This week, Natasha Huq, Gunnar Groves-Raines and Daryll Bunce will represent Custom Lane and GRAS at MIPIM, the global urban festival for real estate, investment and city-making, bringing a perspective on development shaped by Leith.

We believe in grassroots regeneration grounded in heritage, community and placemaking. We create foundations that support environmentally and socially sustainable, cumulative development, with long-term value in mind. That thinking is rooted in Leith, where our work extends across architecture, conservation, interiors, objects and cultural programming. Based at Custom Lane, behind the iconic Custom House, we have cultivated an ecosystem for collaboration, enterprise and shared growth.

Our work moves across scales and disciplines, from adaptive reuse and urban thinking to furniture, objects and the everyday life of place. We think beyond the conventional role of the architect, shaping not only buildings, but the wider conditions that allow places to grow well over time. This approach can be seen in Brown’s of Leith, where the former George Brown & Sons engineering works has been carefully adapted to support a new community of food, drink and creative practice. Through repair rather than replacement, the industrial fabric has been retained and reactivated, allowing new uses to emerge while sustaining continuity with the harbour’s working past.

At MIPIM in Cannes, an international gathering focused on real estate, investment and city-making, we look forward to sharing a Scottish model of grassroots regeneration, one that is cumulative, place-specific and grounded in the life of the city.

On 22 April, we will host a follow-up event at Brown’s of Leith, rooted in the place and practice from which these ideas have grown. If you would like to join us, drop us a line at practice@gras.co.