Sunand Prasad

Overview

Sunand Prasad is a British architect, co-founder of the practice Penoyre & Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) from 2007 to 2009, and chair of the humanitarian architecture charity Article 25 during the fraud crisis that nearly closed it in 2015 (UK Green Building Council; ArchDaily). Born in India in 1950, he came to England at 12, switched from engineering to architecture at Cambridge, and built a practice and a public career organised around one idea: that buildings for health, education and civic life should be sustainable by design, not by afterthought (UK Green Building Council; RIBAJ).

Prasad’s profile is distinctive because his own account of his career is unusually reflective, and because his leadership roles form a chain: a practice founded in 1988, a RIBA presidency spent arguing for climate action, a chairmanship of the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) from October 2020, and an OBE in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to regeneration (UK Green Building Council). The through-line is public purpose — in the United Kingdom and, through Article 25, in the countries where the charity builds schools, hospitals and homes. A stat that captures the practice’s standing comes from its merger announcement: Penoyre & Prasad was named Sustainable Practice of the Year in 2014 by The Architect’s Journal, and its 2019 release lists Oriel for Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Sibson Building at the University of Kent and Bobby Moore Academy among its best-known projects (Perkins&Will).

From central India to Penoyre & Prasad

Prasad’s childhood home was in central India in a Gandhian agrarian community, where, from the age of about eight or nine, he and his friends played at making small mud dams and sluices in irrigation channels and gullies, and made Meccano models (RIBAJ). His father was an artist and teacher, and his close encounter with architecture was designing bamboo and timber exhibition and conference pavilions for the All India Congress meeting after Independence (RIBAJ). The family came to England when Prasad was 12, and he learnt DIY working with his father “modernising” their terraced house in Edmonton (RIBAJ). UKGBC’s biography confirms the outline: born in India in 1950, he grew up in a rural community deeply connected with nature, studied first at Cambridge and then at the RCA, before co-founding Penoyre & Prasad (UK Green Building Council).

Prasad first wanted to be a scientist, and went on to do engineering at the University of Cambridge — but, in his own words, “something was missing”, the School of Architecture was next door, and starting in architecture “was a moment of finding oneself” (RIBAJ). He was grateful both for the grounding in engineering and for the fact that the London Borough of Enfield funded him for six years of study, the last two at the Architectural Association (RIBAJ). He then worked at Cullinan’s for eight years before doing a PhD at the Royal College of Art on north Indian urban fabric, based on the courtyard house, being selected for the RIBA 40 Under 40 in 1985, and working on the Arts Council exhibition on Le Corbusier in 1987 (RIBAJ).

In 1988 he co-founded Penoyre & Prasad with Greg Penoyre, with whom he had worked at Cullinan’s (RIBAJ; Perkins&Will). His account of the founding is deliberately unglamorous: the idea of a single breakthrough project is “a bit of a hype”, but the first project he brought to the practice — an RIBA-award-winning conversion of a house Ted Cullinan had designed — fulfilled what he felt capable of, while Penoyre brought a doctor’s surgery project at the same time, and both were well received by clients and in the press (RIBAJ). The practice that grew from those two commissions became known for designing some of the UK’s most sustainable educational, healthcare, residential and cultural buildings, and was named Sustainable Practice of the Year in 2014 by The Architect’s Journal (Perkins&Will).

The buildings Prasad himself names as those he is most proud of show the range: the Millennium Centre in Dagenham (1997), designed from first principles with sustainability at heart and still performing as designed; the Rushton Medical Centre (1996) in Hackney, which has changed and grown just as it was designed to do; the extension and upgrading of Snape Maltings Concert Hall (1999); buildings in Belfast embodying a new model of healthcare; Minster School (2007) in Southwell near Newark; university buildings at Portsmouth and Kent; and Oriel, the new home for Moorfields Eye Hospital and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, on which Penoyre & Prasad is lead architect as part of the AECOM team (RIBAJ). In 2019 Penoyre & Prasad joined the global design firm Perkins&Will, operating as a studio within its London studio and retaining its brand for a few years during integration, with all 35 staff co-locating in the Whitechapel Building (Perkins&Will).

