Who Is Your Favourite Architect, Really?
What a Difficult Question!
I often encourage my mentees to form opinions of their own: do you actually like architecture, who is your favourite architect, and what is your favourite building - and why? When that question was recently turned back on me, I realised how difficult it was to answer simply. As part of an ongoing series untangling - and indulging in - the things I admire about architecture, I am beginning with a selection of socially driven practices, collectives and organisations whose values, structures and ways of working interest me as much as the work they produce.
When I first became interested in architecture, my mother lovingly bought me two books. One collected Pritzker Prize-winning architects and their quotations; the other was called 50 Architects You Should Know. I started there, looking up each architect one by one and gradually assembling a collection of buildings, names and opinions.
It was a fairly simplistic way of developing taste, but perhaps that is how it begins. You find an image that holds your attention, learn who designed it and then follow the thread.
The question that underpinned my Cambridge interview was similarly direct. In my own rather blunt words, much of the architecture being built in Hong Kong felt “monotonous and boring.” Why did so much of it look the same, and could we do better?
At the time, I repeatedly returned to three buildings in Hong Kong: Norman Foster’s HSBC Main Building, I. M. Pei’s Bank of China Tower and César Pelli’s Cheung Kong Center. Built during the boom years of the 1980s and 1990s, they stand almost side by side, forming a kind of architectural conversation within the skyline - different corporate identities, structural expressions and geometries, each responding to the others and to the city’s deep awareness of feng shui. I talked about them constantly. They were a genuine source of fascination, but also, I suspect, something I used to distinguish myself: evidence that I had begun to read the city around me rather than simply move through it.
At university, the field expanded dramatically.
There was the experience of walking into David Chipperfield’s Neues Museum in Berlin and beginning to understand how an architect could work with damage, memory and an existing building without attempting to disguise any of them. There was the Asia Society Hong Kong Center by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, where the route through the site, the material weight of the buildings and the surrounding landscape felt inseparable.
There was Giovanni Michelucci’s Church of the Autostrada, conceived as both a place of pause for people travelling along the motorway and a memorial to the workers who died building it. There was also the almost mystical experience of Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery, and the wider discovery of his expressive detailing - where thresholds, joints, water, concrete, metal and crafted fragments seemed to give architecture a ritual quality. At Cornell, there was the unavoidable presence of OMA’s Milstein Hall: a building we encountered so constantly that it became both a work of architecture and part of our everyday infrastructure.
For a period, I was especially drawn to the seriousness of European architecture: Peter Zumthor, Álvaro Siza, Herzog & de Meuron, Aires Mateus, Cruz y Ortiz, and the wider Swiss and Iberian sensibility. Christian Kerez’s House with One Wall, the almost severe clarity of Valerio Olgiati’s work, and the quiet monumentality of these architects all held a particular fascination. I loved buildings that appeared restrained, even simple, but were underpinned by extraordinary precision - where proportion, structure, material, junctions, light and construction seemed to have been considered almost obsessively. I still do. SANAA introduced something lighter and more elusive: architecture shaped through relationships, movement and atmosphere rather than weight alone. Their teaching philosophy - the patient testing of ideas through observation, drawings and endless models, reducing and refining rather than decorating - reinforced the idea that apparent simplicity is often the result of the most rigorous thought.
My professors also changed the way I saw architecture. Paulo David, from Madeira, changed my life. Thomas Phifer did too. His studio was probably the most difficult studio I had - the point at which I felt most muddled and least certain of what I was doing - but it was also the one from which I learned the most. Both left a lasting impression on how I think about light, landscape, material and the emotional atmosphere of a building.
Then came the allure of workplace and civic architecture, and with it an interest in larger practices. I was drawn to the scale of their work, the range of expertise they could bring together and the enormous number of people their buildings could affect. A workplace, transport project, public building or urban plan can shape the everyday experience of thousands of people. There was something compelling about that level of reach.
Moving to the UK opened another chapter. I began learning about the Stirling Prize, the ecosystem of British architecture and a whole suite of smaller practices: firms such as Morris + Company, Mæ, DSDHA and many others whose work I had not encountered in the same way before.
It also made me more interested in the practice of architecture as a business. Why does the UK sustain so many small and medium-sized studios? How do procurement, fees, competitions, planning systems and public funding influence the kinds of practices that emerge? How does this compare with the United States, where many of the most visible firms operate at a much larger scale? What does each system enable, and what does it make more difficult?
The longer I work in architecture, the harder the original question becomes.
