engineering.
London is our first home because it is a source of inspiration and a pool of remarkable design talent. And by working as one team with our other offices, we keep our spirit undiluted, our focus sharp, and our commitments entirely deliverable. Our flexible, organic form makes us more responsive to the inevitable changes and challenges of our industry.
Vision and values.
Working in openness without hierarchy means that we can hear each other. And if we listen, we can learn. That’s how our culture is nurtured, and our work emboldened.
The practice was formed on a genuine passion for structural engineering, advanced knowledge of construction, and extraordinary technical know-how. And although we’ve grown and evolved, those original characteristics remain the foundational and differentiating strengths that make us interdisciplinary, searching and catalytic today.
The technical expertise of engineering is our baseline. It’s where we take the conversation beyond it that makes the difference to the architectural concept, the construction process, and the ultimate experience of the structure.
So, our work begins early in a project. Sometimes at the blank page stage – when the opportunity to bring betterment through design is endless. We’re here to talk about what we can do, not what a client or architect can’t do. We take the long view and the short, we focus on micro and macro, and we design for today and tomorrow.
AKT II is also part of the Tyréns Group – a Sweden-based, independent organisation of consultancies that work throughout urban and infrastructural design.
The group has been operating since the 1940s, and today encompasses more than 3,000 people, with offices in the UK and across Europe.
Through our association with Tyréns, we offer a thorough design insight from the group’s many projects internationally. AKT II’s own projects also benefit from the group’s industry-leading funding programme for research and development (R&D) initiatives.
AKT II is a certified B Corporation (aka ‘B Corp’). Together with our clients and collaborators, we’re helping to redefine what success in business means, through the creation of a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
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We are experts in design-driven engineering. Across our six specialisms, we touch every facet of the built environment – the seen and unseen, the functional and aesthetic, the material and the human.
Each service area is powered by a team of skilled and experienced individuals, supported by an armoury of advanced tools and resources. And their knowledge is enriched by learnings and insights from our academic and institutional partners.
Each discipline has its precise focus, and yet each is integral to the others. Collaboration between teams is central to our approach. No project starts without a holistic foundation of collective intelligence.
Our design worth is our greatest worth. We are co-creators of origination and integrity – an ally of architecture. It is no longer enough to simply be a structural or civil engineer. The days of our role being to simply equate the external pull of gravity to internal strain energy is consigned to history.
In everything we do we need a collective skill set. We need to be scripting and accessing advantageous resources such as material science, parametric design and data management. That’s how we can contribute to the discussion and push the technologies to deliver outstanding design solutions that respond to the most pressing issue of our time – climate change.
Ours is a culture where everyone openly connects – a physical and emotional environment that feeds a collective energy for bringing betterment.
Our openness makes us more aware of, more attuned to and more aligned with each other’s skills and perspectives. It nurtures the diversity and equality within our team. And that can only make our work more meaningful.
We put it down to an attitude that we all uphold, whether we’re a director or a freshly appointed graduate. It’s an excitement for what we do, courage to take design further, and confidence to make it happen. It’s leading by example and learning from each other. It’s something we’ve always had.
We work with clients with both a UK and an international focus. And they come from wildly diverse sectors. It’s what makes our work perpetually exciting.
Urban developers, global brands, art galleries and heritage sites ask us to solve different challenges. But, at the same time, they all come to us for the same things: dependability, proactivity, creativity, and the ability to transform the complex into the simple. Those are the core qualities that build trust and nurture long-term bonds.
When we work with architects, contractors or builders, we relish professional collaboration and developing a profound understanding of their designs, skills and motivations.
Since the formation of our practice in 1995, we’ve received over 440 awards, for both projects and our practice.
