A site visit in Bruton, Somerset, brought together the longlisted architects for the Hummingbird Learning Lab with Architecture Today and Hummingbird founders Beau Lotto and Dave Strudwick – offering a first-hand encounter with an ambitious, neuroscience-led vision for regenerative education and the landscape that will shape it.
We’ve been in Bruton, Somerset, welcoming the longlisted teams for the Hummingbird Learning Lab – AHMM, Bindloss Dawes Architects, Invisible Studio with PEARCE+, ritchie*studio, Studio 8FOLD, Studio Bark & alma-nac, Studio Saar with Format and Urquhart Hunt, and Tezuka Architects – for a site visit and the next round of interviews, an important moment in shaping the next phase of this ambitious project.
Introduced as an opportunity for practices on the Regenerative Architecture Index, founders of the Learning Lab Beau Lotto and Dave Strudwick are committed to commissioning one of these practices for the project due to their commitment to sustainable, thoughtful and progressive design.
Left to right: Luis Oliveira (Tezuka Architects), George Dawes (Bindloss Dawes), Piers Taylor (Invisible Studio),Ananya Singhal (Studio Saar), Jonny Buckland (Studio Saar), Beau Lotto (The hummingbird Learning Lab), and Oliver Bindloss (Bindloss Dawes).
The Hummingbird Learning Lab sets out to create a new kind of educational environment. It is seeking to extend its already established campus in Bruton into a demountable, regenerative campus rooted in neuroscience, ecology and community. Designed as an evolving system, the project aims to establish a model for future schools: small, connected, and deeply embedded in their surroundings.
The day began with an introduction from Beau Lotto, who shared the thinking underpinning the school. His approach reframes education as something fundamentally experiential, grounded in perception, uncertainty and discovery. Rather than seeing learning as the acquisition of fixed knowledge, it becomes a process of interaction: with each other, with nature, and with space itself. As Beau describes, the role of design is not simply to accommodate activity, but to create meaning through the interactions it enables – an idea central to the Hummingbird vision.
TheThe practices presented their vision before a panel of Neil Thomas of Atelier One, Isabel Allen of Architecture Today, education expert Terry White and Beau Lotto and Dave Strudwick from Hummingbird Learning Lab.
From there, the group toured the Bruton site, walking across the road for lunch at Hauser & Wirth before an afternoon of interviews with each of the longlisted practices. Selected through the Regenerative Architecture Index, the longlist reflects a shared commitment to regenerative design, with practices chosen for their alignment with Hummingbird’s values as much as their architectural approach.
An unconventional brief, this was an invitation to rethink what a school can be – spatially, socially and ecologically. Thank you to all the practices who joined us and stay posted as this project continues to evolve.
Enter the RAI today before this year’s deadline on 18th May 2026.
