Having lectured and taught at the University for several years, Harbinder will now be advising and teaching on the new Design Tripos degree (MDes) course.
Harbinder is an Architect and Creative Director of Birdi & Partners, a London based consultancy that provides design advisory services to government bodies, academic institutes, and the private sector. He has extensive board level experience, particularly within the arts sector and is a Trustee of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith and was previously a Trustee of Pitzhanger Manor Gallery, designed by Sir John Soane in Ealing.
He is a design advisor to Hs2, OPDC, Ealing, Camden, Brent and Thanet Council. For over five years he has advised Hs2 on the design of Euston station and associated over-site development and has also worked with the ICE (Institution of Civil Engineers) to define for the UK Government and National Infrastructure Commission, methodologies for the delivery of design excellence in major projects.
Previously he held the position of Head of Infrastructure at Hawkins\Brown Architects, where he led the design and delivery for Tottenham Court Road station, Elizabeth Line and coordinated the delivery of Bond St and Liverpool St station. He was also the Principal Architect that led the public realm design for the central section of Thames Tideway Tunnel.
As a fellow of the RIBA, ICE and RSA he promotes through talks, the members creative expertise globally. He lectures on inter-disciplinary design at Cambridge University and the UCL and has been invited to talk at organisations such as Sony, Ogilvy and TEDx on creative and collaborative techniques. He works with local authorities to make the construction industry more inclusive and is a ‘speakers for schools’ member. Harbinder sits on the RIBA validation panel and has been a RIBA Part 3 professional examiner for over 15 years and currently mentors’ architectural assistants and apprentices.
He has an interest in the influence that conceptual artists bring to the built environment and at Tottenham Court Road Station, he collaborated with Daniel Buren, Richard Wright and Douglas Gordan as well reintegrating existing works by Mark Wallinger and Eduardo Paolozzi. This station is recognised as having the greatest number of conceptual artists’ works in a single underground metro.