Richard Keating, RKA Director and Founder – BA (Hons) Dip Arch RIBA ARB

Richard founded RKA in 2019 after 25 enjoyable year in London. This included 16 years with Orms and the last 5 as Director.

Richard’s family move to Scotland gave him the opportunity to set up his own practice, focus on design and delivery and bring together all the inspirational learning that he benefited from in the 3 practices he worked for in London.

Richard completed over 20 built projects with Orms, responsible for 8-12 projects at any one time with values from £500k to £120m. The project sectors included Education, Commercial office, high end Residential, Mixed use including retail, restaurant, hotel and music venues. A number of these projects were award winning, including an RIBA award for Sherborne School’s new Music building.

Richard led the highest profile, and most complex project in the office, the £150m transformation of St Giles – a bespoke solution for a key Soho site, which he navigated through design, technical design and onto site through to completion.

This truly mixed use project incorporates 3 major new buildings and refurbishment of 12 existing buildings, including a number of listed buildings. Richard led careful negotiation with Historic England which enabled a lift and move of a 17th Century listed Smithy to allow a new grass roots music venue to be built below.

Richard was architecturally educated in Liverpool, graduating in 1996 and with a masters in 1999 when he was named in the Building Design top 50 students in the UK. Richard completed his architectural education in 2001 when he passed his part 3 at London’s prestigious Architectural Association school.

Refurbishment of existing buildings is a something Richard really enjoys and has been fortunate enough to be exposed to for over 20 years. Whether this is smaller listed buildings or complex cut and carve projects for Grade A developers, the drive and ambition stays the same.

Richard served 8 years as a School Trust Governor for Woodside Primary Academy and acted as ‘Client’ for their new teaching facility. Richard has experience in lecturing at Cardiff University and as a termly guest critic at Greenwich University. He continues his role as a judge for the RIBA and Civic Trust awards.