Build Architecture Awards

Build Architecture Awards 2015 6 notice, with Loughborough University purchasing a large stage and then the NEC in Birmingham showing an interest during their search for a stage to be used in the newly-built Arena. This interest rapidly became more serious and, after a lengthy and in-depth pitching and decision process, the design was not only chosen but the chief engineer in charge of the project wrote Anthony a letter stat- ing that, out of the six applications received, even though theirs was by far the most expensive – six times costlier than some – it was also “up-market and simply the best”. Following this major breakthrough, Anthony started making stages for schools and between 1978 and when he sold the company eight years ago, they had made close to 13,000 sales to schools in the country, 60 percent of the cathedrals in the UK and countless churches and leisure centres, halls and conference centres. During this time, Anthony visited hundreds of schools and heard many complaints relating to the exceedingly poor furniture. Anthony says: “It wasn’t difficult to see that they had a point and so we set to work on creating a range of designs for stools, desks and chairs, which notable for their increased height and, in the case of the chairs, for having a waterfall front edge, which when released to the market, caught the eye of a number of companies – most notably ESA Macintosh in Scotland. In fact, when we decided to sell the company, one of the major factors in the deal was the success of this furniture.” However, upon selling his company, it quickly became clear to Anthony that the new owners had little or no interest in continuing the work that he had started – namely combating bad posture and back pain caused by school furniture – so he set up another firm to remedy this, spending well over half of the £5m he received for selling the company on research and development and tools and so laying the foundations for the Aalborg range of pos- tural furniture and stage equipment that is proving so popular.