Haworth Tompkins has been named AJ100 Practice of the Year 2022, for the second time in three years. Read the full story here from AJ's Emily Booth:
"Judges were fulsome in their praise of the practice, the overwhelming winner of this year’s AJ100 Practice of the Year accolade. ‘It’s a forward-thinking, genuine practice and a well-deserving winner – impressive on all fronts,’ they enthused.
Accountability was mentioned time and again: ‘It is aligning with all its principles to create an authentic environment where people prosper and thrive – and it is holding itself to account with its move to an Employee Ownership Trust,’ said one judge. ‘It has a comprehensive and accountable approach,’ said another.
No stranger to the Practice of the Year award (the studio won in 2020, when it was also named New Member of the Year), Haworth Tompkins has proclaimed a ‘bumper’ 30th anniversary year, with turnover increasing from £7 million to £10 million and its headcount of qualified architects rising from 53 to 62.
It has implemented a successful hybrid working model and an important strategic change has been to improve its gender split at leadership level with the appointment of two new female directors (Lucy Picardo and Joanna Sutherland) and a new female associate director. Forty-two per cent of its architects are women. Nearly 10 per cent are from a black or minority ethnic background. As a founding signatory of Architects Declare, it plays an active role in the organisation.
Project-wise, Haworth Tompkins has diversified its international work, with new commissions in Perth in Western Australia and Bergen in Norway, in addition to work in New Zealand, the USA and Sweden. It has won work in its core sectors of performing arts, housing and education – and, importantly, also in new sectors of masterplanning (Queen Mary University), industrial densification (Albert Island in the Royal Docks) and workplace.
Completed project highlights range from its Theatre Royal Drury Lane refurbishment right down to the small Punchdrunk temporary theatre in Woolwich. Projects currently on site are diverse, including housing (Wood Street and Blackwall Reach) and work for Pembroke College and Barking Industria (a stacked industrial brownfield development).
Addressing the climate emergency is central to the practice’s thinking. Its approaches are significant and include: a sustainability and regenerative design working group which produces and reviews its in-house toolkit; all projects being designed to meet net zero by 2030; and publishing its post-occupancy evaluation reports on its website. It assesses the whole-life carbon in projects and guides clients to use this is as part of the services engineering scope of work. It advocates that all clients appoint an ecologist on projects.
Haworth Tompkins has also firmly embedded equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) into its business plan. Among myriad initiatives, it monitors the demographics of applicants so it can tailor job adverts as required, proactively advertises via diverse networks, and has developed a transparent recruitment process. The studio carries out an annual diversity report with recommendations and targets, has established EDI groups, and has signed up to the NLA Diverse Leaders Pledge and the RIBA Inclusion Charter. It is an active member of the Architecture Race Forum.
Quite simply, as our judges said: ‘It’s a comprehensive approach to practice management and excellence.’"
Construction of Perth’s first fully comprehensive, inner-city university has reached a major milestone, with the Edith Cowan University (ECU) City campus reaching its full structural height. The ‘topping out’ milestone marks major progress on one of Perth’s most significant developments, with internal fit-out and finishing works continuing throughout 2025 ahead of the campus opening in 2026.
ECU City will feature state-of-the-art learning, engagement and performance spaces giving students and staff access to learn, teach, create and perform in world-class spaces. The new home for WAAPA includes a Playhouse Theatre, Recital Hall, Flex Theatre, Jazz and Contemporary Venue, Aboriginal Performance venue, and Dance Theatre, along with a range of teaching spaces and rehearsal venues, workshop areas and dressing rooms. Haworth Tompkins is working with Australian architects Lyons, Perth-based Silver Thomas Hanley, theatre consultants CharcoalBlue, acoustics designers Marshall Day, Head contractor Multiplex and engineers Stantec.
ECU City is located on the traditional lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people.
HT Director Roger Watts was recently on site at the Court Theatre in New Zealand for the first time since 2016 when the site was still empty and bare. Haworth Tompkins has been involved in the project since 2013 after Roger fortuitously met members of The Court at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre. During the recent visit Roger met Matthew Webby of Athfield Architects, the local lead architect on the project, in person for the first time after working together for five years via online communication.
Very few projects of the complexity and magnitude of The Court Theatre rebuild are designed without in-person collaboration. However, the use of technology following the Covid-19 pandemic has been of benefit to this project, with project members able to collaborate closely via video meetings held globally. Roger will return to site for the theatre’s grand opening in May 2025.
National Theatre – NT Future has been announced as winner of the Religion & Culture category at the 2024 Architecture Today, Buildings that stand the test of time awards. The awards demonstrate a strong track record for delivering on their environmental, functional, community and cultural ambitions, awarding architectural excellence, longevity, and a commitment to community, sustainability, and innovation.
The judges commented “In the 50 years since it was built the National Theatre has had to evolve to reflect the changing expectations of theatre and audiences and the evolution of the South Bank. Haworth Tompkins’ intelligent and sensitive interventions have been pulled off with aplomb and will set the stage for the next 50 years.” National Theatre
Industria Barking has won the Workplace category at the 2024 New London Architecture Awards. The judges praised the project for its bold commitment to blending industrial uses with workplaces and community spaces.
