William Mann is an architect. He studied in Cambridge and Harvard before practising in London and Flanders. Since 2001 he has been a director of Witherford Watson Mann Architects, based in East London. The studio’s work focuses on the physical continuity of buildings, and the social evolution of cities and institutions. Their projects of transformation include a house within the ruins of the twelfth-century Astley Castle, for which they won the RIBA Stirling Prize 2013; a new theatre for Nevill Holt Opera within a seventeenth-century stable block; and the transformation of the Courtauld Institute of Art at Somerset House. They have built social housing in Gistel, Flanders (2003-15), in Eddington, Cambridge (2012-17), and in Bermondsey, London (2014-23). William has written for a variety of architectural publications on the edge landscapes of London and Flanders, on urban renewal and social change, and on the friction of time in the building process. Recent essays include ‘A Latecomer Imagines the City’, in The Sage Handbook of the 21st Century City, and ‘The Slip Twixt Cup and Lip’ in Casabella.

→ Álvaro Siza: Housing in the Contested City

William Mann, along with Marta Caldeira, serves as the guest editor for the inaugural issue of the journal Project : Research, having been appointed by the editorial and scientific advisory boards.