Knight Architectural Design was established in 2000 (later becoming a limited company in 2012 along with moving out of Southampton to Sarisbury Green). Its founder is Ian Knight who studied Architecture + Building Studies HND in Southampton in 1992. 

Ian had initially set out to be an Architect, but work experience whilst at school opened the world of Architectural Technology to him. He designed and submitted to planning & building control, his first home extension plans when he was just 16!  After qualifying, he set himself a ten-year career path to experience all fields of architecture before setting up in his own business.  

Over those years he worked firstly in Petrochem before his first architectural post – primarily residential but with some larger schemes. He went on to work in the MoD as a facilities manager (in the civil service, the UKs youngest Higher Professional Technical Officer) before returning to architecture and working within institutional design and next with a retail design practice. His next two moves were within commercial interiors – head hunted from the second biggest by the biggest and mostly working within the M25. 

Ian’s ‘Independence Day’ was the 4th July, 2000. With a young growing family, the first ten years saw the client base grow and the portfolio amassed over two thousand projects which ranged from office space planning, new retail schemes and housing through to a number of churches. At least a day a week was being spent in London. 

After taking on a business coach, Ian went on to grow the workforce at approximately a new apprentice every 12 months and KAD is now a team of 6. Presently almost one thousand projects a year pass through our busy office and in the last year over four hundred extra bed spaces were built from our plans.  

K.A.D. isn’t like usual Architectural practices – bound by fee structures of the RIBA, and we aren’t too precious to simply lend our survey & CAD skills to other professionals like solicitors & agents. We also handle our own planning applications (in 2020, almost 150 – across the south). Something of a speciality is the repurposing of buildings and especially working within emerging planning legislation mostly with our base of property investor clients. We also now service the majority of commercial agents in the Solent region who we’re grateful, daily pass us referrals– which is primarily thanks to our reputation, summed up in our new mission statement… “Exceeding Expectations with Innovative Design”.