Proctor and Matthews will be working with Skanska Residential, the UK's new Scandinavian contemporary home builder. This follows an innovative competition to find partner architects to work with Skanska Residential on its future developments.
The competition was born out of the desire by Skanska Residential to focus on customer benefits and delivering quality products when designing its new houses. Proctor and Matthews join five other practices on a panel of firms which Skanska will be working with on future house building projects.
The first phase of the competition attracted submissions from over 30 practices and judged the firms' compatibility with Skanska Residential. Five questions were asked to elicit values and company culture. All submissions were asked to be anonymous, designed to eliminate potential bias from Skanska.
A second round featuring six of the initial applicants took place over several weeks and involved the firms collaborating with each other to develop a proposal and then role playing for Skanska to understand how the different architects interact with customers.
Jamie Wilding, development manager of Skanska Residential, said: "We wanted the architects to be creative and to show us what they stood for. Most of the architects liked the unexpected and creative approach to the competition. The six successful firms really listened to the customers and tailored their presentations to them. The whole idea is to design new homes for real people."
Magnus Andersson, president of Skanska Residential UK, said: "We think it's important to listen first and find out what people need from a new home. We need to focus on better quality products, green solutions and to be recognised as a design focussed developer. This is what the competition was all about, finding architects who had a similar ethos to us on customer benefits and who we could work with to deliver our vision."
Stephen Proctor commented: "This is an extremely significant development for our practice, and we're delighted to have been chosen by Skanska to work with them on their first venture into residential development in the UK. We're particularly thrilled to have come through a very thorough competition process where we were up against some very big names."
