Despite its origins in the radical world of the Architecture Association in the early 1960s, NGP is not an overtly political practice, does not write manifestos - though the lectures given by the principals always promote a socially-aware and sustainable design approach, with quiet insistence. Few other noted architects have invested as much time as this one in the fundamentals of energy-conscious design, from the embodied energy and recyclability of the building materials to the reduction in the use of generated energy day by day. "Paper architecture", however, has never been high on the agenda, with very rare exceptions such as the speculative airport terminal design produced for the 1991 architecture Biennale in Venice. Instead, NGP builds, with a particular attitude towards social improvement and the building as urban catalyst.
The architecture produced has never been solely functionalist, though there was a time when the need for low-cost problem-solving might have made it appear so. The very first Grimshaw project - the spiral form of the prefabricated bathroom pod for a student hostel, in 1967 - revealed an expressiveness and an interest in the potential of organic forms that was to re-emerge, fully formed, some 20 years later. Early sketches of projects very often explore a shape, a metaphor, an image, at the same time as they rough out the disposition of accommodation. And increasingly, this is part of the brief: clients very often want a landmark building. That is a functional requirement. But the more traditionally functionalist strand continues through to the present as well. Look at the Park Road apartment tower of 1968 in London, and compare its appearance and rationale with the Mabeg headquarters building of 1999 in Germany: you see a particular way of thinking about free space around a fixed core, of turning a corner, of cladding details, refined over more than 30 years. Similarly the Orange call centre outside Darlington in north-east England demonstrates that the 1960s idea of the adaptable slick shed has now reached a state of considerable refinement. If NGP's architecture was a car, it would be a Mercedes.
The directors have a range of individual responses to the question "What is NGP?". For David Harriss, it is not so much a question of technology - which is simply a tool, he remarks - as a more abstract quality. "A building should have honesty, so people can see how it works," he says, adding that "some of our best buildings come out of responding to the constraints of the projects". A Harriss project exemplifying both these strands would be the Grand Stand at Lord's cricket ground.
Chris Nash talks of the practice developing a community of architectural themes co-operatively. "Our work is concerned with producing buildings and products which are noticeably more joyful, interesting and understandable than the norm through an intelligent process," he says. For Nash, it is vital to ask the question "is it beautiful?" His family of NGP buildings includes the RAC Supercentre and the EIHMS faculty at the University of Surrey.
Neven Sidor highlights the sense of exploration. "A team of designers follows a completely rational chain of decisions, through an almost magical territory unfettered by preconceived ideas, until they arrive at a destination that they themselves find surprising." Such as, perhaps, Ludwig Erhard Haus in Berlin, or the Ijburg bridge outside Amsterdam.
And for Andrew Whalley, whose project credits include the Paddington Station masterplan and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Centre in St. Louis, Missouri, there is absolutely no house style - only a shared approach, what he calls "a culture and philosophy which enables individuals to create an appropriate design solution." He believes that everything must be questioned from first principles - even a competition-winning NGP design - in order to achieve full understanding of what is required.
