Arabian Expansion

Tim Makower sketches in Doha's newest souk
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TM: We do small special projects and we do vast developments. We are uniquely known—we really stand out in Britain—as having an exceptionally strong balance between master planning and architecture. There are very few of our competitors that are quite so strong equally in both fields. I think most people, even our competitors, would acknowledge that.

Can you give an example?

TM: We were part of the original bid for the Olympic Games and we’re part of the consortium working on that; we did the master plan for King’s Cross; we’re doing master plans all over East London in the regeneration areas, and the list goes on. We’re also doing significant jewel-like buildings such as the new Observatory at Greenwich, London, and smaller university buildings in Oxford and Cambridge.

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TM: What you’ll find true of, I think, every single project we’ve ever done is that there’s something special about the brief. Take, for example, Thames Water. Not many architects would put a lot of love into a shed. After all, it’s a pumping station. What could be more ordinary? But the clients knew it was a special pumping station so they came to us.

We had a great deal of interest in exploring the mechanisms of this pump and trying to understand how to express the science of it in architecture. I’m sure you noticed it is a rather Islamic form, that’s by coincidence, but it has a certain Islamic resonance. We love that project.

What is the future for A&M?

TM: We certainly want to grow in the Middle East. We certainly want to grow internationally. At the moment, we aren’t declaring that we want to grow numerically but we’re not inclined to turn down projects that seem worth doing. We’re not good at saying ‘no’. We love competing and that’s how we’ve grown.

What is your personal goal for the future of the firm?

TM: My personal view of what our goal is for the medium to long-term future is that we’re currently in the first generation of the firm, but it’s aging. We’re all getting older. But, if we can be as good, if not better, in the second generation than we are now, well, that’s an ambition. I’m not sure any architecture firm has ever quite achieved that.