Simon Toplis
MA Dip Arch
Partner, Architecture and IT
Simon Toplis joined HTA in 1998 becoming a Partner in 2013. He is responsible for leading an architectural and urban design teams across a wide range of regeneration and residential projects. His portfolio has focused on innovation and design quality in suburban housing, with a contrasting set of urban regeneration projects at high density often delivered through offsite manufacture.
Simon’s suburban housing experience started with the Ardler Estate in Dundee – the first stock transfer in Scotland and saw the creation of 1100 two and three storey homes in place of seven high-rise blocks. Over the last two decades, this experience has extended to include a diverse investigation of suburban housing including the Design for Manufacture / 60k House sites for Barratt, the VELUX Carbonlight Houses, the zero carbon village at Hanham Hall in Bristol and the Olympic Sailing village at Officers Field in Portland. More recently he has led a number of large scale low density housing developments including Leithfield Park in Surrey, Cane Hill Park in Croydon, Kings Hill in Kent, Filwood Park in Bristol, Mulberry Park in Combe Down and Beaulieu Park in Chelmsford. His experience also extends to working on a number of larger urban extensions and Garden Villages including Lawley in Telford, Wyton in Huntingdonshire and most recently the cluster of villages to the East of Biggleswade. His passion for the creating exemplars in suburban housing is reflected in HTA’s winning submission for the AJ ‘Home of the Future’ competition and more recent shortlisting in the Sunday Time’s ‘Terrace of the Future’ competition.
Simon’s experience of offsite manufacture is extensive with many of the suburban projects above incorporating elements of offsite complimented by higher density examples. In total Simon has led the design of over 2,500 homes which have been built using offsite manufacture. These most recent of these is Apex House, a, 28 storey tower which is Europe’s tallest modular building and has been built in less than a year on site. He is currently leading the onsite stages of a 44 storey residential tower in Croydon which when constructed will be the worlds tallest modular building.
