A NEW GROSVENOR SQUARE. AN ILLUSTRATED TALK TO BE GIVEN BY MIKE TONKIN AND ANNA LIU, ARCHITECTS, OF TONKIN LIU. CHAIRED BY SAVILIAN ANTONY MILLER, HON CLUB ARCHITECT.

In this talk, Anna Liu and Mike Tonkin, of Tonkin Liu Architects, will introduce the design process for Grosvenor Square Gardens, and demonstrate how it was used to generate design proposals in an international design competition won by Tonkin Liu Architects in 2020.  The project gained planning permission in 2022, has commenced on site, and is due for completion in 2026. In addition to fulfilling the pragmatics of the brief and the aspirations of the client, Anna and Mike will show how their practice’s design process, Asking Looking Playing Making, (RIBA publication 2025) has helped to find the spirit of place, to deliver a project with an unique, unifying identity.

Mike Tonkin qualified as an architect in 1989, the year he set up his practice. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 1986 after receiving first-class honours at Leeds Polytechnic, having completed an apprenticeship as an architectural technician with training at Bath Technical College. His interest in nature led to his qualification as a landscape architect in 2014. He has taught for many years, including for a decade at the University of Bath and as a unit master at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the University of Westminster and London Metropolitan. He has been an external examiner for the master’s courses at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and a longstanding visiting critic. He completed his PhD at the University of Bath and is currently a Visiting Professor of Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture.     

Anna Liu qualified as an architect in 2002, after completing her Master of Architecture at Columbia University, New York, in 1994 and a liberal arts education encompassing chemistry and comparative literature at Smith College Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1987. Her experience has drawn from working in the UK, China and Japan where she discovered architecture, the US where she grew up, and Taiwan where she was born. She has taught as a unit master at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the University of Westminster and London Metropolitan, and has been an external examiner at the Bartlett School of Architecture and at the University of Dundee. She is a trustee of the Open City charity, a Visiting Practice Professor at Sheffield School of Architecture, and a MArch external examiner at London Metropolitan University.

Antony Miller is well known to many of you as our Club architect.  Beyond the walls of Brook Street however, he has enjoyed a long career with Trehearne Architects who are currently celebrating their 125th Year.  His interest in classical European architecture and its development has reinforced his far-reaching knowledge of London building types where he has reinvigorated heritage buildings, mainly in Mayfair and St James’s, representing every major architectural period from early Georgian to late Modern often creating compelling interiors and beguiling lighting, bringing a contemporary edge to design within historic contexts.