Gaunt Francis

read moreGaunt Francis Architects is a creative commercial design studio that equates business acumen and technical excellence with design creativity. Formed in 1997, the practice has delivered award-winning projects throughout the UK and abroad, from its offices in London and Cardiff. It celebrates collaborative working and has no single designer or design style but rather a collective enterprise that values collective endeavour.

read moreOur people are our principal asset. They are highly skilled, communicative and dedicated. We have a blend of senior and junior people who bring a mixture of experience and fresh thinking to our work. We encourage everyone to contribute.

read moreWe deliver a bespoke service regardless of the scale or complexity of brief. We usually deliver our work through one of three philosophies: Creating Places; Creating Buildings; and Creating Spaces. We have a clear method of approaching masterplanning that has proven to be both successful and stimulating; we call this "Creating Places". This process can be broken down into three distinct stages; Appreciating, Connecting and Designing. We make sure that we understand the context of a project, by analysing, researching and mapping all the available data about a place.

read moreDesign thinking collaboratively always creates a better result, and our offices are laid out to emphasise that. There is no hierarchy in the layout - senior staff occupy the same studio space and benches as junior staff - and design ideas can be freely expressed and challenged. Different sized meeting and discussion zones are important - a creative working environment helps facilitate a creative thinking environment. Freehand drawing is encouraged. There will always be aspects of a project that are better handled on a computer screen and some - technical coordination for instance - which are less flexible or much slower without electronic tools.

read moreWe spend a great deal of time getting to know our clients and their business plan. We like to drill down deep into that plan - get under the skin of our clients - to fully understand their modus operandi, what makes them tick, and how we can best work with them. Some clients have very simple plans which require little in the way of briefing but plenty of site analysis and design inspiration. Others require intensive stakeholder participation, from CEO to junior assistant, and where audit trails and project champions play a key role.