It was a huge honour to pick up a Special Mention for Sensitive Restoration at the Camden Design Awards last night for our 10-year commitment to this very unique pocket of history in the borough.
Read more about the series of sensitive historic building upgrades and contemporary interventions here.
Our 2025 re-brand has been shortlisted for two Archiboo Awards - Best Brand and Best Visual Design. Working with graphic designer Adam Tarasewicz and communications strategist Julia Nicholls, we set out to establish a brand capturing the collective personality of ICA and a website which showcases the evolving breadth and quality of work we undertake.
Winners will be announced at a ceremony on 13 November.
We have gained planning consent for an innovative hidden home within the landscape of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site. Our designs protect and celebrate remnants of a tin mine estate on the exposed heathland site to deliver an innovative 5-bedroom home for a local family.
Read more about The Count House here.
As part of a special series featuring Camden Design Award shortlisted projects, ICA hosted two sold out walking tours of Tin Pan Alley during September's Open House Festival.
The decade-long project has involved the sensitive repair of multiple historic buildings alongside a series of contemporary interventions.
Read more about the project here.
Our early-stage work with Shepton Mallet's Amulet Theatre has facilitated a series of activations over the summer and a fantastic programme of temporary events. Utilising previously inaccessible ground floor spaces, gifted furniture from other regional theatres and following building upgrade works by community volunteers - Buy the Amulet has hosted events for local people including live music, theatre productions, screenings and stalls from the vibrant monthly market in the town square.
See the events here.
Following our 10-year anniversary reflections in 2024, we launched a new identity and website in July 2025. To mark the transition into ICA's second decade, we crafted a brand which captures the collective personality of ICA and a website to showcase the evolving breadth and quality of work we undertake.
With thanks to our collaborators, graphic designer Adam Tarasewicz and communications strategist Julia Nicholls.
Our decade-long project at Tin Pan Alley has been shortlisted for a Camden Design Award. The work has involved careful upgrades to a series of historic and listed buildings as well as new contemporary interventions to establish a mix of uses honouring the musical heritage of the site.
Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in October.
See more about Tin Pan Alley here.
With the ever improving quality and speed of available rendering tools we are increasingly using in-house visuals as part of our orthographic technical information to help describe finished spaces.
Images like these are able to capture far more than isolated drawings and their inclusion in construction information ensures everyone on site is able to see and share in the end goal.
We also enjoy doing them!
This image shows the proposal for our extension to a Gough Cooper house in Blackheath which has recently started on site.
The proposal reverses a number of inappropriate alterations to the 1960's building whilst adding a flexible use timber framed garden room to the ground floor.
The existing building will be thermally upgraded throughout with new highly efficient windows and wood-fibre insulation to all external walls and roofs.
Our Associate Director, Giles, has been part of ICA for just shy of a decade, leading on key projects including the award-winning retrofit of Chart Street Studios for Heyne Tillett Steel.
Currently Giles is steering our sensitive adaptation of Cambridge Arts Theatre through phased construction on site.
Combining architecture practice alongside teaching, Giles is also dad to office mutt Sanna and new baby Finn.
Edward has been Ian’s right hand man from day one, having successfully worked together at Orms.
His thoughtful approach to the conservation of heritage buildings has been key to the success of several theatre, residential and community buildings.
We are incredibly excited to be working with the local community group @buytheamulet & @C20society on proposals to buy, restore and reopen the former Amulet Theatre in Shepton Mallet, Somerset.
Opened in 1975, the Amulet was a gift to the people of Shepton Mallet by the local industrialist and brewer Francis Showering (inventor of Babycham), and was designed by regionally based practice the Wyvern Design Group. A state-of-the art theatre and multi-purpose venue for the whole community, it formed part of a wider, privately-led, £1.5 million scheme for the reconstruction of an important town centre site.
Closed as a theatre since 2011, in 2023 a campaign action group, @buytheamulet comprising local residents and arts group leaders, was formed in repsonse to the considerable interest in reopening the building as a theatre.
ICA celebrated 10 years in practice with a party in their award-winning Chart Street Studios and an exhibition entitled 10 Years 10 Projects.
