2hD / Services

2hD are designers of spaces and places for people, and architecture is at the core of what we do. We offer a full architectural service, from helping our clients to understand their needs for a project, right through to running the building contract, conducting site inspections and certifying payments to builders.

We are firm believers in an in-depth briefing process, even for small projects and particularly when funds are tight. By really understanding the way our clients (be they individuals or organisations) live, work and think, we can find solutions that are creative, practical, and great value.

Having got our heads around the project, we set up a dialogue with our clients, involving them just as much as they want in the design process and decision making. We demystify each step along the way to create a true sense of shared ownership of the design. This principle of dialogue extends to our professional collaborators: we seek out collaborators with a similar attitude to their clients and engage early with planning and building control authorities to make sure we are heading in an achievable direction.

When the strategy is clear, we pitch whole-heartedly into working out the detail of our projects. Our priority is to make fantastic designs that work — on all levels.

Sounds interesting?
Have a look at the projects in our portfolio.

Communicating in a friendly and accessible way with our clients is at the core to our way of working. Over time, we have developed a wide variety of techniques to visualise design ideas, from expressive hand sketches to illustrate design concepts, to accurate 3D models to communicate technical information with our site collaborators.

Although we believe that technical drawings have their role to play in the design process, we will never flood you with obscure sections and puzzling plans: we always adapt our way of visualising information to its context and its target audience. For instance, our design of an assembly manual for a self build domestic project did not have the same focus as the interactive data-mining tool that we created for a university research project that analysed large sets of environmental data.

In any case, we always make sure that what you and your audience see is not only clear but also opens new ways to understand ideas. Visualisation should be clear, engaging and interactive, whatever the complexity of what you are trying to show.

So whether you would like to interactively explore the interior of your new house or create detailed technical brochures for a building component you are developing, we will help you visualise your ideas!

Why would an architectural practice design websites? Because we believe they should be designed the same way as architectural spaces: accessible, participative and open!

We specialise in creating dynamic websites to allow communities to interact and thrive. We design sleek and friendly websites using the latest standards in web design and accessibility. We will make sure that you and your team can easily modify and add new content to your website at any time, through simple and intuitive administration pages, so that it can evolve along with your organisation.

We like to use open-source platforms to power the websites we design. This allows us to really focus on tailoring your site to your needs and your audience rather than to have to re-invent the wheel every time. This way, you can also make sure that you will always find a lively and active community to help you if, later on, you decide to go your own way.You will never end up stuck with a website that nobody knows how to upgrade or modify…

Either starting from scratch or reusing existing materials you already have, we will advise you on the best strategy to communicate your message online and take care of all the technical aspects for you, so that you can focus on what matters most to you.

At 2hD we complement our practice with the teaching of architecture and related subjects, having more than 25 years teaching experience between us. Thibaut runs structure and construction related workshops, Tom teaches studio design, computer aided design and construction technology, whilst Alina has developed from scratch, and run, an entirely new Architecture Program at Nottingham Trent University.

As a team we can deliver a wide range of teaching modes, from one-off lectures to seminar series, but we specialise in studio-based, hands-on workshops. We believe that student-centred and student-led learning has enormous potential in architectural design, as it helps with engaging students in this complex, ethically charged, technically challenging subject.

Using our familiarity of both education and practice contexts, we can bring together teaching packages that make the subject accessible, and learning enjoyable. This results in interesting and engaging physical outputs: models, posters, drawings and texts. Having taught across the range of ages, from primary school to postgraduate, we are able to pitch our teaching at an appropriate level for our students.

In addition to our visualisation and sketching techniques, we extensively use photography to develop and document projects we are involved in.

Photography fits in many stages of our design practice: appraising a site, developing the brief with clients, telling the story of the construction process and the key community events related to the project. And finally, we are often asked to document the life of the building and its users once the project is completed.

Aside from architectural photography, we also enjoy capturing the life of the community projects we are involved in, either to help promote them or simply for the fun of it.

We are professionally equipped to take care of the whole photographic workflow and help you produce creative imagery for your project, all the way to photos ready to include in your printed materials or to use on your website.