Sheppard Robson was founded in 1938 by Richard Sheppard, a technically skilled designer with a talent for developing new materials, who was disabled as a teenager by polio, and Jean Shufflebottom, his wife, a gifted architect in her own right. The company's first big success was the
Jicwood Bungalow in 1944, which used materials from aircraft manufacture. By 1950, the company had built a reputation for large modern projects, and Sheppard had a new business partner, Geoffrey Robson, who added his name to the practice. At first they specialised in schools, building more than 80 in the 1950s. In 1958, the practice won a competition to design a science college and memorial to Winston Churchill –
Churchill College, Cambridge. Later they branched out into other public buildings, and by the 1970s had built a strong reputation in commercial, university and retail buildings. In the 1990s and 2000s, the firm entered a period of growth with often large-scale buildings such as The Helicon, Toyota/Lexus HQ,
MediaCityUK, the Lighthouse,
Barking Riverside and Siemens HQ Middle East. Many of these were important landmarks in the development of sustainable architecture. For instance, the Lighthouse was the UK's first net zero carbon house, the Helicon was an early sustainable office/retail building, and MediaCityUK was built as a sustainable community, verified by international sustainability regulator
BREEAM (the first corporate building to achieve this). The firm's recently completed and ongoing projects include the transformation of an urban block in London's Fitzrovia (Fitzroy Place), the completion of a new science building at the
University of Hertfordshire, and the creation of new residential-led neighbourhoods of 1,500 homes at
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (East Wick and Sweetwater). ==Sustainability==