A Glasgow-founded home architecture business, started in 2019, that offers homeowners architects, design and building help in one place from studios across the UK.
HOKO is an architecture business that focuses on homes. Its founder, Danny Campbell, started it in Glasgow in 2019 with the idea that getting an extension or a remodel designed is slow and confusing for homeowners. HOKO offers a one-stop service: an architect, virtual reality walkthroughs of the design, interior design, and help finding builders and suppliers. Its later services, called HOKO Build and HOKO Shop, aim to let a client handle the whole project in one place. The company says it has completed more than 1,000 projects since 2019. In 2024 it also announced software tools for faster visualisation, cost reporting and checking designs against regulations.
Mr Campbell, a Scottish architect who also appears as a judge on BBC Scotland's Home of the Year, says the aim is to fix an industry he calls "broken". The company describes its mission as giving homeowners "the perfect home remodelling experience" and, in its own words, becoming the first household name in architecture. It has described itself as an "Uber for architecture", meaning that homeowners can book an architect as easily as they might a taxi. That is the company's marketing language and its ambitions are claims, not results.
HOKO is headquartered in Glasgow. A 2021 report listed studios in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Inverness, Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham and two in London, with plans for more across the UK and a launch in Dublin. An earlier opening in Inverness serves clients from the Highlands and islands to Perth, Aberdeen and Wick. Because those studio lists date from 2021, check which are still open. At that time, ten project architects worked across the UK and the team had grown to about 30 people, which shows it was a small business still growing.
On culture, the company's description is shaped around its business model. A 2021 report says project architects are paid a salary plus 30% commission on every invoice and can join an employee share scheme after six months, and a studio manager called it a great place to work. In 2024 it brought in outside advisers, Andrew Dobbie to lead branding and Amir Hossein Noori to oversee software development. These are claims from press coverage, not independent views of the working environment.
The jobs at HOKO include project architects who run a studio and work directly with homeowners, architectural assistants and technologists who prepare drawings, interior designers, software and product staff for its visualisation tools, and marketing, customer service and finance staff. For students interested in architecture who like talking to people about their own homes, a business like this gives early client contact that some larger practices do not. See the company's website for current roles.
Website: www.hoko.design
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