This is the 28th year of the award, which celebrates the best in built architecture and structures realised on a small budget: this year up to a contract value of £350,000, the limit increased to reflect inflation.

The award is the AJ’s annual showcase of the best in low-cost design from the best designers. Previous winners include Rashid Ali Architects, Carmody Groarke, Haworth Tompkins, David Leech Architects, Hawkins\Brown, Kate Darby Architects and Mole Architects.

This year we received more than 170 entries from all around the country, which were whittled down to a shortlist of 20. They range from a boathouse to a bench, a prayer room to a workplace-cum-recording studio, and a bridge to an urban garden and play structure.

On 3 May, the 20 shortlisted architects and designers will present their projects to our judges: Esther Everett, head of design development at the London Legacy Development Corporation; Pedro Gil, director at Studio Gil; Ross Keenan, director at Akin Studio and the winner of last year’s award; and Fiona Scott, director at Gort Scott.

The judging will be followed by a celebratory event where the winner will be announced. This year it will be held at the offices of Morris+Company in Hackney: join us there. It’s free to attend but tickets are allocated on a first come, first served basis.

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Browse all entries to AJ Small Projects 2023 in the AJ Buildings Library

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FleaFollyArchitects

The False Banana Pavilion

£26,000

Designed and built by the architects, this pavilion is one of five temporary installations across the 500 acres of Wakehurst National Trust’s wild botanic gardens, which are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The brief was to explore an aspect of Kew’s international science projects through an immersive artwork. FleaFolly worked with Kew research fellow James Borrell to celebrate the enset plant, a resilient food plant also sometimes called the ‘tree against hunger’ or ‘the false banana’.

A large, rectangular wooden frame, 6m tall and with a 3.2 x 3.2m footprint, is clad in a variety of natural materials found in and around Wakehurst. The pavilion is dressed in layers of hazel hurdles and sheets of compressed water reeds. These are overclad in bands of long grass thatch, cut and crafted to create a geometric set of decorative forms not usually associated with natural materials such as these. A layer of willow ‘Gothic shields’ adorns all four sides and the pavilion is topped with sarass grass.

The full-height, pyramid-shaped space inside is clad in more than 900 CNC-cut birch plywood ‘enset leaves’, individually stained in gradient bands of red and green and engraved with the names of different enset species and their locations in Ethiopia. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Jan Kattein Architects

Café Roj

£285,000

This café pavilion is designed to provide a new focus for Ducketts Common, a key public open space in Wood Green, north London. It has full drainage connection, allowing it to serve food, and an internal seating area with accessible toilet, thus providing a year-round facility for the park.

The café, carefully sited to avoid the roots of mature plane trees growing nearby, has an expressed timber frame and rendered panels sporting a vivid paint finish.

The simple timber structure is also exposed internally, with a deep sill around the edge acting as bench seating. Internal and external serving hatches allow the kitchen to operate flexibly. An illuminated orb on the roof reflects the café’s branding (roj means ‘sun’ in the operator’s native Kurdish), giving the business visibility even at night.

The project was developed in collaboration with local residents, the café operator, Haringey Council and the Friends of Ducketts Common. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Jo Townshend Architects

Pitzhanger Hub

£269,302

This project creates a meeting and learning hub for Pitzhanger Manor, providing a space for the visitor attraction’s volunteer staff to relax and socialise, but also a space that can be used by the local Ealing community.

The intervention is set within the existing listed courtyard walls of the manor. The original masonry has been built up to form a constant datum, with a glazed lantern placed above to provide natural daylight – inspired by Pitzhanger architect Sir John Soane’s design methodologies on light.

These design tools are also reflected in the ceiling’s structural resolution, where the form of one of Soane’s ‘handkerchief ceilings’, which can be seen in the manor, has been dissected and mirrored through both axes. This results in an undulating ceiling-scape – lower at the centre and rising around the perimeter – that creates an interesting play of light. Formed out of a series of fins hanging vertically and stretching across the width of the room, this roof is one of a series of ‘tab and wedge’ construction kits the practice has developed in collaboration with Webb Yates Engineers.

