The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
The past seven years have been a remarkable journey for Jonathan Hagos, 38, who co-founded Freehaus with Tom Bell in 2013 and has won competition after competition ever since.
After graduating from the Bartlett and completing confidence-building stints at Squire & Partners, Studio Cullinan and Buck, and Consarc Architects, Hagos set up Freehaus as a platform to deliver ‘inclusive projects that encourage positive societal change’. The practice’s breakthroughs have included winning a competition for the RIBA’s showcase trade stand at Ecobuild and being chosen for the high-profile RIBA Regent Street Windows programme.
Other recent competition victories have seen Freehaus commissioned to create a new London Innovation Gateway in Havering and to refurbish the Grade II-listed 639 Tottenham High Road –creating a new home for The Trampery social enterprise featuring a café and community kitchen.
Strategy diagram for Southwark’s Africa Centre
Of all Hagos’s contest wins, the most civic-minded came a year ago with an appointment to transform Southwark’s unassuming Gunpowder House into a new café, bar, gallery, performance space and research centre for The Africa Centre.
Alongside this pipeline of public projects, Hagos has played a very active teaching role, first at Oxford Brookes, later at the University of Greenwich and now at London Metropolitan University.
He also stepped outside the world of architecture to work as production designer and art director on the multiple award-winning 2014 film Simshar, recounting the real-life story of a Maltese family stranded at sea with a rescued group of African migrants.
Milestones
2013 Co-founds Freehaus, which is now based in east London and Oxford, specialising in ‘designing civic buildings, sustainability, Passivhaus design and working within historic buildings’
2016 Makes shortlist in invited contest for a new riverfront café and entrance for the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank
2017 Wins contest for RIBA’s £10,000 lounge, bookshop and meeting space at Ecobuild
2018 Completes competition-winning £5,000 installation for RIBA Regent Street Windows
2019 Wins competitions for a new Rainham Innovation Centre, to refurbish Tottenham’s The Trampery social enterprise, and to overhaul The Africa Centre’s headquarters in Southwark
2020 Reaches shortlist for a new substation as part of Argent Related’s £4.5 billion Brent Cross South development. Submits planning application to erect a two-storey learning annexe within the garden of Notting Hill’s ClementJames Centre
RetroFirst stories: Freehaus on turning The Africa Centre’s 1960s base into ‘embassy of optimism’
Freehaus lodges plans to extend Kensington education charity building
RIBA Regent Street Windows winners go on show
AJ 40 under 40 in association with
