Honeycomb

Clive Wilkinson Architects is a workshop for environmental design ideas, a concept driven studio for converting client needs and desires into extraordinary solutions. Established by Clive Wilkinson in 1991, the practice grew rapidly when international advertising agency TBWA/Chiat/Day and Twentieth Century Fox both commissioned the firm to design major workplace and film studio projects in 1997. TBWA/Chiat/Day’s 120,000 SF “advertising city” HQ won ten design awards and attracted international media attention, while the 100,000 SF Fox Digital Effects Studio project was featured as the CTU HQ in the successful television series ‘24’. Since that time, CWA has attracted many Fortune 500 clients in both American and Europe with their focus on the integration of business and creativity. The firm has completed over a million square feet of creative workplace and educational projects, including HQ offices for Foote Cone & Belding (100,000SF), an urban regeneration project for Max Maier, in Ludwigsburg, Germany; the headquarters of Pallotta TeamWorks, the largest independent charity fund raiser in the USA (47,000 SF); the New York headquarters of ad agency J. Walter Thompson (250,000 SF), and several projects for the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, including the Orange County campus (53,000 SF), the LA campus renovation and a new mixed-use tower building in downtown LA (240,000 SF). One of its largest successes was winning the invited competition to design the Masterplan for Google’s campus in Silicon Valley, and building out a 200,000 SF building for their software engineers in a record 10 months. The firm’s design leadership is provided by Clive Wilkinson AIA RIBA and Vice President/Design Director, Ian Macduff, whose background includes leadership roles with global architectural firms in London and Hong Kong; Vice President/Projects Director, Alexis Rappaport, who has overseen several of the firm’s award winning projects; and Director of Technology/Projects Director, John Meachem. The firm’s 22 person professional staff originates from a wide diversity of places, and together they bring an international perspective on the work development. CWA has won over 30 major design awards in the last ten years, attracting considerable media attention in over 30 countries. In 2005, Clive Wilkinson was elected a Board Director of the American Institute of Architects/Los Angeles, and was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. The firm’s range of work includes urban design, creative workplace design, educational, residential and retail projects. CWA’s particular strength is in conceptual work, strategy and ideation, which range from strategies for global office roll-outs, to conceiving space design in aircraft for zero gravity flights. The firm places a great emphasis on forging team relationships and close collaboration with their clients. They believe in an exhaustive assimilation of client needs and contextual location as the basis for successful work, and that content is the basis of style, or as Jean Luc Goddard said, ‘style is the outside of content’