Having a home - one which is affordable and safe to live in - is a right everyone should enjoy. By designating housing as national infrastructure - with the recognition and central funding that comes with it - the government can set a clear shift in approach and tone. It may be the only way our industry can deliver its target of 1.5m homes. Here's hoping. Jestico + Whiles

We're excited to see the UK NZC Buildings Standard pilot version has launched. It's the first cross-industry technical standard for defining net zero carbon-aligned buildings. Jestico + Whiles is proud to be a sponsor of this vital work, and to have played a part in its development by hosting an industry round table earlier this year. We look forward to engaging more with the standard and supporting its continued development. Download a copy of the standard at www.nzcbuildings.co.uk.