Architect looks east as income from Asia more than trebles

Ken Shuttleworth’s Make Architects has reported a 12% increase in revenue to £14.6m for the past year.

Building’s sister title Building Design said the firm’s results for the year ended 31 December 2011 showed fee income from Asia increse from £800,000 in 2010 to £2.7m last year. Pre-tax profits for the year recovered from just £14,000 in 2010 to £181,000.

Shuttleworth said London, where Make is carrying out work on 5 Broadgate in the City, was still continuing to operate outside the rest of the UK economy.

“London is in some sort of bubble,” he said.

“There’s a lot of commercial and residential work going on.”

The firm is also looking at other parts of the world, including South America and India, where it is designing a 50-storey mixed-use tower in Mumbai, its first scheme in that country.

Shuttleworth admitted breaking into South America would not happen overnight.

“We’ve been down to Brazil like everyone else,” he said.

“But getting into a new country tales a long, long time. We’ll get there eventually.”

But he said there was no real sign of an upturn in work in the Middle East where Make was hit with a bad debt which saw it rack up a £890,000 pre-tax loss in 2009.