Rachel Hoolahan

Associate Director and Sustainability Lead · Orms · company speakers →

Rachel Hoolahan is Associate Director at Orms. We design places for learning, living, working and mixing that are deeply functional and forever generous. Based in central London, we’ve been in practice for more than 40 years, continually evolving our studio to make it fit for purpose. In 2018 we became an Employee Owned Trust (EOT) and in 2024 a BCorp. She leads the practice's sustainability consultancy, bridging research and implementation to advance regenerative design, in particular material reuse, in the built environment. Rachel spearheaded Orms' materials passports research, developing open-source methodologies that enable design teams to catalogue and redeploy building fabric. In collaboration with Lancaster University, she published a policy paper in 2024 that provides frameworks for wider adoption. This research-to-practice approach is exemplified in Orms' work on 75 London Wall, a deep refurbishment with ambitious material reuse targets that demonstrates how material intelligence can be embedded in live projects. To date, 300t of materials have been diverted from recycling routes to reuse routes on the project. Rachel serves on a number of committees, steering groups and award panels, and is active in a number of research streams, positioning her at the intersection of policy, research, and built outcomes.

Is this you? Claim this profile →