inspire health and happiness Together we can...
Together we can...
GSSArchitecture is a national, award-winning architectural practice with a dynamic and forward-thinking approach. Operating across the whole of the UK with offices located in Kettering, Gloucester, Harrogate, Leeds, Milton Keynes and Newcastle, we specialise in projects where a collaborative approach is required.
We design tailored architectural solutions and place sustainability and inclusivity at the heart of our design ethos. Our project experience includes a diverse range of public and private sectors from inception through to completion, all of which are supported by inhouse specialist divisions including Graphics and Conservation and Heritage.
Over the years, GSSArchitecture has built up a significant amount of knowledge and experience of sports specific projects, which includes involvement in sports research projects.
We have designed a wide range of sports facilities, which include Football & Cricket Stadiums, Specialist Sports Training Centres, Gyms, Swimming Pools, and Injury Rehabilitation Centres, many of which have been linked with Higher and Further Education institutions. These have been delivered for different clients bodies, including local authorities, universities, schools, professional sports bodies and private providers.
Together, we can bring your vision to life.
Swimming Pools
Pool facilities have included 25m new build pools and hyrdotherapy suites. Often these incorporate other “wet side” elements such as sauna and steam.
All pools are designed to be fully accessible and have also included audjustable/moving floors.
Sports Halls
A full range of sports halls has been delivered, ranging from 2 court through to 8 court. This includes the full spectrum of specialist floors and wall finishes.
In addition to general use, halls have been designed for very specialist use, such as inoor cricket and a national basketball centre.
Gymnasiums
Gymnasiums, of various sizes, are either included as part of a larger facilitiy, or as a stand alone arrangement with all the necessary support spaces.
These include the full range of equipment, some of which can be very specialist and require specific floor and other material specifications.
Sports Treatment/Research
Sports treatment and investment in research programmes is an important part of the team’s delivery and development in the sector. This has included sports injury rehabilitation centres incorporating hydrotherapy, cryotherapy, hyperbaric chamber and bio-mechanics treatment and research.
In addition, recent new developments have included sports psychology and nutrition. These facilities are utilisied by professional sports teams and elite athletes.
Sports Stadia
In addition to a range of different local and regional sports pavillions, changing and indoor facilities, GSS have also delivered professional team stadia, particularly in cricket and football.
This work includes full new build/relocation and redevelopment of existing facilities. This can incorporate new stands, specialist playing surfaces, training and treatment centres, media and corporate accommodation.
Architectural Services Feasibilities Masterplanning
As experienced Chartered Architects we can work with you to explore your options, bringing a wide range of experience, innovations and best practice to realise your vision.
We can bring a wide range of innovations and best practice from our different sectors to meet your specific needs and aspirations. This experience includes masterplanning, new builds, remodelling and extensions and specialist heritage advice.
We will work with you in a collaborative way to develop a workable brief to explore design concepts and options, to manage your project through the planning process, the development of detailed design proposals, details and specifications, together with all necessary statutory approval processes.
Feasibility studies are an extremely important part of the development process. By carefully mapping out your options, risks, constraints, and opportunities we can present creative proposals and scheme appraisals that are deliverable, viable and fit for purpose. Developing your brief is fundamental to this process.
Our highly experienced teams work on a wide variety of projects, ranging in both sector and size. This means that the knowledge, experience and ‘lessons learnt’ can be brought to benefit your feasibility brief and our experience allows your dedicated project team to explore all the options quickly and effectively to arrive at an appropriate project delivery strategy.
A good masterplan is not just about the distribution of land use, it should provide you a sound starting point to create healthy communities and well-planned development strategies. A masterplan should give you a carefully considered and well thought out long-term planning document that serves as a conceptual plan to guide future growth and development.
Master planning is all about setting the standard that creates an appropriate sense of place, connecting buildings with social, public and cultural spaces to create environments that help communities to thrive.
3D Graphics / Animation
As a streamlined part of our service offering, 3DLABS is our in-house digital design studio that specialises in CGI visualisations, 3D printing and marketing support services. They offer these services to communicate our clients designs, concepts, products or services to a wider audience, allowing them to be represented in the most visually appealing medium.
They have been offering these services for nearly a decade, gathering a diverse client base with their own unique needs and requirements.
The studio is made of a highly skilled team, led by their Studio Manager who has over 15 years of industry experience. He is supported by a team who each bring their own passions and specialisms, with photorealistic renders, interior design, graphic design to name a few.
Interior Design
In recent years, there has been an increased awareness of how the built environment can impact health and productivity, and its added benefits to help institutions flourish. Organisations are now focusing their efforts on how to use the built environment for mental health and wellbeing by encouraging choice, movement and relaxation, controlling temperature, noise levels and air quality, ergonomic furniture, plants, and adding breakout areas. These are all fundamental components of good interior design.
Our interior design services include interior layouts and drawings, internal elevations, room data sheets, space planning and interior architecture, furniture selection and accessories, custom furniture and textile design and colour palette consultation.
Estates Strategies
Estate Strategies are critically important documents to have in place to provide a framework and direction for how an estate needs to grow and evolve to support you in delivering your strategic objectives. Estate strategies are important to a number of our higher education clients for example, and we have worked with a number of UK based universities to help them define their strategies.
