what if: projects is an architecture and creative practice dedicated to spatial justice and the transformation of neglected urban environments to accommodate multiple species. We have a track record of initiating change at various scales and complexities and delivering high-quality architectural services tailored to public and third-sector clients’ unique needs.
We view architecture as a social and cultural practice, where ideas and strategies are tested through prototypes that engage diverse groups in shaping urban spaces. Our approach emphasises designing collective processes, working collaboratively with complex stakeholder and client groups, and adapting to project-specific requirements and timelines.
Our small, creative team brings extensive experience to project development, with a strong focus on detail and a commitment to delivering high standards across all our projects. The what if: projects website serves as an archive, showcasing the consistency of our approach and the quality of our work.
Our selection for the Mayor of London’s A+U Framework (2023) to support High Street & Town Centre Recovery recognises our contributions to creating a better, greener and more sustainable London. what if: projects Ltd is an RIBA chartered practice, and we are proud to be among the 5% of LGBTQ+ led practices on the A+U Framework.
We seek to work with collaborators and clients who want to explore creative approaches in response to the biodiversity and climate crisis. Here is an overview of our interests and the fields of work we engage with:
ARTISTIC PRACTICE: Our work is grounded in artistic practice and evolved through art commissions and collaborations. These initiatives are calls for action, provocations and critiques of given conditions. They are a testbed for ideas and, at times, the beginning of something new.
URBAN ECOLOGY: Our projects leverage local knowledge and community participation to create more equitable, climate-resilient urban environments. We support grassroots organisations in their efforts to effect change locally. Small projects can bring powerful, positive outcomes for people and places.
PUBLIC SPACE: Our public realm work focuses on ordinary streets and neglected open spaces. We collaborate with neighbourhoods and borough councils to create urban environments that improve the quality of life for people and nature. Greening is a key objective – from tree planting to sustainable urban drainage solutions.
ACTIVE TRAVEL: We design urban environments around active, human-powered transport to reduce air pollution and enhance living conditions. Collaborating with stakeholders such as local governments, policymakers, campaign groups, highway engineers, schools, and citizens, we develop strategies and deliver projects prioritising cycling and walking.
HOUSING ENVIRONMENTS: We work in the social housing context to adapt existing buildings, transform shared open spaces, and create the social infrastructure that complements housing. Our participatory process is guided by a commitment to sustainability and resilience.
BUILDING DESIGN: Embracing a non-fussy, simple, and restrained design language, we have refurbished, reconfigured, and expanded existing structures to accommodate changing needs and designed proposals for zero-carbon public buildings.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? *
“Queerness is an ideality. The future is queerness’s domain.”
José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
The body of work produced by what if: projects carries an untold backstory, one that resonates with the context of queer architectural practices and the exploration of queer design. The perspectives and lived experiences of our co-founders have profoundly influenced our approach to independent architectural practice and the development of our work. We view our website as a living archive showcasing this evolving journey.
Our name, what if: projects, embodies our desire to imagine possible futures. In the words of José Esteban Muñoz, we aim to “…dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds…” We find inspiration in the emerging discourse on queer design practices in architecture, and we are actively seeking the language to tell the “stories that tell other stories” **.
QUEER ECOLOGY: Through the lens of queer ecology, we prioritise a multi-species perspective that centres on the needs of all living beings, emphasising our interdependence and entanglements with one another.
ON ORIENTATION: Our perspective—the position from which we view the world—shapes what we perceive and notice, and this differs for everyone. As Sara Ahmed discusses in her book Queer Phenomenology, “If orientation is a matter of how we reside in space, then sexual orientation might also be a matter of residence; of how we inhabit spaces as well as ‘who’ or ‘what’ we inhabit spaces with.”
A PROJECT OF SELF-ACTUALISATION: We founded what if: projects to create a space for making architecture with people, to immerse ourselves in the creative process, and to escape the constraints of commercial practice. We wanted a place where we could unfold creatively and produce work that is ‘true’ to who we are. This is our project of self-actualisation. Referencing bell hooks, for us, queer is not “about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
* Jack Halberstam, Trans*
** Donna Harraway, Staying with the trouble