Our culture is one of respect and collaboration, wherever you work in the world you are part of one team, sharing ideas and building understanding to deliver engaging and elegant designs. Our culture is driven by our ambition to create and connect sustainable places for people, and all of our work and social activities support this.
Future Thinking, Innovation and Research
We hold regular collaborative forums to promote innovation and support creative thinking. Bringing together our studios, our people, our clients and collaborators, we share ideas and propose innovative solutions to a range of problems that face us as designers today. Everyone has a voice and we embrace cross-sector and cross-country learning to push our design ideas and interests forward.
Our Innovation and Foresight Lab, IF_Lab promotes this work beyond our studios through specific funded research programmes in collaboration with other area experts intent on driving future thinking and sustainable change.
Competitions
We enter architectural competitions to develop new work in existing and new sectors, to challenge ourselves, and to develop our design ideas and present them with clarity. It’s a process which requires focus and motivation.
There’s something addictive about competitions. We analyse the brief, read between the lines, and develop a scheme appropriate for the site, context and the client that’s also true to our design vision. The belief as it goes out of the door that you have created a brilliant, winning entry, never ceases.
Sports + Social
Sports and social activities are important to us, as a busy practice we need to allow time outside of work to refresh, and protect our well-being. We try to cater for all our staff varied interested, from life drawing and yoga to team games. Much of our sports and social activity is led by our staff and we are always open to ideas of what to do next!
Equality, Diversity + Inclusion
We are committed to the belief that our studios ought to reflect the diversity of the places in which we work. We promote an environment of dignity, inclusion and respect for all, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, disability, age, nationality, sexuality, religion, marital status or social class. Our staff are employed, promoted and trained purely on their aptitude and ability to do the job.
Our global Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies and action plan’s guide what we do, how we work and who we work with. We only work with suppliers and businesses that share our views and our values.
In the UK, we are signatories of RIBA’s Inclusion Charter showing our commitment to driving change within the architectural industry. We have a team of EDI Champions who promote awareness and understanding across our Studios.
Through our global design activities in Australia we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the communities and unceded land where we work and live. In Canada, involving First Nations communities early on in our projects is common practice. We are inspired to learn from their rich history and protect Indigenous culture and place. We acknowledge that we are settlers, surrounded by and part of a living system. We pay our respects to the ancestors who walked before, the current community, and the emerging leaders who will follow.