RISE Design Studio

RISE Design Studio RISE Design Studio is an innovative contemporary architect’s practice based in Queen’s Park, West London

We are open as usual - although working from home!

RISE Design Studio is an innovative contemporary architect’s practice based in Queen’s Park, West London

There's a version of a renovation that goes exactly as planned. The contractor delivers. The budget holds. The house bec...
29/05/2026

There's a version of a renovation that goes exactly as planned. The contractor delivers. The budget holds. The house becomes what you imagined.

For that to happen, a lot of quiet things need to be in place before work starts. Insurance is one of them.

Not the box-ticking kind. The kind that actually matches the risk on your specific project. Your standard home insurance was written for a static, occupied house. A renovation changes everything about that.

After a CPD with specialist construction insurance brokers TL Dallas, the team at RISE Design Studio has written a guide to the nine policies that matter. It covers the obvious ones and the ones most homeowners don't know to ask for.

Worth reading before the scaffolding goes up. https://bit.ly/3RAXFz3

At 6am this morning, RISE founder Sean Ronnie Hill was in the Serpentine with client Zoe Birch of Physio Motion, Mayfair...
27/05/2026

At 6am this morning, RISE founder Sean Ronnie Hill was in the Serpentine with client Zoe Birch of Physio Motion, Mayfair. Water temperature 23.7°C. London's heatwave in full effect.

Sean swims here all year round. In January the water is around 4°C. Nearly twenty degrees colder. Same lake, same rope, same jetty. Completely different proposition.

That contrast, between a January swim and a warm May morning, is one of the clearest lessons in thermal comfort he knows. And it leads directly to how RISE thinks about building performance.

The full piece is on the RISE journal. Worth a read if you are thinking about a project where how a space feels matters as much as how it performs. https://bit.ly/4fQ3vXc

Sean Ronnie Hill, founder of RISE Design Studio, visited Matiz Gallery in Barcelona this week and was stopped in his tra...
27/05/2026

Sean Ronnie Hill, founder of RISE Design Studio, visited Matiz Gallery in Barcelona this week and was stopped in his tracks by the work of Adam Weismann of Claymoon Studio.

Weismann's Green Rammed Earth Skyspace is a triptych of unfired clay panels, each compacted layer by layer until compression itself becomes the image. Up close: raw texture, mineral tones, honest material. Across the room: three panels that dissolve into something close to a landscape.

At 65mm deep, the work casts its own shadow. It doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.

For Sean and the team at RISE, where a fabric-first approach to design means thinking hard about materials before systems, encountering work like this matters. These materials carry presence, ecological integrity, and a connection to place that synthetic alternatives simply cannot replicate.

Sean has written about the work and its relevance to how RISE approaches natural materials in architecture. Read the full piece on the RISE journal.

Herbert Paradise, a low-energy EnerPHit retrofit in Kensal Rise by RISE Design Studio, has been featured in a Samsung Ge...
20/05/2026

Herbert Paradise, a low-energy EnerPHit retrofit in Kensal Rise by RISE Design Studio, has been featured in a Samsung Germany campaign promoting their glare-free television technology.

What's interesting about the choice of location isn't the product. It's what Samsung instinctively recognised in the architecture: a quality of calm that comes from building well. Filtered daylight. Natural materials. Stable temperatures. Spatial stillness. All of it the result of a building designed from the fabric outward, with human comfort as the primary brief.

RISE have written about what the collaboration revealed, and what it suggests about where architecture and interiors are heading. Worth a read if you're thinking about how the spaces we inhabit shape the way we feel inside them.

Read the full piece https://bit.ly/3PRZF5t

Most UK homes were built when energy was cheap. That era is overRISE Design Studio's latest piece unpacks why the conver...
04/05/2026

Most UK homes were built when energy was cheap. That era is over

RISE Design Studio's latest piece unpacks why the conversation around rising energy bills so often starts in the wrong place - and what a fabric-first approach to design actually changes.

