May 2023

When faced with buying in an unaffordable and overinflated housing market, architect William Samuels and his partner Hannah D’Arcy were forced to consider alternative paths to home ownership. ‘To address this, we looked at how to detach the house value from the land value,’ says William.

The answer: leased land. William and Hannah struck up a long-term agreement with a landowner in Nelson, located in New Zealand’s South Island, to rent the land required to host their future home. 

Built on a NZD$150,000 (about AUD$140,000) budget, William and Hannah’s resulting home, The Studio House, tackles the issues of housing affordability as well as sustainable design, the liveability of smaller spaces, and adaptable architecture.

It’s been a feat of engineering in itself to bring the trees into the podium area of 21 Moorfields in The City of London. This zone is in the public realm but to get the plants in required craning them from the street up over 5 storeys and back down into the beds. We have yet to construct the planters for further planting but already just a three trees shows what a difference even a small amount of green makes in an urban environment. We say small, but these trees were each over 6m tall and weighed well over two tonnes each. Hats off to the team who planted them.

The building here will be home to new Deutsche Bank HQ in the City of London and is designed by Wilkinson Eyre Architects. The entire scheme includes new public realm, raised walkways, bridges, and a new City Garden. Additionally there are six levels of private roof terraces which we have already planted. The building is huge with a footprint of approximately 100m x 60m and just to make things a bit more difficult it sits directly above the new Crossrail station. A genuine feat of engineering and an exciting  project for Andy Sturgeon Design to work on.