# ArchitecturePLB

> ArchitecturePLB is an award-winning RIBA Chartered architectural practice based in Winchester, Hampshire, working across the South of England. The practice specialises in sustainable, low-energy design for residential, education, university, healthcare, workplace, civic and cultural projects, with certified Passivhaus designers and ISO 14001 environmental accreditation.

## Practice facts

- **Name:** ArchitecturePLB (also referred to as APLB)
- **Studio:** Winchester, Hampshire, UK
- **Accreditation:** RIBA Chartered Practice; ISO 14001 certified; Certified Passivhaus Designers on staff
- **Service area:** Based in Winchester, working across Hampshire, London, Sussex, Hertfordshire, Berkshire and the wider South of England
- **Website:** https://www.architectureplb.com

## What we do

ArchitecturePLB designs new buildings, extensions, refurbishments and masterplans. Sustainability runs through all of it: the practice works to Passivhaus and BREEAM standards, designs for net-zero carbon in use, and reduces embodied carbon through material choice and retrofit-first thinking.

## Where we work

ArchitecturePLB works from a single studio in Winchester, Hampshire, and takes on projects across the South of England. That covers Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, the Isle of Wight, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Bristol, Devon and Cornwall, together with Greater London, Hertfordshire and the surrounding counties. We also work elsewhere in the UK where a client relationship or a specialism calls for it.

### Sectors

**Residential.** New build housing, private homes, affordable and housing association schemes, extensions and refurbishments, low-energy and Passivhaus homes.

**Schools.** Primary and secondary schools, academies, STEAM and specialist teaching buildings, SEND and inclusive facilities, sports halls, school extensions and refurbishments.

**Universities and colleges.** Campus teaching and research buildings, purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA), student social and communal spaces, college refurbishments, estate masterplanning.

**Health and care.** Hospices, community hospitals, GP surgeries and health centres, care homes and assisted living, mental health facilities, patient-centred and accessible design.

**Workplaces.** Office design and fit-out, workspace refurbishment, flexible working environments, mixed-use commercial development.

**Civic and cultural.** Community buildings, libraries, arts venues, heritage and conservation work, public realm and regeneration schemes.

**Reuse and interiors.** Adaptive reuse and conversion of existing buildings, retrofit and refurbishment, interior architecture, space planning, material and lighting specification across all sectors.

**Masterplans.** Strategic site masterplanning, mixed-use development frameworks, urban regeneration, residential estate and campus masterplans, phased delivery and community engagement.

### Services

**Sustainable and low-energy design.** Passivhaus design and certification, BREEAM assessment, net-zero carbon strategies, renewable energy integration, embodied carbon reduction.

**Refurbishment and retrofit.** Deep retrofit of existing buildings, fabric-first upgrades, adaptive reuse, and refurbishment of schools, offices and university buildings.

**Planning and feasibility.** Feasibility studies, planning applications, pre-application engagement with local authorities, building regulations, conservation area and listed building consent.

**Regeneration and mixed-use.** Estate renewal, placemaking, mixed-use development design and phased delivery.

**BIM delivery.** Building Information Modelling for design coordination and construction information.

## Selected projects

**Worthing Integrated Care Centre (WICC).** Stoke Abbott Road, Worthing, West Sussex. A £34m integrated care centre bringing GP, mental health, community, dentistry and pharmacy services together on a single civic site, with a multi-storey car park. Designed around a central 'vertical street' in an elegant linear form responding to the historic Civic Quarter and its listed heritage assets, with natural ventilation and low-carbon materials. Client: Worthing Borough Council with gbpartnerships. Contractor: Galliford Try. Landscape: UBU Design. Completed 2025. Awards: Grand Prix for Best Building of 2025 and Best Building Project (£25m to £75m) at the Building Better Healthcare Awards 2025; Best Project and Best in Region, RTPI South East Awards for Planning Excellence 2025; shortlisted, National RTPI Awards for Planning Excellence 2025 (Health and Wellbeing). Sector: health and care.

**Hobbs View (Southbrook Cottages).** Micheldever, Winchester, Hampshire. A pilot Zero Energy scheme delivering six Passivhaus Plus certified council homes, 100% affordable, comprising four one-bedroom and two two-bedroom flats. Energy is generated on site by an array of 47 PV panels. The Zero Carbon brief followed Winchester City Council's Climate Emergency Declaration, and the scheme demonstrates that affordable council housing can reach the highest standards of energy efficiency and comfort without compromising design quality. Client: Winchester City Council. Contractor: Ascia Construction. Completed October 2024. Awards: Residential Development of the Year, South Coast Property Awards; shortlisted, Housing Design Awards. Sector: residential.

