FOUNDERS
Now a Founder and Director of Southgate & Sarabia Architects, Darren has 30 years of professional experience. A former Main Board Equity Director of a UK top 50 architectural practice, Darren was responsible for UK-wide business development, architectural design authoring and leadership of his studio teams to deliver award-winning projects. Practiced in the delivery of all RIBA stages, Darren’s projects range from billion pound masterplans for Universities and Developers to bespoke facilities for researchers and industrialists alike, strong in strategic thinking and planning through to detailed project execution.
In his early career, PFI hospitals, prisons, schools, offices and residential, set his interest in cross sector knowledge transfer. For example, modern offices or industrial design informed new healthcare projects with faster forms of construction, whilst looking at new ways of appreciating healthcare architecture as ‘spiritually uplifting’, through the use of colour and texture, not readily seen before. Pioneering exploration has been at the heart of Darren’s work through both private and public commissions.
Striving for right first time and managing positively in to a team with co-creation at the centre of good design and practice, Darren’s studio teams felt engaged and empowered to take ownership and add value to projects under his leadership. This trust and team spirit led to many repeat commissions with one client continuously commissioning for over twelve years, creating two world class campuses. Spinouts from these campuses led to international commissions and competitions in Asia and North America. These successes are not by accident, but genuine hard work, competitive spirit and creative thinking, striving to be different and supporting clients on their journeys over many years.
As a Founder and Director of Southgate & Sarabia Architects, Natalie has worked for over 30 years in the design and construction industry, with extensive experience including award winning further and higher education projects, schools, leisure, care homes, extra care, healthcare, commercial offices, residential, retail and mixed use developments, as well as conservation, listed building, regeneration and masterplanning.
A former director of her own architectural consultancy practice, Architecture ID, for the past 6 years Natalie has worked on a consultancy basis, working with small architectural practices to help develop and grow them into successful commercial businesses, helping to win and deliver large complex projects. Through business planning, networking, introducing process and robust management, Natalie has helped to totally change how the practices were run and delivered their services.
Natalie has worked for various sized architectural practices as a Chartered Architect and has gained great experience in different types of projects from new build University buildings to masterplanning and small town regeneration strategies, where she has been responsible for multi-discipline design teams.
She has managed many frameworks from local authorities to universities; key roles have included design champion, business development, marketing, brand awareness, digital media, managing a team, key account management, stakeholder management and managing change.
Natalie is passionate about design, regeneration and sustainability and loves nothing more than working with her clients to help deliver their vision and aspirations. Natalie has been a part time design tutor and professional examiner at both Leeds Beckett and Huddersfield universities and enjoys mentoring and coaching graduates to give them the best start to becoming an architect.
Gamal is a founder and director of Southgate & Sarabia Architects Collaborative, an international venture structured to deliver projects in collaboration with global partners and academia with a cross-binding benefit in terms of research and commercial application. He is an expert in applied research, with a Chair in Architecture at the School of Architecture, Design and Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University. Gamal leads the development of the University’s research theme Global Heritage: Science, Management and Development, a research team that aims to engage with and produce strategic research projects with evident global impact on improving heritage conservation and preservation strategies both internationally and cross boundary.
Gamal’s research focuses on the investigation of socio-spatial practice of urban environments, the architecture of the home, special memory, politics of urban space in everyday list, Digital Urban Heritage, Digital Modelling and the Pedagogy of Architectural Studio. He leads several partnerships and consortium teams that include American, British, European and Middle Eastern universities, research organisations and specialist industries.
Gamal advises several governments and international organisations in Ireland, Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on aspects of sustainable heritage, preservation, urban planning and design. He has received the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE) Biennale’s Jeffrey Cook Award (2014) for his research on traditional urban environments. He is also an expert for the European Research Council’s Horizon 2020, a peer reviewer for Routledge, Ashgate, Built Environment and TDSR, and sits on several international research committees, board of advisors and professional societies.
Alongside his prestigious resumé, Gamal is a devoted family man, loves travelling and being in his garden when he can.