posted: 02.07.03

We’ve been working on property projects for over ten years now – on projects as diverse as the conversion of a spectacular John Wood designed hospital, to a five year long public awareness campaign to support the building of a Grimshaw designed spa building in Bath. But nothing has indulged our enthusiasm for good contemporary architecture as much as one of our latest projects.

We are part of the King Alfred Project team that have put together a bid to build a sports centre with an enabling residential development on Hove seafront.

The team comprises, Frank Gehry [Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao], Piers Gough, [Bankside Lofts, London], Antony Gormley, [Angel of the North] plus HOK Sports [National Stadium Wembley]. The developer is Karis/ING Real Estate.

Our role has spanned a number of disciplines: we used our design and production facilities to put together the first phase bid document [which got the team into a shortlist of 4] and then subsequently the final proposal that was over 100 pages long.

The research, collation and co-ordination of the content had to be tightly controlled and scheduled because of the extremely short lead time – with late night file transfers and phone calls to Frank Gehry’s offices in Santa Monica commonplace.

Our writing and editing skills were used alongside our newly-found photo journalism talents [which we didn’t know we had!] and the sum total of this multi tasking was that we were able to deliver a document that was worked on by a team comprising more than five organisations, some of which are on the other side of the Atlantic. We also prepared a public exhibition and a powerpoint presentation for the jury panel.

We’ll let you know how the team fairs – the competition is hot, but we are now down to one of two, with Wilkinson Eyre still in and the Richard Rogers proposal now dropped from the short-list.