The Design Lab is led and chaired by the creative director Tim Evans.

The objective of Design Lab is to research and experiment architectural and design ideas in order to generate innovative and creative solutions. The design review process has been established to ensure that the architectural output of the partnership consistently addresses key issues and develops the full potential of all project opportunities. Design Lab is a physical space, a design collective and a process for ensuring design quality. The Design Lab is used both formally and informally, where projects are reviewed and critiqued, and where debate is encouraged.

The design collective has, at its core, ten design directors, but calls on the skills and talents of over 300 qualified architects, interior designers, urban designers and graphic designers, to develop solutions and raise questions. Our process of enquiry and analysis invariably leads to new and better understandings of technology, function and culture. It is the interpretation of these factors that generates our ideas and leads to original solutions.

We are developing a consistency of approach, integrity of thought and a process which is common to all projects. The Design Lab is an integral part of the practice’s strategy for achieving this. The role of the design directors is to ensure that all projects are subjected to the same rigorous process and that we are all asking the same fundamental questions. How does the design engage with the issue of form, function, sustainability and materiality? Sheppard Robson is a learning and thinking organisation, where we question what we are doing and where we strive to find new and better ways of doing it.

Current areas of enquiry include the first zero carbon office.

An initiative led by Lee Bennett (design director) and Alan Shingler (head of sustainability) has resulted in a radical rethink of the modern office. This is manifested in a unique architectural form which reflects the use of materials with low embodied energy and a passive design ethos.

Developments in computing technology, particularly in terms of complex form derivation and delivery, are being developed by our modelling group. These advancements have been utilised by designer Rodi MacArthur on a project for a car park in Cumbria where parametric modelling and CADCAM scripting have enabled us to create a 250m long façade where each of the 1,636 10m high strips is individually shaped to replicate the Lakeland typography.

For the elevational studies on the Trocadero project Alastair Townend has used similar parametric modelling techniques to achieve fluidity and economy for the façade of this large-scale mixed-use building.

Challenging architectural precepts such as enclosure, containment and the blurring of boundaries between landscape and architecture, have resulted in the development of proposals such as the culture park project  a 2012 Olympic legacy scheme.