With pivoting bookshelves and vanishing doors, Amin Taha + Groupwork create flexible spaces to live and work in London’s historical Clerkenwell neighbourhood

Award-winning architect Amin Taha has provoked the wrath of council planners with his glorious, rough-hewn flats in London’s Clerkenwell. Do they face the wrecking ball?

Using quarry found finishes, part carved and abandoned stone columns, revealed cloisters and mosaic floors 15 Clerkenwell Close at first alludes to a local archaeology, but also raises questions on our architectural heritage and its responsibility within a broader culture.

The building Taha has realised with his practice, Groupwork, doesn’t kowtow but converses as an equal with its historic surroundings and tells its modern story contextually and lucidly.

The philosophy behind these designs is to use a material as both the skin and the bone of a structure, creating something both rational and elegant.

Helical staircases are often designed to be show-stoppers, focal points of architectural spaces that are intended to impress. But even compared to its eye-catching peers, this staircase developed by Webb Yates Engineers and The Stonemasonry Company is unusually audacious.

The Stonemasonry Company, based in Great Britain, deploys taught steel ropes for the construction of its spiral stairwell

This stair is as remarkable as it looks. It is a 320°, self supporting staircase made in solid limestone.

The stair, a free-standing curve of 270 created by hand in the purest French Limestone, is a masterpiece of design and engineering.