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INSIGHTS


PRACTICE PROFILE PRP Architects


As PRP marks its 60th anniversary, senior partners Manisha Patel and Brendan Kilpatrick reveal to ADF how a strong ethos around community-led design and collaborative culture has been instrumental to achieving enduring success


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n the 1960s, the UK was grappling with a severe housing shortage, prompting the Government to put building new homes at the top of its agenda. As a result, this era saw an unprecedented surge in housebuilding, with the country experiencing a higher rate of residential development than ever before.


Against this backdrop, three architectural graduates with a shared passion for community-led housing design (Peter Phippen, Peter Randall and David Parkes), pooled their resources and founded PRP in 1963. The initial principles of the fi rm, instigated by its founders were centred around placing the end user at the heart of every design decision, an ethos that continues to be a “core value of the practice to this day,” asserts Brendan Kilpatrick, senior partner at PRP. In the practice’s early stages, designing and constructing affordable housing was a signifi cant challenge, community-based housing organisations having to work with extremely small


budgets. Despite this, after a few years of ups and downs, PRP completed its fi rst project in 1969 – a celebrated housing scheme called the Ryde in Hatfi eld. This unique project featured a diverse range of two, three, and four bed single-storey houses designed around courtyards, and benefi tting from bright, free-fl owing spaces. The success of the scheme led to a string of residential commissions in various then-emerging ‘New Towns’ such as Bracknell, Basildon, and Crawley. Today the practice boasts a dedicated team of 300, with offi ces in London, Surrey and Manchester. The practice ventured overseas in a strategic move, opening two offi ces in Poland – Wroclaw in 2017, and Sopot in 2020. The offi ces each have “different specialisms and semi-autonomous groups,” however the move has also proven highly important for the fi rm’s sustainability post-Brexit. Kilpatrick explains that facing the potential loss of some of its international talent following the UK’s exit from the EU, the opening of their branch in Wroclaw in particular has allowed PRP


Canal Quarter, Brewery Lane © PRP


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ADF MAY 2023


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