RISE Design Studio Blog: Modern Architecture & Design Insights

Tennis in an English Garden

by Imran Jahn on Jul 31, 2025

Aerial view of RISE Design Studio’s proposed new clubhouse at Elmwood Lawn Tennis Club in Kensal Rise, featuring a pitched roof, rooflights, outdoor seating, and landscaped gardens beside the tennis courts, designed for community use and low-energy performance.

Reimagining the Elmwood Lawn Tennis Club Pavilion

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Topics: Sustainable architecture Tennis Pavilion Sustainable Tennis Pavilion

How to Choose the Right Building Standards for a Low-Carbon Future

by Sean Hill on Jul 30, 2025

Rear view of a sustainable London home extension featuring timber cladding, large triple-glazed openings, and meticulous detailing, designed to meet EnerPHit principles for energy efficiency, airtightness, and occupant comfort.

Every build is a decision. Every decision shapes the future.

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Topics: Passivhaus enerphit BREEAM AECB

How to Retrofit a London Home to the EnerPHit Standard

by Imran Jahn on Jul 30, 2025

Rear view of a Victorian London home featuring a contemporary timber-clad extension with triple-glazed sliding doors, designed to EnerPHit standard for low energy use, airtightness, and sustainable performance while respecting the original architecture.

How EnerPHit retrofit principles are shaping London's low-carbon future

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Topics: Building energy Sustainable architecture enerphit

Building on Brownfield in 2025

by Imran Jahn on Jul 26, 2025

Row of contemporary brick houses with pitched roofs and timber detailing, designed by RISE Design Studio on a redeveloped brownfield site, showcasing sustainable urban housing with landscaped frontages and integrated solar shading.

Why the Future of Housing Might Be Hiding in Plain Sight

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Topics: Sustainable architecture Sustainable Affordable Homes Brownfield Development

Breathing New Life into Homes: Why MVHR Matters in a Low-Energy Future

by Sean Hill on Jul 26, 2025

Interior of a low-energy deep retrofit home by RISE Design Studio featuring natural timber finishes, large skylight, MVHR-integrated design, and garden connection through full-height glazing.

At RISE, we believe homes should do more than shelter. They should nurture. Heal. Breathe. And in our journey to design spaces that tread lightly and live deeply, Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) has become a quiet revolution — quite literally.

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Topics: enerphit mvhr Sustainable Interiors Sustainable Architect Sustainable Extensions

Building from the Ground Up: How to Get Planning Permission for a New Build Home

by Sean Hill on Jul 22, 2025

Modern self-build home with brick and timber façade, large glazing, green roof, and landscaped approach. Designed with sustainable principles and planning sensitivity, showcasing low-energy architecture in a contemporary UK residential context.

How to secure planning permission for a new build or self-build home

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Topics: Sustainable architecture New build New Build House

Seeing Past the Plaster: Reimagining a Mews House for the Low-Carbon Age

by Sean Hill on Jul 22, 2025

Dilapidated Maida Vale mews house with faded façade and garage door, symbolising the potential of low-energy retrofits to transform London’s historic homes into sustainable dwellings.

In Maida Vale, one of London’s most quietly charismatic neighbourhoods, a crumbling one-bedroom house has just sold for £2 million.

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Topics: Retrofit Mews House Retrofit

Designing a Better Future, One Extension at a Time

by Sean Hill on Jul 17, 2025

Sustainable rear extension with full-height glazing, reclaimed brick walls, and natural light connecting the indoor living space to the garden, showcasing energy-efficient, low-impact design by RISE Design Studio.

At RISE, we believe your home should tell a deeper story.

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Topics: Sustainable Extensions

The Cost of Cutting Corners: Why Building Standards in the UK Need a Rethink

by Sean Hill on Jul 17, 2025

Aerial view of a terraced house undergoing a major renovation, fully covered in scaffolding and protective sheeting, highlighting the scale and care involved in a professional construction project managed by RISE Design Studio.

At RISE, we’ve seen the ripple effects of poor construction up close. The hidden costs. The broken trust. The dreams that crumble faster than the plaster on an uninspected wall. It’s a painful truth: too many people in the UK have entrusted their homes – their lives – to builders who …

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Topics: Cowboy Builders

Building Better, Faster, Lighter

by Sean Hill on Jul 16, 2025

Factory setting showing timber-framed modular units under construction, highlighting the precision, efficiency, and sustainability of offsite housing methods.

How offsite manufacturing is reshaping sustainable architecture

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Topics: Sustainable architecture Innovative Architecture Offsite manufacturing Modern Methods of Construction

Retrofit or Rebuild? The Developer’s Dilemma in a Carbon-Critical Age

by Sean Hill on Jul 16, 2025

A sustainably retrofitted brick building in London by RISE Design Studio, featuring arched windows, contemporary extensions, and a landscaped garden – showcasing the harmony between heritage architecture and modern low-energy design.

☉ In an era where buildings must do more with less – less carbon, less waste, less time – we find ourselves rethinking everything.

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Topics: Sustainable architecture Retrofit New build Rebuild

A New Tennis Pavilion for the Next Chapter

by Sean Hill on Jul 14, 2025

Existing single-storey timber pavilion at Sutton Churches Tennis Club with corrugated metal roof and multiple windows, showing signs of age and wear, set against a cloudy blue sky.

