The Benyon Estate comprises some 300 properties, all under the same ownership since the mid-Nineteenth Century. Areas of employment on the estate are limited, but extremely popular, and demand is high for smaller scale studio type space. The brief was to adapt and extend a series of Edwardian industrial buildings to create a centre for creative businesses. The Block is in the 19th century residential De Beauvoir Town Conservation Area and immediately to the west of De Beauvoir Square and its listed Neo-Jacobean houses. The scheme involved selective demolition, restoration and new construction, reshaping a morass of separate buildings to form a central yard, and above a new rooftop £settlement£ of timber framed studios wrapped in EPDM rubber. Larger additions to 92 are steel frame and CLT - on the street, a white precast concrete loggia shields a new floor. To the rear a two-storey structure completes the yard. The 2,495m2 scheme establishes a four-tier £habitat£ of workspace enabling businesses to be seeded and grow, with tenure from a month to 10 years: membership of the caf£, incubator co-workspace, 30m2 rooftop studios and units up to 250m2. The scheme seeks to establish an intentional working community where congregation, chance encounter and meetings, and collaboration are the norm. Generous outdoor space plays an important part in this. The pink hue of the fletton brick walls is repeated in a similarly coloured concrete mat and the brickwork borders to the floor of the yard. Around the perimeter of the yard, new brick piers and glazed screens have been introduced. The low-tech building techniques indicate how elementary the construction of an office might be. The objective being to ensure that these 100-year-old buildings, their additions and interiors are robust and low maintenance. The practice worked in conjunction with M&E engineer AJ Energy, QS Castle-Davis, planning consultant CMA Planning and contractor Sullivan Brothers Construction. De Beauvoir Block has been published in The Architects Journal and Architecture Today, and is the recipient of an RIBA Regional Award 2018, AJ Retrofit Award 2018, and Civic Trust Award 2019. We are currently working on a further 2 phases - 98 De Beauvoir Road due for completion in 2019, and 100 De Beauvoir Road due for completion in 2020.