Our purpose.
HTA Design sets out to create great places to live, and to be a great place for our people to work.
Making great places to live.
HTA is a practice of over 200 architects, urbanists, planners, landscape architects, interior designers, sustainability specialists, graphic designers and researchers. Our collective focus is on creating great places to live and we have a 50 year track record of the design and delivery of better housing.
We have a singular focus, applying an inter-disciplinary approach to the design of homes and residential neighbourhoods. Our collaborative effort is to improve all aspects of housing, from individual homes and housing typologies, apartment buildings small and large, masterplans and design codes, urban neighbourhoods, suburban settlements as well as brownfield and estate regeneration. We are experienced across all stages, from concept to completion and feedback.
Making a great place to work.
We are dedicated to creating a supportive and healthy professional environment that nurtures talent, builds careers and fosters creativity, enjoyment and satisfaction in our shared endeavour. We work hard to be the best employer possible and were rewarded by becoming winners of the AJ100 Employer of the Year Award in 2022 & 2018, as well as being selected as one of Building Magazine’s top 50 Good Employers for the third year running.
Our inter-disciplinary structure reflects our instinctively collaborative nature, and our four studios in London, Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh are arranged to maximise creative interaction between teams.
Our purpose.
HTA Design sets out to create great places to live, and to be a great place for our people to work.
Making great places to live.
HTA is a practice of over 200 architects, urbanists, planners, landscape architects, interior designers, sustainability specialists, graphic designers and researchers. Our collective focus is on creating great places to live and we have a 50 year track record of the design and delivery of better housing.
We have a singular focus, applying an inter-disciplinary approach to the design of homes and residential neighbourhoods. Our collaborative effort is to improve all aspects of housing, from individual homes and housing typologies, apartment buildings small and large, masterplans and design codes, urban neighbourhoods, suburban settlements as well as brownfield and estate regeneration. We are experienced across all stages, from concept to completion and feedback.
Making a great place to work. We are dedicated to creating a supportive and healthy professional environment that nurtures talent, builds careers and fosters creativity, enjoyment and satisfaction in our shared endeavour. We work hard to be the best employer possible and were rewarded by becoming winners of the AJ100 Employer of the Year Award in 2022 & 2018, as well as being selected as one of Building Magazine’s top 50 Good Employers for the third year running. Our inter-disciplinary structure reflects our instinctively collaborative nature, and our four studios in London, Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh are arranged to maximise creative interaction between teams.
Creative Collaboration.
We put collaborative working amongst our diverse disciplines, with our clients and co-professionals and the people housed in our projects at the centre of our work ethic. Central to our process is to clarify our clients’ objectives at the outset, bringing all our inter-disciplinary expertise to bear on achieving them. We believe in the continuous improvement of successful solutions and in learning from feedback. We are signatories to the RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge, working with our clients to deliver our shared obligation to reducing carbon, and join with us in post occupancy evaluation of our projects. We hold internal design and technical reviews every week.
Our values
We define our core values as:
- Creativity
- Collaboration
- Commercial value
- Care for each other
- Continuous improvement.
We participate in processes on projects and events throughout the year in order to reinforce these values. We have a structured a compulsory CPD programme, a thoroughgoing approach to staff appraisal and development and a sophisticated welfare programme for our colleagues. We carry out an annual staff survey to obtain feedback internally. We set social value objectives for our projects and like to test our success in post occupancy evaluation.
Origins
We were formed in 1969, when Bernard Hunt and John Thompson established Hunt Thompson Associates in London’s Camden Town. Ben Derbyshire joined the firm in 1973 and is HTA’s current Chairman having overseen the succession of the practice to HTA Design LLP in 2013.
Our roots are founded in pioneering the practice of Community Architecture, where a concern to engage with the users of our projects, considered avant-garde in the late twentieth century, has now become mainstream. We continue to lead the field with innovative techniques of design engagement to enable a contribution from the communities we serve which enhances their experience and improves the product and outcomes.
Other innovations followed with a number of innovations including a social research subsidiary (USER Research), the first radical rolling programmes of estate refurbishment and redevelopment, and community planning events. More recently the Housing Quality Indicators, and the housing design group, Design for Homes, were initiatives that started life at HTA. Our engagement with the wider profession has resulted in contributions to writings and research across a wide range of housing related matters.
Established as a partnership, Hunt Thompson Associates in 1969, we became a Limited Company, HTA Architects Ltd in 1999, and then a limited liability partnership, HTA Design LLP in 2013. A new generation of partners has the led the transformation and growth of the business since then.
