Meet Kirsten Whiteley
Introducing Kirsten Whiteley, Associate at Allford Hall Monaghan Morris!
Our Meet the Builders series spotlights the people and organisations shaping the built environment — from designers and engineers to planners, surveyors, developers, and communicators.
This edition features Kirsten Whiteley of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM), a large UK-based architecture firm. In 2025, we opened Society Building Bristol in AHMM’s One Portwall Square studio.
Tell us a bit about yourself…
I am from New Zealand but was born and spent most of my childhood in Malaysia. I completed my architecture degree in New Zealand and worked in Australasia before embarking on the antipodean rites of passage, moving to London to work and travel! Over a decade later, I’ve landed in Bristol and am enjoying life in the South West.
…and Allford Hall Monaghan Morris
Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, often known as AHMM, is an architecture practice founded in 1989. It has offices in London, Bristol, Madrid, Oklahoma City and Sydney, and works across the UK and around the world on projects across sectors and scales, from a transformative mixed-use masterplan to a small therapeutic space for a charity.
The practice won the RIBA Stirling Prize for Burntwood School in 2015 and has won many other awards and critical acclaim for its work over the last 35 years. Since 2017, AHMM has been majority owned by its employees through an Employee Ownership Trust.
If someone only had 30 seconds to understand your work, what would you show them? OR What is a project or initiative that really challenged or inspired your team?
My work would show restraint, a simple material palette and clean lines. Maybe a splash of colour if the situation permits. I am not a fan of fussiness or overdesigning.
Rob Parrish Photography
Society Building was created with a purpose to engineer a better society. What’s a current trend or challenge in the built environment that excites or concerns you?
In recent years as a company, we’ve become increasingly aware of the wasteful nature of Cat A fit out in commercial office buildings. In response to this, AHMM published a study Fit Out // Rip Out, that explores the carbon impacts of the standard approach to the design, construction, and marketing of Cat A fit out.
This both concerns me, that such a challenge exists and is accepted as a necessary part of the industry, but it also excites me. It’s an opportunity for designers and end stakeholders to work together, think differently about our projects and help frame the conversation with clients and project teams.
Favourite thing about working in a coworking and collaboration space?
Meeting people from other companies that share the space and learning about the work they do – we’ve had some really interesting talks and presentations from the practices in our community.
If your work had a soundtrack, which song would play first?
Ludovico Einaudi’s Dietro Casa.
