Building Design Partnership
| Founded | 1961 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | 11 Ducie Street, Piccadilly, Manchester, UK[1] |
| Services | architecture, engineering |
Number of employees | 950 |
| Website | BDP website |
BDP, formerly known as Building Design Partnership, is a firm of architects and engineers employing over 900 staff in the UK and internationally.
History
The firm was founded in 1961 by George Grenfell-Baines with architects Bill White and John Wilkinson, quantity surveyor Arnold Towler and eight associate partners: Brian & Derek Cobb, Keith Ingham, Peter Renninson, David Rock, Lorrie Rossant, N Keith Scott and Sid Tasker. The associates were made full equity partners in 1964. Grenfell-Baines was the first chairman.
BDP was the end result of a series of experiments in profit sharing and multidisciplinary working begun by Grenfell-Baines in 1941 with the Grenfell Baines Group. A 1962 policy statement committed BDP to “the principle of equal status for all professions”.[2] The firm expanded rapidly over the following decades and had 30 partners and 700 staff by the time of Grenfell-Baines’s retirement in 1974. The firm has been associated with a variety of large public and private projects, such as the controversial bus station in Preston, Lancashire that was designed by BDP's Keith Ingham and Charles Wilson, and retail projects such as the Liverpool One complex.[3]
BDP’s principal offices, inherited from Grenfell Baines & Hargreaves, were in London, Manchester and Preston. By 1970, there were branch offices in Belfast, Glasgow and Guildford plus international offices in Memphis, Rome and Johannesburg.
BDP ceased to be a partnership in 1997 and became a limited company. As of 2016 BDP was reported to be the UK's third largest architecture firm, with 950 employees. In March 2016, the Japanese engineering firm Nippon Koei bought all of the stock of BDP for a total sale price of £102.2 million.[4]
Professions represented in BDP offices in 1968[5]
- Architects
- Town Planners
- Cost Consultants
- Civil Engineers
- Building Services Engineers
- Structural Engineers
- Electrical Engineers
- Heating Engineers
- Ventilating Engineers
- Landscape Architects
- Traffic Engineers
- Graphic Designers
- Industrial Designers
- Sociologists
Current locations of BDP Offices
Building Design Partnership Ltd., UK
Building Design Partnership (Ireland) Ltd., Ireland
BDP.Khandekar, Netherlands
BDP Ltd., China
BDP Ltd., UAE
BDP Ltd., India
Selected Projects
- Rebuilding of Aldershot Military Town (1961–69)
- University of Surrey, Guildford (1965–68)
- University of Bradford (1965–71)
- Preston bus station (1968–69)
- Blackburn Central Area Redevelopment (Blackburn Shopping Centre) (1965–77)
- Bank House (Bank of England regional headquarters), Leeds (1969–71)
- Halifax HQ, Halifax (1973 & refurbishment 2002)
- Channel Tunnel Terminal, Folkestone (1973-5, revived 1987-93)
- Brent Cross refurbishment, London (1994+)
- Ealing Broadway Centre (1979–85)
- Kingston upon Hull Crown Court (1988–90)
- All England Lawn Tennis Club, Wimbledon (1992–2000)
- Reconstruction of Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London (1996–2000) with Dixon Jones
- Cribbs Causeway, Bristol (1998)
- Scottish Widows, Edinburgh (1998) Number 93 of Prospect 100 best modern Scottish buildings
- Adam Opel Campus, Ruesselsheim, Germany (1998)
- Niketown, London (1999)
- Connolly Station, Dublin (1999)
- Vasco da Gama Centre, Lisbon (1999)
- Olympic Tennis Centre, Sydney (2000)
- Glasgow Science Centre, Glasgow (2001)
- Manchester Piccadilly Station concourse (2001–02)
- Sao Gabriel & Sao Rafael Towers, Lisbon (2001–04)
- Hampden Gurney CE Primary School, London (2002) - Nominated for Stirling Prize
- iceSheffield Sheffield(2002)
- TresAguas Centre, Madrid (2002)
- Royal Albert Hall, 30 discrete projects including the South Porch (2003)
- Nanoscience Centre, University of Cambridge (2003)
- BBC Mailbox, Birmingham (2004)
- Olympic Tennis Centre, Athens (2004)
- Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge (2005)
- Melbourne City Waterfront (2006)
- Aintree Racecourse, Merseyside (2007)
- Liverpool One, Merseyside (2008) - Masterplan nominated for Stirling Prize in 2009
- Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (2011) - Masterplan
- Riverside East building, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen (2013)
- University of Strathclyde Technology and Innovation Centre, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (2015)
Image Gallery of BDP Projects
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University of Surrey, Guildford (1965-68)
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Preston bus station (1968-69)
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Halifax HQ, Halifax (1973 & refurbisment 2002)
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Cribbs Causeway, Bristol (1998)
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Manchester Piccadilly Station (2001-02)
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BBC Mailbox (2004)
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Sir Ian Wood building (formerly Riverside East), The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen (2011-13)
People who have worked for BDP
Notes
- ↑ "BDP Contacts". BDP. Retrieved 2014-08-20.
- ↑ White, Bill (1987), The Spirit Of BDP, Preston: BDP, p 22.
- ↑ Owen Hatherley (31 July 2012). A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys through Urban Britain. Verso Books. pp. 70–77ff. ISBN 978-1-84467-909-6.
- ↑ "UK's third-biggest architecture firm BDP bought by Japanese engineering giant", Dezeen, 3 March 2016.
- ↑ BDP (1968), Experience in Industrial Building, Preston: BDP.