Our identity as an Employee Owned business means that all our co-owners have a meaningful stake in the business: Everyone has a voice in the future of Architype.

As we approach our 40th birthday, we have been hosting a series of collaborative workshops with all our co-owners to look to the future of Architype - and how we can thrive in our next 40 years.

We want to celebrate this process as part of EO day 2024, and show how proud we are of all our Architype co-owners and the contribution they are making to our Employee Ownership journey.

The workshops

Our ‘Vision Workshops’, were held in person at our studios in London, Hereford and Edinburgh and encouraged a collaborative discussion around:

• Architype’s core purpose

• Our ethos and values

• How we work in a hybrid environment

• How we can thrive for the next 40 years

We took the opportunity to combine the workshop with – at Hereford, the team celebrated with coffee and cake, in Edinburgh our newest studio engaged in a lively and interactive discussion and in London our team built the session around a day of creative thinking. As Director Ben explained,

“The London studio workshop was the culmination of a creative contact day, where London co-owners visited two new buildings at Roehampton University by Feilden Clegg and Henley Halebrown in the morning. Buoyed up by visiting and discussing inspiring architecture, sketching, and good weather, the team came to the workshop enthused, motivated and full of great ideas and contributions about how the practice can develop and progress in all sorts of different ways.”

We will be gathering all our co-owners together again next month for our quarterly Employee Ownership ‘Cake’ meeting where we will be discussing the outcomes of each vision workshop, and how these outcomes will be taken forward to help shape the future of Architype.

Reflecting on the workshops, Helen Moreton, Architype’s External Trustee commented:

“EO Day in the UK gives employee-owned businesses the opportunity to celebrate being part of a wonderful movement and sector. It also gives us the opportunity to reflect upon the difference EO makes to our organisation and its people. As Independent Trustee for Architype, I am very proud to work with this business, who truly put their Co-owners at the heart of what they do. The Vision Workshops are a great example of this, where all Co-owners were able to share questions, opportunities and ideas to contribute to the future focus and success of their business. Architype is a better and stronger business for being EO.”

Looking to the future

Director Mark Barry, said:

“I’m very excited about helping to shape the future of Architype with, and for the co-owners. It was great to witness the level of interest and appreciation for our pioneering Cavell Project at the recent European Healthcare Design congress and this, coupled with the continued strong growth into other sectors like the cultural sector, where we are shortly completing our eighth and ninth project for the Imperial War Museums alone, is another strong indication that we are moving into a dynamic and healthy new era for the practice”.

Reflecting across the discussions we’ve had so far in this process, we’ve seen some key themes emerging. It is clear our co-owners are passionate about uplifting, people-centred architecture, and all three studios discussed how to create more space for design. The mood was optimistic, and we looked at Architype’s mission – concentrating on what we do and why it’s important to keep our values at the heart of our business.

Managing Director Jonathan Hines added,

“Given the rapid growth of the Edinburgh studio and the number of new co-owners that have joined in the last couple of years, the vision workshop was a great opportunity to bring all the co-owners together to explore ideas about the company's future vision. The level of enthusiasm and support for Architype's core values and approach expressed by co-owners was uplifting, and the range of ideas that emerged to help shape our future vision was inspiring, in particular the focus on design as a tool for shaping a more sustainable future.”

We’re proud to be a people-powered business and look forward to seeing how these discussions will benefit not just our co-owners but our clients and collaborators too. Through these vision sessions, we’re certainly looking forward to the next 40 years and seeing where Architype will go – finding new ways to pioneer and enhance lives just as we have done since 1984!