Haworth Tompkins

Since its foundation in 1991, Haworth Tompkins has been exploring the rich, complicated relationship between people and architecture. Although the buildings illustrated in this book span decades and cover a wide range of types and scales, they are united by an engagement with physical and cultural context, a sensitivity to time, a pleasure in material quality and an examination of architecture’s role in public, institutional and private life. 

At the heart of each completed project is a creative collaboration with a specific client, with the consistent ambition to reinforce a collective sense of place and community. 

Much of the work has focused on the complementary relationships between physical space and human activity in the territories of culture, making and dwelling. A number of parallel specialisations have emerged in areas as diverse as performing arts buildings, urban housing and higher education spaces, along with factories, workshops and libraries, but there is no hierarchy of job type within the studio: rather, a pleasure in discovering the essence of each commission, along with a recognition that the architecture of cities is made primarily of ambient, adaptable urban stock, leavened with more particular public buildings and given meaning by the everyday activities of life. 

Consequently, the work has moved away from classical Modernism’s hermetic cleanliness in favour of a more robust, tactile language that invites engagement and adaptation over generations. Projects are designed to welcome the passage of time, and in many cases fragments of existing fabric or reclaimed materials have been incorporated into a new, conglomerate whole. Across the entire spectrum of the studio’s output, from theatres to social housing, and contrary to much current practice, there is an active expectation that the completed buildings will continue to gain in depth and accumulate meaning over decades of hard use.

A long-term perspective has naturally resulted in a preoccupation with the lifetime carbon cost of buildings and their place in a cyclical, regenerative economy: simple construction; legible tectonics; direct finishes and recyclable materials are constantly recurring themes, along with ongoing research projects around adaptive re-use of existing buildings, multi-purpose typologies, new occupancy models, natural ventilation and timber construction. This is not only a technical conversation but a deeply rooted commitment to making durable, socially purposeful architecture in a time of environmental emergency.

The employee-owned London studio has grown slowly and deliberately, with a limited number of projects in development at any one time, allowing time to consolidate working methods, research the specifics of each commission and to develop deep working relationships with studio colleagues, clients, builders, collaborating designers and artists. Each completed project is both a one-off and part of a constantly evolving, collective body of work and thought.