RIBA presidency, UKGBC and the OBE

Prasad was president of RIBA from 2007 to 2009, championing the value of design, reform of architectural education and action on climate change (TRUUD; UK Green Building Council). Looking back, he called the presidency “challenging, but I had a wonderful time”, and said it was fulfilling to have the platform to draw attention to climate change and carbon, both through RIBA publications and by personally travelling around the country giving continuing-professional-development sessions on the subject (RIBAJ). He has also served in several key advisory and policy positions, regularly chairs Design Review Panels, and is a London Mayor’s Design Advocate (TRUUD).

In October 2020 he became Chair of the UKGBC Board of Trustees, succeeding David Partridge, having already served as a trustee for several years (UK Green Building Council). He said he planned to use the chairmanship to champion climate action in the property and construction industry, to inspire the industry to adopt practical solutions to making buildings truly sustainable and regenerative by design, and to make increasing the diversity of voices at the sustainability table a personal mission (UK Green Building Council). That diversity commitment has a personal history: when his family moved to England in 1962 they experienced a lot of overt racism, lasting until he went to university, and in 1990 he joined Elsie Owusu and others in co-founding the Society of Black Architects (RIBAJ).

In King Charles’s first Birthday Honours in 2023, Prasad, then chair of UKGBC’s Board, received an OBE for services to regeneration (UK Green Building Council). UKGBC’s honours report notes that he had held the chair position since October 2020 as part of a long career that included his RIBA presidency and his co-founding of Penoyre & Prasad, latterly as a partner at Perkins & Will, specialising in public projects including residential, healthcare and education (UK Green Building Council). His stated dream project, in the RIBAJ interview, remains unbuilt and revealing: to be involved in making a settlement — sustainable, collaborative, zero carbon — with a patron who wants to give the practice the chance to show what it can do (RIBAJ).

Chairing Article 25 through the 2015 fraud

Prasad’s chairmanship of Article 25 was tested in public in July 2015. ArchDaily’s report of 9 July 2015 quotes “Sunand Prasad, chairman of the charity” as the charity announced that its bank had alerted it to irregular account activity and that trustees had uncovered what appeared to be a systematic falsification of financial statements hiding multiple unapproved payments believed to be in excess of £200,000 (ArchDaily). Prasad’s appeal framed the charity as belonging to its supporters: “Article 25 is a charity that belongs to us all and we now need to fight for its survival”, and warned that the access of thousands of people to basic accommodation for health or education was now in jeopardy (ArchDaily). The trustees mounted a rescue campaign to raise £130,000 by Friday 10 July 2015; by the 15 July update the target had been reached, enabling the charity to continue its work in Myanmar, Haiti and Nepal (ArchDaily).

After the target was hit, Prasad thanked architects, engineers and the wider industry for a “truly magnificent, and very moving” response, and promised that the charity would take steps to ensure its financial controls and procedures were “the best in the charity sector which is so vulnerable to theft and fraud” (ArchDaily). In December 2015, when former office manager Scott Golding was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for stealing £260,479, Third Sector quoted Prasad, as chair, saying: “With William Golding’s imprisonment, it is good to see that justice has been done”, while adding that the sentence could not itself repair the damage, since “Golding worked systematically, forging documents, and defrauding Article 25 of vital funds” (Third Sector). Third Sector also records that the charity had been left with just £611 in its account and was saved only by emergency funds from the architectural and construction industry (Third Sector). The episode is the clearest test of Prasad’s chairmanship on the public record: a charity led through near-collapse by an emergency appeal, followed by a conviction that vindicated the trustees’ account of what had happened.

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not resolve the RIBA presidency dates: it follows 2007–2009, given by RIBAJ, UKGBC and TRUUD, and flags the Perkins&Will release’s 2005–2007 dates as conflicting rather than silently choosing between them. It does not state Sevagram as Prasad’s birthplace, since that detail appears only in Wikipedia-derived sources; UKGBC confirms only birth in India in 1950. It does not assert an earlier MBE, which was not verified in a source read in full. It does not claim Prasad remains chair of Article 25 today, since the sources read date that role to 2015 and to TRUUD’s undated biography without a current end date. It does not give a total project count for Penoyre & Prasad, since no total verified in a source read in full was available for this profile.