A Bath-founded architecture practice, now with studios in Bath, London and Manchester, known for sustainable design, housing and arts and education buildings.
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, often shortened to FCBStudios, is a British architecture practice. It was founded in 1978 as Feilden Clegg Design in small premises in Bath by Richard Feilden and Peter Clegg. Over the decades it grew to more than 100 staff and a large group of partners, and it now works across housing, education, arts and culture, workplaces and urban design. Notable projects include Accordia in Cambridge, Manchester School of Art, the University of Warwick's Faculty of Arts, the Hayward Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Hall refurbishment at the Southbank Centre, and the Hive in Worcester.
The practice has long been known for sustainable design, starting with low-energy housing in its early years. Its current areas of expertise include heritage, retrofit (improving existing buildings so they use less energy) and low-carbon architecture. Co-founder Peter Clegg helped to launch Architects Declare in 2019, a group of practices that commit to responding to the climate and biodiversity emergencies. We could not read a formal mission statement from the practice's own site, so this is a description of what it does rather than a quote.
FCBStudios has studios in Bath, London and Manchester. Its work covers many British places: Cambridge, Leeds, Worcester, Plymouth, Birmingham, Wakefield and Manchester all feature in its list of buildings. In Manchester it has taken on urban design such as Circle Square, and in Leeds it has worked on Southbank and the Broadcasting Tower housing scheme. The Bath roots are still part of the identity, and in the city the late founder Richard Feilden is remembered through the Richard Feilden Foundation, set up in 2005 to support sustainable architecture and education projects in Africa.
On people and culture, staff describing the practice as it grew called its way of working "unusually democratic", according to the source we read, which is a view from inside rather than something we have checked. The practice has 23 partners listed, which suggests leadership is shared among many people rather than held by one or two. Its record is also a sign of the quality it aims for. Accordia won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2008, the first housing development to do so, and the practice has won 37 RIBA Awards in total. Peter Clegg was appointed OBE for services to architecture in the 2025 New Year Honours.
Practices of this kind employ architects and architectural assistants, urban designers, interior and landscape designers, sustainability specialists and technologists, as well as people in finance, communications, administration and IT. If you are curious about how buildings can use less energy, how homes make neighbourhoods feel better, or how old buildings can be given new lives, the work FCBStudios publishes is a good place to start looking. Current openings are shown on the practice's own website.
Website: www.fcbstudios.com
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