The Architect Directory is a new online resource which uses data in the public domain. It is a directory of nearly 900 London-based architects who have the capacity to design housing that is searchable by various criteria including borough, practice size and staff profile.

Public authorities of various kinds buy architectural services to the tune of c. £40m per year in London, and about four times that amount in the UK as a whole. They are currently not able to see all the practices who can offer that service, and their formal procurement processes seek bids 'blindly' via the Find a Tender process. Whilst the authorities will get expressions of interest from a number of practices, they may not really see what the practice is capable of and have to go to each firm’s website to get an idea of what they can do.

 

Private sector developers want to be able to search quickly for practices who they might bring to a public sector opportunity, by seeing who is local, emerging, and/or representative of a local demographic.

 

Architects often want to partner with complementary practices on big schemes and cannot easily find those partners.

We have a number of aims which are:

 

Improving the quality of new homes: Enabling housing developers of all kinds to make better choices of architects and thus drive a better quality built environment

 

Allowing visibility of whole supply chain: Helping local authorities and housing associations as well as housing developers ’see’ the architectural supplier market in one place, and use relevant filters to narrow down the suppliers

 

Giving visibility to profession statistics: Showing collective and individual supplier stats to the profession itself as well as clients and government

 

Promoting best practice public procurement: Showing procurement tips to the public sector

 

Promoting SME suppliers: Giving visibility to smaller firms who aren't on people's radar

 

Promoting Equality and Diversity: Encouraging architecture practices to value diversity and inclusion in their workforce

We know that in the end, public authorities will have to undertake a 'Find a Tender' procurement process in order to select individual architects or create a framework. But we believe strongly that housing clients do not have a clear sight of the possible suppliers in the marketplace, let alone their staff profile or experience. We find that housing clients can get ‘stuck in their ways’ and use the same practices repeatedly, or that they call for e.g. a turnover level which does not match the size of project which a small practice can tackle. Our aim is that this ‘shop window’ acts to dispel some myths for and expand the view of these important clients before they press the formal ‘procurement button’.

We looked in the following places:

 

• RIBA Directory of Chartered Practices
• Paradigm website
• London Group of Architects website
• AJ recent competition and other articles
• AF New Architects publications
• Modern House website
• Architects Declare

 

We are of course very keen to hear from practices we have missed, provided they meet the test below in response to “How do you then decide who is listed in the Directory”.

Our guiding principle is that this site must be useful for our primary users, who are either public or private housing clients wanting more than one home on their development site. What those clients (especially the public ones) tend to value is seeing at least one completed project, even if it is only one new build house. These particular clients also like to see a practice ambition to grow beyond single house projects to multiple homes. That might mean a practice showing a competition entry for a new housing project, or some research and design work on housing as a topic.

 

We have therefore listed practices if they have demonstrated one or both of the following Basic Criteria:
• Undertaken an exploration of multi-unit housing for a real client via competition or research; and/or
• Completed a new build home or housing scheme.

 

We have not so far included those practices who only undertake house extensions or interiors. This is because there are many other excellent websites aimed at this kind of one-off client (e.g. Modern House).

 

We have endeavoured to include all architects who meet the criteria above, regardless of our opinion on quality. This is to ensure fairness and completeness.

 

We are open to developing our ideas on who we list in order best to benefit our key users (housing clients) and offer the most relevant exposure and opportunity for a diverse selection of architects.

If you think your practice meets the criteria and should be on this site, please email info@architectdirectory.co.uk

We would like to make this a particular sub-category on the site, as these practices are an invaluable part of the architectural ecosystem when it comes to housing projects. We aim to do this as soon as possible.

We have collected initial data on landscape architects and will be adding this once the site becomes viable.

We emailed every practice on the directory during May - August 2022 to seek updates from them to their page. You may have missed these emails, but you can email us at info@architectdirectory.co.uk if you want to update your data and we will send you a link to allow you to do so. At the next stage, we will allow practices to create an account and edit their own page.

We have made this initial 'trial' site using images from the web, so please provide image credits for any images we have included or you have uploaded. By providing these images, you are confirming that you have the relevant permission and licence to sub-licence these images to be used on the directory.

 

We welcome you sending us the images you want to use and providing full credit information alongside those images. We are unable to pay if that is needed, so any photos which require a licence payment will not be added to the directory.