We’ve just been appointed to design something quietly ambitious for Sutton Churches Tennis Club.

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Topics: Sustainable architecture Sustainable Design sustainable materials sustainable structure Sustainable Tennis Pavilion

11 Things We Always Consider When Designing an Eco Home

by Sean Hill on Jul 14, 2025

Modern eco home by a pond in a woodland setting, designed with Passivhaus principles including deep eaves, timber cladding, solar orientation, and full-height glazing for energy efficiency and comfort year-round.

At RISE, we believe the homes we build should quietly work for the planet—while beautifully serving the people who live in them.

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Topics: Passivhaus Sustainable Design

Stone, Time and Legacy: A Conversation with Artorius Faber

by Sean Hill on Jul 11, 2025

Sean Ronnie Hill of RISE Design Studio and Edward Smith of Artorius Faber standing in front of large natural stone blocks, highlighting their conversation on stone, time, and legacy in sustainable architecture and material longevity.

At RISE, we’ve always believed that the materials we choose tell stories — about place, about time, about how we value what we build and who we build for.

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Topics: Sustainable architecture Stone Architecture Designing with Stone

Reinventing Timber: A New Chapter in Sustainable Building

by Sean Hill on Jul 9, 2025

A detailed view of three stacked Superwood planks in varying warm tones, showcasing the fine grain and engineered density of this sustainable, high-performance timber alternative developed for low-carbon architectural applications.

At RISE, we believe in material honesty. In designing buildings that respect the earth they rise from, and the future they help shape. So when a material like Superwood enters the conversation—a bio-based innovation that challenges concrete and steel—it catches our attention.

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Topics: Building materials natural materials sustainable materials

Beyond Repair, Built for Tomorrow: Crafting a Contemporary Rural Home near Faversham

by Sean Hill on Jul 4, 2025

Visualisation of a modern barn-style replacement dwelling near Faversham, Kent, designed by RISE Design Studio. The sustainable home features natural timber cladding, a pitched metal roof, open-plan living spaces and large openings connecting to the rural landscape.

Hidden behind a screen of wild grasses and hedgerow just outside Faversham sits a plot that tells a story many know but few want to face: a house that once served its time, now left to the elements, a shell clinging to life it no longer has. When we first stepped onto this patch of Ke …

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Topics: Sustainable Design Rural New Build Replacement Dwelling

How to Find the Right Architect for Your London Home

by Sean Hill on Jul 2, 2025

Sean Ronnie Hill and Imran Jahn of RISE Design Studio discussing a sustainable residential project with their team in the studio, with a computer screen showing a 3D design for an energy-efficient London home, reflecting collaboration and low-energy architecture

Sean Ronnie Hill and Imran Jahn from RISE Design Studio collaborating with their team on a sustainable residential design for a low-energy London home. Designing or renovating a home in London is more than just a project - it’s a chance to shape how you live and how lightly you tread …

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Topics: London Architecture Sustainable Architect

Do I Need Planning Permission for a Shed or Garden Office? A Guide to Building Sustainable Outbuildings

by Sean Hill on Jul 1, 2025

A modern garden office studio designed by RISE Design Studio, built with sustainable timber, natural light and a green roof, sitting quietly in a London back garden — showing how a permitted outbuilding can add purposeful, low-impact space to your home.

At some point, many of us outgrow our homes — not in spirit, but in space. A quiet garden office, a sturdy shed, a timber studio for work, play or simply to sit still. These aren’t just buildings — they’re small revolutions in how we choose to live, lightly and purposefully.

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Topics: Garden studio Sustainable Design

Why an Architectural Feasibility Study Matters

by Sean Hill on Jul 1, 2025

Section drawing of Douglas House in Kensal Rise showing sustainable features such as external blinds, green roof, lowered floor, winter sunlight path, cross ventilation and dual aspect layout, used to support early-stage feasibility studies and passive design strategies.

Every project begins long before a spade touches soil. It starts in that hazy, hopeful place where ideas spark and dreams form — and where the wise pause to ask: Is this really possible?

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Topics: Sustainable Design Feasibility Study

Mews Houses: Breathing New Life into London’s Best-Kept Secrets

by Sean Hill on Jul 1, 2025

Interior of a renovated London mews house designed by RISE Design Studio, featuring a minimalist staircase in warm timber, marble kitchen surfaces, and brass fixtures—blending sustainable materials with elegant, modern detailing in a compact, efficient layout.

London holds many stories. Some are loud and proud—shouted from rooftops and mansion façades. Others whisper. Hidden behind elegant squares and leafy crescents, the mews house belongs to the latter. These back-lane buildings were never designed to impress, and yet today, they quietly …

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Topics: Mews House Retrofit Sustainable Mews House

A New Standard for Living: Why Passivhaus Matters

by Sean Hill on Jul 1, 2025

Exterior view of a sustainable low energy London home designed by RISE Design Studio, featuring high-performance insulation, triple-glazed windows, and a contemporary aesthetic aligned with Passivhaus principles.

At RISE, we believe that architecture has the power to restore balance—between people and planet, cost and comfort, purpose and performance. The buildings we design must rise to meet more than just today’s needs. They must lead. They must inspire. They must work.

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Topics: Passivhaus Passive house Sustainable architecture