2016 highlights: Another successful year for the Chapman Taylor Team

We are pleased to report that once again, Chapman Taylor has had another successful year.  Our 2016 highlights include:

Key project wins

We have won a number of prestigious design commissions in Azerbaijan, China, Dubai, Spain, Russia, Thailand and in Turkey; amongst many other parts of the world.  In Germany, we were unanimously chosen by a design jury in a prestigious international urban design competition to create a new retail-led town quarter within the medieval town centre of Aachen. In the UK, we have continued to deliver the two largest retail-led regeneration projects in the country at Westgate Oxford and at The Lexicon in Bracknell. 

We have also successfully completed a number of prestigious projects. These include the 500,000 m2 Jiangnan Global Harbor in Changzhou which opened in September.  Just 'soft' opened is the highly anticipated Mall of Qatar, also a 500,000 m2 shopping centre that provides visitors with over 500 stores, 100 restaurants, and a Cinemacity complex consisting of 19 screens. The opening of Mall of Qatar, and of Jiangnan Global Harbour, mean that Chapman Taylor has successfully completed two of the largest retail/leisure projects in the world in 2016. 

Awards Won

We won fourteen leading industry awards to add to our list of over 200+ awards globally. These included being named ‘Designer of the Year’ by leading industry publication Retail and Leisure International (RLI) which was a fantastic accolade.  Whilst it is reassuring for our clients to know they are working with the best, it is extremely rewarding for our employees to know that their work is recognised as best in class on a world stage.      

Team

We continue to strengthen our team and we have an ongoing retention and recruitment process to attract and retain the best people in our industry.  As part of these initiatives in 2016  four new Associate Directors have been recruited to help support our Directors both in the UK and Internationally.  In addition, internally we have promoted a number of employees to senior positions including to our UK management board.

Expanding our portfolio of international work

We already operate across diverse international geographies, but we are always on the lookout for new markets.  We have started to pick up a number of projects in Myanmar, formerly Burma, which as a market is set to attract a lot of inward investment over the next decade. 

We are setting up a new company in Dubai as part of our growth into the Middle East region.  This will allow us to provide a strong presence in the region which is still growing economically.

Research and development

At Chapman Taylor we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of the latest technology developments.  This is why we are always investigating and innovating in the latest design and construction techniques.   We are industry leading experts in Building Information Modelling (BIM) - information-rich, virtual 3D modelling of proposed buildings.  We also continue to publish research and speak at leading conferences on ‘offsite’ construction methods in the residential market.

Looking to the year ahead

We are currently designing a number of diverse projects across the world from Global 100 (a major new Chinese theme park on Hainan Island) to Plaza Rio 2 (which will be Madrid’s largest shopping centre) through to helping IKEA expand its presence in Asia.

In the UK, we have picked up further largescale design and masterplanning commissions at MediaCityUK in Salford, Princesshay Leisure in Exeter, the extension to Ashford Designer Outlet in Kent and we have also just been appointed to redesign Gatwick Airport’s North Terminal Departure Lounge.  Our projects at Westgate Oxford, Bracknell regeneration and Brent Cross are progressing well and our London office is also driving some big international projects in Tallinn, Moscow, Istanbul and Baku.

For all these reasons 2017 looks to be another promising year for the global Chapman Taylor team.