Ripple Effect

After more than 25 years with Foster + Partners, Brandon Haw has started his own practice as a means of returning to the fundamentals of architecture.

- Sophie Kalkreuth

Art affects our emotions, but architecture has the ability to improve our lives. This is the claim Brandon Haw’s father – himself a minimalist painter and conceptual artist – made when Haw was still a teenager. “He said to me ‘look: you can say I don’t really like that picture or that sculpture, but it’s not the same as being stuck in a hospital bed or a school with no light, no air, and feeling miserable,’ ” recalls Haw, who was born in London but now resides in New York.

His father’s credo proved persuasive. Instead of enrolling in art school, Brandon Haw attended Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning in London, continuing on to Princeton University in the U.S. where he received his Masters Degree in Architecture. After graduating he worked at the offices of Skidmore Owings and Merrill and then joined Norman Foster’s studio, where, over the course of 26 years, he built up the practice from 30 people to nearly 2,000 and oversaw major international projects including the HSBC World Headquarters in London and the Hearst Building in Manhattan.

Around two years ago Haw launched his own New York-based practice, Brandon Haw Architecture (BHA), a move inspired in part by a desire to return to the fundamentals of architecture and the principles that his father emphasised many years ago.

“It was a very serious conversation that I’ve always remembered because it has guided how I treat architecture from a functional point of view, first and foremost,” Haw confides. “I don’t care about style. What architecture really needs to do is create a better physical environment through design.”

FIRST IMPRESSIONS