Teaching provides us with a forum in which to exchange and develop ideas about architecture with students and colleagues, and to test ideas and speculate through design research. The critical position of our practice has been formed through teaching, and our attitude to teaching has in turn been shaped by our experience in practice.

Kingston School of Art in London is a rare school of architecture made up of critically engaged architects at various stages of their careers who are passionate about buildings. Projects by these architects, and the questions they set their students, are plausible, responsive, considerate and culturally situated. It is in such a place that in 2011 we were able to establish the first professionally accredited studio to teach the classical language of architecture in a UK school of architecture for over 80 years.

In 2022 we were awarded the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art’s Arthur Ross Award for Education at the University Club of New York City. Established in 1982, the education award is not given every year and we were only the 11th recipients in 30 years. Past winners include Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Robert A. M. Stern. In 2021 we were awarded the RIBA Traditional Architecture Group’s Achievement Award in recognition of our 10 years of teaching classical architecture.

Fragment model based on the drawing of the Tomb of Cecilia Metella, Appian Way, Rome 1826, by Michail Sarafidis. Photo Guus Kaandorp
Gainsborough House gallery annexe, first floor plan, Peter Folland 2016

We currently lead MArch Unit 6 at Kingston School of Art, which enjoys an international profile for its teaching of contemporary classical architecture; work by our students has been published and exhibited in the UK, Europe and USA. Graduates of our studio have gone on to work for traditional practices in the UK and USA, as well as conservation offices and more mainstream contemporary practices.

Since 2022 we have been Visiting Scholars at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. We have established a partnership between CUA and Kingston and in 2023 ran the inaugural London Summer Studio for American students in London. From 2017-2019 we taught on the INTBAU Ax:son Johnson Engelsberg Summer School in Classical Architecture in Sweden, and in 2021 we were William H. Harrison Visiting Critics at the University of Miami, USA.

Livery hall vestibule, Mungo Adam-Smith, 2023
Livery Hall, Lauren Drummond, 2022

We have been guest design critics at Yale University (USA), University of Notre Dame (USA), University of Miami (USA), TU Munich (Germany), ETH Zürich (Switzerland), Cambridge University (UK), London Metropolitan University and Edinburgh College of Art. For 10 years Timothy was director of first the BA and then the MArch Architecture courses at Kingston School of Art, and he sits on the Education Committee of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

“above all, we must thank our students for placing their trust in us and joining us in an endeavour which in 2012 seemed quixotic and in 2022 is still a very brave thing to do!”
Jonathan Taylor, Arthur Ross Award acceptance speech, 2022

Gainsborough House gallery annexe, entrance detail, Peter Folland 2016
Study of St Mary Woolnoth church, Michael Mee, 2020