"By helping community groups to get organised and establish themselves as a team, we are enabling people who have never been involved in the design process before to set about realising physical projects with an emphasis on design."
About us
Ambitious about community design
Unlike most young practices, we deliberately avoid private house extensions, and instead choose the community and voluntary sector to practice a consistent approach to designing buildings and open spaces.
Dan Jones and Andrew Siddall are founding Directors of civic Architects Ltd – a process based architecture practice concerned with demand-led design projects and the advocacy of user engagement with architecture.
civic was formally established in 2005, with a strong background in collaborative working between disciplines and an ethos of strengthening links between lay stakeholders and the built environment.
As well as providing what are considered to be traditional Architect's services, we provide technical training, impartial design advice, study tours and project support to community sector clients at each stage of the design process. In particular we enable the early engagement of the end-user in all design projects whether publicly or privately procured.
civic have been one of the key contributors in the development of the British Council for School Environments (the BCSE – formerly SchoolWorks) and is actively delivering design training and brief writing for new schools under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.
civic is a CABE enabler delivering CABE's 'Support for School Grounds' initiative. This programme is investigating the role of landscape design in the development of new schools in later BSF waves across England.
Our work has been used as a design exemplar to illustrate CABE’s recent publication "It's Our Space": a guide for community groups working to improve public space.
civic was co-illustrator and author of the A-Z sketchbook of School Design and Build which sets out a comprehensive, user-friendly briefing document for anybody involved in designing school environments.
civic have been one of the key contributors in the development of The Glass-House community led design, and is still actively providing design advice, training and project support on behalf of The Glass-House to support and encourage better working partnerships between community clients and professionals working in all 3 sectors.