Hopkins Architects is an architectural firm founded by Michael and Patty Hopkins in 1976. It trails projects respectfully and designs architecture that sits to be environmentally and socially harmonious. It adapts to the changes in the world and constantly reviews and develops their craft. They do a variety of projects from houses, healthcare, research, and designing whilst preserving historical buildings.
Below is the list of 15 Projects by Hopkins Architects:
1. Brent Civic Centre
Brent Civic Centre located in London, the United Kingdom by Hopkins Architects serves to be a one-stop hub for the community. Residents can meet, shop, and eat. Accommodating Brent’s civic, public, and working functions under one roof, Brent Civic Centre holds up to 2000 staff.
With its naturally lit foyer and atrium and the circular Dum clad in timber, Brent Civic has emerged to be the first project to be rewarded the coveted BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ rating, the highest possible to have achieved in this. This means to say that the existence of this building reduces 33% in carbon emissions, all of which made possible with the use of solar shading, natural ventilation, high-performance façade, and combined cooling, heating and power that utilises waste fish oil.
2. Evelina London Children’s Hospital
The hospital was Hopkins Architects’ first healthcare project. It prides itself to be a joyful, sunny, and colourful ambient building that was strategically planned and made adaptable for the future. Hopkin Architects took Evelina London Children’s Hospital starting with the typical layout of hospitals. They designed a simple two-part long block that flanks the central concourse that rises till the overall height of the building.
The lower levels share spaces for the Intensive Care Unit, 3 operating theatres, imaging equipment and the outpatient departments whereas the upper floors hold the wards that overlook a commodious conservatory under the building’s curved glazed roof.
3. Harvard University: Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Campus Center
This project is of a wider ongoing University ‘Common Spaces’ initiative designed to ensure that the physical spaces promote “Harvard’s intellectual, cultural and social experience and support the wider community”. It is a re-appraisal of Josep Luis Sert design of the 10-storey building in the 1950s.
The campus Hopkins Architects redesigned the first, second and tenth floors through the reinterpretation of Sert’s design. Add-ons and extractions from the existing design were made by Hopkins to form a more defined building of captured internal and external landscape.
4. London 2012 Velodrome
The concept of London 2012 Velodrome came from the form and ergonomic shape of a bicycle. The velodrome prides itself to be the manifestation of the building version of a bicycle however not in the way that it is mimicking a bicycle but more so as a 3D response to the requirements of the project.
The overall form and every aspect of the building have come to be of great performance and efficiency. It uses simple materials and consists of 6,000 seats in both Olympic and Legacy modes. Hopkins Architects have marvellously achieved or even exceeded the sustainable and material targets that were put in place by the Olympic Delivery Authority.
5. Portcullis House
Accommodating 201 MPs around a central courtyard and a project that was precisely coordinated with Westminster Underground Station, Portcullis House by Hopkins Architects clinched the height available BREEAM Excellent rating in 2000. Portcullis House features 6 massive columns tied by a transfer structure of concrete arches which supports the inner walls of the courtyard.
As elaborated by Hopkins Architects, “Gullwing precast concrete floor units span onto perimeter walls composed of sandstone piers. Welded box girders, doubling as air ducts, form spider-like roof frames on top of the piers. The chimneys are the terminals of a sophisticated, energy-efficient ventilation system”.
6. Westminster Underground Station
With the arrival of the Jubilee Line extension and the built-up of Portcullis House, comes the Westminster Underground Station. As the old Westminster Underground Station served the shallow District and Circle London Underground lines which cut across the site at a 45-degree angle. This pushed Hopkins Architects to strategically design how the station is being laid out.
Walls, escalators, and ticket barriers were all then placed along the diagonal grid of the railway or the orthogonal grid of the building above. The station holds strong Piranesian effects with the exposed rough concrete of the box wall, framed by a huge diagrid of beams and buttresses that acts as the feet of Portcullis House.
7. WWF-UK’s Living Planet Centre
The WWF-UK’s Living Planet Centre project came with preserving the existing public carpark at the ground level. With that in mind, Hopkins Architects designed the building to sit on a raised in-situ concrete podium surrounded with softscapes of many kinds. There is a bridge that connects the town centre and public piazza at podium level through an internal public exhibition space.
