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In ancient Greek architecture stoas were designed to create safe, enveloping, protective atmospheres which combined useful inside and outside space. Stoicism — named for the stoa — is the philosophy of personal ethics and an informed, mindful system of logic, which perfectly explains our belief that buildings are more than just bricks and mortar. Buildings should be practical, protective, and inspirational. Hence our name — STOAS — reflecting our ethos of logic, efficiency and leading-edge design.
We’ve been established for over 30 years and are based in Coleshill, Birmingham. Our designs emphasise efficiency and practicality at every step. Each element has a purpose and contributes to the whole development including the social, psychological and economic context.
We’ve grown significantly over the last 10 years but maintain a small practice ethos of being approachable and friendly. We value work life balance and provide many staff incentives, including social activities, lunchtime walking and charity events such as Macmillan coffee mornings and velo Birmingham.
We maintain close links with our local school of architecture, participating in work-experience and mentoring schemes. In fact, many of our staff studied at the school part-time whilst working for us.
We design practical, multi-functional and aspirational spaces by analysing project requirements and considering all contexts. Our rigorous examination of needs and environments enables us to create efficient designs, delivering confident, workable spaces, which adapt to changing needs.
Our open collaborative design process encourages inspired thinking whilst protecting original project goals and core ideas. The finished project acts as a protective, useful, open space for innovation and a catalyst to reimagine future project goals.
We embrace the physical, social and environmental facts; embracing them for what they are, then factor in the practical project requirements and combine all elements. This ensures we design practical, efficient, architectural solutions which fulfil client requirements.
Our enviable client retention record demonstrates how we work and how we are committed to lasting relationships. We have grown alongside many of our clients and are often asked to adapt spaces to fulfil changing requirements.
These long-term client interactions provide valuable insights and opportunities to evaluate or review projects within changing operational needs. We regularly suggest new ideas to compliment or enhance original designs.
We are strong advocates of embracing emerging technologies and applying them to the design and construction process to deliver efficient projects. We have adopted an interactive approach to reviewing projects across all stages, frequently using virtual reality to better demonstrate proposals to clients and create an engaging design process that encourages the exploration of concepts from the outset.
In addition to virtual reality the practice recognises the importance of BIM in the industry and that many clients are looking to develop integrated information systems for projects. We have significantly invested in BIM training and adoption to develop the knowledge required to offer integrated information within a single model, this has the benefit of: delivering efficiencies during the design process, identify potential clashes prior to construction onsite and therefore reducing cost implications, and providing a valuable tool to better maintain buildings over their lifecycle.
