GAD Editorial · Published · · English study · Chinese summary · Study dated 2026-10-05
DSDHA’s portfolio crosses the boundary between buildings and the spaces around them. The practice describes a design process developed through research, dialogue with clients and engagement with users. Its stated concern with community makes the public realm more than an area left over after a building has been planned. Streets, entrances and gardens become part of the architectural brief from the outset. Practice
Exchange Square: access is a design material
Exchange Square at Broadgate in the City of London, completed in 2022, is a public landscape above the railway tracks approaching Liverpool Street Station. DSDHA’s project account describes several levels, planting, seating and routes, supported by an analysis of barriers to pedestrian access. These included changes in level, signage and differences in surface perception. Exchange Square
The project is useful because it complicates a simple opposition between infrastructure and nature. A park over tracks is still a technically constructed surface, carrying loads and depending on drainage, maintenance and clear routes. The presence of planting does not remove those obligations. For a comparable brief, the first design drawing should show how people reach the space from surrounding streets, including the route taken by someone who cannot use steps.
It is also important to distinguish the design intention of welcoming a broader public from evidence of who actually uses a place. A landscape plan can demonstrate the provision of routes and resting places; it cannot by itself establish social inclusion. Observation after opening, access policies and ongoing management remain relevant to that assessment.
Reuse at the scale of a cultural building
The practice’s Sheep Field Barn project at Henry Moore Studios & Gardens in Perry Green offers another scale of intervention. The official account describes refurbishment and extension of an agricultural structure previously used for storage and later adapted as a gallery. The work adds learning facilities, extends the steel frame and introduces a timber structure. Reclaimed external timber and reused internal cladding are identified as part of the material strategy. Henry Moore Studios & Gardens
Here, the precedent question is how a modest inherited building can acquire more public uses without losing its relation to the landscape. Compare the spaces for viewing, making and gathering. Their environmental and servicing demands differ, so a reuse strategy needs more precision than simply retaining an exterior. The practice’s projected carbon reductions are design claims; this profile does not present them as measured outcomes.
What connects the work
DSDHA’s published values link social use with environmental responsibility, including the potential of retrofit and existing networks of people. Design values Read this as a method to interrogate through projects, not a guarantee attached to the practice name. At both the city and building scale, useful questions remain concrete: which barrier was removed, which structure was kept, what new activity became possible, and what evidence shows the result? That approach makes the portfolio relevant to briefs where architecture must coordinate public access, inherited fabric and landscape rather than optimise each in isolation.