Arkilab

When Sophie is not in the studio, she enjoys keeping active whether that be avoiding balls hurled at her face whilst playing water polo or dashing around the netball court, she loves to embrace her competitive side.

Sophie is a recent graduate with skills in Revit, AutoCAD, and Adobe suite software. With a keen interest in healthy design principles, she is passionate about designing equitable, inclusive, and diverse spaces that positively impact the social, physical, and emotional health of the users.

Sophie prides herself on being a team player and loves to bring enthusiasm to the studio environment. With high levels of self-motivation, she is detail-orientated and thorough in her work.

For Greg nothing is impossible, whether he wants to design and build his own HIFi stereo amplifier, 3d printer or CNC machine, he will always fulfil his passion and curiosity.

Greg is an architect who can balance creativity and innovation with an understanding of technical detailing and buildability. He has a wide range of experience across the education, residential, commercial and sports sectors.

Greg is fully conversant with offsite / MMC methodologies, having worked previously on the DfE offsite Free Schools programme and dovetails well into our specialisms.

His 15 years of expertise in Revit, including BIM content creation and visual programming using dynamo offers exceptional professional service in building information modelling as well as 3D visualisations.

Aside from watching back episodes of Friends, and the inner geek of playing boardgames, Andrea focuses her attention to architecture building the best dens on the planet for her young child and a puppy. She is always at her best constructing some healthy cooking and designing the optimum solution of decanting a fine glass of red wine at the end of the week.

Having worked in varied roles from Legal Executive and Office Management to Events and Front of House Coordination in large hotel settings, Andrea successfully achieved an honours degree as a mature student in Forensic Psychology at UCLAN.  This was an amazing challenge for her, and she extended this process by working as an Intelligence Analyst and Prison Custody Officer within a secure setting.  People management was critical in this as well as understanding individuals from a different perspective to the mainstream view.

Andrea is now able to transfer this experience into a Studio Management role with exceptional organisational abilities, a strong work ethic and an understanding of multiple management systems put in place to maintain a stable and managed workplace with a varied approach.

Iain’s passions for golf, rally navigation and whisky emphasise his approach to mental and physical health, exploration and a little culture, surpassed only by his passion for creating exceptional spaces for people to explore and learn in.

A founding member of Arkilab, Iain is an experienced Architect with 22 years post qualification experience. Throughout his career, Iain has largely been involved in the education sector, originally in the Diocesan sector followed by a brief involvement with the design of PFI bids, and more recently the design of several schools ranging in value from £1m to £20m under the DfE’s Free School and Priority School Programmes.

Iain has also worked as a Design Technical Advisor for the DfE and has a detailed knowledge of DfE design and procurement processes, Output Specifications and Building Bulletins including current area and cost allocations. Iain is a talented designer and a collaborator, thriving on stakeholder engagement in this role, with excellent communication and presentation skills.

With a high level of self-motivation, galvanising a team’s collective sense of direction, Iain always keeps the end goal as the focus. With a bias for exploration, Iain looks to innovation and finding new ways of doing things, a visionary offering challenging and sometimes radical ideas, with intellectual insight.

Katerina is passionate about design and headstands. When she is not upside down, she secretly practises for the next season of Great British Bake Off.

A founding member of Arkilab, Katerina was born and raised in Athens, Greece, naturally growing up to love art and architecture with great admiration for the Modern Greek Architecture of the 1930s.

Having worked as an architect for more than 14 years in both the UK and Greece she has delivered schemes across a range of sectors including education, healthcare, transport, cultural and residential. Katerina’s most notable project to date is the National Opera and Library of Greece. She was fortunate to work as an architect for Betaplan S.A, the local Greek partner to Renzo Piano’s Building Workshop, engaged in all phases of the project.

Katerina has won awards and honourable mentions in competition entries and is always seeking to explore new opportunities in all sectors of architecture.

Katerina has exceptional technical skills and is a talented designer with attention to detail. She has excellent communication skills, being fluent in Greek, English and French and enjoys all aspects of the Client engagement process.

