(“Text as taken from the website”)
Nicola du Pisanie
BSc (Hons) DipArch MA Sustainability RIBA ARB. Nicola is a founding Director at Stonewood Design. Nicola has previously worked at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Arup Associates in the UK and Rodney Harber Associates in South Africa. She has a passion for working with simple and appropriate technologies and recently worked with an orphanage at Siyathuthuka in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa to build a series of external and play spaces. Nicola is a Visiting Critic at the University of Bath School of Architecture. Nicola delivered the RIBA South West shortlisted Story of Gardening museum in Somerset and has most recently completed a museum to view Roman archaeology, alongside a Roman Villa reconstruction. She is currently involved in a museum in Cornwall which is under construction.
Practice Ideology
Stonewood’s unusual beginning as part of a building company has helped shape its philosophy and development. It was founded in 2010 by Nicola du Pisanie, one of four principals who have all worked at the Bath offices of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios. She joined Stonewood Builders as its in-house architect (one of the directors was a neighbour in Bath) and then set up Stonewood Design working from the same premises. She was joined in 2012 by husband and former FCBS partner Matt Vaudin, whom she’d met when they both worked in London for Arup Associates, and the following year by Adam Chambers, winner of the RIBA South West Project Architect of the Year Award 2019. The London office is led by Ross McDonald, who rejoined Stonewood after seven years at Alison Brooks Architects.
‘We are ambitious for each of our projects, but we are not ambitious in terms of size, turnover, awards etc,’ says du Pisanie. ‘We do have the ambition to maintain the beautiful mix of amazing projects that we currently have. This size is really fantastic,’ she says, gesturing to the team beavering away behind her. ‘We know every person in our office really well. We have such an amazingly loyal team who work really hard.’
