Castle Boulevard
168UNITS
Rethinking Student Living at Graystacks.
Architects + Developers
A development-led design and delivery practice.
We align creativity with buildability and long-term value.
Scroll
We align creativity with buildability and long-term value.
Rethinking Student Living at Graystacks.
EDGE have worked alongside the founders of ALLY for the last decade. They have a constructive approach to value engineering with a strong focus on intelligent efficiencies and operational performance rather than simply reducing quality.
Regenerating Nottingham’s Southside at Crocus.
The team at ALLY designed a building with a heart! The attention given to every decision creates real operational benefits and is noticeably appreciated by the residents.
Redefining PBSA at Bridgeside.
ALLY’s designs are grounded in buildability. Every detail feels considered from a construction perspective, creating a far smoother delivery process on site.
Integrating Affordable Living and Operational Intelligence.
Unlocking Opportunity at East Bridgford.
Aligning Design and Value at St Ives, Cornwall.
Rethinking Student Living at Graystacks.
Graystacks was OMNI Developments’ first project, with the ALLY team providing the design and technical expertise behind what became a pioneering approach to student living.
Delivered across two phases, the scheme comprises 14 townhouse-style buildings containing 12 bedrooms each - a significant departure from the double-loaded corridor model typical of purpose-built student accommodation. At the centre of every house is a shared atrium with a stepped sectional arrangement that gradually introduces residents to one another, encouraging interaction and community formation through everyday movement and shared space. Recessed entrances and interconnected roof terraces further strengthen the social relationship between the houses.
The project also pioneered the use of cross-laminated timber within the sector, alongside a negative-carbon construction approach that challenged conventional assumptions around student housing delivery. The result was recognised with Sustainable Building of the Year in 2015.
Importantly, Graystacks became the only proposal in the area to gain the support of the local community group, reflecting an approach that prioritised long-term place quality, materiality, and neighbour relationships alongside commercial viability.
The quality of the finished building was made possible through a highly collaborative relationship between the design team, contractor, and specialist subcontractors. That experience ultimately led to the creation of TUNE Homes, established to continue delivering the same level of craftsmanship, detailing, and construction quality.
Graystacks remains an exceptionally popular building with students, universities, community groups, and institutional partners alike, demonstrating how thoughtful design and delivery can redefine expectations within the student sector.
Redefining PBSA at Bridgeside.
Bridgeside is a 222-bed flagship PBSA scheme beside Nottingham’s Jubilee Campus, developed in response to the changing demands of a mature student market. The initial design work was undertaken by the ALLY team, with the configuration of the building becoming the defining challenge.
Rather than adopting a typical double-loaded corridor arrangement, the scheme was designed to maximise views across the campus and strengthen resident interaction. Studios and cluster sizes were deliberately limited, bedrooms increased by approximately 25 percent, and kitchen-lounge areas doubled in size per resident to create a significantly stronger social environment.
At the centre of the scheme is a six-storey winter garden, replacing the typical ground-floor amenity model with a vertical social spine connected to daylight, views, and shared activity throughout the building.
Delivered during a period of extreme construction cost inflation, the project evolved through an intelligent iterative design process that balanced design quality, operational performance, and buildability. Working closely with Torsion Group, every component was refined to maximise value while maintaining standard build costs, resulting in a building that is significantly outperforming more conventional market products.
The scheme also implemented a zero-fossil-fuel strategy ahead of legislative requirements, achieving an EPC A rating through close collaboration with the wider delivery and funding team including OakNorth Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Torsion Group, and LUNA Students.
Bridgeside reflects the ALLY approach: design, viability, buildability, and operational performance working together as a seamless process rather than separate disciplines.
Regenerating Nottingham’s Southside at Crocus.
Crocus is a 300-home apartment scheme positioned within Nottingham’s emerging Southside masterplan, adjacent to the railway station and overlooking a previously overlooked culverted waterfront edge.
The project reimagines this constrained piece of infrastructure as part of a new public-facing riverside environment, combining high-density urban living with generous amenity spaces and an improved relationship to the water. Our approach focuses not only on delivering homes, but on helping shape a new part of the city through landscape, activation, and long-term place quality.
The scheme incorporates the class-leading social and amenity spaces that have become central to our residential projects, alongside durable, robust detailing designed to reduce maintenance and operational costs over the building’s lifecycle. Drawing on over 15 years of development and operational experience, the building has been designed around efficient management, low operational expenditure, and low-carbon principles from the outset.
Our experience navigating the Building Safety Act gateway process has also been integral to bringing the scheme forward in a deliverable and investment-ready form. Our unique skills ensure that compliance, buildability, and long-term operational performance are embedded within the design process, rather than treated as secondary considerations.
Crocus reflects ALLY’s integrated approach to development: combining architecture, delivery, operational insight, and urban regeneration to create resilient residential places designed for long-term performance.
Integrating Affordable Living and Operational Intelligence at Highurst.
Highurst is conceived as more than a residential building. It is designed as a new model for delivering high-quality, affordable urban living for Nottingham’s young workforce. Located on a prominent brownfield corner site on Ilkeston Road, the scheme delivers 63 compact, efficiently planned apartments within a carefully modelled mid-rise building that reinforces the emerging urban character of the corridor.
