Architect Keith Priest announces retirement

Fletcher Priest Architects founder Keith Priest has announced his retirement after a career spanning half a century.

Priest, who is founding partner at the firm he helped set up in 1978 and turned 73 last month, said it “feels like the right time” to step down. Filings made at Companies House show that he stepped down as a designated member of the LLP at the end of last month.

The practice employs more than 120 people at its Fitzrovia Studios headquarters in London and also has bases in Cologne, Germany, and Latvian capital Riga.

Its recent major projects include 55 Gracechurch Street and One Exchange Square, both in the City of London, the Brunel Building in Westminster and Oxford North in Oxford.

The practice said Priest’s retirement had been “several years in planning” and it would continue to be led by a long-established partnership group who will build on the firm’s portfolio.

“From inception, the practice has been designed to nurture and grow its leadership from within with continual positive transformation an objective - this is part of that process,” the firm said.

Priest, a graduate of the AA School of Architecture, worked at Denys Lasdun and was a design director at Wolff Olins before founding Fletcher Priest more than 40 years ago with Michael Fletcher, now 78, who retired in 2015.

He was President of the AA School and is a former chair of the AA Foundation, and recently chaired the AA School’s external examiners. He has also taught at schools of architecture and design, been a member of many design advisory panels and lectured widely.

He said: “At some point you have to finish and this feels like the right time. 

“At Fletcher Priest, I have worked with, and learned from, many talented people from all over the world both internally and externally so I know that I am leaving very capable and tight teams with an amazing support infrastructure in place, led by talented and experienced people that I have had the pleasure to know for years and trust implicitly, all of which will ensure the practice continues to go from strength to strength. I wish them well and look forward to seeing and celebrating their evolutionary adventures.”

He added that after 50 years of non-stop working he would miss the “daily ‘surprises’” but was equally looking forward to “having freedom to pursue personal interests and see more of friends and my long-suffering family”.

The practice said fields which it is currently developing include AI and film. Its international projects include residential schemes in Germany, urban design projects in Latvia and film studios in Portugal.

Revised plans for the firm’s £700m Oxford North office scheme were approved in March. Laing O’Rourke is slated to start construction work this summer.