Passivhaus methodology. EnerPHit retrofit. The right sequence of improvements, in the right order. And the financial data that is now confirming what building science has pointed to for years

The homes being designed well now will cost less to run, hold their value better, and weather the kind of external shocks that have made energy costs so unpredictable

https://bit.ly/42LvShC

Planning approved! 🎾RISE Design Studio has secured consent for a new low-carbon clubhouse for in Sutton, London - desig...
23/04/2026

Planning approved! 🎾
RISE Design Studio has secured consent for a new low-carbon clubhouse for in Sutton, London - designed as a contemporary mass timber pavilion to AECB CarbonLite New Build standard.
To celebrate, the team has written a guide for any sports club committee considering a new facility: what to ask your architect, how to approach planning, why sustainability saves money in the long run, and why getting your brief right matters more than your budget.
Link in bio.
Visuals by Gabriel Spera. Project team: Jose Dengra, Imran Jahn

Planning approved! 🎾RISE Design Studio has secured consent for a new low-carbon clubhouse for Sutton Churches Lawn Tenni...
23/04/2026

Planning approved! 🎾

RISE Design Studio has secured consent for a new low-carbon clubhouse for Sutton Churches Lawn Tennis Club in Sutton, London - designed as a contemporary mass timber pavilion to AECB CarbonLite New Build standard.

To celebrate, the team has written a guide for any sports club committee considering a new facility: what to ask your architect, how to approach planning, why sustainability saves money in the long run, and why getting your brief right matters more than your budget.

Link in bio.

Visuals by Gabriel Spera. Project team: José Dengra, Imran Jahn, Sean Ronnie Hill. Structural engineer: Francis Law.

Scallop House, Winston Road N16 - RIBA Stage 3 Developed Design.From a bold terracotta concept to something quieter and ...
14/04/2026

Scallop House, Winston Road N16 - RIBA Stage 3 Developed Design.

From a bold terracotta concept to something quieter and more deeply considered. Clay plaster. Lime render. Oiled oak. H**p board. A Japanese-influenced garden of gravel, stepping stones, and cloud-pruned trees.

The scalloped cylindrical columns, elliptical oculus rooflight, and brushed brass frames remain at the heart of the design - but the palette has been stripped back to its essentials.

Planning submission to Hackney Council imminent. https://bit.ly/4cnGR5n

What does it actually cost to build a new home in London in 2026?RISE Design Studio have written the guide they wish exi...
31/03/2026

What does it actually cost to build a new home in London in 2026?

RISE Design Studio have written the guide they wish existed - no meaningless ranges, no vague caveats. Just an honest, detailed breakdown of every cost involved: construction, professional fees, planning, VAT, and a full worked example of a certified Passivhaus family home on a North London infill plot.

Key numbers to know -

☉ Good quality new build: £3,250 to £4,000/m² (construction only) ☉ Passivhaus standard, all-in: £5,000 to £5,400/m² ☉ New build residential construction is zero-rated for VAT ☉ Energy bills in a certified Passivhaus home can be 80-90% lower than a standard equivalent

Building your own home in London is rarely a purely financial decision. But against the cost of buying an equivalent property - plus stamp duty, legal fees, and the uncertainty of opaque build quality - it often makes more sense than it first appears.

The full guide is on the RISE Journal - link: https://bit.ly/41AQit5

☉ Architecture for people and planet

The client's brief had one rule.No glazed box.Scallop House, Stoke Newington N16.Lime render. Curved forms. Two elliptic...
25/03/2026

The client's brief had one rule.

No glazed box.

Scallop House, Stoke Newington N16.

Lime render. Curved forms. Two elliptical rooflights that know exactly where the sun is going.

Upstairs - a room the colour of the sky.

Fabric-first. Built to last. Built to be loved.

Address

The Society Building, 55 Whitfield Street
London
W1T4AH

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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+442032901003

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