GG: BDP's Founder

2008 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of BDP’s founder.

Professor Sir George Grenfell Baines (known affectionately as GG) set up in practice as an architect in Preston (UK) in 1937.

Four years later he teamed up with two other Preston practices and the Grenfell-Baines Group was born. Expansion in various locations in the UK continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s. In 1951 Grenfell Baines was the only northern architect appointed to design a building for the Festival of Britain in London.

In 1961 Building Design Partnership, as it was then, was launched as a interdisciplinary practice. On the occasion of his retirement in 1974, the advice of Professor Sir George Grenfell Baines was to “keep going, getting better”. 

Since then the practice has grown to its current position of over 1200 people in 11 locations throughout the UK and Ireland and associations in France via architect practice Groupe 6.

BDP has evolved from an original concept largely inspired by one man’s vision and shared by a closely-knit group of colleagues who were committed to the same idea.

BDP’s policy today remains firmly based on a strongly held and convincing philosophy established in teamwork. It was the same interdisciplinary approach that was at the root of the original partnership that grew out of George Grenfell Baines’ broad-minded conviction.