Most recently Hedia Yared joined us for a week from her A-Level studies at Queen Mary’s Grammar School for girls. Hedia worked within the heart of our studio on a theoretical project to design her dream house, while being involved in general office activities and sitting in on project meetings and design reviews of our live projects. At the end of the week she was able to see her newly learnt Revit skills in 3D by enjoying a walk around her dream house in our VR set up. Hedia told us she had a great time with us and is now even more motivated to become an Architect.

D5 have now submitted a full planning application for our proposed extension to The Blue Coat School’s Viney Building in Edgbaston, Birmingham. The project involves the infilling of a central courtyard to create a multi-use top lit space providing accommodation for an extended dining hall and hosting events.

The Jewellery Quarter site was historically William Sapcote and Sons Ltd. builders’ yard since the early 1900’s, however in recent years it has been unoccupied and in need of redevelopment. The approved proposal includes 11 townhouses and 2 apartments.

The existing Camden Street fronting building is to be retained, converted and extended with a zinc clad roof top extension. Within the old yard two terraces of newbuild townhouses complete the scheme.

D5’s Meera Jackson has been tutoring second year architecture degree students for the past year, and was very pleased to be asked to present prizes to graduate students on D5 Architects behalf in the Dissertation: Champions of Environmental and Social Agenda category to Samuel Kercher – Champion of inclusive urban design, Alana Perry Kinloch – Champion of urban regeneration and Batool Hamadi – Champion of design for mental health and wellbeing. Meera commented, ‘ I’ve really enjoyed working with the students and seeing their projects come to life over the semesters – well done everyone’.

D5 have a long history of collaboration with local schools of architecture including tutoring, examining, work experience and year out placements. We see this as great way to connect with and help new upcoming talent and support the schools many of the practice attended.

The original Georgian house was almost entirely lost in form and out of sight before the project commenced. The house had been extensively modified to suit the sites former industrial needs and enclosed in surrounding buildings from the 19^th and 20^th century. The before photo shows how the front door and steps appeared before the project started. Now virtually free standing, the hansom property has been meticulously renovated and reinstated as a single 3-storey dwelling with cellar. The unique 5-bed house is now available for purchase, with marketing by Maguire Jackson

The project will develop a long vacant site in south Digbeth, within the Rea Valley Urban Quarter. The 10-storey building has been designed to accommodate 70, one, two and three bedroom apartments. Many dwellings have private external terraces with the upper storey dwellings having large westerly facing terraces with great views of the city centre.

The building will be clad in brick and feature recessed panels with a Celtic knot pattern in textured brickwork in reference to the area’s Irish heritage. Lines of burnished brass cladding panels feature on the façade identifying the ground floor entrances. Brass has been used in reference to the chandelier and gas fitting manufacturer which once stood on the site, which also gave its Leopold Works name to the development.

And we spotlight Savita Rolia who has been at D5 since 2018 and has experience across multiple sectors including residential, commercial, retail and education. Over the last 4 years at D5, Savita has been involved in residential schemes across the West Midlands as well as various projects at Coventry University and Birmingham Airport, where she is currently involved in the complex New Generation Security Compliance project now progressing on site. Savita’s profile and involvement at Birmingham Airport will be presented in a gallery Celebrating Women in Architecture organised by the Birmingham Architecture Association at Symphony Hall, Birmingham 08/03/2023, 18:00-21:00 .

For this weeks Friday morning meeting we enjoyed time freehand sketching various icon views of Birmingham in pen or charcoal including a few continuous line versions. Can you identify all four views?!

Great news! Today we received unanimous approval at the Planning Committee for our part conversion, part new build residential led project of Summer Hill House in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter conservation area. Now to get on with the Technical Design for construction.

Promotion News: We’re delighted to announce a double promotion at D5 Architects this week. Both Rachael Darby (Senior Technologist) and Joe Bowman (Senior Architect) have accepted promotions to Associate. Their promotions have been made in acknowledgement of their continued high quality, hard work and commitment to meeting and exceeding our clients’ expectations.

The Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) scheme will replace 5no terraced houses in student HMO use with a development of 69 bedrooms including 43 studio rooms and 25 cluster rooms.

More information on the project page here.

The Grade 2 listed buildings will be restored, renovated, converted and extended to create 26 residential apartments and 12 apart-hotel rooms.

More information on the project page here.

This week our Friday morning meeting was taken out out the office with visit to Coventry to have a guided tour around the University's recently completed Delia Derbyshire building for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

We all travelled by train and so enroute we also looked around our Coventry Station project which opened earlier in the year.

The development will be built on a long vacant site currently used for surface car parking surrounding the existing Queensgate House. The proposal is for 159 dwellings in two buildings and includes a mix of 1-bed, 2-bed and 3-bed properties.

More information on the project page here.

Following lunch in Brindley Place, the team at D5 enjoyed a couple of hours cruising around our city centre canals in electric GoBoats! Great to see our city from an unusual view point. We then moved on to a night out enjoying the bars and activities in Digbeth. Great time had by all!

Instead of our normal inhouse whole office Friday morning meeting, last Friday Richard Colyer, Project Architect for our Priory House project for Elevate Property, took D5 team members not involved in the project for a guided tour of the near complete project. It can be a challenge working with existing buildings, but it’s very rewarding bringing them back to life and we really enjoy doing it. Also great working with Elevate to realise the vision we had over 12-months ago. Its looking brilliant and wont be long before residents can move it!

A full planning application has now been submitted for our design of a residential proposal for 17no new dwellings in a semi-rural location on the outskirts of Redditch.

More information regarding the project here.

The application is due to be determined later this year.

Birmingham Airport Press Release:

"Birmingham Airport Security Screening Investment to Drive Economic Growth in West Midlands 

Customers flying out of Birmingham Airport are to benefit from a simpler, speedier security screening process from June 2024.  

This investment in the Next Generation Security system will achieve compliance with new Government standards as well as enabling greater numbers of customers to be processed more quickly at peak times.   

In its Master Plan published in 2018, Birmingham Airport outlined its aspiration to grow customer volumes from 13m a year (pre-pandemic) to around 18m by 2033. Its new security hall supports this expansion, which in turn will help drive economic growth in the West Midlands region.  

Nick Barton, chief executive of Birmingham Airport, said: “This investment paves the way for a better customer experience and economic growth in the West Midlands. For these reasons, I’m excited about our Next-Generation Security system.”  

Birmingham Airport submitted its planning application for this scheme to Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council earlier this week.   

Delivering the new system will also enable better use of existing space including an enlarged departures area and additional retail and seating for customers to enjoy.  "

The client of our Danzey House project commission Do Digital to produce these great visuals of our design for our clients newbuild house in Warwickshire. While the main house ha snot been built, the planning permission is extant through progression and completion of other works which formed the original planning application approval.

More information about the project here.

The project represents a great opportunity to bring residential activity back to Summer Hill Terrace with careful conversion of the grand existing buildings into characterful and unique apartments. With D5’s extensive experience in designing such developments, we have carefully designed the proposals to combine conversion with contemporary contextual new build, rear and side extensions, with shared and private external spaces. The scheme will provide high quality living accommodation in this great location in the Jewellery Quarter, close to the city centre.