An international architecture practice founded in London in 1959, specialising in shopping, leisure, residential and mixed-use places, including MediaCityUK and Cabot Circus.
Chapman Taylor is an architecture practice that began in the UK in 1959. It designs large mixed-use places that combine shops, leisure, homes, hotels, transport and workplaces. Wikipedia says it has completed over 3,000 projects and won over 300 design awards, including a Queen's Award. Its first project was New Scotland Yard in London, and its UK work includes Victoria Place at Victoria Station, the Trafford Centre in Manchester, Cabot Circus in Bristol, MediaCityUK in Manchester, Liverpool Waters, Drake Circus in Plymouth and the retail areas of Heathrow Terminals 2 and 5 and St Pancras International.
Its founding partners were Bob Chapman, who died in 2017, and Jane Durham, who died in 2019. A 2019 obituary describes Jane Durham as a founding partner, and the practice marked its 60th year in 2019 with a piece on its London origins. We did not find a mission statement, design philosophy or values page in what we read, so we have not invented one. The best sign of its priorities is the range of places it designs: busy public spaces that need to work for large numbers of people.
The practice was founded in London and still lists London as a studio; its contact page for London was among the search results. In the early 1990s it opened its first design studios in mainland Europe, and in the 2010s it expanded across Europe, Asia, Central and South America and Africa, with projects such as Global Harbor in Shanghai, Mall of Qatar and the Almaty Museum of Arts in Kazakhstan (2025). The pages we read do not list its office addresses or staff numbers, so check the company website for the current London location and size.
We found no staff-written material on its culture, and the leadership shown in our sources is only the two founders, both now deceased. What is clear is that it works on projects in many countries at once, so people there collaborate with colleagues and clients across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. We treat any claim about working life as unknown.
Roles in a retail and mixed-use architecture practice include architects and architectural assistants, masterplanners and urban designers, interior designers, visualisation artists, technologists, project managers and business support. If you like shopping centres, city centres, travel hubs or how crowds move through a space, this is the kind of practice that designs them. Current vacancies should be on the practice's website, which we did not read directly.
Website: www.chapmantaylor.com
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