Hannah Wooller sees herself as a doctor for buildings, using her expertise in conservation and regeneration to breathe new life into East Anglia’s seaside towns.

Norfolk has always called me.  I was away in the Northwest for most of my career and although the vibrant community and human mass of the cities suited me well, I always knew that I would return home. When I had daughters of my own, I couldn’t imagine their childhood away from the wide skies and diverse coastline of East Anglia. To most people we are seen as a backwater but that same geographical anomaly, few major routes in or out, allows Norfolk to remain different.  You have to mean to come here, no one finds themselves in Norwich by accident.

My work in conservation and regeneration leads me to the seaside towns. I look for work where our buildings can offer the most impact to the local communities. I find working with dereliction exciting. Bringing a building back into use; healing a visual scar, resonates with me on many levels. By capturing the embodied carbon and historic craftsmanship we can also respect the human endeavour, which over the generations, kept the building standing. Then through investigations and diagnosis you can reinstate its function. I liken it to being a doctor for buildings; you apply what you have determined to bring a building back to relevance through good design.

The sea change in the enquiries we have been getting over the last year fills me with optimism for our profession. Knowing the damage the built environment does to the climate, I have recently found it hard to reconcile building buildings at all. Even accounting for the civic contribution of good architecture, meeting current regulations was nowhere near justification for the embodied carbon required to build afresh. We previously worked with our clients to lead them on the low-energy journey, but now most of our new projects are climate aware from the initial briefing. This level of ambition, in new build and retrofit, means our work can hopefully play a part in evolving a non-exploitative and even regenerative language of architecture.

As a Quaker, silence, and the ability to look deep inside for a perspective, has been fundamental in designing my career and how I approach practice. Anthony Hudson has built an inspiring design studio here in Norfolk and I love working with our team on the innovative and brave projects we do. Quaker tenets suggest that we seek to live adventurously, and through architecture, I can.

Hannah Wooller
Norfolk