Hawkins\Brown named AJ100 Practice of the Year 2021

While the practice made redundancies in 2019, Hawkins\Brown grew by 15 staff during lockdown, expanding in areas such as Scotland and the north of England in harmony with the increasing desire of some employees to achieve a better work/life balance outside the capital.

‘I really like that the way they are growing is based on the life choices of some of their staff,’ said one judge. ‘It seems like a great way to expand and keep hold of talented staff.’

Turnover rose slightly to £27.7 million in 2020 and completed projects included the comprehensive refurbishment of a drab 70s office building near Farringdon, a new GP surgery in Hertfordshire and the Plumstead Centre, a south-east London retrofit and extension selected as this year’s AJ100 Building of the Year.

While each of the other nominated practices impressed on certain measures, judges felt some were giving lip service to the idea of better representing the UK population in terms of diversity and inclusion. ‘We [as a profession] still haven’t understood why this is important,’ one judge remarked.

This was not an observation that could be aimed at Hawkins\Brown, which employed 153 architects in the UK in 2020 and places great importance on community and industry collaboration, the social side of projects and the idea that ‘everybody has a voice’. With an architect workforce that was 41 per cent female and 11 per cent BAME in 2020, its underlying philosophy is also being strengthened by becoming a 100 per cent Employee Owned Trust.

Judges remarked that Hawkins\Brown is performing strongly in almost every area of practice, including design quality, sustainability and the ability to communicate its capabilities to others.

One judge said: ‘They have this kind of self-awareness, an ability to reflect on themselves clearly and learn the lessons. As a profession, we seem to be rather bad at that.’

The jury also praised Hawkins\Brown’s interest in its own staff, saying that the ability to listen and nurture them was a win-win for employees and the business itself. One said: ‘They are growing the practice in a pandemic. But they also know how to retain their staff – they know how to look after them and they know how to listen to them. If you have keen, loyal staff, you can do anything you want.’

AJ100 Practice of the Year is sponsored by