The building features an 80m long curved timber gridshell spans 37.5m which provides flexibility for WWF. Similarly, to most of their other projects, this project emerged with a BREEAM Outstanding rating.
8. Yale University: Kroon Hall, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Pushing to be the new main focus of Yale University, Kroon Hall holds a strong architectural image for the faculty. It emerged to be the centre for the study of sustainability and achieved LEED Platinum by the US Green Building Council.
Being a collaborative project, Hopkins Architects worked with Centerbrook Architects and successfully designed a four-storey rectangular form building with a steeply pitched roof. The whole project used a mixture of natural and modern materials such as stone, timber, concrete, steel, and glass.
9. Manchester Art Gallery
Hopkins Architects was tasked to infill the final quarter of the site having the City Art Gallery and Athenaeum by Sir Charles Barry. It acts as a merger of the new and old buildings whilst allowing them to preserve their own personal identity.
Keeping the Ionic portico of the old gallery, Manchester Art Gallery fits well within its context. Exposed pre-cast concrete frame accentuates the volumes of the interior galleries were designed with the intent of seamlessly complementing the stonework on the Athenaeum.
10. Dynamic Earth
Dynamic Earth is located at the exact spot where the father of modern geology, James Hutton lived and worked in the 1970s. This made the site a perfect place to include interactive, virtual and widescreen film technologies exhibitions that reflect Earth’s evolution from the Bing Bang to the future. It holds to be an architectural form that pushes visitors to understand the relationship between nature and artifice.
11. Schlumberger Research Centre
A research centre project, Hopkins Architects successfully created a building that sits well between form and function. This practical building appears romantically on the skyline with the use of Teflon coated glass fibre that is uninsulated and transmits 13% daylight. The building is held in place with a cat’s cradle of cables that transfer the weight of the Teflon to the ground 4 structures.
12. Jebel Buhais Geology Museum
Jebel Buhais Geology sits on an exceptional prehistoric and geological significant area of the UAE. The site consists of a myriad of marine fossils dated from over 65 million years ago. The form took inspiration from fossilised urchins.
Considering how the site is preserved and of high importance, pods were made as prefabricated concrete structures that were lightly placed to the in-situ reinforced concrete foundation discs on site.
Both the interior and exterior were carefully designed for a seamless fit and to control the amount of natural light that enters the space due to the brightness of the desert sun.
13. Norwich Cathedral Hostry
Norwich Cathedral Hostry is built upon the original pilgrim’s guest house. It complements the Refectory and serves to be a re-image of the medieval cloister. Besides hosting the exhibition spaces and a teaching room, it too holds the Cathedral’s Song School and rehearsal spaces.
Hopkins Architects approached this project respecting the medieval fabric and building 2 new buildings that follow closely to what the location, function and form of the site represent. To Hopkins Architects, “A bold modern architecture has emerged from the most sympathetic attitude to building these structures in such an intimate relationship with the historic ones”.
14. Bracken House
The structure of the Bracken House is shown off to the public. The central space has load-bearing metal and glass facades. It features frameless windows that are held together by stone piers with tri-partite bronze castings on it that holds the gunmetal structural bays.
Hopkins Architects also pushed their design to create the essence of classical palazzo design which makes Bracken House a contemporary financial institution.
15. Hopkins House
Hopkins House houses Hopkin Architect’s Founding Partners that act as a house and a studio. From its front, the house presents itself as a one-storey building but in reality, the building sits 2.5m below the road. The design of the Hopkins House is grid-like with its structural steel following 2m by 4m. The side walls are insulated metal decking sandwich whereas the front and back walls are floor to ceiling sliding glass doors that have no vertical frames.
The interior spaces are open and adaptable with Venetian blinds that hang between internal columns to demarcate different spaces within the house with the floors connected by one spiral staircase. Hopkins house by Hopkins Architects serves to be evidence that a basic strategy and cost restraint project can stand to be an architecture of beauty and refinement.