Whilst it would be a shame for your firm not to be included, we respect your decision. Please contact info@architectdirectory.co.uk and request that the entry is removed. We may ask for confirmation of the removal from other contacts at your firm. This will prevent the firm you represent from being included on the directory for up to 5 years.

Turnover assessments to gauge the annual monetary turnover of each practice are based on staff numbers gleaned from the Companies House website and cross-checked with a practice’s own website where possible. We recognise that contract staff may not show on either, so our estimates of turnover may be slightly lower than the actual figure, but we believe that in most cases they are broadly correct.

 

We do not guarantee the accuracy of our turnover assessments. These should not be solely relied on to make financial decisions.

We’ve shown these categories because it is often very challenging to assess staff data for these firms (see below). We also feel it is important for housing clients to know whether they are dealing with a national or global firm with all of the advantages and potential disadvantages which this might bring.

We have found collecting reliable data on this too difficult at the moment because some practices ‘oversell’ whilst others are not clear enough about their expertise. We would like practices to self-assess and update their own pages but we want to clarify the ‘expertise metrics’ first to avoid e.g. everyone saying they are ‘experts in zero carbon’.

The practices on the homepage are selected at random from all practices. The selection changes every 24 hours. This means that no practice gets an advantage because they begin with 'A'. It also allows users to press the 'back' button on any given day and see the same results. We think this is the fairest solution.

The order is randomised, and if you did the same search on the following day, it would be a 'new randomisation'. Adding functionality around 'most relevant' etc. is currently beyond the scope of this site, but in any case, we consider that the randomisation is actually the fairest way of showing the results.

Anyone familiar with the built environment industry knows that it is still dominated by white males. We (and many others) feel that the built environment should be designed by as diverse a cohort of people as possible so that the places we live and work and hang out take everyone’s needs into account.

We agree that these characteristics would be great to collect and report on in order to promote diversity and inclusion in the architectural sector. If you have ideas about how practices could self-report in these areas without impacting people’s privacy, please do let us know.

The term ‘Director’ gets used very loosely, which makes this difficult. We have tried to stick to anyone who is listed as a director or partner at Companies House. Associate Directors, for instance, have not been included.

We have sought to adhere to the Office for National Statistics' definition. In this classification, BAME comprises all Mixed, Asian, Black and Other (non white) ethnicities. White ethnic groups comprise White British; White Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller; and Other White.

 

However, we don't like the term 'BAME' and we would welcome an alternative. We have been engaging with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Inclusion Director, individual members of the Paradigm Network and other industry EDI specialists to ensure our statistics and measures are consistently up to date with societal change and social progress within the industry.

 

Where we do not have sufficient basis to report on this data, we will not provide this information.

We have not attempted this assessment.

Protecting your personal data is important to us. We will only use your personal data where we have a legal basis for doing so. Please refer to our Privacy Notice for more information on how we look after your data.

Practices will appear automatically on the site if they have completed one house or more. The site will then be kept up to date via an annual update and spot audit of all data for existing practices, including the addition of new firms.

 

We reserve the right to check the data you send us and query it should we find any discrepancies with our own data verifiably false information. Under data protection legislation, if you are an individual you have the right for any personal data that we process about you to be accurate. You can find out more about how we process your personal data, and your rights in relation to this by reviewing our Privacy Notice.

 

We intend to put in place a ‘challenge and development’ panel of c. 10 individuals/ organisations and will use best endeavours to ensure the information we hold about your firm and the others contained on the directory is accurate. This group will meet annually at the point of updating the entries to challenge criteria, terminology and functionality, and to decide on future development requirements.

Awards are a quick way of seeing who has been deemed 'best in class' by independent panels judging quality.

 

Public authority frameworks are often open for all public authorities to use, and can help councils and housing associations to procure and appoint architects more easily.

Most of this information is in the public domain. The frameworks refresh every four or so years and the data will be updated as this happens.

Award winners are listed in the public domain. We have only counted awards won since 2010.

 

We have chosen these three awards:

 

RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) - regional awards, housing category
NLA (New London Architecture) - main awards, housing section
HDA (Housing Design Awards) - shortlisters and winners

 

because they are recognised by many in the architectural industry as being the highest quality awards. There are many, many other awards and the term ‘award-winning’ can therefore be much maligned. We are happy to be challenged on this issue and to consider other awards for inclusion.