Building Design Partnership


Building Design Partnership Ltd, doing business as BDP, is a firm of architects and engineers employing over 900 staff in the United Kingdom and internationally.

History

BDP was founded in 1961 by George Grenfell-Baines with architects Bill White and John Wilkinson, quantity surveyor Arnold Towler and eight associate partners. The associates were made full equity partners in 1964. Grenfell-Baines was the first chairman.
BDP was the end result of a series of experiments in profit sharing and multidisciplinary working begun by Grenfell-Baines in 1941 with the Grenfell Baines Group. A 1962 policy statement committed BDP to “the principle of equal status for all professions”. The firm expanded rapidly over the following decades and had 30 partners and 700 staff by the time of Grenfell-Baines’s retirement in 1974. The firm has been associated with a variety of large public and private projects, such as the controversial Preston bus station that was designed by BDP's Keith Ingham and Charles Wilson, and retail projects such as the Liverpool One complex.
BDP’s principal offices, inherited from Grenfell Baines & Hargreaves, were in London, Manchester and Preston. By 1970, there were branch offices in Belfast, Glasgow and Guildford plus international offices in Memphis, Rome and Johannesburg.
As of 2016 BDP was reported to be the UK's second largest architecture firm, with 950 employees. In March 2016, the Japanese engineering firm Nippon Koei bought all of the stock of BDP for a total sale price of £102.2 million.
In 2017, BDP was appointed architect for the refurbishment project for the Palace of Westminster.
In 2018, BDP won the Carbuncle Cup award for worst new building of the year for their development of Redrock in Stockport, United Kingdom.
In June 2020, BDP announced plans to make up to 70 UK staff redundant, blaming uncertainty arising from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit.

Selected Projects

People who have worked for BDP