Ideas Exchange: The Collaborative Studio of Hawkins/Brown

The Hawkins\Brown architectural firm in London, founded in 1988 by Roger Hawkins and Russell Brown, is one of the up-and-coming offices on the international architecture scene. The spectrum of the firm’s works ranges from residences and interior design by way of office buildings and various public buildings such as theaters and university buildings all the way to urban planning, such as designs for squares and subway stations. Hawkins\Brown strives to come to an optimal result in a process that integrates all of the players. Hawkins\Brown has received numerous awards for various projects, such as the RIBA Award for its Wysing Arts Centre (2008), the New Chemistry Building of the University of Oxford (2009), and the New Art Exchange art center in Nottingham (2009) and the BREEAM Award for Eltham Hill Technology College (2008). This book documents some twenty-five buildings from the past five years. The projects presented include the Tottenham Court Road Underground Station, one of the busiest Tube stations in London with a hundred thousand passengers daily (to be completed in 2011); the Stratford Regional Station in London, an access platform for one of the major sites for the Olympic Games (to be completed in 2010); Park Hill, the master plan for a neighborhood in Sheffield (to be completed in 2011), and the Dubai Arts Pavilion in the United Arab Emirates.

Tim Abrahams has been an editor at the British architecture and design magazine Blueprint for the past three years.