Sam Vijatov: Congratulations on winning Architectural Practice of the Year. How would you describe your style and philosophy as an architect practice?
Paul Mathews: We started in 1997, so about 28 years ago now. We set out originally to do a mix of healthcare and other stuff, but over the years as we’ve developed and the practice has grown and our depth of experience has grown, we’ve become specialists in the [healthcare] area. Health is our passion – we do everything from acute hospitals through to [projects] in the community and all sorts of stuff in between. So, it’s what we do. It’s our bread and butter. We’re extremely good at it. Our philosophy is always to try and build something better to help people. You’re going to hospital because there’s something [wrong] with you, so it’s about trying to create a better space for those moments.
Could you take me through a recent project that captures what Murphy Philipps is all about?
PM: At the IHEEM Awards we [also] won an award for Hellesdon Rivers Centre,1 so that’s something we’ve done recently; it’s fairly typical of the mental health work we do. We’ve done a couple of mental health projects this year. That one involved a lot of service user engagement, and I think that is absolutely key to delivering a good healthcare project. Your end users are the people that are going to experience that space and you have to understand – whether it’s staff or whether it’s patients or whether it’s carers – how they’re going to use that space. That’s a key part of what we do. So, at Hellesdon we engaged not only with the staff on the wards, but with those people that were already using the facilities – a very outdated institutional space – to understand what the problems were with that, and then tried to address those in the new design. Similarly, another very high-profile project that we’ve done this year is for The Samaritans in Central London. I wouldn’t say that’s a typical project for us because it’s not a pure healthcare scheme and it doesn’t have any clinical space in it, but it very much fits our brief. Again we consulted with the volunteers, found out the types of spaces and the types of issues that they were dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and brought those into the design. So, in summary, it’s about the user engagement – it’s about encapsulating that within our schemes.
Take, for example, the Samaritans project. What were some of the key challenges you encountered on that?
PM: One of the key [challenges] on Samaritans was the budget. It’s a third sector scheme – all of the money was charitable funds so you have to be sure that every penny of what you’re spending is actually going into something meaningful. In the call centre, which is one of the key spaces in that building, generally they’re in a very stressful situation – they’re taking a call from someone who’s distressed and they need to be able to get them into a space where they can try and calm them down, so, the quietness of that space is really important, the acoustics of that space is really important, and the calmness of that space is really important, and you need to be able to bring that out in the design.
But on the other side of that, you need to think that these are volunteers and once they’ve dealt with somebody like this, they need a little bit of decompression time. So, it’s also about having some breakout areas and some rest and relaxation spaces where the volunteers can just go and take a break and get ready for the next time.
With regards to sustainability, how would you say that fits into your design process and your day-to-day decision making?
PM: For a practice, there’s two elements to that. There’s obviously the sustainability of the designs that we do, and there’s sustainability in the office and our own impact in terms of what we’re doing day-to-day.
So within a building, it’s very much about the energy use, the materials we’re using, thinking about the carbon footprint of that. So that’s the design element – which I would say most architects do.
Within the office, it’s very much about looking at ourselves, making sure that we’re not travelling more than we need to and just being much more aware of what we’re doing. And probably a good example of that is that we had a fun thing in the summer where we got all the staff to bring in a meal and somebody in the office made a very simple app that was able to calculate the carbon footprint of everybody’s lunch.
What is the atmosphere like in your practice?
PM: I think we have a really nice atmosphere, and I know it’s a cliche to say that it’s all about the people, but it is so much all about the people. And I think we do foster a really good culture and a really good environment where, if we provide the training, the mentorship, and a knowledgeable environment, that translates into what we’re then delivering into the buildings. The culture is very high on our agenda
What’s the plan for the next, say, five years?
PM: I think the plan is always to try and deliver the best healthcare buildings we can, the best possible health spaces that we can, and whatever size and scale they are, as long as they’re making something better for people in a moment of their need, then that’s the important thing. It’s not about scale. It could be the biggest, it could be the smallest. We’ve completed our biggest project ever this year, but we’ve also done one of our smallest projects this year.
How do you measure success on a project personally?
PM: Well, awards are good! But actually, the biggest satisfaction is when you get testimonials from building users and from the people that, sometimes many years before, gave you the brief, and when the building is done and they’re using it, they’re happy with it and it’s exceeded all their expectations – that’s a real measure of success. And I think, as architects, that’s kind of what we live for.
With new technologies and innovation, how are they are changing the way you work?
PM: Well, you’re probably expecting me to talk about AI. We are sort of dipping our toes in the water. There’s a couple of areas that I can see it’s going to start to come into our workflows. Obviously, the written side of things – we’re exploring how it can assist. And then the other side is what I call crude ideation, where we’re using [AI] to create images a little bit quicker just to imagine a space. And then there are some of those mundane processes as well – things like minute writing. To get to a process where that works better and takes some time out of the system is, I think, inevitably going to be the way it’s going to go, certainly in the medium term.
What’s next for Murphy Philipps?
PM: Well, what’s interesting about being an architect is that you never know what’s around the corner. You’re only as good as your last project! At the end of the day, we primarily just want to continue to deliver excellent buildings and to push innovation on the health sector side.
Lovely to talk to you. Thank you.
Reference
1 The 2025 IHEEM Healthcare Estates New Build Project of the Year award was won by the project team behind the Hellesdon Rivers Centre, with the entry having been submitted by Murphy Philipps Architects on behalf of Castons, Ingleton Wood, Integrated Health Projects (IHP) – the joint venture between VINCI Building and Sir Robert McAlpine, Hospital Rooms, JP Chick and Partners, Murphy Philipps, Relabond and Sheils Flynn. The client was Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust.