ArchitectsLondon EC1Since 2009

Concrete, timber, daylight.

Studio Okafor is fourteen architects at one long table in Clerkenwell. We design chapels, libraries, houses and housing that are calm to stand in and slow to wear out.

Index of works Start a project

1 Not always in that order.

The underside of a cantilevered concrete roof and a single column against a pale sky.
Fig. 01 Marlowe Road Pavilion, Walthamstow. Completed 2025.51°35′02″N 0°01′11″W
Practice
Studio Okafor Architects
Sheet
00 · Cover
Scale
1:100
Grid reference
51.5246° N, 0.1052° W
Date
30.10.2026
Status
Booking site visits for spring 2027
01Index of works, 2009–2026Sheet 01 / 07

Index of works

Ten projects from seventeen years. Five are built and photographed. Five are still drawings: on site, in planning or freshly won.

  1. Concrete roof of the Marlowe Road Pavilion cantilevering past its column.

    A café, toilets and a covered stage under one concrete roof that cantilevers nine metres, for a park that had none of the three.

    Client
    Marlowe Road Park Trust
    Area
    410 m²
    Award
    RIBA London 2025

  2. Forty practice rooms stacked around a 300-seat hall, each room a slightly different shape so no two sound alike. Won in open competition in 2025.

    Client
    Kelham Music Trust
    Area
    3,900 m²
    Stage
    Concept design

  3. A 25-metre pool and a bathhouse inside a disused Victorian bus garage. The roof trusses stay; the water goes where the buses parked.

    Client
    Kingsland Community Baths
    Area
    2,250 m²
    Stage
    Planning submitted
  4. Looking up a board-marked concrete lightwell to a single high window.

    A chapel without a denomination for a village of 2,300. One window, one bench, one forty-metre wall.

    Client
    Ditchling Chapel Trust
    Area
    186 m²
    Award
    RIBA South East 2025
    Walk through the chapel

  5. A timber hide and visitor centre raised 1.8 metres above the marsh, for the day the sea walls stop holding.

    Client
    Rye Harbour Nature Trust
    Area
    640 m²
    Stage
    Developed design
  6. A chair and an oak table in a dark room, with bars of sunlight across the concrete floor.

    A low house on the edge of the fens for a retired printer and her books. The long table faces west, where the weather comes from.

    Client
    Private
    Area
    214 m²
    Award
    Wood Awards 2023

  7. Forty-eight council homes over makers' workshops. Every flat has windows on two sides and a balcony deep enough for a table for four.

    Client
    Hackney homes programme
    Area
    5,100 m²
    Stage
    On site, frame complete
  8. A concrete stair curving up the inside of a round concrete courtyard.

    A round reading court and a stair cast in one continuous pour, sunk half a storey into a Peckham square to keep the traffic out.

    Client
    Southwark libraries
    Area
    1,320 m²
    Award
    RIBA London 2022

  9. Six workshops for violin and guitar makers under north-light roofs, behind a Soho mews. Even light, no glare, no direct sun on the varnish.

    Client
    Wardour Makers Co-op
    Area
    780 m²
    Stage
    On site, roof going on
  10. Four white concrete volumes of rising height behind a long low wall and a curved screen wall.

    Four rooms of rising height for a private collection, entered past a curved wall that keeps the sea wind off the door.

    Client
    The Coldharbour Collection
    Area
    1,080 m²
    Award
    RIBA South East 2020
Built work photographed; unbuilt work shown as drawn41 completed projects, full list on request
02Featured · Hollow Lane Chapel · Job 147Sheet 02 / 07

Hollow Lane Chapel

A chapel without a denomination, for a village of 2,300. Ditchling, East Sussex. Completed June 2024.

Client
Ditchling Chapel Trust
Area
186 m², 60 seats on one bench
Structure
Board-marked concrete, reclaimed oak
Award
RIBA South East Award 2025

Hollow Lane ChapelDitchling, East Sussex · 2024

01Approach

A forty-metre wall walks you in from the lane. From the village you see no door, only a long grey line and the shadow it throws.

02Nave

Inside, the walls lean in by four degrees. The roof is the oak frame of the barn that stood here, lifted and set back down.

03Lightwell

One window, facing north-east and set high, so the morning reaches the floor and nothing else does.

