Francesca O’Shea joined Gibson Thornley Architects in 2021. She was drawn by the breadth of the portfolio: while her previous practices had singular areas of interest, Gibson Thornley brought many of these together, delivering projects with a creative edge whatever their scale. She has since worked on projects of many different types, building a reputation among clients and peers for good leadership, conscientiousness and creativity. Her interests in conservation and cultural heritage are balanced by experience delivering contemporary and new-build projects, her design ambition by an ability to build within tight financial and contextual constraints. As an associate she is responsible for project resourcing across the office, and is a member of the EDI policy group.

For Francesca, good architecture comes out of developing culturally conscious responses to the brief, and the meticulous deployment of simple design ideas.