Much of the existing building fabric for the project has been re-used and it is concrete and steel-free, except for some localised underpinning. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

OGU Architects and MMAS

Adelaide Street

£233,000

An example of people-centred placemaking and collaboration, this project in Belfast saw a lane of vehicular traffic removed (in what is still a stubbornly car-centric city) and replaced by a half-kilometre of urban garden and new public space. Designed for incidental play and containing 140m² of new planting, it offers a resource for local residents with little previous access to outdoor playspace or gardens – and has unexpectedly created a new habitat for hawk moth caterpillars, too.

Totemic lanterns, powered by solar energy, make reference to the area’s linen-making heritage while offering shelter and creating playful glowing patterns in the evening.

The installation was designed to be demountable and re-usable, thus reducing waste and justifying its quality and craftsmanship. It was fabricated in Northern Ireland using larch grown in Country Tyrone, which helped reduce embodied carbon. The project was a collaboration between the design team, the NI Department for Infrastructure and Belfast City Council. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Pashenko Works

White Patio House

£320,000

This house in Camberwell, south London, is conceived as a sequence from the street of five successive elements: the original Victorian terrace connecting via a glass ‘bridge’ atrium to the new extension at ground and first levels, with a patio garden behind, which in turn is framed by a garden room at its far end.

Envisaged as a prototype for dense urban living, the project maximises space within local planning constraints, more than doubling the original floor plate and enabling several generations of the same family to occupy the house.

The design also looks to create an experientially rich dwelling through its use of materials. The façades of the new additions have been clad in off-white corrugated steel sheets, which match the colour of the window frames and doors.

Inspired by Belgian Brutalist architecture, exposed blockwork with a high recycled content delineates the whole perimeter of the site as a uniting theme, creating – together with exposed steel beams, concrete floor and metal deck – what the architect describes as ‘an ascetic domesticity’. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Sebastian Hicks

CoForum

£70,000

This project, or so-called ‘assemblage’, comprises a circular timber frame structure, upon which 110 bespoke collapsible chairs are hung. When not in use, these create a seemingly hermetic façade, closing off the central space. However, when people gather and take down the chairs to sit on, the enclosure disappears, opening up an internal space like an informal bandstand, designed as a focus for performances and other activities.

Intended to be an ambiguous object that challenges the notion of the public monument, it was developed as a model for Covid-resilient cultural infrastructure and new forms of public space. The project was constructed locally, using materials and craft skills from the immediate community. Hicks collaborated with architect Stefan Breuer on the project, which was supported by the Austrian Ministry for Culture and in conjunction with Architecture House Carinthia. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Studio Kap

Extension in South Glasgow

£172,000

The Glasgow conservation area of Pollokshields houses some of the city’s finest Victorian villas. This project consists of a one-storey rear extension to a handsome, but unlisted, sandstone villa with a typical four-room plan on both floors.

The brief called for a well-lit, relaxing space that had immediate access to the garden for a home-based elderly relative and wider family to enjoy – plus dining for up to 12 people.

The garden room is inspired by Victorian conservatories and has a light, frame-like form to contrast with the solid presence of the villa. A sheltered entrance and covered seating area adjoins a new terrace while accommodating a tall, arched stair window.

The interconnected spaces allow for a range of activities: a timber-lined booth for reading and meals, a window seat for individual and group conversations and a white wall for presentations to professional colleagues. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Studio naama

Lubetkin Apartment

£102,300

This refurbishment of a 65m² two-bedroom apartment in Berthold Lubetkin’s high-rise, Grade II-listed Sivill House freed up the rigid original layout using minimal demolition to create a series of flexible, adaptable rooms that lend and borrow space and light. These include a bicycle storage and training area, a study and a more versatile second bedroom that doubles as a casual eating space. The existing structure is celebrated, with original concrete beams exposed, while the wall between one bedroom and the living room has been punched through and timber-clad furniture and bespoke metalwork integrated.

To keep within budget, the project used low-cost fabrication and standard building materials, including lower-grade plywood, substrates for flooring, lightweight polycarbonate sheeting, acrylic and mirrors, with an emphasis on material and craft.

