Design Engine has won the commission for the new £500,000 reception area of LSE’s iconic Old Building in Houghton Street, WC2 ahead of A-EM Studio and ADP.
The creative competition-winning scheme involves the remodelling of the interior, creating a new reception, split level waiting areas, new cloakrooms, and a green room for the theatre. It also involves integrating lighting, signage and wayfinding in a single solution and external installations in order to bring cohesion to LSE’s Houghton Street buildings and bridges.

After 6 months of post-competition design development, the project started on site in June and will be complete for the start of the 2010-11 academic year.

Design Engine has won an invited competition to design a new multi-use centre for Radley College, Abingdon. The new facility is designed around a listed Rackets Court and will house the Racket pro’s offices, history classrooms, art studios, gallery, sculpture courts and a café. The scheme won unanimous approval from the Governors and will be developed for a planning application in October 2010.

Design Engine has won an invited competition to design a new chemistry building for Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey. The competition involved five architects in total: Design Engine; Hopkins Architects; Panter Hudspith, Belsize Architects and Pringle Richards Sharratt Architects.

The project is seen as an opportunity to reconstruct a very damaged and poorly utilised part of the the main Gothic campus which was originally built in 1872. The new two storey building will contain 6 new laboratories, three on each floor along with preparation areas and staff offices. The northern elevation which faces the principle entrance approach to the school is dominated by 3 stone chimneys which house the chemical flues from the laboratories. In contrast the southern façade faces into the main campus introducing a two storey colonnade providing a new external pedestrian route at ground floor and first floor access to the classrooms whilst offering solar protection to the building.

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Design Engine’s design for the redevelopment of Oxford Brookes University’s Headington Campus has finally been given the go-ahead by Oxford City Council.  The 24,500sqft  £80m scheme, which twice received planning consent from the Council’s Strategic Planning Committee before being ‘called in’ by OCC, will now proceed on site towards the end of 2010 with completion due in 2012.  The project contains a new library, Student Union and School of the Built Environment; arranged around new internal courtyards, and Commercial space off a new public piazza to London Road.

A new planning application is submitted to Oxford City Council for the new Oxford Brookes University Headington Campus masterplan.

Design Engine is invited to a limited competition for a new teaching, art and social hub project for Radley College, Abingdon. Presentations are due in February 2009.

Design Engine is invited to a limited competition for a new science laboratory building for Charterhouse School, Godalming. Presentations are due in February 2009.

The new John Payne Building at Oxford Brookes University Headington Campus is complete, representing the first phase of the masterplan for the campus. The £4m 15,000sqft facility accommodates the relocated architectural workshop and material testing laboratory from buildings due for demolition, plus two floors of office space above. The building has been designed as a foil for the new development, and is detailed with crisp black cladding with strategic accent colour referenced from the machinery inside the technical areas.

Having been granted planning permission by States of Guernsey Island Development Committee earlier in 2009, Les Beaucamps Secondary School is given funding approval. The new £35m campus, which replaces the existing school, is due on site in November 2010 and completion of all areas is programmed for 2014. Design Engine have been working with the States Education team on the project since first winning the design competition in 2003.