Established in 2000 by Daniel Rosbottom and David Howarth, the work of DRDH covers a breadth of scales, contexts and building types, for public and private sector clients in the UK and overseas. The 11 strong London office is one of the few emerging practices in the UK engaged in large scale public building commissions.
The practice has recently completed a high profile international project for two buildings in Bodo, Norway, a new concert hall & theatre and a city library. These buildings in the Arctic Circle together form one of the largest cultural projects being built in Europe at the moment and we hope its recent opening will cement our emerging international profile.
The concert hall houses 4 scales of performance venues, including a fully adaptable 950 seat concert hall & theatre space which can transform from symphonic hall to fully flown proscenium theatre. Through this state of the art project, we have developed a specialism in the design and delivery of performing arts spaces.
In the UK the practice has just won the competition to remodel and extend the Site Gallery in Sheffield, a leading international contemporary art space, and has established itself within the HE arts sector with the design of a small gallery for London Metropolitan University and a £1.2m redevelopment of the Elaine Thomas Library in Farnham for the University for the Creative Arts. The practice were subsequently commissioned to design a £7m project to extend and remodel the UCA’s Rochester campus to include new public facing facilities including galleries and a multi media project space.
In 2010 the practice received a National RIBA award for The Workshop, a studio office building in Sheffield, and the project was named Building of the Year in the 2011 Sheffield Design Awards. DRDH were a finalist in the National 2012 Architect of the Year Awards and were the subject of an exhibition at the Norwegian National Museum of Art and Architecture in Oslo.
Daniel combines his role in practice with that of Head of School at Kingston University and David is Visiting Professor of Architecture at Northumbria University in Newcastle. David has been a member and chair of Sheffield City Council’s Sustainable Design panel since its inception in 2006 and was chair of the awards panel for the RIBA Yorkshire and Sheffield Civic Trust Design Awards 2012.