All gas services were replaced by an electrical system, including a heat battery and all-electric heating, helping to reduce significantly the household’s carbon footprint. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Thomas Randall-Page Studio

Cody Dock Rolling Bridge

£250,000

Cody Dock is a large, former industrial wharf on the tidal River Lea in Newham, east London. It is now home to an artistic community who are transforming the place from dereliction to an area of creativity and production.

The bridge was designed to reopen the dock to the water through the removal of a dam and introduction of a footbridge – one of the last missing links unlocking a footpath running from Hertfordshire to the Thames.

Seeing the potential for a ‘public spectacle’, Randall-Page has designed a rolling structure working on the principle of equilibrium. To open, the bridge rolls on undulating rails cast into the concrete abutments on either bank. A ballast filling at the top of each square portal counters the weight of the brick deck. This symmetry allows the whole bridge structure to easily roll 180 degrees to a fully inverted position, giving passage to boats entering and leaving the dock. The fine balance of the system means the 13-tonne weathered steel and oak bridge can be operated by hand winches alone. FW

Location London E16 | Start on site March 2022 | Completion September 2022 | Gross internal floor area 35.7m² (functional area) | Client Gasworks Dock Partnership | Funding The Green Recovery Challenge Fund (Heritage Fund, DEFRA, Environment Agency, Natural England) and crowd funding campaign | Structural engineer Price & Myers | Mechanical engineer Eadon Consulting | Main contractor Cake Industries | Annual CO₂ emissions Nil (hand-operated) | Embodied/whole-life carbon 815 kgCO₂e/m² (timber elements) | Photography Jim Stephenson, Guy Archard

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Unagru Architecture Urbanism

House for A Cellist

£330,000

This extension, refurbishment and reconfiguration of a well-loved Victorian terraced house in Islington has added more living space so the owners will not have to move on. The house sits within a conservation area and the extension’s design had to be sympathetic to local context while reflecting the client’s personality.

There are no doors nor corridors on the ground floor level, which forms a single, flexible space for both living and working. The entrance hall unfolds into the rest of the house, navigating between the rectangular volume of the kitchen – fabricated as a timber and glass box; a triangular wooden wedge containing the stair and services; and a cylinder formed by a deep, circular rooflight. This latter feature, around which the whole space pivots, draws natural light deep into the interior and was designed to create the perfect place for a musician to practise in. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Almost Blue

Ferguson

£35,000

This ‘small place to stay’ in Glasgow was born out of an unusual collaboration between three practitioners – Duncan Blackmore, Simon Harlow and Lee Ivett – during Covid lockdown, blurring the lines between developer, architect and maker.

Taking its name from a found nameplate, Ferguson is a 25m² single-room apartment occupying part of the ground floor of a Victorian tenement that had fallen into disrepair. The project aimed to create movement and flexibility within a small space.

Existing structural openings have been raised and new ones inserted to create a three-dimensional layout that can be ‘strolled around’. A mezzanine level containing a sleeping area with high-level views across the apartment sits in the existing 3.4m-high volume.

In plan, all functions have been pushed to the edges, forming one ‘main’, unprogrammed space, arranged laterally to capture light from two large, south-facing windows. Contrasting with the simplicity of this open space, function is signified through intense use of colour, formal architectural tectonics and material experimentation – particularly in the patterned shower room, cast red concrete and yellow fibreglass detailing. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Artefact

Pirouette House

£237,000

This practical, playful extension overhauls a 1980s single-aspect, ex-local authority home in Islington, extending its life, improving insulation and creating cross-ventilation while maximising daylight to its north-facing elevation.

The project utilises cost-effective, low-carbon materials, with extensive use of timber, which forms the main new element – a cloister lining two sides of a courtyard garden. Designed as an outdoor room, its external façades are enlivened by deep red fins sitting on a pigmented blockwork plinth with contrasting silver larch boards. The timber frame extends to form a bench to catch the midday sun.

Internally the kitchen, dining and living spaces ‘pirouette’ around a triangular blue column. This, together with other elements in primary colours – a yellow bookshelf and terracotta-red stair – animate the interior spaces, which are also given warmth and character by Douglas fir beams and boarding and diamond-shaped skylights casting patterns of light. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Ashworth Parkes Architect

The Boathouse

£98,457

This boathouse provides shelter for a single boat and, in the manner of a folly, is not strictly required for that purpose.

