Stickland Wright
Stickland Wright are an integrated architecture and interior design practice, delivering bespoke and innovative designs which span across residential, commercial, hospitality and retail projects, nationally and internationally. The studio is committed to creating thoughtful, sustainable spaces that enrich the human experience and stand the test of time.
Working with the University of Brighton’s Green Growth Platform, the company was awarded a LoCASE Business Development grant. We spoke to Sophie Law-Smith, Business Manager at Stickland Wright, to find out more.
Specialised software
“We used the grant to access software which enables us to do thermal modelling of buildings, heat and moisture transport assessments and thermography. It allows us to really analyse the buildings, and design to make them a lot more energy efficient and reduce their carbon emissions as well. So our focus was purely to use the grant to enable us as a practice to fast track on our equipment and software and to give us a more effective retrofitting service to our clients.”
Providing an enhanced service
“Having the IES & Wufi software allows us to test our designs so we can put forward recommendations and offer added value to our clients. We can confidently test what we believe will be the outcome of the building’s efficiency, and this software gives us the reassurance that what we are designing will actually be delivered.
We have certainly been offering a more enhanced service to our current clients because we can do that, we just now need to do a lot of training (with the software) to be able to get us to a point we’re delivering efficiently. We are all on a journey to design more sustainably, investing time in research and development of the practice is of paramount importance.”
Transforming the way we work
“To have that ability to have the software in house and be able to run 3D energy models, simulate potential design options and analyse the energy performance has already changed the way we work and it’s definitely going to improve the agility and output of the practice. We have already taken on a junior designer who allows us to free up the time of the Senior Architects who are learning the software and developing our new offering.”
Phenomenal support
“The support was amazing; Kerry is absolutely phenomenal she was really good, we really enjoyed speaking to her and she helped us through it. Putting the wording together was a good process for us because it helps it helps externalise what we’re trying to achieve as a business, so actually just even that process help feed into our business development plan.”
Would you recommend LoCASE to other businesses?
“Yes, absolutely. I’m running a grant myself through another one of my businesses which is an architecturally led retrofit assessors and coordinators consultancy, providing sound definitive guidance, retrofitting options and easy to adopt, costed solutions for buildings and whole estates. I would always highly recommend it.”
Photo by Andrew Beasley Photography.