King's College Chapel, University of Cambridge
Celebrating our 60th anniversary
This year we're celebrating the 60th birthday of our practice which Max founded in his Camden home back in 1966.
Throughout the year, we will be highlighting the people, projects, innovations and collaborations that have been part of our journey, as we reflect on the past 60 years and look to the next 60.
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Building services engineering has come a very long way since our founding in 1966. For one thing, we now have computers rather than drawing boards. We also have carbon modelling, Passivhaus, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), smart buildings, EPD declarations, the UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard and artificial intelligence.
Max founded the practice to pursue a new approach to engineering, driven by his insatiable curiosity about how buildings worked. He applied the fundamental principles of physics and an intuitive understanding of the flows of heat, light and air, and developed approaches for the passive design of buildings that influenced and elegantly complemented the architecture. These principles employed in Max's early and innovative pioneering projects still guide us today.
We have many more recent accomplishments to celebrate, including working on the UK's most celebrated and innovative projects, such as the installation of 438 photovoltaic panels at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, the RIBA National Award-winning National Portrait Gallery, helping breathe new life into the beloved Grade I-listed Rochdale Town Hall, and achieving ultra-low energy demand at the Ravelin Sports Centre, University of Portsmouth.
In sixty years' time, we aspire to still be at the forefront of environmental performance and the design of truly sustainable buildings. Our long-standing design philosophy, ‘Beautiful Engineering’, encapsulates our belief in elegant, sustainable outcomes that are good for humanity and good for the planet.
Throughout this 60th anniversary year, we'll be sharing anecdotes from some of our defining projects, memories from long-standing Partners, and thoughts and ideas for the future of sustainable building design.
To start, you can learn more about the practice's history on our timeline and about Max through the virtual version of the exhibition "Max Fordham: Engineering Ideas, Engineering Change".
