New Wave House is a minimalist showroom located in London, United Kingdom, designed by Thomas-McBrien and New Wave London. When specialist contractors New Wave London found themselves needing more space but unwilling to abandon their community roots, they turned to long-time collaborators Thomas-McBrien Architects for a solution that would honor both their craft ethos and environmental values. The result—a 600-square-meter timber pavilion delicately balanced atop an existing industrial building—offers a compelling vision of how adaptive reuse and material consciousness can reshape our urban fabric.
Standing before the completed New Wave House, one is struck by the contrast between the original brick structure and the featherlight timber extension above. The pavilion doesn’t merely sit on the existing building; it appears to float, its carefully weathered Douglas-fir frame creating a dialogue between old and new, heavy and light, permanence and adaptability.
This juxtaposition reflects the project’s central innovation: using lightweight timber construction to expand upward without expanding outward. By choosing PEFC-certified Douglas-fir glulam as their primary structural material, the team created a framework with less than 5% of the embodied carbon of comparable steel construction. Each cubic meter of the timber sequesters over 700kg of CO2e, effectively making the extension carbon-negative in its material composition.
The construction process itself embodied the craft-centered approach that defines both practices. The 13-meter glulam beams were delivered to the site’s ground floor workshop, where they were precisely cut before being craned to the roof. This on-site fabrication approach eliminated waste and embedded the human touch directly into the building’s DNA.
What makes New Wave House particularly significant is its circular material economy. The original roof panels were carefully removed and reinstalled on the new extension. Timber salvaged from other projects found new life as floor joists and structural elements. Even leftover lime render from a previous Aēsop retail collaboration was repurposed for interior walls. These weren’t token gestures toward sustainability but fundamental design decisions that shaped the project’s aesthetic and technical resolutions.
