Hollaway Studio is an architecture practice that embraces the past, the present, and the future and places people and feeling at the core of its architecture philosophy.
With offices in London and Kent and a strong reputation for design, the practice is working in a wide range of sectors including hospitality, hotels, restaurants, education, and housing. In recent years it has worked on a number of large-scale regeneration schemes including the restoration of five listed buildings into a mixed-use site involving four TV & Film Studios, Post Production, educational facilities, and residential.
Design begins with feeling – for place, for the past, for the needs and wants of the now, and for a future that matters. It listens. It empathises. It’s pragmatic. It’s an understanding that informs everything we do. It makes buildings that work – truly, beautifully. This is how we approach all projects.
An architecture practice is nothing without its people, and the very best practices are those in which everyone has a voice – however different it may be. We are extremely fortunate Hollaway is exactly this: an extraordinary bunch of thinkers, talkers, and doers. These are the people that get buildings made.
Among his many feats, the artist Nick Veasey has x-rayed an entire Boeing 777, a busy office building, and the length of human-laden single-decker bus. However, some of his most beautiful works are the result of a collaboration with the V&A, where he x-rayed collections of historic dresses. Seeing one of his images next to the original dress is to understand in an instant an art that seeks to see through to the truth of things. At once beautiful and ephemeral, there is an extraordinary purity to the x-rayed dress, and it is exactly this that informs the design of the Process Gallery.
Utterly unusual, a studio and gallery, a place for seeing into and being seen into, it was essential that the materials used for Process Gallery’s construction embody the art it would both facilitate and show off. The bones of the building had to be laid bare – in much the same way as Veasey’s work finds its way into exposing those of his subjects. Hence, everything looks like it should look: concrete floors, a ply-clad interior, and exposed concrete walls. Nothing is hidden, camouflaged, obscured. There is no trickery, no conceit.
The RIBA award-winning architecture practice has built its reputation working on a wide array of projects, including a cutting-edge skate park, the world’s first heritage theme park, a bespoke artist’s studio in an open field, and a high-end seafood restaurant. The breadth of these projects may be wide, but each one brings the perfect balance of playfulness and sincerity, with a firm focus on placemaking, sustainability and the experience of the individuals who will use the space.
London
10A Acton Street WC1X 9NG
+44 (0)20 7096 5425
Kent
The Tramway Stables, Rampart Road
Hythe CT21 5BG
+44 (0)1303 260 515