The project was designed in collaboration with Ashton Smith Associates for client BeFirst and represents an innovative and ambitious approach to modern industrial design that densifies and diversifies workspace in a move away from the traditional typology of single-storey, low density ‘sheds’. Read more here - https://www.haworthtompkins.com/work/barking-industria
Phase 1 of Pembroke Mill Lane, Cambridge development has been highly Commended at the Wood Awards in the Education & Public Sector category. The project forms part of the Mill Lane development for Pembroke College: the most significant expansion of the College since the fourteenth century, within a highly complex site in the historic city centre.
The project provides a range of public and collegiate spaces within both new and existing buildings, linked by an external landscape that continues and extends the language of Pembroke’s distinctive gardens. The Wood Awards recognises, encourages, and promotes outstanding design, craftsmanship and installation using wood. Pembroke College, Cambridge
The “Backstage Building” topping out ceremony was held on the 17 October to mark reaching the highest primary structure of the Glulam timber frame. To mark this milestone, tours of the building site were led by Haworth Tompkins and speeches took place in what will be the new event space with a toast in the Back of House rehearsal room.
With only 9 months to go on site, the new, six-storey backstage building will include a daytime café and script library, writers' room, Clore learning studio, green room and event space. Its realisation will also make the Old Vic stage and back-of-house areas accessible to visitors as well as staff and working creatives for the first time in more than 200 years.
Haworth Tompkins is excited to welcome our first two architectural apprentices to the studio offering both Level 6 and Level 7 opportunities. The apprenticeship programme has been launched to offer a more inclusive and diverse route into architecture, combining work-based learning with academic training. The programme reflects our social value commitments and support for the growth of the profession via alternative and holistic routes.
Our Level 7 apprentice, Aneesha Irika joined HT as a Part I and we will now support her via the Level 7 apprentice route at Cambridge university integrated Part II and Part III degree.
“I chose this apprenticeship for its focus on practical experience and career growth. In today’s competitive landscape, hands-on skills are valued alongside traditional learning, and Cambridge’s programme embraces this shift. It provides the ideal platform to develop real-world abilities essential for thriving in architecture. Additionally, the Part 2/3 study group at Haworth Tompkins further supports this ethos to nurture talent beyond traditional academia.” Aneesha Irika
Our Level 6 apprentice Jamila Saha was an Architectural Trainee as part of the Build the Way programme receiving creative and technical support by industry professionals and studies as part of the London School of Architecture Part 0 initiative. We will now support her to work through her Part I qualification via the Level 6 apprenticeship route at South Bank University.
“I couldn’t be more excited to embark on my journey as an apprentice with Haworth Tompkins and LSBU. The chance to gain valuable work experience with such a creative practice whilst pursuing architectural education is a fantastic opportunity for me”. Jamila Saha
The Mayor of London has selected Ken Okonkwo, Associate Director at Haworth Tompkins and Mayor’s Design Advocate to the role of Town Architect for the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. The programme is part of Khan’s wider plans to support local growth and improve design in London through the £1.25 million Local Growth Capacity Support Programme. The two-year pilot scheme will utilise built environment expert knowledge from ten architects in ten locations to ensure that new buildings and public spaces in their respective area ‘benefit all Londoners by promoting quality and inclusion in the built environment’.
Ken will be supporting BeFirst and the borough on projects within the Thames Road Factory District and strategic projects in the southern part of Barking and Dagenham. In 2020, Haworth Tompkins developed strategic masterplan proposals for the Thames Road Area, providing a framework for its transformation over the next 30 years. Key objectives were to create a vibrant, cohesive and sustainable mixed-use district, incorporating a mix of industrial, residential and community uses. Forming part of the intensification strategy for the area, Haworth Tompkins designed Industria, an innovative multistorey ramped building, developed for BeFirst as a catalyst development for the district. Completed in 2023, it provides 11,500sqm of flexible, modern industrial floorspace and represents a groundbreaking new typology for UK industrial buildings.
Ken has been a Mayor’s Design Advocate since 2022, is vice chair for the Royal Borough of Greenwich design review panel and sits on design review panels for Ebbsfleet Development Corporation and the London Borough of Waltham Forest.
https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/mayor-picks-top-names-for-londons-new-town-architects
‘I'm delighted to have been selected by the Mayor of London as Town Architect for Thames Road Factory District and South Barking and Dagenham as part of the GLA’s Town Architect pilot scheme. Along with the fellow MDAs working in different neighbourhoods across London, I will be promoting the 6 pillars of the Good Growth by Design programme, ensuring that new buildings and public spaces ‘benefit all Londoners by promoting quality and inclusion in the built environment’.
Building on Haworth Tompkins’ previous masterplanning work in the area, I am especially thrilled to be supporting BeFirst and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham in making its first steps to realising the vision for Thames Road as a vibrant, sustainable and inclusive, mixed-use district, co-locating residential and industrial uses for the existing and future diverse communities within Barking.’ Ken Okonkwo, Associate Director Haworth Tompkins