What differentiates the project is the integration of investment, operational, and development thinking from the outset. Drawing on our experience as both developers and operators, the building was specifically designed to reduce long-term operational expenditure through efficient planning, durable materials, and low-maintenance detailing. Significant additional operational efficiencies are possible due to the integration of proptech systems that simplify management and reduce carbon and running costs.
Rather than relying on affordability through reduced quality, the scheme focuses on operational efficiency to support lower living costs over the life of the building. This approach allowed us to create high-quality homes in a highly accessible city location without many of the traditional overheads associated with managed residential buildings.
The project demonstrates ALLY’s belief that good design is not only architectural - it is operational, financial, and strategic. By combining design quality with real-world delivery and management experience, the scheme creates a more sustainable model for affordable urban living.
Unlocking Opportunity at East Bridgford.
Previous proposals for this site by others had been rejected due to highways concerns surrounding the historic road layout, constrained access through a communal courtyard, and visibility splays crossing neighbouring land. We were later recommended to review the opportunity after the site had become widely regarded as too constrained to develop.
Our response focused on the wider context rather than the plot in isolation. We developed a collaborative strategy that improved the communal courtyard, rationalised parking arrangements, and allocated areas of land to neighbouring properties to create shared benefit and secure local support.
By aligning the interests of the community, highways requirements, and the design ambition, we secured planning consent for a contemporary 3,000 sq ft family home on a highly constrained site.
Aligning Design and Value at St Ives, Cornwall.
We were recommended to the landowner of this highly sensitive site as part of a strategy to generate funding for the refurbishment of the adjoining hotel. The opportunity was not simply about securing planning consent, but about rethinking how custom-build housing could be delivered in a more coordinated and valuable way.
Working alongside Re-format Architects, we designed a planning consent for 16 custom-build homes through a carefully structured design code that established a coherent contemporary streetscape, while still allowing for bespoke internal configurations. The approach challenged the often fragmented and uncoordinated nature of traditional custom-build developments.
Rather than maximising value through density alone, the project focused on creating a unified street with long-term architectural coherence and stronger place identity, increasing both land value and market appeal.
The project demonstrates how a developer-designer mindset can align planning, design quality, and commercial strategy to create better outcomes for landowners, buyers, and the wider setting alike.
The individuals behind ALLY have spent years delivering projects through a consistent way of thinking: one where design, commercial understanding and delivery are considered together from the outset. While members of the team have previously worked across different practices, consultancies and development environments, a common methodology emerged - practical, development-aware architecture grounded in execution rather than abstraction.
ALLY formalises that collective approach into one integrated practice.
Bringing together design leadership, planning strategy, commercial awareness and project delivery within a coordinated framework, the practice allows decisions to be made with clarity across the full lifecycle of a scheme.
Rather than separating concept from viability, or planning from procurement, ALLY approaches projects as interconnected systems - shaped by a team that understands both the creative ambition and operational realities required to deliver successful buildings.
“ALLY creates projects with genuine depth and substance, making them exciting and rewarding to market.”
Rosie HillSales Director, Luna Students“The name ALLY genuinely reflects the experience of working with them. I always felt they were on our side throughout the process.”
Mike Spencer
My experience to date sits at the intersection of architecture and development, delivering complex multi-residential and mixed-use projects on technically and commercially challenging sites.
My work has spanned high-density housing, student accommodation, co-living developments, build-to-rent (BTR), and single-family housing. I have worked closely with developers, contractors, and a wide range of stakeholders to test options, assess viability, and balance design quality with regulatory and commercial constraints. This end-to-end experience allows me to confidently lead teams from early feasibility through to handover.
I have led and contributed to complex projects across all stages of design and delivery, including both planning and technical gateways. This includes achieving Gateway 2 approval on a 180-bed student accommodation scheme at Watford Way, London; securing planning approval for a 397-bed co-living scheme in Southampton; working on the 222-bed Bridgeside PBSA scheme in Nottingham from planning through to handover; and working on the design of the 936-bed Giles Lane student accommodation scheme through planning approval. These projects required close collaboration with developers, consultants, and contractors to resolve technical challenges and deliver robust, sustainable, and compliant solutions.
My experience spans both Higher-Risk Buildings (HRB) and non-HRB projects, providing a strong understanding of regulatory processes, technical coordination, and risk management across the full lifecycle of a project. I am comfortable managing complexity while maintaining clarity, momentum, and focus on wider project objectives.
I take a practical, solutions-focused approach and place strong emphasis on communication, working effectively across clients, consultants, contractors, and stakeholders, with a clear understanding of commercial and political realities.
Alongside practice, I actively build networks and collaborations within the industry. I run The Build Club with Alex Edmeades, a platform that brings together architects, developers, consultants, funders and contractors to share knowledge, build relationships, and support better development outcomes.
Andy is the practice discipline behind ALLY - design, technical detail and delivery held in continuity from sketch to keys. His career has been spent making sure the drawing is the building, and the building is the drawing.
Where Mohammad pressure-tests projects against viability and procurement, Andy pressure-tests them against buildability and detail. The combination is why ALLY exists.
At ALLY he leads the design and technical resolution of each project, working alongside the wider team to carry intent through every stage without dilution.