Creative. Ecological. Progressive. Community.

We embrace the power of design to shape our world for the better - from nurturing an early stage project vision through to detailed technical delivery.

Our architecture is underpinned by an agile team of creative multidisciplinary designers with an ecological imperative and progressive approach to creating inspiring places and spaces. We love to work collaboratively, translating your vision into delightful carefully crafted architecture that serves people, their local communities and the wider planet - now and into the future.

With over 40 years of experience of innovation in sustainable design, we have the design expertise and robust technical understanding to support your most ambitious project goals.

Architecture

Contact us for advice on your project

Architect

Edward’s Court Extra Care

Safe and sensitive care

The design balances conviviality with privacy. Residents can observe activity in communal areas from their own apartment before committing to socialising, reducing the physical and cognitive demands of social participation.

Design-led, with the vision and technical expertise to deliver.

Architype has over 40 years of expertise in architectural design and delivery across multiple typologies and project scales. This includes experience in a wide range of procurement from traditional, design & build and single point delivery through single and two stage routes and industry standard forms of contract. Our experienced design teams skilfully guide projects from the earliest stages through to completion as architects, lead designers and contract administrators.

While design has always been our core studio activity, we believe that architects need to embrace new skills to help deliver a flourishing positive future vision of a society living in harmony with the natural world.

In response, our team now includes forward-thinking specialists in many aspects of environmental and technical design. This enables us to take a unique truly integrated approach - bringing our industry leading insights, research and technical expertise directly to the heart of our design work

Community Engagement

St Luke's CE Primary School

Getting to know each other

Architype's approach is to discover, through consultation, the character and personality of an organisation and to then explore through a conceptual design approach ways of expressing this.

Maybury Primary School

Serving the wider community

Maybury strives to provide a place that serves the greater community and creates long term value while supporting the needs of all learners and learning styles

Springhill Co-Housing

First purpose built co-housing in UK

This is the first new build co-housing scheme in the UK and was designed with the full participation of the residents achieving a sense of community that is absent from much UK housing.

Edward’s Court Extra Care

Placemaking and precedents

Architype held in-depth consultations and regular reviews with key stakeholders to maintain rigorous ISO design quality standards throughout the process.

Hackbridge Primary School

Placemaking at school

Architype established an engagement framework early in the design process to understand the pedagogical needs of the school and establish opportunities to integrate indoor and outdoor learning into the design.

Meaningful participatory design that welcomes key stakeholders, future users, and the wider community into the design process.

Founded on the principles of community architecture and self-build, from our earliest projects we have been committed to working collaboratively with our clients to understand their priorities and vision through carefully structured participatory briefing, engagement and co-design techniques. Using sketches, 3D models and collaborative technology we create beautiful well-considered buildings that work everyone.

Principal Designer [CDM / BRPD]

Competence and compliance embedded in design.

Architype delivers both the CDM Principal Designer and the Building Regulations Principal Designer (BRPD) roles from within the core design team. We understand that the new duties can be difficult for clients to navigate, so we help define responsibilities early and keep compliance clearly evidenced throughout the project.

Our approach is built around clear CDM and BRPD checkpoints aligned to the RIBA Plan of Work, from early brief, competency and risk reviews through to handover, O&M information and lessons learned. This combines strategic oversight, hands-on delivery and regulatory expertise, supported by a structured QA system and a board-level BRPD champion.

These duties sit alongside design decision-making, risks can be eliminated or reduced through design rather than managed through mitigation, and clients benefit from a single joined-up route to compliance.

Client Design Advisor

The Enterprise Centre

Embedding design quality processes

The early stages of the DQI process were fundamental in establishing the client's priorities and aspirations for the new building and surrounding grounds.

Sharing our experience to support your decision making.

In our Client Design Advisor work we build on the foundation of over four decades of experience in successfully shaping the design and delivery of many innovative, challenging and unique projects, and are able to share insights, approaches and ideas that can help shape and guide the vision of your next opportunity.

From the earliest stages of project formation, we have the skills to work with you to support the development of your emergent ideas and structure ongoing project design evaluation processes to deliver successful outcomes.

Masterplanning & strategic development

Resilient places that support thriving communities and allow nature to flourish.

Working in both urban and rural contexts, our strategic masterplanning approach focuses on a sensitivity to setting and the importance of the creating enriching and satisfying places to be. We carefully assess the need for new development where existing buildings or structures could potentially be re-purposed.

We take an environmentally and socially informed approach to develop inspiring site strategies that are deeply informed by context, nature and the needs of communities. We understand the importance of establishing appropriate energy, transport and natural infrastructure to create robust, resilient climate change proof site-wide solutions.

A nature-first approach builds in bio-diversity and locally informed design codes and material mapping define a coherent character and a true sense of place and belonging.