Architect - BMA Architecture, South Hampton
I am Leo Ellis, an architect at BMA Architecture in South Hampton, working in concrete, timber and daylight. We design houses, pavilions and civic rooms that feel inevitable - reduced to their proportions, their structure, and the way the light moves through them.
A handful of recent buildings - chosen because each one solved its site in a single, clear gesture.
A low concrete bar pressed into the desert floor, opening to a courtyard and a single sheet of water that mirrors the evening sky.
02Cultural pavilion - Loenen, Netherlands
A place for remembrance set into the trees - board-marked concrete, a measured roof, and light drawn in slowly through the day.
03Cabin - Litchfield, Connecticut
A timber volume held just above a sloping forest floor, touching the ground as lightly as the site would allow.
04Civic sports centre - Viana do Castelo, Portugal
A monolithic civic room facing the Atlantic, where structure, surface and shadow are the only ornament.
05Private residence - Byron Bay, Australia
A simple dwelling that frames the coast - quiet rooms, deep eaves, and an honest palette of lime, timber and stone.
Architecture is the patient work of removing everything a building does not need, until only its idea is left standing.
At BMA Architecture in South Hampton, every project starts on the site, in silence, before a line is drawn. I want to know how the light arrives, where the wind comes from, and what the ground is asking for. The plan that follows is an argument made in concrete and timber - proportion first, ornament never.
Start a project
Through BMA Architecture in South Hampton, I take on a small number of houses, pavilions and civic commissions each year. Tell me about your site and what you hope it becomes.