Social value in architecture

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Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) is one of the 20 businesses we spoke to as we celebrate having supported 1,000 London businesses. The Islington-based architecture practice joined Heart of the City in 2016 and is now an ambassador, helping us to support more SMEs new to responsible business.

We spoke to Partnerships Lead Claire Pollock earlier this year to ask her about responsible business and social value at AHMM. She told us about the community support that AHMM offers, focusing on their partnership with the Magpie Project in 2019. They project saw them organise monthly collections of clothing, children’s books and toys from employees to support mums and under-fives living in temporary accommodation and fund an artist in residence. Claire also spoke about AHMM’s commitment to sustainability as one of the founding signatories of Architects Declare, a call to arms around the climate crisis. Watch the video below:

If you’d like to join AHMM as a business doing well by doing good, join Heart of the City for 2021! Applications are open now. 

We filmed with AHMM before the pandemic, and we’re pleased to say they’ve continued to support communities virtually. They ran their AHMM Summer School digitally, inviting 22 students to learn about working in architecture. Hosting this online meant that as well as having students from London joining, they were able to involve young people from across the UK together with three from Uruguay and one from South Africa.

In May, they worked with Accumulate, the art school for the homeless, to run a workshop on WhatsApp! They’re continuing this support during Lockdown 2.0, with AHMM organising two Zoom sessions introducing perspective drawing, architectural collage and modelmaking with art materials sent out to each participant in advance.

And fundraising hasn’t stopped either. Together, employees undertook the AHMM 3030 challenge to celebrate 30 years of AHMM. Collectively, teams completed 30,000km of running, walking and cycling, raising £4,000 for Covid relief and NHS charities. They also took part in Inktober, the annual international drawing challenge. Employees responded to daily sketch prompts throughout October and AHMM donated £5 for every sketch to FCV Dorcas, their Charity of the Year 2020.

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