Alex Abbey
Partner
Alex has over twenty years’ design experience, the majority spent at Cullinan Studio. He has had the rare privilege to work with amazing colleagues, clients and collaborators to produce pioneering projects for unique places in the world. His major concern is to ensure we develop sustainably and endeavour to repair the damage of pollution and environmental degradation.
He grew up in a house surrounded by broadleaf woodland and as a result, has an affinity with trees and the use of timber to create calming, healthy spaces for us to live and work in. This has manifested in becoming chair of the TRADA advisory board.
Alex loves playing with his two wonderful children, cooking and eating with friends and family, singing with his friends in a local community choir and walking, climbing or skiing in the mountains (where it is possible to indulge in all of these interests!).
Project Experience
Exploring and explaining the world of plants
The John Hope Gateway integrates into the special and sensitive landscape of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. A confluence of paths gather below a floating horizontal roof; providing deep overhangs to shelter entrances and define the building’s presence in the Garden. Supported by a diagrid of timber beams on slender steel columns, a series of coffered bays define spaces beneath, evoking a tree canopy.
Prescribing a dose of nature for the Natural Health Service
The new Springfield Park and Community Cluster buildings for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool stand as an innovative, joined-up approach to the treatment of physical and mental health for children and young adults centred on contact to nature. Bringing together several clinical services, currently scattered across the hospital site and the city, it will form a crucible for mental healthcare excellence within a park – the first of its kind in Europe.
Hot Water from Waste Heat; a new civic industrial architecture
The Bunhill 2 Energy Centre, Islington – the first of its kind in the world – captures waste heat from the London Underground to provide heating and hot water to more than 550 homes, a school, and cooling for the Tube system. It provides a revolutionary blueprint for decarbonising heat, reducing heating bills and carbon emissions, while improving air quality and making cities more self-sufficient in energy.