Restauro dolce
Skinners’ Hall, 6a architects
Massimo Curzi · Casabella 985 · 2026
For a practice as influential and widely admired as 6a, founded by Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald in 2001, the choice of commissions is crucial, particularly for two architects whose professional practice proceeds in parallel with their thinking and their highly individual research. Each project thus becomes a manifesto for a cultural position and a way of working in which experimentation and research are closely interwoven. Further evidence of this approach lies in the sustained commitment with which Tom Emerson leads his design studio at ETH Zurich. Through a continuous exchange of ideas with students, his architectural thinking evolves and develops, gaining freshness, strength and energy. The publication last year of Dirty Old River by Park Books likewise brings into focus and consolidates a highly original and personal line of enquiry.
From their earliest projects, 6a have demonstrated both a strong commitment to engaging with context and a particular sensitivity to reading and entering into dialogue with what is already there. An ability to resonate with a place and attune themselves to it through form and materials has always been evident in their work. The two architects have pursued a highly individual path, combining their sensitivity to place with a distinctive attention to interiors: the spaces in which life unfolds. They have a particular aptitude for giving architectural expression to a precise and distinctive way of inhabiting space. This involves gesture, bodily posture and ways of dressing. Inhabitation subtly encompasses all these aspects, conveying with precision the character the architects wish future occupants to experience.
The project for Skinners’ Hall, in the historic heart of London’s financial district, is therefore a particularly significant undertaking, far from straightforward and demanding considerable care throughout its execution. As is often the case, working on protected historic buildings requires exceptional flexibility in both scheduling and commitment. The day-to-day demands of the construction site call for prompt, carefully judged interventions that allow the contractor to maintain progress while safeguarding the character of the design.
The Worshipful Company of Skinners, one of the Great Twelve Livery Companies, has been based in the heart of the City of London since 1327. Reconstruction of its hall began after the Great Fire of 1666, followed by substantial interventions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the early decades of the twentieth. The building subsequently suffered severe wartime damage. In 1952, the Hall was designated a Scheduled Monument as an important example of a seventeenth-century livery hall, built over medieval remains and Roman structures along the former course of the Walbrook, the celebrated buried river of Roman London, now lost from view. Numerous architects have worked on the building over the centuries, from John Oliver, between 1668 and 1678, to George Dance the Elder, between 1737 and 1740, and W. Campbell Jones, between 1891 and 1915, through to 6a architects, whose latest intervention spanned eight years. Today, Skinners’ Hall provides spaces for events, meetings and social gatherings, with the proceeds supporting the Company’s charitable activities.
The two London architects have intervened with great care, comprehensively upgrading the building services to meet current energy standards through the use of air-source heat pumps housed in a new rooftop plant enclosure. At the same time, the project has improved vertical and horizontal circulation through the insertion of new stairs and lifts, making the entire building accessible to all and connecting the formal rooms on the upper floors with the basement.
Another major undertaking has been to bring daylight into previously dark and gloomy spaces, including those at the base of the building and others that had historically received no natural light. The project culminates in a new rooftop pavilion opening onto a generous terrace. A large circular rooflight crowns the pavilion, admitting abundant daylight into the interior. Executed in oak, limestone and lime plaster, these new elements add a further, contemporary layer to the complex.
The vaulted undercroft beneath the Great Hall, once used for storage, has been transformed into an events space, accessed from a new courtyard excavated within the former channel of the Walbrook.
An ambitious and demanding project, realised not through the familiar architectural gesture that shouts without listening, but through the accumulation of many small “moves”: a truly considerate restoration.