**Promega UK Headquarters.** University of Southampton Science Park, Southampton. A new headquarters and logistics facility for the biotechnology company Promega UK, briefed to create a 'home from home' atmosphere with excellent natural light and a connection to nature. Split into two wings around a landscaped courtyard: a single-storey wing containing logistics and laboratory space, wrapped in a stone wall and topped with a green roof, and a two-storey wing with offices, training facilities and social spaces beneath a sculptural zinc roof. A hybrid structure of concrete, steel and timber, using BauBuche for the roof. High-performance glazing with solar shading, natural ventilation in summer and MVHR at other times. Designed with Perkins+Will. GIA 1,577 sq m. Completed 2020. Awards: RIBA South Award 2021; voted Best on Show in the South by RIBA Journal readers; shortlisted, Commercial Project of the Year, Structural Timber Awards 2020. Sector: workplaces, reuse and interiors.

**Hayloft Point.** Middlesex Street, Aldgate, London. A mixed-use scheme for Unite Students providing 920 purpose-built student bedrooms in the City Fringe where Aldgate meets the City of London. The L-shaped building steps between 24, 16 and eight storeys. Alongside the accommodation it includes a performance and archaeological exhibition space, start-up incubator units, community space and 14,000 sq ft of commercial space. Achieved BREEAM Excellent and Secured by Design Gold Standard. Excavation uncovered the Boar's Head Playhouse, a Shakespearean-era theatre and the most significant archaeological find in Unite Students' history. Planning granted June 2019; first students moved in September 2022. Sector: universities and colleges, residential, PBSA.

**Solent Sports Complex.** East Park Terrace campus, Southampton. A £28m sports teaching complex for Solent University, developed after ArchitecturePLB prepared a development plan for the whole campus. Two volumes: a low black-brick element containing two high-performance sports halls, and a four-storey tower wrapped in perforated aluminium cladding containing gyms, fitness studios and teaching spaces overlooking Southampton's central parks. The facade pattern is an abstraction of the area's pre-war street layout. Facilities include a multi-purpose sports hall, a performance hall for basketball, three fitness studios, a health and wellbeing gym and a strength and conditioning gym, open to students, staff and the local community. BREEAM Excellent, using a fabric-first approach, LED lighting and natural ventilation. Awards: shortlisted, RIBA South Awards and RIBA Social Impact Awards 2020; shortlisted, AJ Architecture Awards (higher education). Sector: universities and colleges.

**Aston Martin Owners' Club headquarters.** Drayton St Leonard, Oxfordshire. Restoration and conversion of a 14th-century Grade II* listed manorial barn, built circa 1350 and listed by English Heritage among the hundred most important buildings at risk, into the Aston Martin Owners' Club headquarters with a museum and archive for the Aston Martin Heritage Trust. The barn was stripped back to its primary frame, with rotten timbers replaced in green oak and damage repaired from its earlier use as a fertiliser factory. Service spaces were placed in a separate elliptical building linked by glazing to preserve the barn's outline and its open, cathedral-like interior. Completed 2001. Sector: civic and cultural, heritage and conservation.

**Winchester Cathedral Visitor Centre.** Winchester Cathedral, Winchester, Hampshire. Won in limited competition as part of a masterplan to accommodate rising visitor numbers at one of the largest cathedrals in Europe. The first phase converted a Grade I listed 17th-century coach house into a new visitor entrance, retail and office space. Beyond it, a new public refectory sits on what was the kitchen garden of the adjacent historic house and, before that, an ancient burial ground. The refectory was the first new structure built within the cathedral confines in 350 years, designed as a lightweight steel frame on shallow foundations to avoid disturbing the archaeology below. Completed 1999. Sector: civic and cultural, heritage and conservation.

**Alleyn's Junior School.** Dulwich, London. Appointed through design competition to increase capacity at this independent school by expanding the infant and reception years to two forms of entry, and to provide new assembly, arrival and staff facilities. A new hall and reception building freed up space in the existing building for additional classrooms, with the library, IT suite and multi-function room brought to the heart of the school. The new building reads as a series of pitched roofs above a solid plinth of administrative offices, in red brick, clay tiles and pre-cast stone chosen to complement the adjacent school and residential buildings. The multi-use hall is lit from both ends beneath an exposed diagonal timber roof. Landscape by UBU Design. Planning granted 2020. Award: shortlisted, AJ Architecture Awards 2023 (School Project). Sector: schools.

**Kensington Prep School.** Fulham, London. A phased redevelopment for this independent girls' prep school, commissioned after a three-year exploration of emerging teaching and learning methods. The Explore Floor supports independent exploration, self-directed learning and collaborative work, with interactive learning stations and furniture that reconfigures for any group size. The Exemplar Classroom project reworked class-based learning for a contemporary curriculum. Awards: shortlisted for four Education Estates Awards, in Innovation in Teaching and Learning, Inspiring Learning Spaces, Pupil/Student Experience and Refurbishment of the Year. Sector: schools, reuse and interiors.