Sitting in a prominent location passed by up to 1,000 people a day, including pedestrians, cyclists and rowers, the project had to be both beautiful and low in environmental impact.

It is made of local British larch and, except for the roof and substructure, not a single screw or metal bracket has been used. The primary frames have been constructed using Japanese timber joints while the floorboards and sarking boards are fixed using wooden nails. The larch was rough-sawn and left undried, minimising the energy required to prepare it. Untreated copper used for the roof is 100 per cent recycled.

The substructure, which presented a challenge to find a material that wouldn’t warp when wet, is formed of end-of-life scaffold poles hand-driven and jointed to give the required depth and strength. Built to last 60 years, it is hoped the scheme will become an established part of the River Cam scene at Ferry Lane in Cambridge, much like the nearby bridge, from which it can be viewed. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Bryden Wood

Igus Courtyard Café

£341,000

This project sits within a courtyard of the existing Igus Headquarters factory in Cologne, Germany, which Bryden Wood originally designed in 1990. The café has been created as a breakout or respite space for employees and is a pilot project for replication across all eight courtyards of the building.

Its design consists of four glazed ‘pods’, which divide up the courtyard and are formed by a lightweight ETFE canopy on a steel frame. Their form echoes that of the skylights of the original building. Following the existing grid, the new envelope works around a central yellow pylon in the courtyard, its transparency intended to dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior.

The ‘pods’ are entered by double doors from all four sides, giving the café flexibility as a multipurpose, reconfigurable space.

The spaces are enclosed and heated in the winter, but sliding and pivoting glazed perimeter partitions allow them to be fully opened up in the summer months. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

CarverHaggard

Greenhill Place

£300,000

Located on a busy pedestrian route between Harrow town centre and outer residential areas, this site was previously a dead end, used for car parking and bounded by run-down buildings and service yards.

Harrow Council’s brief called for kiosks to create new town-centre opportunities for an emerging food business sector, plus a showcase for art. The scheme combines kiosks and ancillary space into a single building shaping a new public space. A cranked volume creates a new edge to the square with a covered seating area for customers, open by day and secured at night behind patterned shutters.

A gridded roof structure is filled with a frieze of patterned green panels and rests on cruciform steel columns, forming a sheltered colonnade where the canopy oversails. Both frames and foundations have been designed to be demountable.

The pattern and colour scheme were developed with graphic design studio Objectif and were inspired by the site’s history as a rural hamlet. Outside the building, a terrazzo floor acts as a welcome mat, while the canopy, with its oversized signage, forms a gateway. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

CAUKIN Studio

Bogor Musholla

£14,280

This building is used as a prayer room and for community events and training at the Center for Community Development and Social Entrepreneurship at Bogor in West Java, which is part of an Indonesian developmental NGO.

The project consists of one main space adjacent to a small, covered veranda and washrooms. It is designed to maximise natural daylight and ventilation internally while using locally sourced materials chosen for durability and low maintenance. The structure combines rigidity with flexibility to enable it to withstand seismic activity.

The structure, comprising three timber portal frames, is raised off the ground on cast concrete columns and charred using the shou sugi ban technique to protect against termites and rot. A large truss spanning the frames supports the roof, while the cladding consists of a variety of local natural materials.

The six-week build involved 17 international volunteer participants from architecture and engineering schools and practices, working alongside members of the local Indonesian community. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Charlie Luxton Design

Black Barn Studios

£340,000

This project converted an equestrian barn into a sustainable rural workplace for Charlie Luxton Design’s studio, plus a music recording space.

The existing barn’s steel frame, structural slab, foundations and concrete yard have been retained. A pre-cut, 300mm timber I-beam structure was erected over five days within the steel frame, which was then re-clad using black corrugated metal and larch, with repurposed industrial walkways as solar shading.

Interiors were fitted out using UK-grown elm flooring, reclaimed timber windows as screens, recycled drylining and second-hand furniture. Heating is provided by a small air source heat pump via an MVHR system which also monitors CO2, ensuring high air quality. This low-energy approach is also supported by a 20kW PV array and the building’s envelope achieves an airtightness of 0.3ACH at 50Pa.

