Alan Higgs Architects is a full service architectural practice.
Our work encompasses all aspects of building design from pre-purchase and options appraisals, master planning, building design, landscape and interiors and furniture. Over 220 completed commissions in Britain, Australia and Europe include new houses, full-scale reconstructions of buildings, work for schools and arts and religious institutions and commercial fit-outs. Much of our work seeks to ease new life into old buildings - we have worked on over 30 listed buildings - and sustainable building and environment technologies are at the heart of our thinking. At all times we are conscious of our clients’ budgetary and programme concerns and help to plan and progress their projects to conclusion.Our work is characterised by a sense of order and calm, finely composed relationships between spaces and between inside and out, and the capture of as much natural light as possible. Our designs respond with vision to private clients’ books, art and furniture, and form optimal settings for their specific lifestyles and aspirations. Work for arts and education clients, often carried out in phases, embodies the values and missions of the institutions. Our architecture has recognisable and themes and consistent values, but provides individual, fresh and creative solutions whatever the context and brief.
Alan HiggsBArch PhD RIBA
Alan graduated with distinction in architecture from RMIT University in Melbourne Australia in 1987. He is qualified as an architect in Britain and is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. After working for small design focused practices, and a large commercial firm, Alan established Alan Higgs Architects in 1997. Since then, he has been responsible for nearly 270 commissions, at every relevant work stage.
Alan has wide interests in and knowledge of architectural and design history and theory, over many world regions. These include specific interests in the English country house, European and American high modernism and the Australian vernacular and they influence his design work in many ways. He always seeks a sense of calm and order while maximising the attributes of any site or existing building, with the client's aspirations remaining at the heart of the design process. Alan is adept at plotting a course for clients through the complexities of planning, costing and construction and is proud of working for the same families and institutions over multiple projects and many years.
Alan lives and works in a building converted and developed to his own design in central London. He has recently completed a doctorate; its subject being the creative work of Alan Higgs Architects. Its title, "I didn't ask for this - Private practices in the creation of a residential architecture", alludes to the way clients often say their projects have produced results far beyond their initial imaginings.
David Weston-ThomasMA (Cantab) Dip Arch ARB
David studied at Cambridge University, writing dissertations on the work of Le Corbusier and Rem Koolhass. He also won a year's scholarship to Harvard University, working at the Graduate School of Design and subsequently worked in San Francisco and Budapest on a range of building types before returning to the UK and obtaining his professional qualification as an architect in 1996. Working for larger practices, David obtained significant experience of the commercial and public sectors, designing offices, a library, sports facility and multi-unit housing. Presentations to commercial clients, funding partners, and local authorities honed his ability and interest in the communication of design ideas both verbally and on paper.
Since joining AHA in 2003 David has enjoyed focusing on private residential commissions too. He has a passion for spatial clarity and formal rigour achieved with the use of both simple and more refined materials and enjoys finding appropriate and elegant solutions to the particulars of each project and clients' wishes. His design work is complementary to Alan's but by no means identical, as one would expect.
David is an enthusiastic cook, cat owner and football fan. He lives in an apartment of his own design on Shaftesbury Avenue and travels often to Normandy where he is renovating and extending a country house and expansive garden with his husband.