In January, the same Hackney building that houses London architecture firm Morris + Company welcomed a buzzy 32-seat restaurant, Edit. The synergy between the two tenants goes beyond their shared real estate: The new dining spot is the brainchild of former architect Elly Ward, whose husband, Joe Morris, heads the adjacent design studio.

Edit highlights the natural character of its building with exposed brickwork.

As you might expect from the talent behind it, Edit (which Ward envisioned herself and executed with a bit of help from Morris) boasts a warm, stylish interior. Impressively, nearly every square metre consists of recycled, reclaimed and repurposed materials. This approach mirrors Edit’s hyper-sustainable menu, which commits to zero-waste “root to fruit” cooking and features seasonal, local and vegan fare. “I went vegan six years ago,” Ward says. “Once I opened that door, I did a deep dive into all kinds of environmental concerns. It’s great if a restaurant is vegan, but there’s a lot more to it than just the food that you cook.”

A wall of architectural maquettes leads towards Morris + Company’s office.

In a manner that echoes the River Café of Ruth and Richard Rogers, Edit often serves meals to its neighbouring architects — and to highlight this connection, the same lava-red floor flows right from the restaurant into the atelier. “We are also working on a collaborative events program that explores the relationship between food and architecture,” Ward notes. Evidently, circular design is just as applicable to restaurant menus as it is to blueprints.

Behind the bar, a wood-framed wall finished with sheets of recycled plastic sections off the restaurant’s private dining room.

Ingredient List:

1

Seating

Some of Edit’s dining chairs originally belonged to Ward’s grandmother, while others are second-hand finds sourced through reclamation yards or eBay.

2

Tiles

Ward salvaged the red terracotta tiles that line the restaurant’s back kitchen wall and bar from Market Harborough in Central England. While beautiful, all have slight imperfections that would have made them unsaleable, in the same way that “wonky vegetables” often end up in the landfill.

3

Lighting

The lampshades above each table and the branchlike chandelier in the private dining room (both by Devon-based maker Peter Lanyon) are produced using sustainable, homegrown British woods like cherry, oak and chestnut.

4

Tables

Terrazzo-like tabletops are made of Foresso, a low-carbon product that combines timber offcuts, planing waste and wood dust diverted from local sawmills and building site waste streams.

5

Washrooms

Ward fitted antique jam pans that she found on eBay with plumbing fixtures to repurpose them as wash basins. Copper bar cladding left behind by the café that had previously occupied Edit’s space was re-used for the sink counters.