My tastes have expanded and changed, although I still love many of the buildings I admired when I was younger. Knowledge accumulates like layers of an onion. First, you notice the overall form. Then you begin to understand the plan, the structure, the details, the environmental strategy, the procurement route, the labour involved and the financial conditions that made the building possible. Appreciation becomes less immediate but much richer.
Increasingly, I find myself admiring not only buildings but the organisations behind them - How is a practice structured? Who owns it? How does it fund its work? Who gets to participate in the design process? What kinds of projects does its business model make possible? What knowledge, employment or infrastructure remain after the architect has left?
This is therefore part of a wider series in which I am allowing myself to unpack - and indulge in - the things I admire about architecture. It is an attempt to answer the question of who my favourite architects are, while also questioning what “favourite” really means.
The first part looks at socially minded practices, collectives and organisations. Some are recognised for the architectural quality of their buildings; others are better known for their research, activism, humanitarian work or alternative models of practice. What connects them is their belief that architectural knowledge can be used in different ways: to improve health, investigate injustice, develop local skills, strengthen public institutions or give communities greater agency over the places they inhabit.
I describe them as practices, collectives and organisations, rather than firms alone, because their different operating models are precisely what make them interesting. They expand my understanding of what an architect can do - and what an architectural practice can be.
MASS Design Group
The non-profit multidisciplinary practice
A large US–Rwanda-based 501(c)(3) design collective operating internationally across architecture, landscape, engineering, research, construction and storytelling; its Rwanda construction arm alone employs 160 salaried staff and 2,100 contract workers, while its fabrication network connects more than 85 local manufacturers, cooperatives and artisans. Notable projects include the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama and the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture; MASS received the AIA Architecture Firm Award in 2022.
Assemble
The democratic collective
A small London-based multidisciplinary collective working across architecture, art, design, construction and manufacturing, with a collaborative structure that resists the conventional model of singular architectural authorship; its work is concentrated in the UK but has expanded internationally. Its best-known project, Granby Four Streets, combined housing refurbishment with community ownership, employment and the creation of Granby Workshop, earning Assemble the 2015 Turner Prize; the collective also transformed the former Laurie Grove Baths into Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art.
Article 25
The architectural NGO
A small London-based architectural charity supported by local site teams and a wider pro-bono professional network, Article 25 has completed more than 100 education, healthcare and housing projects in over 35 countries, benefiting more than 550,000 people annually. Its Collège Amadou Hampâté Bâ in Niger serves more than 1,200 students and received a 2024 RIBA International Award for Excellence, while Kao La Amani Children’s Village in Tanzania provides homes and facilities for approximately 60 children and received an AIA UK award citation in 2026.
Rural Studio
The educational design-build programme
An off-campus Auburn University programme in Alabama’s Black Belt, Rural Studio operates with approximately 48 students each year and has educated more than 1,200 students while constructing over 220 homes, civic spaces and community facilities since 1993. Its influential work includes the 20K House and Front Porch Initiative, which researches replicable affordable rural housing, and the Newbern Firehouse; the programme received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture in 2022.
Kéré Architecture and Kéré Foundation
The practice foundation partnership
A roughly 30-person Berlin architecture studio working alongside a small nonprofit foundation and a Burkina Faso-based construction network, the partnership operates across four continents while maintaining a sustained focus on educational, health and environmental infrastructure around Gando. The expanding Gando campus has enabled children from the surrounding region to progress through primary and secondary education; the Gando Primary School received the 2004 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, while Lycée Schorge continued its model of locally made, climate-responsive construction, and Francis Kéré became the 2022 Pritzker Prize laureate.
Heritage Foundation of Pakistan
The distributed community self-build model
A Karachi-based nonprofit foundation with a small central organisation and a much larger distributed network of village committees, artisans and “barefoot entrepreneurs,” it works across Pakistan to spread low-cost, low-carbon construction and disaster-resilience systems without depending on conventional contractor-led delivery. Following the 2022 floods, 13 established zero-carbon villages supported 130 destitute villages, with 60 villages representing around 4,000 families entering its food-security programme; notable initiatives include the Sindh Flood Rehabilitation Programme and Denso Hall Rahguzar, while founder Yasmeen Lari received the 2025 Lisbon Architecture Triennale Lifetime Achievement Award.
Orkidstudio / BuildX Studio
The social-impact design-and-build enterprise
Originally a small Nairobi-based practice combining the roles of architect, contractor, educator and social enterprise, Orkidstudio has since evolved into BuildX Studio, so it is best presented as an important precursor to the current organisation rather than as a separate active practice. Its Sachibondu Hospital in Zambia was designed to serve more than 30,000 people, while the Nakuru Children’s Home used construction to create local employment and opportunities for women; Orkidstudio was selected for Metropolis New Talent in 2017 and nominated for the 2017–18 Swiss Architectural Award.
