A multi-awarding winning architects today announced a rebrand to build on a 43-year success story and ensure its talented staff collectively lead its continued growth - as it takes the first tentative steps to shared ownership.
Globally renowned Hodder + Partners with over 60 awards and whose commissions include successfully reimagining the £300m St Michael’s mixed use Manchester development led by Gary Neville’s Relentless Group; RHS Bridgewater’s Welcome Building in Worsley and new additions and conservation of Arne Jacobsen’s Grade I-listed St Catherine’s College in Oxford; was today reborn as Hodder Architects.
Today its founder Stephen Hodder who leads the practice with his wife and its managing director Claire, stressed they both firmly remain at the helm of the Manchester-based architects he established in 1983.
But as a practice that “never stood still” the rebrand would help fuel a blueprint for its senior team to broaden their responsibilities and for all staff to collectively shape the continued growth of the practice amid an eventual goal in the years to come to move over to shared ownership.
Stephen, whose practice, based at Kelso Place, won the Royal Fine Art Commission/ Sunday Times Building of the Year Award for Colne Swimming Pool in Lancashire in 1992 and four years later received the RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture – the most important award in British Architecture for a single building - for the Centenary Building, University of Salford, said:
“The rebrand and becoming Hodder Architects is a continuation of the development of the practice.
To be absolutely clear, the role Claire and I play in terms of design, leadership, client interfacing, and delivery will not change.
“However, at the moment business development and financial management is led by Claire and myself. Going forward we want everyone who works here to grow with the practice. We want to devolve some of the responsibility and encourage them to lead the growth and broaden what they do as we tentatively start a potential move towards shared ownership.”
Stephen, awarded an MBE for services to architecture and whose firm is fondly known for replacing and reimagining the Corporation Street Bridge (pictured), a symbol of hope and resilience after it was shattered in the 1996 Manchester bombing, added: “Our senior team already assume practice-wide responsibilities and I want them to build on that, think about the future of the practice, whether it’s quality assurance, long term growth or how artificial intelligence can be harnessed for benefit of the practice and our clients. The practice will become more of a collective.
“Every project that we've done, all the awards we have won is down to the contributions of everyone in the practice. That sense of collaboration, both internally and externally has always been something that has underpinned this practice and the rebrand allows us to recognise and build on that. Hodder Architects becomes less about me as an individual and more about the collective, and a brilliant, creative one at that.”
Stephen, a Professor of Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture and a Governor at the Glasgow School of Art also hopes the rebrand and practice’s evolution will allow younger members of his team to thrive, grow and lead.
“This is a practice that has got some really wonderful and talented architects, the next generation of design leaders at Hodder Architects. I want them to feel that they can grow with the practice and there's a real future for them here. There's a legacy, but now's the time for everyone to build on that.”
More information on Hodder Architects can be found here.