A collaborative studio shaping places with people

Director of Place & Architect
BSc (Hons) MArch ARB
she/her

Becca co-founded New Practice to rethink how architecture and placemaking engage with people. A skilled and thoughtful architect, Becca oversees all design work across the studio, working closely with the team to shape considered, responsive and ambitious projects for clients. She brings a strategic overview to each project, contributing at key stages from early briefing through to delivery.

Becca has delivered projects across a wide range of scales, from pavilions and public realm interventions to retrofit, creative workspaces, cultural buildings and community-led developments. Her work focuses on participation, social sustainability and the everyday use of spaces. She is particularly experienced in developing robust briefs, helping clients build confidence in design and construction processes, and translating complex challenges into clear, deliverable outcomes.

Alongside practice, she contributes actively to the wider built environment sector. In 2019, she was appointed to the Glasgow Urban Design Panel, where she provides advice to development teams and planners at pre-application stage. In 2021, she became a Trustee of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), supporting the organisation’s work across the profession.

Beyond this, Becca is involved in a number of initiatives that connect design, community and culture. Her work with Hope in Place CIC and Many Studios CIC focuses on building relationships, supporting creative communities and expanding access to space, resources and opportunities within the built environment.

Becca’s approach is grounded in a simple idea: places work best when the people who use them help shape them.

Place Designer
BDes (Hons)
she/her

Freya is a Place Designer. She joined New Practice in 2025. With experience in spatial, graphic & co-design, her work spans from strategy and engagement through to design and fabrication. At the core of Freya’s design practice are collaborative processes that connect a place to its social histories & stories, to create a positive impact on collective wellbeing.

Since graduating from Interior & Environmental Design at DJCAD, she has contributed to major exhibition & engagement projects across the UK with partners such as UNESCO, Scottish Government, V&A Dundee, Camanachd Association and the National Trust. She also maintains a personal artistic practice, and freelances in workshop facilitation in rural communities.

Freya is passionate about the relationship between people, place and nature, with cultural ties to the Outer Hebrides. The use of Gàidhlig through Freya’s work is important as a communication method working on projects in Scotland, but also also has developed her deep interest in working with minority or endangered languages, ecologies and cultures.

Place Coordinator
BSc MA
she/her

Lauren is a Place Coordinator with a background in architecture and community-engaged design. She joined New Practice in 2025. After graduating from the University of Strathclyde in 2024, Lauren spent a year working closely with Glasgow Girls Club, where she facilitated creative workshops, youth-led campaigns, and citywide engagement rooted in lived experience. This work shaped her collaborative approach, using art, conversation, and playful methods to help communities meaningfully influence the places around them.

Since joining New Practice Lauren has been developing this approach further, bringing together her architectural background with grassroots, community-led methods to support placemaking projects that prioritise inclusion and creativity. Alongside her role at New Practice, she continues to work part-time with the Glasgow Girls Club, where she co-designs initiatives that put young women at the centre of decision-making and supports them to build confidence, skills, and connections to thrive.Lauren enjoys using creative tools and collaborative processes, which can broaden access to design, making it easier and more enjoyable for communities to get involved.

Place Designer
BDes (Hons)
she/her

Marieke is a Place Designer and joined New Practice in 2025.

Marieke is inspired by the work of local activists who drive local grassroots projects, and sees her work as an opportunity to further contribute to creating equity in our neighbourhoods. After graduating from Interior & Environmental Design at DJCAD, she specialised in service design. Marieke draws on this experience to ensure user needs and aspirations are at the heart of her work- blending design thinking with shaping the places in which we live, work and play. She is passionate about engaging inclusively and creatively with community groups through co-design. By ensuring they have the tools to drive and champion the changes they want to see, she believes we can create places that help to address the social, economic and environmental challenges of today.

Her work includes assisting the development of design concepts, creating engagement tools and strategies and designing and facilitating stakeholder and community workshops, and is using this experience to support feasibility studies and placemaking strategies across the UK.

Place Lead
BA PGDip
he/him

Samuel is a Place Lead. He joined New Practice in 2021, and has worked on projects from concept to delivery. This has included an exhibition and events site for COP26, a biodiversity focussed meanwhile space at Walk-Up Avenue, and has led major consultation, placemaking and master planning projects for private, public and community clients across both urban and rural settings.

He is driven by the social and political implications of how we prescribe meaning to the places we inhabit. As a queer-identifying designer, this comes from a personal lens of equitable agency and the provision of space and safety for all members of society, from all backgrounds and of all identities; he is passionate about forefronting intersectional, queer experiences and perspectives on culture and society.

Samuel is a foundational committee member and Chair of Open Plan Scotland, a volunteer-led advocacy and support network for the LGBTQIA+ community studying or working in Architecture in Scotland.

Residency for Ideas is a collaborative programme supporting emerging practitioners to explore new ideas, creative practice and the future of architecture.

Developed in Emma’s memory with The Glasgow School of Art and Karakusevic Carson Architects.

In memoriam

New Practice honour our friend and colleague Emma Burke Newman who passed away in January 2023. She was a passionate cyclist, who loved wild swimming, ceilidh-dancing, hiking, and ratatouille. She was an architecture student at Glasgow School of Art and Designer at New Practice.

A critical campaign making our cities safer places for walking, biking and wheeling co-signed and supported by a network of built environment professionals.

Waiting to Happen brings together anecdotal, qualitative and quantitative data to inform location-specific solutions and create systems for a safer city.