Despite its many challenges, 2021 has been a year to celebrate. We mark our 30th anniversary with a Monograph covering the work we have completed in our first thirty years, pictured above, which will be launched early next year. We welcomed two new directors – Joanna Sutherland and Lucy Picardo – whilst Steve Tompkins, received an MBE for services to architecture and the arts in the Queen’s Birthday Honours and we saw our studio grow to over 100 strong.
The year saw the successful completion of four projects - Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Gardner Close, Donmar Warehouse and Fish Island Village and we received awards for four others - Kingston School of Art, Bristol Old Vic, Battersea Arts Centre and Kingswood.
We won a number of new commissions including for Lendlease as part of the first phase of the Birmingham Smithfield masterplan, and masterplans for Queen Mary University London, for the Western Gateway at the Royal Docks, and for co-location masterplans for sites in Harringay and Barking.
Planning permission was received for a number of new projects including Wood Street, a housing and community hub for LB Waltham Forest; Greenhill, a housing and gym for LB Newham; two housing plots at Wembley NW Lands for Quintain; Albert Island and Barking Industria, industrial intensification projects for L+R and BeFirst respectively. In addition we have submitted planning for three blocks at Canada Water for British Land and for Maydew House and the Bede Site Redevelopment for LB Southwark
Several projects started on site such as King's Cross Church, Barking Industria and the first phase of our projects for Pembroke College, Cambridge.
We are working on a wide range of performing arts project including with Trafalgar Entertainment Group on a new theatre at Olympia, for the Old Vic Theatre on a new Annex, with Theatr Clwyd on a radical working of their 1970s building and a new home for Punchdrunk in Woolwich. We have continued to develop our work internationally adding a performing arts complex in Australia for Perth-based Edith Cowan University to our portfolio of projects around the world including the American Repertory Theatre in Boston, USA; The Court Theatre in Christchurch New Zealand; Stadsteater in Malmö, Sweden and Sentralbadet in Bergen, Norway.
The year has reinforced the importance of the collective wellbeing of our staff, our society and our planet and as such our resolution for the year ahead is to find new and better ways to work that will support and sustain the social and environmental ecosystem of which we are part.
We are looking forward to 2022 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.