Haworth Tompkins have won Practice of the Year in the AJ100 Awards for 2020. We were also named New Member of the Year for our "business success and the quality of [our] work."
From the AJ - Why Haworth Tompkins was named AJ100 Practice of the year - Will Hurst
"The AJ100 judges were bowled over by the achievements of Haworth Tompkins in a competitive field of nominees. The Stirling Prize-winning practice itself began its presentation by describing 2019 as the ‘most significant year’ of its 30-year history and it quickly became clear this was no exaggeration.
As well as achieving steady growth in profit and turnover (architecture fees totalled £7 million in 2019), Haworth Tompkins diversified into new sectors, such as retirement living and industrial buildings and gained 16 significant new clients over the course of the year.
It also completed a string of significant projects, including a major retrofit for Kingston University, the Fish Island project for Peabody, and The Den theatre auditorium in Manchester.
Co-founder Steve Tompkins was named the most influential person in British theatre by The Stage magazine and the practice won 19 awards, including the most RIBA National Awards for any architect that year. It underlined its forward-thinking attitude by investing 12 per cent of its turnover in R&D.
Haworth Tompkins also found time to spearhead the globally influential Architects Declare movement, putting its money where its mouth is by placing social and climate justice at the heart of its purpose as a company. It did this by transforming itself into an Employee Ownership Trust, signing up to the RIBA 2030 Challenge and upping its game on things such as in-house embodied carbon assessments and post-occupancy evaluation and focusing further on retrofitting.
When Covid-19 hit, the studio helped the hard-hit world of theatre by offering its services to a number of theatre organisations pro bono.
‘Haworth Tompkins is setting the standard for architectural practice in today’s world,’ one judge said. ‘They are challenging themselves to improve on every front and succeeding, working incredibly hard to promote architecture and create diversity within the profession and their own leadership team. While universally applying new, higher sustainability standards on all projects, they also share vast amounts of knowledge through open-source publications.’
Other judges admired the practice’s ‘truly democratic studio environment’ as well as its commitment to environmental sustainability. One remarked: ‘They have gone through a series of deep reflections, which have engaged the whole studio. They have redefined their leadership structure by rebalancing age, gender and ethnicity among the group and laying out a clear path to succession. That is so rare.’
In 2020, Haworth Tompkins has set the bar for AJ100 Practice of the Year very high indeed."
Read the full piece here
We’re delighted to announce our Fish Island Village project has been shortlisted for the New London Awards 2023 in the Mixed Use Category. The scheme is a mid-rise development comprising 588 mixed tenure dwellings with 5,522m² commercial space across a 2.23-hectare site. A major brownfield regeneration project, it has transformed a site of disused warehouses with a collection of mid-rise buildings interspersed with new public streets and spaces, opening up over 200 metres of previously inaccessible canal frontage.
Three teams of architects worked on the detail design of the buildings; Neptune Wharf by Haworth Tompkins, made up of 17 individual blocks forming 3 clusters, comprising 501 dwellings and 56 commercial and workspace units, opening up into a sequence of courtyards; Lanterna by Lyndon Goode, a standalone building facing a new public square comprising 16 dwellings and a ground floor restaurant and Monier Road by Pitman Tozer, 3 blocks comprising 71 homes and 7 workspace studios. Emerging practice Bureau de Change designed the fit-out of the workspace facilities delivered by The Trampery.
Congratulations to all of the shortlisted teams. Every shortlisted project is also in the running for the People's Choice award, click here to vote.
As part of the youth engagement by ECDC, Haworth Tompkins partnered with Year 5 students from Francis Holland School for an Architecture in Schools series of workshops and model making competition against seven other primary schools in the RBKC area. The programme – organised by Open City, called for an innovative reimagining of the Earl’s Court site through the children’s eyes.
A series of workshops designed to introduce the children to architecture and unleash their creativity culminated in the creation of a multi layered model, created with repurposed materials from everyday objects like postal boxes, soap bottles, and even pebbles from the playground. Each layer of the model represents a different function - VR supermarkets, lakeside parks, a labyrinth of soft play, climbing walls, bingo clubs and an array of colourful flats and houses, provided vertically encouraging all communities to come together.
The children worked together to reimagine how the built environment could become a wonderful collaboration woven with playfulness and an innovative outlook for the future. We were thrilled that our multi-layered model won first place in the vision category and was proudly displayed at ECDC’s Conversation Corner next to the development site.
We are delighted to announce that Barking Industria has reached practical completion on site. Developed for client Be First Regeneration Limited, Industria represents an innovative approach to modern industrial design with the ambition to deliver a building that densifies and diversifies industrial space in a move away from the traditional typology of single-storey, low-density ‘sheds’.
Industria will house a community of light industrial businesses and makers within a modern, sustainable, multi-storey building capable of flexing and adapting to future needs.
Congratulations to everyone involved in the project, it has been a pleasure to work alongside a team committed to pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved when designing industrial spaces.
After over a decade in Kentish Town, Haworth Tompkins is moving back to EC1. Our new home on Golden Lane sits between Old Street and Barbican and will give us flexible space to create, exhibit and host. We look forward to welcoming our friends, clients and collaborators to the studio.
Please note that due to the office move, we are closed for the day on Friday 11th August.
Our plans for work at the Canning Town Old Library have been submitted to the London Borough of Newham for Planning Permission and Listed Building Consent. Proposals for the new 'Newham Heritage Centre' cover the repair and re-purpose of the Grade II listed library, in order to provide a range of Council-led facilities including an archive, digital media suite, flexible exhibition space, café and learning and outreach spaces. In addition to this, two extensions are planned; one to include an archival store, built to conservation standards and the other to house a new lift and stair, which will improve accessibility.
Haworth Tompkins has been chosen by Reading Council as the lead architect on their £13.7 million Hexagon Theatre project. The revitalisation, which sees the creation of a flexible new space for performances and community use, forms the first phase of a longer-term regeneration of the 1970s-built Hexagon. All proposals focus on improved sustainability as part of the Council’s commitment to working towards a net-zero carbon Reading by 2030.
HT Associate Sarah Firth is a judge at this year's Brick Awards, after working on Fish Island Village which won the Urban Regeneration category in 2022. The shortlist has now been revealed and the judging across the 15 categories will take place over the summer, with the awards announced at the ceremony in November.
Signs for Change is a BBC documentary presented by Rose Ayling-Ellis which challenges perceptions of the Deaf community. Christopher Laing and Rose met at the University of Creative Arts Canterbury in 2011 as two of only three Deaf students and have been friends ever since. In a segment filmed at HT's studio, they discuss experiences of Deafness in general and those related to Chris's time in architecture. You can watch the documentary on BBC1 at 9pm on Monday 26 June and afterwards on iPlayer.