Hutchinson & Partners is formed of a collection of like-minded architects, based in London and Berlin, who work with social and environmental conscience to create places and architecture of enduring quality for today and for generations to come. We work across all uses, programmes and scales employing passion, free-thinking, rigour and process in our responses to brief, context, sustainability and legacy.

Design Approach:

Our body of work is characterised by considered placemaking, simplicity of form, elegance of proportion, contextual abstraction and material composition. Our iterative design process informs an architectural language that runs throughout our work, with differentiation between projects provided through responses to context and programme to create moments of delight in composition, ordering, reveal, entrance, crown, colour, material palette and detail.

Sustainability:

We believe that architects have a pivotal role to play in helping society, humanity and the planet in a time of paradigm shift. We design and research for inherent and holistic sustainability. We seek only to work on projects where their siting is in proximity to public transport and where they can contribute to a walkable city. Our belief is we must explore re-use options as a primary approach, and if after thorough investigation a new-build option is genuinely justifiable, then we have a duty to ensure that it is fit for purpose long into the future. We believe that buildings can only be considered sustainable if they can be proven to be adaptable to other future uses. The enduring nature of our architecture, the rationalism on which it is based, and our employment of simple form and use of robust materiality inherently provide for adaptability and longevity of use, with the aim for permanence to mitigate future need for recycling and re-use. We believe in the long-term benefits of contextualism in providing a sense of place, identity and ownership. This is realised in our work through in-depth research of the specific conditions of a site’s geographical, climatic, historical, social and cultural context with the aim to improve the quality of experience and engagement within the city through a creative reimagining of its contextual conditions.

Social Responsibility:

We believe in the importance of our role in engaging communities within the profession. We have a dedicated in-house team for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion & Community to bring in new initiatives and to help us ensure that our voice of advocacy is heard through internal and external communications. Their activities include working with the community and local schools with the aim of increasing the awareness and understanding of architecture and the built environment in order to help make the profession more visible and accessible to young people from all backgrounds who might not otherwise have considered a career in architecture.

Research:

Continuous research is a key element in the continuous development of our practice. Our ongoing research programmes include ‘Twelve Sites’, a mapping of the city of Berlin; ‘The Death of the High Street’ looking at the densification and re-population of town centres, and and the development of the ‘Universal Building’, an adaptable building typology to ensure future longevity of use.