Hunnarshala Foundation
The artisan-led habitat organisation
A small nonprofit foundation based in Kutch, India, whose effective scale comes from its network of craftspeople, community organisations and artisan enterprises, Hunnarshala combines traditional earth, stone, bamboo and timber knowledge with contemporary engineering and participatory delivery. Its post-earthquake rehabilitation across 14 Banni and Paccham villages enabled 1,456 families to build homes, while its heritage-restoration work has employed more than 150 artisans; Hunnarshala received the 2013 Curry Stone Design Prize for bringing artisan knowledge and livelihoods into mainstream construction.
Build Change
The systems-change engineering nonprofit
A global US-registered 501(c)(3) engineering and housing organisation with a distributed workforce—approximately 75% of staff are based in programme countries—Build Change works across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region to strengthen entire housing systems rather than deliver isolated buildings. It reports having made more than 280,000 buildings safer, benefiting approximately 1.43 million people and protecting $5.2 billion in assets; current programmes include technical support for resilience improvements to 8,400 homes in Mozambique and its BCtap platform, which has made assessments three times faster while reducing field visits by 33%, and the organisation received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2017.
BC architects, studies and materials
The regenerative hybrid cooperative
A roughly 19-person Brussels practice operating through three connected entities—an architecture cooperative, a nonprofit education and research laboratory and a materials cooperative—BC works across Europe and Africa to connect design, construction, training and the reuse of locally available earth, fibres and timber. Its notable projects include the 2,500-square-metre LOT 8 at Atelier LUMA, developed with Assemble using bioregional materials, and the Women’s House in Ouled Merzoug; BC was named Promising Young Architect at the 2021 Brussels Architecture Prize, while the Women’s House won a 2021 TerraFibra Award.
TAMassociati
The humanitarian architecture practice
A small Italian architecture and design practice working through long-term partnerships with organisations such as Emergency, TAMassociati has operated across Italy, Africa and other conflict-affected or under-resourced contexts, particularly in healthcare and civic infrastructure. By 2013, five hospitals created through its collaboration with Emergency had treated more than 700,000 patients; the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery in Khartoum received the 2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and the Port Sudan Paediatric Centre received the 2014 Zumtobel Group Award, while the practice’s wider body of humanitarian work won the 2013 Curry Stone Design Prize.
Architecture Sans Frontières International
The global NGO federation
A worldwide federation rather than a single architectural employer, ASF International comprised 22 national member organisations by March 2025, sharing knowledge, training and professional capacity in support of vulnerable and marginalised communities. Because delivery remains with its individual members, it does not publish a single consolidated beneficiary or project total; its principal collective initiatives include the Challenging Practice educational programme, international working groups and the biennial ASF Award, which recognises socially responsible built-environment work.
Public Practice
The public-sector capacity social enterprise
A small London-based not-for-profit whose scale lies in its professional placement network rather than a large permanent staff, Public Practice operates across England to move built-environment expertise into local government. Since 2017, it has attracted more than 3,000 applicants and placed over 360 Associates in almost 100 public-sector organisations, with 74% still working in those organisations two years after their initial contracts; its principal initiatives are the Associate Programme and Recruitment and Skills Survey, and in 2025 it received £500,000 of government funding to support the recruitment of 300 additional planning and placemaking professionals.
Forensic Architecture
The investigative research agency
A mid-sized interdisciplinary research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, Forensic Architecture works internationally with architects, journalists, scientists, filmmakers, lawyers and software specialists, using spatial and open-source analysis rather than conventional building design. Its impact is measured through investigations and evidentiary use rather than beneficiary numbers: its work has been submitted to UN bodies, truth commissions, the European Court of Human Rights and national courts; notable investigations include the reconstruction of Saydnaya Prison and the collaborative Grenfell Tower Situated Testimonies, while the agency was shortlisted for the 2018 Turner Prize and received an Institutional Peabody Award in 2022.
It is difficult to reduce all of this to a single favourite architect or practice. Over time, my appreciation has expanded beyond the design of individual buildings to include the structures behind them: how practices are organised, how they are funded, who they serve, how they collaborate and what kind of impact they make. The more I learn, the more “favourite” becomes less about a particular aesthetic and more about the many different ways architecture can be practised with care, intelligence and purpose.
