Edward Cullinan Architects

Edward (Ted) Cullinan set up his practice in 1965 as a cooperative in the belief that architecture needed commitment from the whole team. He was inspired by a year at Berkeley in 1956, and worked closely with Denys Lasdun before deciding to draw, make and grow his own architecture. He started with highly inventive low-cost houses, building his own upside-down passive solar home in Camden Mews in North London where he lived until his death in 2019.

The practice and the projects grew with major local authority housing schemes, schools, health buildings and conference centres before embarking on a sequence of university buildings and masterplans in the UK and abroad. Ted composed his buildings, drawing by hand the section, plan and elevation simultaneously. The architecture is integral, not applied and you didn't have to be an architect to be captivated by the drawings he made when giving lectures. His integration of lower energy and environmental design matured as a team effort of architects and engineers.

With some classic and many new photographs and a selection of his drawings this is the first complete account of the practice that he led for over 50 years. Never more than 45 strong, the practice ebbed and flowed with the economy and morphed into Cullinan Studio with his insistence on thinking and behaving differently for architecture and the greater good.

Kenneth Powell has written many articles about the work and the first practice monograph for Academy Editions in 1995.

Edward Cullinan Architects is part of the series Twentieth Century Architects, produced in collaboration with the Twentieth Century Society and Historic England.