Despite slipping one place down the rankings after its architect numbers fell by three in the UK, EPR has enjoyed a strong performance in 2018. Total architectural fees, including income from its office in Poland, rose 23 per cent year on year from £14.7 million to £18. 1 million.
Part of that increase was down to big projects going on site, including the Old War Office scheme to transform a Grade II*-listed former government building in Whitehall into a five-star hotel and apartments.
EPR managing director Chris Castle says the practice – boosted by winning last year’s AJ100 Clients’ Choice Award – also increased the amount of work it gets from new clients by 5-10 per cent in 2018.
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‘Traditionally, we’ve won most of our work through existing contacts so it’s interesting that we’re starting to get calls from people who we’re not familiar with,’ he says.
As well as its three main sectors of residential, hotels and offices, EPR is also doing a lot of masterplanning and urban regeneration work. Significant projects completed last year include the first phase of its mixed-use masterplan for the redevelopment of the Young’s Brewery site in Wandsworth town centre, south-west London, into the Ram Quarter.
Being a practice ‘with a very long track record and a reputation as a very safe pair of hands’ has, Castle believes, been beneficial during a time of unprecedented uncertainty. The practice is not experiencing a slowdown, he says, and it has a ‘very good’ pipeline of work. ‘Despite everything, we remain reasonably optimistic about the next year.’
