Welcome to Mae

The competition is for the remasterplan of Derbent in Russia, Dagestan's second largest city and one of the oldest cities in Russia.

Our multi-disciplinary and international team has been selected from 144 applications, and our winning strategy is aimed at building in resilience; addressing a lack of housing, education and cultural infrastructure and creating economic opportunity.

Based on the guiding principle of a vibrant city, we have developed a forward looking vision for Derbent which respects the unique identity and qualities of the city.

Derbent is located on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, at the foothills of the Tabasaran Mountains of the Greater Caucasus. The historic city centre is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its citadel, ancient town, and fortress buildings.

On Friday 15th November Alex Ely will be speaking as part of an international seminar at Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

The seminar is inspired by the increasing number of projects and architectural practices dealing with spatial, typological and technical innovation connected to the regeneration of existing buildings all over Europe.

Exploring different experiences surrounding the regeneration of existing collective housing, peripheral areas and fragile contexts, along with the unconventional reuse of non-residential, underused or abandoned buildings; delegates will discuss a range of issues including typological innovation in relation to contemporary practices, layout articulation, the image of the building, participation of inhabitants, and the effects that these projects can produce on an urban scale.

We are very pleased to announce the promotion of Romain Muller, Nadine Wagner and Michael Dillon to the position of Associate.

Michael leads our research and development team and is instrumental to our teaching unit at London Met University. Nadine currently leads our technical team and defines best practice in this area, in addition she runs a number of high profile projects including Knight's Walk and Lisson Arches. Romain leads our sustainable and environmental design team and is currently running our Morden College and Aylesbury Estate projects, creating high quality places for older residents.

We are looking forward to the exceptional specialist knowledge that these new members will bring to our senior management team.

Congratulations to our architectural assistants Tatiana Light and Alice Hardy following their success in this year's Architect's Journal Student Prize.

Alice was nominated for the post-graduate prize, while Tatiana won the student undergraduate category with a project that the judges described as ‘a well-judged and beautifully put together set of pages that are very convincing, as well as being a mature piece of work with good clarity in architectural design.’ They added that ‘the project had its own identity while responding to its context and broader history'.

We are engaging in the Global Climate Strikes action on Friday 20th September.

We will be attending the procession in central London and hosting a day of debate and workshops around sustainability in housing design.