Bow belles: in the heart of London's East End, Matthew Lloyd Architects' installation has helped raise St Paul's Church from the dead.

Since appearing alongside his architectural peers in the Architecture Foundation's 1994 exhibition New British Architecture, Matthew Lloyd's career has developed in a relatively quiet manner. His partnership (with architect/wife Patricia Woodward) has not seen significant commercial success, or growth. They have chosen to invest their time and energy in a very particular East End community in which, while raising three children, they have modestly upgraded from Lloyd's small studio in Spitalfields to their own office in vibrantly edgy Shoreditch.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Having sharpened his teeth with international giant SOM--briefly in Chicago, before returning to work on refurbishments at County Hall and the Smithson's seminal Economist Building--Lloyd spent time consciously concluding his formal education as a design tutor. However, after over six years busily juggling teaching and practice--initially with Adrian Gale at Plymouth before moving to London's Royal College with Dinah Casson and later, Nigel Coates--Lloyd made the decision to focus on practice instead of, as he puts it, messing about at the edges.

With a community-based persuasion credited to the significant influence of his wife, they did not pursue the small-scale commercial and residential projects that normally springboard young designers' careers. Instead, working with an entrepreneurial spirit, they began by finding sites and initiating projects for housing associations; a slow and highly demanding process where fundraising and economic deliverability took priority over any rush to nurture their own architectural agenda.

The practice's most discernible big break came in 1998 when appointed to design the Prince's Foundation Building for the Prince of Wales; a demanding process with an exceptionally demanding client. From this they were asked to look at the refurbishment of Hawksmoor's fine but bombed Church of St George's in the East, which while not being realized led to their appointment at St Paul's.

The brief at St Paul's was extremely challenging, to the point perhaps that explains why two previously appointed design teams failed to realize proposals. While retaining the main body of the church as a functioning place of worship, it called for additional creche and catering facilities, a fitness and therapy centre, a 175 seat community cinema and, of course, access to all areas; a broad brief that reflected more than simply the ambitious vision of the Rev Phillippa Boardman, who spent six years raising [pounds sterling]20 000 through jumble sales and securing [pounds sterling]3.5m from various funding bodies. Above all else the programme represented the means necessary to make the development's business plan viable. Everything was interdependent, and as Lloyd recalls, this was an architectural process derived from bottom up, where the challenge came from working with a client who had no financial contingency.

While the Victorian church by Newman and Billing was listed, it was unremarkable, redundant and scheduled for demolition. But prayers were answered and the building now has a new vibrant and diverse life, resurrected from an apparently hopeless situation.

The inserted steel and timber structure, while formally audacious, was the only way to meet the floor areas of the brief, with the acoustically isolated auditorium raised above the chancel to preserve the church's original volume and axial views from the west entrance. The discovery of the loft, hidden above an acoustic ceiling inserted two years after the church's construction in 1878, provided a suitable location for the new fitness studio. Then, around these, complicated structural and services coordination resolved the integration of a four-storey lift and stair, and ancillary teaching and therapy spaces. Facilities also include a fully accessible sauna.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

On projects like this, designers genuinely give clients a full service, for little or no profit. St Paul's is once again a delightfully spirited building, produced by an architect who wrongly assumes that he has fallen behind many of his New British contemporaries. Of course, while self-consciousness is understandable with the media's current personality-led agenda, architects like Lloyd should not be discouraged by inappropriate comparisons of size and exposure. Instead, true to the spirit of the original exhibition that helped launch their career in the economically lean and mean early 1990s, Matthew Lloyd Architects have an exemplary part to play, demonstrating the potential of truly sustainable architectural invention.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]