The Progress 1000: London's most influential people 2019 – Business: Architecture

Sir David Adjaye
Matt Writtle
Marcus Field3 October 2019

Sir David Adjaye

Founder, Adjaye Associates
It’s been another good year for the British-Ghanaian architect, who has been celebrated in an exhibition at the Design Museum. He is currently working on a £600 million retail and apartment building opposite the Ritz, as well as the controversial UK Holocaust Memorial alongside the Palace of Westminster.

Amin Taha

Architect, Groupwork | NEW
Taha’s practice won another RIBA award this year, this time for the remarkable Aria building on Upper Street, a ghostly riff on a structure that was destroyed by a bomb in the Second World War.

Tom Emerson & Stephanie Macdonald

Johan Dehlin

Architects, 6a Architects
Emerson and Macdonald’s practice continues to be the number one choice for arty clients, with plaudits this year for their conversion of a fire station for South London Gallery and an award-winning building for the Blue Mountain School concept store in Shoreditch.

Peter Barber

Architect, Peter Barber Architects
London’s leading architect for imaginative social and affordable housing has scored another hit this year, this time with his impressive citadel of 26 shared-ownership townhouses for Newham council in Stratford.

Tamsie Thomson

Managing director of the London Festival of Architecture
Tomson has been in charge since January 2016, ensuring an annual festival that showcases exceptional London architectural practice and research as well as the key role architecture performs in the economy of the city. As director of RIBA London she initiated a number of cultural programmes that promote architecture as well as the student mentorship programme and cross-disciplinary networking event, The Social. Last year she said: “For too long discrimination has been the elephant in the room”.

Norman Foster

Architect, Foster + Partners
Lord Foster is still making headlines with his designs at 84, most recently for his controversial proposal for The Tulip, a 305m-high tourist “pod” which initially received planning permission from the City of London, but was later rejected by Mayor Sadiq Khan. Its future now hangs in the balance.

Richard Rogers

Andrew Zuckerman

Architect, Rogers Stirk Harbour
The tireless veteran, 86, still heads up Rogers Stirk Harbour, the practice whose recent high-rise Merano development opposite Tate Britain is a much-needed model of elegant restraint on the increasingly cacophonous Vauxhall skyline.

Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio

Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro | NEW
The New York practice founded by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio in 1981 has recently opened a London office to manage the building of a 2,000-seat music hall on the edge of the Barbican complex. They are also architects for the V&A’s new outpost at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Junya Ishigami

Architect, Junya Ishigami + Associates | NEW
Ishigami’s rippling, slate-covered 2019 Serpentine Pavilion is the first building in London for this rising star of Japanese architecture who founded his own practice in 2006, having acquired his master’s degree in architecture and planning at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 2000.

Simon Allford

Founder, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
The 2015 Stirling Prize winners continue to build major projects across the capital, the most high profile of which is their proposal for a temporary parliament building. This will house MPs during the refurbishment of the Palace of Westminster and contains striking modern chambers for both the Commons and the Lords.

Alan Stanton and Paul Williams

Founders, Stanton Williams | NEW
Minimalist elegance and quality are the hallmarks of this practice, founded in 1985, which has recently added two new projects to London’s public realm: the crystalline entrances to Tottenham Court Road station and the remodelled Royal Opera House, which now has all-day cafes, bars and performances spaces open to visitors.

Sir David Chipperfield

Architect, David Chipperfield Architects
This architects’ architect, who established his practice in 1985, has won two RIBA awards this year: the first for his crisp, tailored building linking the two halves of the Selfridges department store; the second for two sculptural blocks of high-rise apartments on the Colville Estate in Shoreditch.

Graham Howarth

Architect, Haworth Tompkins | NEW
London’s favourite theatre architects completed the rebuilding of Battersea Arts Centre this year, and announced their appointment as designers of a new theatre for impresarios Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr in King’s Cross, set to open in 2021.

Peter Clegg and Keith Bradley

Architects, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios | NEW
Two high-profile arts projects by this London practice have wowed the crowds over the last year: the sensitive restoration of a Victorian theatre at Alexandra Palace and the £35 million refurbishment of the iconic Hayward Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre.

Dingle Price and Alex Gore

Architects, Pricegore | NEW
Young Peckham architects Price and Gore hit the big time this summer with their Colour Palace, a dazzling pavilion for the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Working with British-Nigerian designer Yinka Ilori, they set out to bring the vibrancy of a Lagos textile market to leafy South London.

Thomas Heatherwick​

© Colonial Pictures

Designer and founder, Heatherwick Studio
Heatherwick didn’t let the cancellation of the Garden Bridge hold him back: in 2019 his studio has completed the giant Vessel staircase in New York as well as the Coal Drops Yard shopping and restaurant complex in King’s Cross. Next up, the £1 billion Google HQ, also in King’s Cross.

Amanda Levete

Architect and founder, AL_A
Levete, still a rare example of a woman leading a major architecture practice, this year broke new ground on a new Maggie’s Centre for cancer support in Southampton and continued construction on two new buildings for Wadham College, Oxford.

Jamie Fobert

Founder, Jamie Fobert Architects
Fobert’s skilful extensions to Tate St Ives and Kettle’s Yard won him the £35.5 million London project to remodel the National Portrait Gallery, complete with new entrance on the Orange Street facade and a redisplay of the entire collection. Construction is expected to start next year, with completion in 2022.

Adam Caruso and Peter St John

Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures

Architects and founders, Caruso St John | NEW
Adam Caruso and Peter St John, London’s top choice of architects for museums and galleries, started the year off well by being elected Royal Academicians. Their current major project is an ice hockey stadium for the Zurich team ZSC Lions.

Liza Fior and Katherine Clarke

Founders, MUF Architecture/Art | NEW
Fior and Clarke set up practice in 1994 and continue to challenge the definition of architecture with their radical urban interventions and recent projects, including the Wonderlab gallery at the Science Museum and imaginative landscaping for two housing estates in Hackney.

Matthew Lloyd

Founder, Matthew Lloyd Architects | NEW
The stock is rising for this Shoreditch architect who has recently drawn praise for his housing projects across the city, including 75 imaginative new homes for Camden council on the Bourne Estate in Holborn.

John Pawson

Architect | NEW
The Halifax-born architect was the creative force behind the transformation of Kensington’s Commonwealth Institute into the new Design Museum. Famous for his minimalist architecture and design aesthetic, Pawson was awarded a CBE for services to design and architecture in the 2019 New Year Honours.

The Progress 1000, in partnership with the global bank Citi, is the Evening Standard’s celebration of the people changing London’s future for the better. #Progress1000

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