Hoverhauling Brighton

Excuse the pun, please.

The head of our Brighton architecture office, Paul Zara, took to The Argus recently to talk about Brighton and Hove’s acute housing crisis, and his opinions on how to solve it.

Conran: Pop-up gallery in the Brighton office….

Last Thursday evening, the Conran & Partners Brighton office transformed itself from productive studio to bustling gallery to host the private view of a retrospective show of photographer Greg Daville’s work.

The event was organised by Arts & Business who help forge valuable partnerships with businesses, arts and cultural organisations.

The exhibition, Urbicide, focuses on buildings that are photographed then structurally altered by digital manipulation, the original photographs providing the raw material for their own re-structuring.

The event was a huge success with more than 130 people coming from far and wide to attend the exhibition.  Both Jane Chambers from Arts and Business and Paul Zara from Conran & Partners said a few words with Toby Amis, a close friend of Greg’s,  giving a moving tribute to the artist.

Read more about what’s going on in our Brighton office here….

Conran: Happy Birthday Brighton!

Happy Birthday Conran & Partners Brighton Office!

So three years on and what have they been up to? Well, let’s start at the beginning….

The office was set up back in 2007 to accommodate the expanding team from London and soak up some of the creative talent down in Brighton. Paul Zara and Lee Davies have been leading the charge ever since.

So, with the early pioneers; Dan Weston, David McDonald, Nathan Zaver and Paul Fender, the team now stands at 20 and appears to be growing on a regular basis! Of course Terence likes to pop down now and again and check that they are all working hard:

 

Despite the fact that it is still a very tough market the Brighton office has managed to keep the creative fun atmosphere (Paul’s jokes aside) and have been commissioned on some great projects from a broad range of clients and sectors. Here are just a few things that have been keeping them busy:

Winning planning consent for 700+ homes at Green Man Lane Estate in West Ealing

Recently submitted planning applications for the greenest office building in Brighton and a prominent residential and hotel development in Weston Super Mare.

They also have a number of exciting projects on their drawing boards including the redevelopment of Walthamstow Stadium project and an apart-hotel and new public square in the centre of Brighton. As well as a having a number of projects on site, including a private residence on the beach in Hove they are also playing an instrumental role in the save the Saltdean Lido campaign.

So in short, the Brighton office is 3 years old and going strong.

More about those projects in the next few weeks…