The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
Set up in 2017, Be First aims to deliver 50,000 new homes and create 20,000 new jobs by 2037. Nominating practice Haworth Tompkins praised its ‘exceptional vision, bold ambition and collaborative approach’ across the industrial, co-location and residential sectors.
The practice last year completed Industria, billed as the UK’s first multistorey light-industrial project. With a 100-year ‘chassis’ that enables flexibility and adaptive re-use, the four-storey development is conceived as a longer lifespan alternative to traditional industrial ‘sheds’. ‘Be First’s brief for Industria was genuinely innovative,’ said the practice. It also praised the organisation’s focus on sustainability, which it says was at the heart of every brief.
Haworth Tompkins is also working with Be First on the final phase of the 2,000-home Gascoigne West estate regeneration. The practice was impressed with the company’s commitment to long-term thinking and hands-on approach to engagement with local residents. It also found Be First’s exemplar Housing Pattern book and design guidelines ‘extremely useful’ during the design stages.
Haworth Tompkins was one of eight teams announced last year for Be First’s architecture framework to deliver 3,500 socially rented homes. Other teams include Levitt Bernstein with JA Projects and Archio – the latter practice has already completed 19 affordable homes and community facilities at the Becontree Estate.
Be First pips two other public sector organisations, Enfield Council and West Northamptonshire Council, as well as Central Foundation Boys’ School in London and developers Muse, General Projects and Derwent London. The latter was nominated by three different AJ100 practices.
Shortlisted
- Central Foundation Boys’ School, nominated by HawkinsBrown
- Derwent London, nominated by Buckley Gray Yeoman, dMFK Architects and Hopkins Architects
- Enfield Council, nominated by HTA Design
- General Projects, nominated by 3DReid
- Muse, nominated by Howells
- West Northamptonshire Council, nominated by Studio Egret West
AJ100 Client of the Year was judged by the AJ editorial team
