Practice behind Southwark tube station wound up after 51 years
MJP Architects has been placed into liquidation following a string of stalled projects in the autumn.
The award-winning practice which designed Southwark station on the Jubilee Line extension and the Wellcome Wing of the Natural History Museum closed at the beginning of December, liquidator Karyn Jones said.
Founded in 1972 by Richard MacCormac with Peter Jamieson and David Prichard, it worked in a range of sectors with other projects including the British Embassy in Thailand and a Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre in Cheltenham.
The Spitalfields-based practice also worked on a £470m extension to the BBC’s Broadcasting House but was notoriously sacked from the project in 2005 when MacCormac refused to agree to cost-related revisions. The fallout resulted in the loss of three directors and a third of the firm’s technical staff. The project was eventually finished by Sheppard Robson in 2011.
MacCormac, a former RIBA president, died in 2014 after a long illness. He was best known for his work at Oxbridge colleges, including Burrell’s Fields at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Sainsbury building at Worcester College, Oxford.
Jones said the practice had struggled to recover from the covid pandemic. “After a long and distinguished architectural journey, MJP Architects closed at the beginning of December 2022,” she said.
“The company was severely impacted by Covid, a slower than anticipated recovery afterwards, in conjunction with construction cost inflation.
“These factors adversely affected many projects over the last two years. After several projects stalled in the autumn, the directors regrettably reached the decision to close the business.
Jones said nine people were made redundant when the practice went into liquidation.
It has been owned by an employee benefit trust since 2007 and changed its name to MJP from MacCormac Jamieson Prichard the following year.
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