Our Studio

Evidence-led Design
Places are best understood first-hand by watching how they are used and how people move through them. When Changi Airport appointed us to design Terminal 4, they said the decision hinged on how we thought about people, and on our willingness to arrive without a fixed idea of what a terminal should be. That instinct is what we hire for, and what we protect.

Our commercial strategists work with the design teams, bringing catchment analysis, trading models and operator insight to the first conversation. The evidence tests the design; the design tests what the evidence assumes.

Our Journey
We started out in 1947 designing cow sheds in Nottinghamshire. Now in our second generation as a family-run business, we’ve grown into a global studio with over 300 people. During this time, we’ve built places that have shaped how cities have grown and given communities somewhere they want to be. We’re most proud of how these places have come to mean something to the cities and people that have embraced them.

Places that last
We design new buildings to last, and where a building already exists, we merge the old with the new. At 18 Cross in Singapore, we retained 99% of the existing podium structure, reducing embodied carbon and improving a building that would otherwise have come down.

As placemakers we make masterplans and landscapes that support biodiversity alongside human wellbeing, from grasslands in Uzbekistan to Middle Eastern deserts and the tropics of Singapore.

At Parc Central in Guangzhou a retail destination sits inside a multi-level public park on the site of a former square. At the Beach in Dubai an overlooked car park became 600 metres of open-air dining and shops set directly on a public shoreline.

In each case the question was the same: what should stay and what should the place give back.