Office Sian Architecture + Design, Unit C Blackhorse Mews (2026)

25/02/2026

WELLBEING + DESIGN [WHAT LAST YEAR TAUGHT US]

Last year we worked with trauma experts who delivered some inspiring CPDs on being better trauma-aware designers. It was one of the most useful — and quietly challenging — things we've done as a practice.

I went in thinking that I already had a reasonable instinct for this:

"We care about people."
"We think carefully about how spaces feel." [whatever that means...]

But what I came away with was a more honest question: does caring about how a space looks actually mean you're designing for how people feel inside it? Those two things can look identical from the outside, and be very different in practice.

Trauma-informed design isn't about a particular aesthetic. It isn't softness, or natural materials, or biophilia, although none of those things hurt. It's about whether a person — any person — feels like they have choice in a space.

Whether they can understand where they are without anxiety. Whether the environment is working with them or quietly against them.

What struck me most was how often "nice" design gets those things wrong. Spaces that are visually calm but spatially confusing. Environments that feel welcoming in a photograph and exposing in person. The gap between intention and experience is wider than most of us would like to admit.

When we worked on a recent visioning study for a client wanting to develop a wellbeing campus, this thinking ran through everything — not just the therapy spaces, but how arrival feels, how different groups of people share a site with dignity, where the quiet goes, and where the activity goes, and what sits between them.

I think that's what good design for wellbeing actually requires. Not just sensitivity. Honesty about the gap between what we intend and what we deliver.

Pic from a CPD Session delivered by Dr Emilie Medeiros & Dr Dean Flanagan from Manas.

23/02/2026

NEW PROJECT THOUGHTS: FROM ALLOCATION.... TO PLACE

If we’re serious about addressing the housing shortage in this country, we have to be equally serious about how sites are structured from the outset — not just how many homes are delivered.

We recently submitted representations to the council in support of the proposed allocation for land in Kent, identified for approximately 77 new homes.

At this stage, it’s not about detailed architecture. It’s about establishing the right principles early — landscape structure, sustainability, ecoligy, density, access, access for all, and community infrastructure — so quality isn’t retrofitted later.

Our submission sets out a landscape-led masterplan responding to the site’s edge-of-settlement position. A central green forms the organising heart of the neighbourhood, with provision for a small community building within it. Streets are arranged to ensure active play-spaces, and natural surveillance.

This is where long-term standards are either embedded or diluted, so it's important to set the tone from the outset.

10/02/2026

WELLBEING + DESIGN [WHAT'S IT ABOUT?]

We’ve recently completed an early visioning study for a client at the very start of exploring a wellbeing campus. At this stage, there were no drawings and no fixed designs. One of the clearest lessons from this work is that wellbeing is shaped less by individual features and more by relationships: between people, between activities, and between public, shared, and private space.

When those relationships are poorly considered, even beautifully designed buildings can feel stressful or exclusionary. When they’re handled with care, spaces begin to support connection, dignity, and ease — often without anyone consciously noticing why.

This is why we focus so much energy at the very beginning of a project. Wellbeing can’t be added later. It has to be embedded in the structure, the sequencing, and the way people are brought together from the outset.

This is the first in a short series sharing what early wellbeing + design work keeps teaching us.

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Unit C Blackhorse Mews

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