Good estate strategies can add value to other large estates however, such as landed estates or multiacademy trusts for example. Our teams have the depth of skills and experience in house to work with you and your estates teams to consider whole estate strategies and how individual projects might fit into the ‘bigger picture.’
Heritage
If you are an owner or custodian of buildings with historical significance, we can help to understand your properties, advise on the best techniques to care for them and make sensitive changes that will mean your heritage assets are both successful and sustainable.
Whether a simple Grade II* Listed House or a complex World Heritage Site, all heritage assets have their own story and unique value and getting the right advice from a well-qualified, specialist team can really make the difference.
Principal Designer - CDM
The importance of the Principal Designer’s role cannot be underestimated and the skills that make a good Principal Designer should never be omitted from a development project. Fundamentally, a good Principal Designer helps to ensure that everyone involved in construction stays safe during the course of their work and complies with the statutory duties and we often provide this service on schemes where we have also been appointed as Architect and/or Lead Consultant.
GSS can give you the confidence of knowing that our organisational approach to Health and Safety is led from partner level, ensuring that all our teams receive regular training, making certain that processes are in place to plan and manage health and safety throughout the project and helping to protect everyone’s health and safety.
Principal Designer - BR
The appointment of a Principal Designer – Building Regulations (BR) is required for all construction projects, from small domestic extensions to complex multimillion-pound developments. If your project is classed as a ‘Higher-Risk Building’ under the Building Safety Act 2022, then additional requirements apply.
Our Principal Designers have undergone competency assessments in line with PAS 8671 requirements and will be able to assist and guide you in navigating your legal duties under the Building Safety Act 2022. They will ensure that you fully understand your duties before any design work commences.
One Stop Shop
Successful construction projects rely on the right balance between design and project control, including project and cost management. We can offer you a streamlined consulting service bringing together all of the design team partners that you need from across our network of approved supply chain partners.
Using a one stop shop service is not right for everyone, but it can mean that you benefit from a single point of contact for your integrated design team. Our teams will use their construction knowledge and cost planning experience to offer expert advice on construction approaches and procurement options. This begins from the very initial feasibility testing of a project, right through until the handover of the completed building.
All successful partnerships are founded on taking a truly collaborative approach to achieving common aims and objectives. Clear communication is therefore an essential part of collaboration, alongside developing and nurturing a culture of working together as one team. GSS have a successful track record of achieving excellent outcomes through working collaboratively and can draw on our experience and lessons learned over the years to encourage and drive collaboration.
Sustainability
With climate change being one of the biggest challenges we face in our lifetime, GSS are committed to ensuring their projects are designed to incorporate innovative, sustainable solutions that not only benefit the building user, but the wider environment.
Our in-house Sustainability Innovation Group are collaborating with industry leaders to research and develop the latest technologies and sustainable processes that can be incorporated into our designs. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimise waste, and create healthy, productive environments.
Artificial Intelligence
GSS’s in-house Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation Group is responsible for providing comprehensive guidance and assistance, ensuring the safe and appropriate utilisation of AI within our work.
This dedicated team from across the UK actively explores both the limitations and opportunities of AI, striving to enhance quality and efficiency. We have implemented a structured plan that is aimed at identifying opportunities through harnessing the latest advancements in AI technology and the team will research and assess these to ensure that they align with our moral and ethical standards.
Fostering a collaborative environment, the group encourages innovation and integration of AI technologies that can add value to our clients. Their efforts include developing customised AI solutions, training for wider GSS team members, and overseeing a robust framework for AI governance.
Our in-house AI Innovation Group plays a crucial role in driving GSS’s commitment to leveraging the benefits of AI and maintaining our competitive edge in the industry.
Net Zero Carbon
Many of our clients have set Net Zero Carbon or Carbon Neutral targets for their buildings and estates through either decarbonisation of their current estate, or through targeting Net Zero Carbon in new buildings or investments.
We are also on our own route to becoming Carbon Neutral by 2030, a target which, although complex and challenging, we believe to be realistic and genuine.
Health and Wellbeing
There is an increasing awareness of how our environment can affect our physical and mental health and the impact that this has on our productivity and wellbeing. The Covid pandemic has reinforced the importance of good mental and physical health for everyone in society and there is an increased focus on the need for more human-centred, sustainable environments that support the people who work and live in them.
We understand that good design is at the centre of this and has real power to improve peoples’ lives and support organisations, delivering places that support health, comfort, and happiness. The quality of environment can help to reduce staff turnover, improve outputs, and attract new people to an organisation.
Our designers are trained to look at how new and existing buildings, and external spaces, can deliver high quality places that is not only functional, adaptable, and efficient but is also welcoming, inclusive and supportive.
Procurement
Professional services frameworks have become increasingly important over recent years as a method to engage construction professionals in a way that ensure compliance with the Public Contracts Regulations (PCR15) and that promote a more streamlined way of partnering in the longer term.
As a practice, we have secured positions on a range of established, Find a Tender (OJEU replacement) compliant formal frameworks, which enables easier, quicker and cheaper procurement routes for our clients. In addition to our national and regional frameworks, GSSArchitecture have also secured places on a number of university frameworks across the country.
For more information on our frameworks and how you can appoint GSSArchitecture for your project, please visit our website via the below QR code:
Scan for more information on our frameworks.
Architects Lead Consultants Masterplanners