We use design and construction to connect communities to the natural environment.
Our projects make the most of reclaimed or readily-available materials, arranging these playfully to make structures that touch the earth lightly and spaces that tell stories about shifting landscapes. We build crudely, but carefully and with character.
In 2025, Flimsy Works were included in New Architects 5, a definitive index compiled by the Architecture Foundation of the UK's best new architects.
Lean and Light
Our structures are lightweight assemblies that are designed to be built and taken apart. We plan thoroughly and are resourceful with material, making use of standardised components or the predetermined dimensions of existing stock to design projects that are economical and produce minimal waste. We use repeatable modules and simple details so that our projects can be built or reconfigured by hand, with ease, and in time. To us, lightness is not fragility but agility - and this approach produces architecture that is inventively pragmatic.
Material reuse
We build what we design and often source our own materials. This enables us to work directly with reclaimed stock and allow availability to drive form - a process described as ‘anticipatory design’ by our regular collaborators, ReCollective. We develop construction systems that can absorb irregularity, and celebrate idiosyncrasy as a defining feature of our architecture. And by designing with demountability in mind, we ensure that our structures can move through multiple lives, extending its usefulness rather than fixing it to a single purpose. We welcome reciprocity in working this way: materials shape the architecture, and the architecture prolongs the life of the materials.
Making things, making things happen
A core belief that we hold is that the natural world must be accessible to all; we work with organisations that enable communities to be part of these spaces and we use hands-on building workshops as a way to engage people physically with the land and to participate in the shaping of it. Quantity surveying is a key part of our service - we are upfront about cost, and understand the importance of keeping a close handle on it. We produce designs for self-build, and have facilitated several workshop events and engaged hundreds of participants, providing easy-to-read blueprints and a Do-It-Yourself mentality to getting things built and building up the communities around them.