The undisputed high point of 2022 has been welcoming everyone back to the studio after two years of pandemic induced disruption. Other highlights include winning the AJ100 Practice of the Year for the second time in three years, being named BD Higher Education Architect of the Year, Associate Director Ken Okonkwo being selected as one of the Mayor’s Design Advocates for London, Laura Gaskell and Hugo Braddick being promoted to become Associate Directors and James Walker to Associate, and cementing our commitment to improving our social and environmental impact by achieving B Corp Certification.
We celebrated the completion and launch of five projects: the new auditorium @sohoplace, King’s House – a community church opened by King Charles earlier this month, Agile Workspace for Kingston University, One Cartridge Place for Punchdrunk in Woolwich, and the Trampery Workspace and final phase at Fish Island Village.
We won another batch of awards including a Housing Design Award for Fish Island Village, NLA Masterplanning Award for Albert Island, the Theatre Building of the Year at the Stage Awards (our fifth in seven years) and a Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award for Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and a Planning Award for Gardner Close.
It has been an exciting year for us as we continue to develop our portfolio in all our major sectors. We’re working with the Earls Court Development Company on a mix of uses for the first phase of their masterplan for the former Exhibition Centres site. We’re carrying out masterplans for Trinity Hall, Cambridge and the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. We’ve been appointed to work on housing projects for Lampton 360 in Hounslow and for Be First in Barking, on a feasibility study for the Liverpool Playhouse, and the refurbishment of Canning Town Old Library for LB Newham.
Planning permission was received for a number of projects including for the new annex at The Old Vic, 237 homes for British Land at Canada Water, and for Custom House for LB Newham.
Several projects started on site such as the Warburg Institute, Wood Street Families and Homes Hub in Waltham Forest, The Old Vic Annex, Lambeth Archive, and Greenhill Centre in Newham.
2023 will see a number of project completions including Malmo Stadsteater in Sweden, Barking Industria, Blackwall Reach, phase one of Pembroke College Cambridge, and the Lightroom for the London Theatre Company which opens with the new David Hockney exhibition early next year.
We’re looking forward to 2023 and wish all our staff, clients and collaborators a very Happy New Year.
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.