Dezeen School Shows: a proposal for a storehouse in Brent, UK, that keeps cultural artefacts is among the student projects from the London School of Architecture.

Also featured is a project that proposes "river rights" as a framework for rethinking our relationship with the natural world and a proposal for a housing community in Bethnal Green, London, which supports young carers.

London School of Architecture

School: London School of Architecture
Course: MArch Designing Architecture
Tutor: Ruth Lang

School Statement:

"The London School of Architecture (LSA) MArch programme unites a network of professional practitioners and academics to support a new generation of architects equipped and empowered to address real-world challenges, including the climate emergency and rampant inequity in urban life.

"Our 2026 degree show, If Only We Will, reinterprets the ideas and optimism central to the 1948 County of London Plan by John Henry Forshaw and Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie, using this as a critical point of reference through which to examine and situate student work in relation to current challenges across the sector.

"The projects presented here are grounded entirely within London, engaging directly with the city's social, environmental, political and spatial complexities.

"Collectively, they demonstrate how architecture can act as a vehicle for more equitable, healthy, sustainable and joyful ways of living.

"This year has been transformative for the LSA, highlighted by our merger with the University of the Built Environment.

"The work on display stands as a powerful provocation for what this future can hold – ambitious, socially engaged and attuned to the opportunities that emerge when disciplines intersect.

"Above all, our graduates demonstrate their capacity to reshape the context in which practice operates."

Architecture as a Framework for Care, Making and Transition by William Brooks

"The project focuses on care leavers – young people who are expected to become independent earlier than many of their peers, often without stable family, financial or emotional support.

"It proposes Hollybush Yard in Bethnal Green as a supported housing and learning community where independence is developed gradually through living, making and shared experience."

"Set within a historic builder's yard, the scheme draws on the site's legacy of construction, repair and material work.

"Rather than erasing this history, the project reactivates it through workshops, shared yards, co-living spaces and learning environments."

Student: William Brooks
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Maker Commons by Thomas Simms

"Situated within Hackney Wick and Fish Island, Maker Commons responds to the gradual displacement of industrial spaces, creative networks and productive communities through cycles of redevelopment following the Olympic Games.

"It investigates how architecture can re-establish these shared infrastructures for material production within urban areas shaped by regeneration-led development.

"While creativity remains central to the area's identity, it has increasingly been aestheticised and repackaged as a cultural asset in support of investor-led growth.

"The project proposes a new form of urban commons that repositions making, repair and skill-sharing as visible and essential civic activities rather than temporary uses."

Student: Thomas Simms
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

What Would the Modern Day City Look Like if Rivers Had Rights? by Elen Togher

"The project is situated within the context of the current climate and ecological crises and proposes river rights as a framework for rethinking our relationship with the natural world.

"Rather than treating rivers as resources to be controlled and exploited, the project explores how recognising rivers as rights-bearing entities could be a stepping stone towards environmental stability.

"Situated along the River Lea, the project proposes an extensive reed filtration network, lido house and river parliament, providing space for river recreation, immersion and representation.

"Constructed from materials of the riverscape, the architecture is intentionally impermanent whilst the landscape heals itself over time."

Student: Elen Togher
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Time and Tide: Unearthing Resilience on the City of London's North Bank by Josie Tindale

"Time and Tide reimagines London's relationship with the River Thames to respond to the projected failure of the Thames Barrier.

"The proposal integrates flood-resilient infrastructure into the City of London's North Bank; unearthing ancient archaeology to enhance heritage, support biodiversity and shape public spaces.

"The excavated material is reused in a tangible celebration of traditional Roman/Medieval construction.

"Drawing on the city's historic connection to the Thames, the scheme seeks to 'soften the edge' of the river following centuries of hard embankment.

"The heart of the scheme is a space for London where history, water, ecology and public life coexist."

Student: Josie Tindale
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Feeding Kilburn by Rachel Opie

"This thesis investigates how architecture can intervene before demolition to enable new forms of community-led civic infrastructure.

"Challenging conventional models of regeneration that rely on clearance and replacement, this project proposes deconstruction as a design process, where buildings are carefully dismantled to recover materials and spatial potential.

"These elements are then reassembled through strategies of adaptive reuse to form frameworks that support evolving forms of occupation.

"By working with what already exists, rather than erasing it, the thesis positions material reuse as a spatial and social strategy for sustaining community presence and agency within the changing city."

Student: Rachel Opie
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Ephemeral Boundaries: Adaptive Reuse as a Pedagogy of Curiosity and Movement by Gloria Hii

"Schools are under pressure to do more than teach. In a post-Covid context, they are expected to support wellbeing, care and social recovery, yet many continue to operate within ageing buildings, rigid classrooms and regulated indoor environments.

"In London, fresh ventilation falters within a culture of standardised comfort, where climate is controlled, sealed and regulated. As a result, curiosity, autonomy and sensory engagement can become suppressed.

"Ephemeral Boundaries argues for an adaptive educational environment that restores school as a porous civic infrastructure, where fresh air is understood not only as a technical requirement, but as a spatial and pedagogical experience."

Student: Gloria Hii
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Designing for Mental Health by Sam Wimbush

"This project began with a seemingly simple question: how can architecture better support mental health?

"Drawing from personal experiences of the NHS mental health system, conversations with service users and wider research into contemporary healthcare provision, it quickly became apparent that the challenges extend far beyond the design of individual buildings.

"Rather than concentrating services within large institutional campuses, care is distributed through a network of familiar and accessible spaces, including community businesses, enhanced GP facilities, therapeutic environments and short-stay accommodation providing support before crisis occurs."

Student: Sam Wimbush
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Unplanning Suburbia: Unlocking An Alternative Future For London's Metroland by Caspar Barker

"With London's population projected to grow to over 11 million by 2050, when London's remaining major brownfield development sites will have all been completed, alternative approaches to building new homes in the capital are going to be required.

"My thesis stands in direct opposition to the Labour government's 2024 planning reforms to permit development on select greenbelt land, and instead I would like to confront how planning reform might bring opportunities for mutually beneficial development among London's vast low-density suburban neighbourhoods to counter urban sprawl."

Student: Caspar Barker
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Common'ing The Boundary by Alex Handy

"The project is a response to the question: What if a neighbourhood could retrofit itself? It proposes an alternative model for the retrofit of UK social housing estates, repositioning retrofit as a collective, materially grounded, and locally embedded process."

"Using the Boundary Estate in London as a test site, the project explores how housing estates can become productive landscapes capable of generating the materials, skills, and governance structures required for their own retrofit.

"The proposal challenges top-down models of retrofit delivery and presents a transferable model for the decentralised retrofit of urban housing across London."

Student: Alex Handy
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

New Imaginaries of Resistance in the Suburban Ends by Anu Sofuyi

"Located in Preston, a suburb in Brent, this thesis proposes a storehouse for cultural artefacts and processes beyond objects: an ever-evolving reflection of diasporic activity.

"It makes the case for a new suburban imagination that seeks to make visible the invisible, and in doing so celebrates the past, present, and future of communal cultural production by the Suburban Mandem.

"Adopting a methodology of speculative fiction using 'hood futurism' (Nabil Al-Kinani, 2024) as a theoretical lens, the project consists of a set of interventions made up of three threads – broadcasting, service and distribution."

Student: Anu Sofuyi
Course: MArch Designing Architecture

Partnership content

This school show is a partnership between Dezeen and the London School of Architecture. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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