Our practice is recognised as a field leader in co-design and consultation led, evidence based design. We see architecture being as much the provision of a service as the fabrication of a product and public / space to be the consequence of multiple voices and demands and not the outcome of top-down professionalism. We work with our clients, stakeholders, users and occupants to understand the issues, needs, cultures, ambitions and histories of a project or a place and co-produce innovative and inspirational responses. Big thinking leads to large scale plans, but we also work on small scale, interstitial and meanwhile urban projects that bring significant benefits in their own right, while being important catalysts and iterative means of informing and testing long term strategies for larger scale change. We have long considered that local people are experts for their area and can inform design propositions through first hand observations of the social, economic and cultural life of a neighbourhood. We have developed interactive, informative tools and techniques to actively engage this knowledge and energy in the design process and these have led to a number of highly acclaimed buildings, urban strategies and neighbourhood plans. Fluid was built on strong academic links with the Architectural Association and London Metropolitan University where directors first tested and established principles of co-design and co-production through ‘Live Research Projects’. These principles have shaped our practice and this has been acknowledged as field-leading through invited conference papers, publications and master classes as well as by CABE and RTPI awards.
