Working with us

Founded in 1992, we work with clients across public, private and civic sectors on a great variety of projects including housing, individual homes, commercial, market places, schools, museums, urban design and regeneration frameworks.

We work on new buildings, and refurbishments and have established an excellent portfolio of repurposing Listed Buildings.

We are especially proud of working with communities, civic activists, social enterprises, artists, makers and academics.

We are regularly involved in helping to facilitate challenging projects and offering added value that goes beyond the client-consultant relationship. We like to be considered as partners to the projects.

We value a collaborative working ethos with our clients, end-users and all other stakeholders. We practice a user-centered approach to design, helping us to focus on creating social value through each design project.

To keep up with the fast pace of change we integrate research and development into our practice.

This helps us to embrace the potential of new technologies and to better understand the future that we are designing for. To allow us to focus on what matters we prefer to work within two hours travel from our office in Leeds enabling us to have a close relationship with our clients. Since 2012 we have worked a 5-day week in 4 days to help to facilitate a better balance between work and home.

Our inspiration and ideas come directly from the individual projects; the purpose of it, the client aspirations, the budget, and the place.

We are interested in the traditions of an area, its politics, and what is available locally in terms of skills and materials.

We aim to be supporters of our clients and we are adept at extracting the maximum value for their projects from often small and challenging budgets.

We built our office to fulfill many of our dreams: to be our own client, to have a tailor made work environment, to stop paying rent and to use our investment to assist with the regeneration of Chapeltown; a vibrant but troubled inner city area of Leeds.

We were the first commercial office building in Chapeltown in the last 70 to 80 years.

The office has also allowed us to start making adjustments in response to the challenges presented by climate change.

We use less energy, compost and recycle our waste, walk and cycle to work more, as many of us have moved into the area and we have space to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers.