Gareth Howell

Gareth is an Architect and Recognised Practitioner in Urban Design. He is a Director at EDP and the Discipline Lead in the practice for the Masterplanning Team.

I have over 23 years’ experience as a Design Architect and Urban Designer working for both public and private sectors on residential; mixed use, commercial, and leisure schemes. My expertise spans the full spatial scale; from promoting sites in the LDP process, securing planning consents for masterplans on complex strategic land commissions, preparing design codes through to detailed planning applications and architectural design of individual buildings. I have also provided expert design witness advice at Public Inquiry.

As an architect and urban designer I'm keen to demonstrate how new development can add to a unique sense of place and enhance what makes something ‘distinctively local’. I believe urban design has a huge role to play in building successful and lasting communities, along with opportunities for people to positively engage with each other, down to individuals personal wellbeing, and improving health outcomes.

I have a passion for design and placemaking and hope I instil this same passion and rigour with my colleagues as well as demonstrate this commitment to my clients, sub-consultants and other stakeholders. I do pride myself and my team that a deep consideration goes into our design work and evident in the final product. I try to inject personality and design flair into every project I am involved with, and persistent in the drive for quality and restless improvement and development of our design methods at EDP. I lead masterplanning teams and take overall responsibility their performance ensuring design excellence that is delivered. I also enjoy and see the value in true collaborative working and stakeholder engagement and have had a lot of experience in public consultation, stakeholder events and design charrettes. I feel there is huge value in recording and capturing this as part of an intuitive design process, and the ability to listen, take on board all relevant comments and objectively and positively respond is vitality important.

Through our collective experience during this global pandemic we have seen how important our urban spaces and access to nature is in maintaining positive health and wellbeing. I strongly believe as design and planning professionals we have a responsibility and major role to play in how we shape our built environments and deliver best practice in placemaking.

Key Skills: Placemaking, Architectural Design, Strategic Land Promotion, Design and Access Statements, Design Codes and Development Briefs, Townscape Analysis, Residential and Mixed Use Design, Regeneration, 3D Visualisation, Public Realm Design, Community Stakeholder Engagement, Sports Venue Design, Primary Care Design, Expert Design Witness at Public Enquiry.