Building Design Partnership

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”. 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.

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.

In 2017, BDP was appointed architect for the refurbishment project for the Palace of Westminster.

Professions represented in BDP offices in 1968

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

Building Design Partnership Ltd., UK

Birmingham

Bristol

Glasgow

London

Manchester

Sheffield

Building Design Partnership (Ireland) Ltd., Ireland

Dublin

BDP.Khandekar, Netherlands

Rotterdam

BDP Ltd., China

Shanghai

BDP Ltd., UAE

Abu Dhabi

BDP Ltd., India

New Dehli

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)

People who have worked for BDP

Leon Krier

Jennifer Ross Meiring

Richard Saxon

Michael Webb