04Midsummer

At 10.40 on the longest day the beam crosses the stone bench from end to end. We drew it for eleven months to make that happen.

Bars of shadow falling across a long board-marked concrete wall.
Fig. 02.1 · The wall from Hollow Lane
Leaning concrete walls rising to an old oak roof frame.
Fig. 02.2 · The nave, looking up
A board-marked concrete lightwell with one high window and its reflection on the wall.
Fig. 02.3 · The lightwell
A diagonal beam of sunlight crossing a stone wall and bench.
Fig. 02.4 · 21 June, 10.40
03Studio and approachSheet 03 / 07

Every project starts at1:50

We start every building in pencil, on one sheet.

Adaeze Okafor founded the studio in 2009 in a former print works on Calder Yard. Fourteen of us now share one eleven-metre oak table. We take on six or seven projects a year, and we stay with each one until the first winter has passed and we have checked the gutters.

41Buildings completed since 2009
14Architects and model makers at one table
07Awards since 2019, four from the RIBA
11mOf oak table, shared by everyone
Section A–A, Hollow Lane Chapel, 1:100 · noon sun, Ditchling21 Dec · altitude 15.6°

Four rules we draw by

  1. 01The sun before the plan.

    We map a year of sun over every site, hour by hour, before we draw a single room. Windows go where light is useful.

  2. 02Three materials, at most.

    One for the structure, one for what your hand touches, one for the weather. Fewer joints, fewer things to fail.

  3. 03Built for the second owner.

    Fixings you can see and parts you can buy again. We design for whoever repairs it in forty years.

  4. 04Pencil first.

    Every scheme starts by hand on a single A1 sheet. Software comes later, to check what the drawing already knows.

04Awards and pressSheet 04 / 07
“A building that is mostly silence, and better for it.”

Plinth Quarterly, No. 31, on Hollow Lane Chapel

Awards07

  1. 2025RIBA London AwardMarlowe Road Pavilion
  2. 2025RIBA South East AwardHollow Lane Chapel
  3. 2024Civic Trust AwardHollow Lane Chapel
  4. 2023Wood Awards, private categoryFen Edge House
  5. 2022RIBA London AwardAlbion Rotunda Library
  6. 2022Small buildings prize, shortlistFen Edge House
  7. 2020RIBA South East AwardColdharbour Gallery

Press05

  1. 2025“Mostly silence”, on Hollow Lane ChapelPlinth Quarterly, No. 31
  2. 2025Adaeze Okafor on drawing the sunThe Section, episode 88
  3. 2023Twelve practices for the next decadeLondon Building Review
  4. 2022A long table facing westTimber Notes
  5. 2021The round room in PeckhamMass Journal
05PeopleSheet 05 / 07

Fourteen people, one long table.

Everyone hears every phone call and sees every drawing. Crits are on Thursdays at four, and anyone can pin up anything.

  • AORIBA
    since 2009

    Adaeze Okafor

    Founding directorLeads Hollow Lane Chapel
  • JLsince 2013

    Jakob Halvorsen

    Director, technicalLeads Kingsland Baths
  • PRsince 2016

    Meera Pillai

    AssociateLeads Kelham Music School
  • TBsince 2017

    Tobias Bello

    AssociateLeads Tenter Ground
  • HMsince 2019

    Harriet Mercer

    Project architectLeads Saltings Visitor Centre
  • KAsince 2015

    Kwame Asante

    Head of the model shop212 models built, 9 kept
  • REsince 2011

    Rosalind Elston

    Studio managerAnswers the phone, runs the diary
  • +7and Plumb

    Architects and assistants

    Plus Plumb, the model-shop dogTwo places for Part 2 students in 2027
06ContactSheet 06 / 07

Send us the site and a sentence.

Tell us where it is and what it has to do. We reply within five working days, usually with questions and a sun path.

Location plan, 1:2500 · Calder Yard, off St John Street, EC1
Studio
Unit 4, 18 Calder Yard
Clerkenwell, London EC1R 0DX
Phone
+44 20 7946 0381
Email
[email protected]
Hours
Monday to Friday, 9.00 to 18.00
Open crit Thursdays at 16.00, by appointment
Nearest
Farringdon, six minutes on foot