The Studio

Our Approach

We pursue an intuitive approach that is driven by context and local culture. We develop designs that fuse buildings into their context. We aim to deliver surprising yet culturally rooted buildings that enhance the wider public realm, that create a sense of place and that engage the passer-by.

We seek to distill complex problems into simple conceptual or architectural propositions. Our starting point is the understanding of the context and identifying relevant building types, new and ancient that we refine and thoroughly modernise. Our buildings inhabit a place between the familiar and the unexpected, a quality that includes and intrigues.

The success of our designs entirely depend on the skill and ingenuity of our collaborators. Landscape architects, engineers, artists and craftsmen are as indispensable to the process as is the presence of a trusting client.

Everyday work is devoted to delivering apparently simple and uncluttered buildings that clients can evolve over time. We want our buildings to evoke a crafted, hand made feel but to be of their time. We use generous landscape and hardy, textured materials that age with grace and evoke rich associations. Developing common sense sustainable environmental solutions is endemic to our approach because a 21st Century building can and should be a benign presence on our planet.

Philip Gumuchdjian BA (Econ) MA (RCA) RIBA ARB FRSA

Philip Gumuchdjian founded Gumuchdjian Architects (GA) after 18 years with the Richard Rogers Partnership. Since founding his practice in 1998 he has won multiple construction industry and RIBA Awards including two Stephen Lawrence Prize. He chaired the RIBA Awards Group from 2014-2016 and was a member of the RIBA Grand Jury for the first International prize for excellence.

In 1986 whilst at RRP he designed the seminal ‘London as it could be’ exhibition at the Royal Academy. In 1993 Philip co-wrote Richard Rogers’ BBC Reith Lectures on sustainability, later published as ‘Cities for a small planet’ now in its tenth edition. From 1996 he acted as Associate Director for the regeneration of the 200 HA Greenwich Peninsula, the legacy of the Millennium exhibition.

GA’s key projects include: the Marylebone School Performing Arts Centre; the Centre Pompidou in Metz with Shigeru Ban; the Think Tank pavilion; the Giant Recycled Paper Building in the Millennium Dome; The Butler Foundation Private Museum and the conversion of Lutyens’ Grade 2* Piccadilly Bank for Hauser & Wirth with Annabelle Selldorf.

Philip has completed many private commissions and currently has four major new-build houses under construction in London and Spain together with the refurbishment of the 1968 Grade 2* Rogers’ Wimbledon House for the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The practice has secured important planning permissions including the 20 storey tower next to the Tate Modern, a penthouse addition to the 1930’s Grade 2* Wells Coates apartment and the thorough remodelling of Sir William Chambers’ 1860’s house for Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Philip was Rapporteur at the UN Habitat II conference in Istanbul, and was a member of the German Government’s Urban 21 panel. He has written, lectured and broadcast on the subject of architecture, sustainability and urban development, and his work has been published and exhibited internationally. Philip has been a visiting critic to the Architectural Association, the Royal College of Art and has taught an MA in Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

Awards

RIBA European Award 2012
RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize 2010
RIBA Award 2010
RIBA Regional Award 2008
RIBA National Award 2008
Concrete Society Building Award 2008
RIBA Sorrel Foundation School Award 2008 – highly commended
Structural Steel Award – commendation
BCIA Award – highly commended
Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award – finalist
RIBA Award 2003
RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize 2003
Commendation AJ/Bovis Lend Lease for Best Architecture 2001