Once a vibrant gathering place, the square is now a traffic-choked thoroughfare; a place to pass through rather than one to come together. Valuing and reinforcing the best aspects of what is already there, we propose a new marketplace, a communal and public dining room and a stepped landscape and raised stage for theatre and other outdoor performances, galvanising Letterkenny's position as a cultural locus in the northwest of Ireland.

The stepped theatre seating rises up with the topography of the site to meet the level of Mountsouthwell Place, from where expansive views open up across the town and the rural landscape of the River Swilly Valley. In the evening the sun sets behind the audience, illuminating what takes place on the stage. As the steps face south-east, they will also become a natural gathering and meeting place during the day, as well as a place for children to play in an informal way.

A new extension to a 16th century Grade II listed cottage allows for the kitchen and dining room to be repositioned to better suit the needs of contemporary family life. Beginning from the tectonics and construction of the original dwelling, we have designed an oak-framed garden room which unpicks the tangle of the existing house without sacrificing the ‘room-like’ qualities of its spaces.

The new dining room is constructed local red brick and solid oak, which is left exposed internally; traditional materials deployed in a contemporary manner. This new room replaces an existing 1990s conservatory and significantly improves levels of thermal comfort within the shared spaces of the house.

This refurbishment of an apartment in a warehouse building in Spitalfields builds on work by Lynch Architects dating from the late 1990s. The apartment has been occupied by the same owner ever since, but as he approached the next phase of his life he wished to make some changes to his home.

We carried out a series of environmental upgrades to make the apartment less carbon intensive to run, and reconfigured the kitchen and bathroom to provide more storage space and a downstairs walk-in shower.

For this gallery and private dining space in Peckham, we were interested in reducing the waste created by retail-fit outs. Three furniture elements are inserted into the room; a plinth for window displays, a long table for objects and for dining, and a sales desk.

The furniture is made predominantly from recycled railway sleepers cut, stacked and assembled in various ways. Internal finishes are also kept to a minimum. There is little that cannot be re-used or recycled when our client moves on.

We have recently completed this project for a garden pavilion in South-West London. Our clients have a tight budget and so we have been experimenting with an architecture of off-the-shelf components, pared back to only the most essential elements in order to minimise costs.

Our approach included eliminating traditional finishes and linings, with the timber roof structure exposed and the blockwork walls finished only with a simple lime plaster.

The refurbishment and extension of a Grade II listed Georgian house in Peckham for a young family. Untouched for decades, the house required extensive insulation and damp-proofing in order to create a comfortable internal environment while also retaining a great deal of historic fabric.

The existing rear kitchen extension was damp and dark; by reconfiguring the roof, we were able to bring light into the darkest part of the long, narrow plan, while elsewhere a new dining room was added opening onto the garden.

Our proposal for a small community-run café on the Cumbrian coast reinterprets the traditional masonry walls, pitched roofs and prominent chimneys of the typical dwelling to make a contemporary 'house for the public' at the foot of Black Combe, overlooking the Irish Sea.

An architecture of thick masonry walls, the building responds to its exposed location, buffeted by south-westerly winds from across the sea. Curved entrances are scooped out from this enclosure, providing spaces of shelter at the threshold between inside and out. The building is oriented to maximise views to the beach and to the slopes of Black Combe from within the dining room, which has a fireplace at its centre for warming up on cold winter days.

This refurbishment project for a 1980s house began life in the office of Lynch Architects. With new clients and a revised brief, we sought to improve the quality of its rooms – small and introverted – by reconfiguring the stair to create a long view through the house at ground floor level. This new stair is concealed within a green timber enclosure which rises through the house, its colour amplifying the foliage of the trees in the park beyond.

The existing loft was converted into a new bedroom and study and this created the opportunity to drop natural light down to the floor below, where the master bedroom and dressing area are located. A rooflight illuminates the stairwell and emphasises the height of the space, a contrast to lower ceilings elsewhere.

This refurbishment of a terraced house unpicked an existing warren of rooms to create a kitchen with a better relationship to the other living spaces and to the garden. Tall appliances are concealed in cupboards which frame the door, allowing for a low counter to run the full length of the room. A breakfast table sits in the east-facing bay window.

The family bathroom is tiled with a pink terrazzo in a nod to our client’s Italian family. A horizontal datum line is established above which the walls are painted; this makes the low-ceilinged room feel taller.

This bathroom takes advantage of its location tucked beneath the sloping roof of a house in Ireland. The height of the room is emphasised by continuous low-level tiling which forms a datum beneath which washing and bathing occur. The bath is positioned below a west-facing rooflight through which evening light, sunsets, and the night sky can be enjoyed.

This exhibition, held at the Crypt Gallery in London in September 2018, captured the uniquely inventive architecture that was born out of the restrictive economic conditions of the period immediately following the Cuban Revolution of 1959 in drawings, models and photographs. The research was supported by the RIBA Boyd Auger Scholarship.