Katerina leads by example and is very passionate about her work with a commitment and dedication that simply inspires her team in every way.

David Johnson is an experienced and effective business leader with a proven track record of delivery. David’s board-level experience gained over 15 years, of business development, strategic corporate growth and Public Private Partnerships (PPP) means Arkilab’s clients benefit from a deep knowledge of how professional service delivery makes the highest impact within your organisation.

Currently David also heads his own specialist PPP – Castle Gate group of companies and David was previously Group Commercial Director for a leading investment and development Group.

Operating in the PPP and Joint Venture arena, David has delivered to financial close PPP/PFI projects worth over one billion pounds predominantly in the education and primary health sectors, gaining a reputation for his ability to deliver results under pressure and for the delivery of value for money and affordability in public private partnership projects.

David is also a founder of two Free Schools and a Multi Academy Trust Trustee.

David is a senior property and estates professional with over 25 years’ experience, engaging effectively with clients at all levels ensuring strategic estate solutions can be implemented. Operating very successfully in the Public Private Partnership field, David has an excellent track record in the delivery of health and social projects with challenging timeframes and budgets.

A founding member of Arkilab, David is also an experienced manager and leader of multi-disciplinary teams delivering strategic estates management and project delivery with Castle Gate Projects. Prior to this, David was a Project Director for three LIFT (Local Improvement Finance Trusts) companies and Development Director for the private equity partner.

He was responsible for delivering 14 private financed health/mixed use developments over 35,000m2/£120m in a six year period, five-year estate planning, rationalisation and building compliance on multi agency sites, supporting the ‘one public place’ agenda, delivery of two carbon negative accredited schemes and the development of a benchmark health and education offsite construction design and construction model.

What Ranbir doesn’t know about health foods, and herbal teas isn’t worth knowing, surpassed only by the number of options he produces on the design of any one given project.

Ranbir has worked as Architect for more than 15 years in the UK and has been involved in schemes within multiple sectors including Commercial, Healthcare, Transport, Cultural and Residential.
More recently Ranbir has been involved within the DfE Free School and Priority Schools Programmes, providing bespoke design and detailing in the modern methods / offsite construction sector.

Ranbir is a creative and critical thinker who pushes experimentation with innovative materials and new technologies.

With excellent design and technical skills, he is passionate about every detail of a project. He has the ability to lead and work collaboratively in teams to meet project deadlines and budgets.

Most of Oscar’s ideas come to fruition within the ‘urban jungle’ he has created in his flat; where he has fully embraced biophilia and coved it from floor to ceiling in plants.

Oscar is an experienced architectural technologist specialising in BIM. Having previously worked as BIM Manager for an award-winning Interior Design & FF&E consultancy, where he oversaw a busy team of 12 people. Oscar’s passions lie in being at the forefront of innovation; he will always be thinking of ways to improve the quality and speed of the design process.

With previous experience within residential, commercial, healthcare and laboratory schemes; Oscar’s main line of experience has come from the education sector where he has worked on well over a hundred projects.

Oscar loves the collaborative approach to design and believes that a project can always be delivered successfully with the right amount of dedication and organisation.

Eszter’s love for Interior Design is only matched by her love of the countryside. She enjoys long walks usually spoiled by her two crazy dogs.

Eszter’s fascination with Interiors started as early as her childhood, drawing house plans and imaginative furnishing. She is now a qualified Interior Designer with four years post qualification experience in the Educational, Commercial and Residential sectors. She has also worked as an FF&E Designer gaining detailed knowledge of Primary, Secondary and SEN school furniture layouts and detailing, to meet client and DfE standards.

Her excellent skillset enables her to provide project support outside interior design, in digital technologies such as Revit, AutoCAD and Photoshop CC, a skill that makes her an extremely valuable team member.

Eszter is dedicated to her work, her team and her friends, inspiring people and clients in her approach … if it matters to you … it matters to Eszti.