History

Toronto, 1965: Brian Cranfield and Colin Stephens set up their firm and simply called it Cranfield & Stephens. The emergence of a new form of architecture focusing on the retail trade owes a lot to them: great designers who knew how to give shops character.

Design International was coined: it was 1965 and the name was a perfect fit for a company that was growing rapidly and embracing different languages and cultures. Paul Mollé was one of the architects at the very cutting-edge during that period. Cranfield and Stephens met him in Johannesburg, where they had opened an office. The business partnership between them took off immediately and soon afterwards Paul took over Design International’s office in Johannesburg.

Paul decided to go back to Europe in the early 1980s. He opened a new Design International office in London. The company expanded its work in the United States, the Middle East, Asia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

1997 was the year of the real turning point for Design International London as it won a tender in France and began designing a shopping mall in Montpellier called Odysseum, a place to live in, made for people, sustainable, with low energy consumption. In 2010 the project won the MAPIC Award for best shopping centre and it soon became a case study analysed all around the world. And not just in architecture classrooms!

Brian Cranfield and Colin Stephens decided to retire. Davide Padoa had been hired at the London office. He had studied in America and worked in Indonesia. Paul realised he had great potential and could take over the reins of the London office. And it was precisely at that time that Lucio Guerra joined the team as well, becoming Partner in 2008. In 2007 DI started its (new) spreading, opening the Milan office, run by Roberto Sibiano till 2021 and now by Eduardo Vazquez.

This decade started with a great success: Morocco Mall opened in 2011 which also is the year of the DI Shanghai office opening. In 2015 Design International celebrated its 50th anniversary and relocated its HQ to a new office in the London Tower Bridge area, followed by the release of its book Motion Buildings, Meeting Places in 2018, published by Mondadori-Electa and Rizzoli. In the same year, the company found a new home for its Milan office and opened its Middle East office in Dubai!

In 2021 the company’s partners Davide Padoa, Lucio Guerra and Paul Mollé set up a management board headed by Padoa as CEO and appoint Hearan Kim as London office Director, Eduardo Vazquez as Milan office Director, Paul Mackrow as Finance Director, and Stefano Fragola as Technical Director. Design International Innovation Hub is created, under the leadership of Francesco Di Niccolo and, further to a large amount of new project design bids, Nick Hart-Woods has been appointed as Head of Concepts.

Tracing an upward graph in six decades of architectural exploration – today, projects flourish in over 50 countries, spanning the sectors of Retail, Leisure & Hospitality, Mixed-Use, Residential, and Workplace, each led by one of our talented innovators: Paolo Bianchini, Kollin Akbar, Chiara Braida, Head of Residential, Andrew Kershaw.

We are passionate about people. We believe we can improve people’s lives when they get together and share experiences. This is the true purpose of Design International. This is what drives us to innovate, always, everywhere, and in every project.