On site: Nyth is a capital project for a new bespoke home for Frân Wen in the former St Mary’s Church in Bangor; a home that invites, welcomes and embraces the creativity of young people and professional artists from all backgrounds, with collaboration and community engagement at its core.

February 2022

Nyth has swept the board at the 2025 RSAW Welsh Architecture Awards, winning Building of the Year as well as Client of the Year and the Sustainability Award.

The jury praised the project’s “intrinsic attitude to inclusivity” and its “refreshing approach to conservation”, describing it as a “sophisticated and at times delightful architectural collage”.

May 2025

iQ Hoxton has won the Education Property Awards 2025 Interior Design Project of the Year.

In our redesign we focussed on optimising the layout to provide improved social, dining and study spaces, as well as a reconfigured reception which upgrades the staff facilities and creates a playful and approachable street presence.

Our approach aims for a locally rooted, contextual design with materiality and details informed by the building’s relationship with the surrounding neighbourhood. Here we drew from the facades and shopfronts of the local Vietnamese restaurants and cafés established by first-generation immigrants, which run parallel to nearby Hoxton Street’s traditional pubs and pie & mash shops, speaking to the eclecticism and diversity of the area.

Bold colours were used through the curation of sets of ceramic objects similar to those found in the Vietnamese restaurants. Recycled plastic rattan forms the feature wall behind the reception desk, inspired by the restaurant placemats, while the tiled reception desk with white top and chequered floor references the pie & mash shop interior.

May 2025

Heathlands School Woodland Building is featured in Wallpaper* Magazine’s examination of DeafSpace design principles.

“…the principles of DeafSpace offer a powerful model for creating not just for accessibility but for altogether better design. Developed within the Deaf community, DeafSpace reimagines architecture with an acute awareness of sensory and social experience. In many cases, inclusivity in architecture is left as an afterthought in the design process; a culture of compliance usually leads to bureaucratic box-ticking – a far cry from creating anything that is loving or, dare we say, aesthetically pleasing. In contrast to this, DeafSpace aims to weave in a visceral human-focused approach that informs form, function, and aesthetics from the very beginning.”

April 2025

Lauren’s article Retrofitting PBSA for a New Generation published in Architecture Yearbook 2025.

“With ingenuity, empathy, contextual understanding and material intelligence, it is possible, not to mention rewarding, to activate and energise rejected spaces, and adapt legacy PBSA to meet the needs, and enrich the lives, of the student generation of today - and tomorrow.”

March 2025

Nyth is one of 5 projects shortlisted for the RSAW Welsh Architecture Awards 2025.

“This year’s shortlist features a diverse range of projects - widely dispersed across North and South Wales, from Bangor to the Gower Peninsular - set within both rural landscapes and urban centres. Ranging from domestic extensions to a community arts centre and a distillery, each project shares a common thread - to think beyond the immediate confines of the site boundaries and enrich the lives of the people and places which they inhabit.” RSAW Jury Chair

February 2025

Nyth has been highly commended in the MacEwen Awards 2025, and is featured on the cover of this month’s RIBA Journal.

“Engaging with Manalo & White was, says Frân Wen creative director Gethin Evans, ‘hugely inspiring and productive’. Evans spent his first day in his role interviewing the shortlisted architects. What the project manager saw as Manalo & White’s ‘unorthodox’ tender document only piqued the interest of a client used to unorthodox approaches of its own. ‘Other presentations seemed a bit lazy by comparison,’ recalls Evans. ‘The work M&W showed us was curious and quirky, and we knew we wanted something playful and dynamic born out of a genuinely collaborative design process.’”

January 2025

Two of our projects, Nyth and Heathlands School, have been shortlisted for the RIBA Journal MacEwen Award 2025. The award celebrates architectural projects which engage with inclusion, sustainability, communities and health to bring significant benefits to the people who use them. The winning projects will be announced on 27th and 28th January.

January 2025

Heathlands School Building Study cover feature in the Architects’ Journal.

“Heathlands School’s new block incorporates many subtle features that can be implemented in design not just for deaf people but for the sake of offering a wider scale of inclusion. They could easily read solely as aesthetic flair to the untrained eye. But in its quiet style the architecture here reconciles both inclusivity and aesthetics in an earnest and honest support to the senses.”

December 2024

Brian’s article for the Architects’ Journal, discussing how we design purposeful space in student housing. Many students will be living away from home for the first time, maybe living abroad for the first time. The sense of comfort and belonging they get from their surroundings will play a huge part in defining their student experience, and by extension, their personal and professional future. When designing these projects we have a duty of care to create spaces that are welcoming, safe and engaging for everyone.

December 2024

Our new classroom building at Heathlands School for Deaf Children is featured in this month’s RIBA Journal.

“A huge amount of care has been taken over details that bring life to what is, in many ways, a modest structure. Throughout, the attitude has been to recognise deafness as a gain, and create an environment embracing that; one that supports interaction, engagement, communication and understanding – conditions which benefit everyone, deaf or otherwise.”

November 2024