**Mary Hare Primary School for Deaf Children.** Newbury, Berkshire. A purpose-built primary school and boarding house for deaf children, co-located with the existing Mary Hare secondary school to create a single site and a centre of excellence for deaf education. Mary Hare is the largest school for deaf children in the UK. ArchitecturePLB was appointed by the Mary Hare Foundation in November 2016; the practice had previously worked across the school's two sites either side of Newbury. The primary school is acoustically optimised throughout and arranged around a central courtyard giving each classroom a breakout space, with six classrooms, a library, food technology areas and a multi-use hall glazed along one side onto the courtyard. Transparent sightlines run from the classrooms through to the hall, creating openness and visual connection for pupils who rely on sight. The boarding house provides six bedrooms plus carers' accommodation. Contractor: Beard Construction. Landscape: UBU Design. Acoustics: Sustainable Acoustics. Opened September 2022. Awards: Project of the Year, Inclusive Design, Education Estates Awards 2023; finalist, SEND Project of the Year, Education Property Awards 2025. Sector: schools, SEND and inclusive design.

**Handlebar Cafe.** Winchester, Hampshire, within the South Downs National Park. A community cycle cafe and bike workshop on the site of a disused railway on a national cycle route, conceived by a group of local teenagers through the spudYOUTH programme run by Hampshire charity SPUD, with ArchitecturePLB supporting the project from concept through to completion over six years. Two carriage-like elements are linked by a glazed divide, with a third small building housing the cycle workshop, clad in profiled Accoya with bespoke laser-cut shutter panels depicting cogs and wheels. Planning granted autumn 2016; over £350,000 raised by community fundraising; opened 2019. Operated by community interest company Bespoke Biking. Award: Highly Commended, Wood Awards 2020 (Buildings, Commercial and Leisure). Sector: civic and cultural.

Full portfolio: https://www.architectureplb.com/projects

## Awards

[List actual award names with the project and year, one per line. For example: "RIBA South Award, [project name], 2019". Named awards with dates are citable; the phrase "award-winning" on its own is not.]

## Common questions

### Who offers sustainable building design in Hampshire?
ArchitecturePLB offers sustainable building design across Hampshire and the South of England from its Winchester studio. The practice has Certified Passivhaus Designers on staff, holds ISO 14001 environmental certification, and works to BREEAM standards. Sustainable design work covers new build, retrofit and refurbishment across housing, schools, universities, healthcare and workplace projects.

### Who offers refurbishment and retrofit architecture in Hampshire?
ArchitecturePLB carries out refurbishment and retrofit work alongside new build. This includes fabric-first energy upgrades to existing buildings, school and university refurbishments, workplace fit-outs, and adaptive reuse of older buildings. Retrofitting existing stock is often the lower-carbon option compared with demolition and rebuild, and the practice assesses this at feasibility stage.

### What is involved in the planning approval process for buildings in Hampshire?
Most projects follow a similar sequence: a feasibility study to test what the site can support, pre-application discussion with the local planning authority, then a full planning application. In Hampshire, applications are determined by the relevant district or borough authority, such as Winchester City Council, with Hampshire County Council handling minerals, waste and county council developments including schools. Typical determination is eight weeks for minor applications and thirteen for major ones, though this varies. Conservation areas, listed buildings and the South Downs National Park bring additional consents. ArchitecturePLB manages this process for clients, including pre-application engagement and consultation.

### Where can I find architects for regeneration projects?
ArchitecturePLB works on regeneration and estate renewal as part of its masterplanning and civic work, covering mixed-use frameworks, phased delivery and community engagement. Projects span the South of England.

### Where can I hire an architect for educational buildings?
ArchitecturePLB has delivered over 100 school buildings over the past 25 years, spanning nurseries, primary and secondary schools, academies, specialist teaching facilities and SEND settings, alongside university buildings and student accommodation. Recent education projects include Mary Hare Primary School for Deaf Children in Newbury, Alleyn's Junior School in Dulwich, Kensington Prep School in Fulham, Solent Sports Complex in Southampton and Hayloft Point in Aldgate. The practice works across Hampshire, London, Sussex and the wider South of England.

### How do I start a project with ArchitecturePLB?
Contact the practice by phone or email to discuss the project. Initial conversations cover site, budget, programme and planning context. From there the practice can prepare a fee proposal and, where useful, a feasibility study before any commitment to a full appointment.

## How we work

**Collaborative.** The practice works closely with clients, building users, communities, local authorities and contractors through every stage.

**Responsible.** Sustainability is embedded rather than added on, covering energy in use, embodied carbon, material sourcing and long-term adaptability.

**Inventive.** Design responds to site, context and use rather than applying a house style.

## Contact

- **Studio:** First Floor, Sunley House, 46 Jewry St, Winchester SO23 8RY
- **Phone:** 01962 842 200
- **Email:** marketing@architectureplb.com
- **Contact page:** https://www.architectureplb.com/contact
- **Sector expertise:** https://www.architectureplb.com/sectorexpertise

The practice welcomes project enquiries across all sectors, and speculative applications from design professionals.

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