The surrounding three-acre site has been planted with more than 700 native trees and shrubs and over 2,000m² of wildflower meadow to help absorb the carbon emitted during construction. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Chris Dobson

Monolith

£3,000

This bench on the Isle of Bute was one of four pieces commissioned by Design Exhibition Scotland for its Sitting Pretty exhibition.

Offering shelter and a place to rest, the design draws inspiration from two precedents in the Scottish Isles – the Brutalist concrete bus shelters found on Lewis and the enveloping shape of the traditional Orkney chair – reinterpreting these in contemporary form.

Drawing on expert advice from Peter Wilson of Timber Design Initiatives/Mass Timber Academy and BE-ST (formerly Construction Scotland Innovation Centre), it uses Scottish-sourced Douglas fir-based cross-laminated timber, grown near Perth and fabricated at BE-ST’s facility in Hamilton.

Through making use of the nascent Scottish CLT industry, manufacturing waste was minimised in the sizing of the elements that form the bench and carbon emissions for their transport were significantly reduced. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Common Ground Workshop

Lloyd Eist House

£295,000

This project in Camberwell, south London, involves the refurbishment of a former light industrial building to provide a compact, three-storey family home with a new second floor and side extension.

Initially it was designed as a live-work unit for the Lloyd Eist Foundation charity but, when the organisation decided not to proceed with the project, it was bought by the practice, which founded its own development company to build out revised designs.

The material palette is both sustainable and tactile and includes reclaimed timber and brick surfaces, bespoke sapele timber window and door frames sourced and fabricated in Bethnal Green, and quartz worktops. Timber from the original floor structure has been reincorporated to create terrace fencing, exterior floor and wall linings and for retaining the external sliding entrance shutters.

The initial open-plan layout of the middle floor has been tweaked with bespoke bi-folding walls to make the space more flexible by splitting it into two smaller areas, as well as with the addition of a ground-floor bathroom. FW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

Eleanor Dodman Architects

Lavender Pumphouse

£180,000

This new nursery school for Hatching Dragons, a bilingual Mandarin-English nursery provider, is the first phase in the site’s development. It comprises two main spaces for children of different ages, one in an existing room, the second in a room constructed in the main hall. The latter space is conceived as a room-within-a-room, using lightweight construction that can be taken down and re-used and employs full-sheet materials, mechanical fixings and simple, durable materials. These include naturally finished plywood – painted black in places as an integrated blackboard, exposed timber wall studs used for shelving and polycarbonate cladding for windows.

Circular openings cut into the exposed ceiling joists allow in natural light. A sensory garden, created with Jacqueline Dodman, uses reclaimed olive barrels, railway sleepers and masonry and boasts a sandpit, bee hotel, seating areas and soft play surfaces made of recycled tyres. RGW

See more photos and drawings of this project in the AJ Buildings Library

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AJ Small Projects 2023 shortlist revealed

FleaFollyArchitects

The False Banana Pavilion

£26,000

Jan Kattein Architects

Café Roj

£285,000

Jo Townshend Architects

Pitzhanger Hub

£269,302

OGU Architects and MMAS

Adelaide Street

£233,000

Pashenko Works

White Patio House

£320,000

Sebastian Hicks

CoForum

£70,000

Studio Kap

Extension in South Glasgow

£172,000

Studio naama

Lubetkin Apartment

£102,300

Thomas Randall-Page Studio

Cody Dock Rolling Bridge

£250,000

Unagru Architecture Urbanism

House for A Cellist

£330,000

Almost Blue

Ferguson

£35,000

Artefact

Pirouette House

£237,000

Ashworth Parkes Architect

The Boathouse

£98,457

Bryden Wood

Igus Courtyard Café

£341,000

CarverHaggard

Greenhill Place

£300,000

CAUKIN Studio

Bogor Musholla

£14,280

Charlie Luxton Design

Black Barn Studios

£340,000

Chris Dobson

Monolith

£3,000

Common Ground Workshop

Lloyd Eist House

£295,000

Eleanor Dodman Architects

Lavender Pumphouse

£180,000

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