the blank is
where you
come in _
we are _ is a studio built around the people we serve. the underscore is deliberate: it's the blank each client arrives with, and our job is to fill it with whatever they actually need, not a house style imposed from above, but a considered response to that particular brief.
we believe architecture is what we're paid for, not just the assembly of walls, and we bring that design thinking into every project, whatever the budget. that doesn't always mean a visual statement. it might be a construction technique, a material choice, or simply how a room meets the outside. modest brief or ambitious one, the discipline is the same: thinking architecturally about the problem, not defaulting to the easiest build.
we call ourselves a studio, not a practice, a practice is what a gp runs. we're where the art happens. built on the fellowship of two friends since our masters, that same spirit extends to everyone who walks through the door: treated not as a case file, but as part of the fold.
fellowship. this is the studio.
we didn't plan it. we jumped _
we'd been working together at a practice in leeds for about four years. then the pandemic came and we were both let go at once. we decided it was now or never, and jumped straight in. the rest is history.
director-led means
director-made _
it's just us. a director-led studio where clients are always in touch with the directors themselves. we call on trusted contract people when a project needs the hands, and we've kept good relationships going with other architects we collaborate with, but the thinking, and the responsibility, stays with the two of us.
andrew clapham _
co-founder · chartered architect · design lead
andrew is a fully qualified, arb-registered and riba-chartered architect. he leads design at the studio, the concept, the moves, the idea a project is built around, and he'll sketch anything given half a chance.
jack davey _
co-founder · technical & planning lead · designer
jack was mid-way through his riba part 3 when redundancy put it on hold, he resumes that next year. integral to design on every project, he's stepped up to lead the technical side and is now our go-to for drawings, regs and planning detail. also an a2 cofc qualified drone pilot.
anyone can put up walls.
we're paid to think _
architecture is the one thing our clients are actually paying us for. these are the things we hold to, project after project, whatever the scale.
every project gets an idea
even the smallest extension deserves a genuine piece of thinking, a section that does something clever, a junction detailed rather than defaulted to, a material chosen for a reason. if we can't point to the idea, we haven't done our job. budget changes the scale of the idea, never whether there is one.
we connect inside and out
we mean it both ways. not just the house opening onto the garden, the garden becoming part of the house. a room outside is still a room. where the boundary sits between inside and out is one of the first questions we ask, on every project, no exceptions.
wellbeing is a design brief
not a wellness buzzword. proportion, daylight, materiality, acoustics, the sequence you move through a building, these shape how someone feels every single day they live or work there. we design for the tuesday morning, not the launch party.
construction can be the architecture
sometimes the idea isn't visual at all, it's how a building is put together. a structural strategy, a way of detailing a junction, a low-tech answer to a high-performance problem. that's still design, even if a client never consciously notices it.
context is a collaborator
whatever's already there, the street, the site, the client's own history, deserves a considered response, not a template dropped on top. that's true whether it's a listed building or a garden shed.
we treat the brief like a friend’s
the fellowship idea, in practice: we take on your problem the way we'd take on a friend's, properly, honestly, with real thought, not as a transaction to be processed.
what you get that
you might not elsewhere _
against a bigger firm
the honest difference is attention. at a larger practice you're handed to whoever has capacity that month, and the person who wins the pitch isn't the one detailing your kitchen extension. here, it's andrew and jack, on every job. the thinking behind the concept is the same thinking still there when we're arguing over a window reveal eighteen months later. you're not paying for scale, you're paying for two people who won't let go until it's right.
against a draughtsperson
the difference is what you're actually buying. a draughtsperson gets you drawings that satisfy building control. we think that's the bare minimum, not the job. every project, extension, new-build, listed building, gets genuine architectural thinking: how the space feels, how it meets the garden, whether the construction itself is doing something interesting. if a client just wants walls, we're the wrong call, and we'll say so.
locally, in yorkshire
we're not precious about typology. we're as interested in a tight-budget terrace extension in leeds as a country-house restoration, the idea has to earn its place either way, and that's a more interesting discipline than only taking the glamorous jobs.
"what clients say back to us, more than anything, is that it didn't feel transactional."
they weren't managed through a process, they were in it with us. they tell us we listened before we designed, rather than turning up with a signature style and fitting the brief around it; that we were straight about budget and trade-offs rather than overselling; and that the finished building feels considered in ways they didn't ask for and didn't expect.
riba chartered practice
we are _ is a chartered practice of the royal institute of british architects.
arb + riba registered
andrew clapham is both arb-registered and riba-chartered.
featured in The Times
december 2025, credited as We Are Architecture Studio.
a2 cofc drone pilot
jack davey is a qualified drone pilot for site survey and aerial work.
a morley studio,
rooted in morley _
the studio, on ackroyd street, is really just a space for the two of us to hang out and do what we love. we're growing steadily, we love the residential work that fills most of our days, and we've been lucky with our clients so far, long may that continue.
we want to be more woven into the community around us. we sponsor morley cricket club and the morley beer festival, and we're always up for more. (the board in the photo up top? that's ours, pitch-side.)
morley cricket club
club sponsor
morley beer festival
festival sponsor
suite 3, ackroyd street
the studio · morley, leeds ls27 8pz
come and be
part of the fold _
tell us what you're planning and one of us, andrew or jack, not a form robot, will get back to you within two working days.