All 16 staff at the company, which was set up in 2010 by Ben Adams, were laid off after liquidators were brought in last Friday (10 April).
Adams was previously one half of Nissen Adams – one of the 2005 AJ 40 under 40 cohort – and had also worked at Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.
A statement of affairs dated 31 March 2026 shows the Southwark Street-based practice (see street view below) owed more than £1.5 million when it went under, including £230,000 to employees, nearly £390,ooo to its landlord and £850,000 to lenders.
According to the company’s accounts for 2020, the practice once employed 45 staff members, but that number had dropped to 18 by 2025.
Last April, the practice announced a ‘reinvigorated leadership structure’ and the appointment of four new directors: Francesca Pont, Patrick Hammond, Emma Holt and Leni Popovici.
The company said the quartet had ‘individually and collectively made a significant contribution to the growth and success of our practice over the last 15 years’.
Only last month Holt, in an interview with the NLA said: ‘I’m feeling really positive about 2026, actually. It feels like over the past six months, end of last year, beginning of this year, we’ve had a lot more inquiries, and things have been moving forward more quickly with a variety of projects.’
But just a few weeks later, the 16-year-old practice, known for its commercial retrofit work in London and for delivering the Nobu Hotel Shoreditch, had shut its doors.
A spokesperson for insolvency practitioner Richard Long & Co told the AJ: ‘Unfortunately, Ben Adams Architects Limited was placed into creditors’ voluntary liquidation on 10 April 2026.
‘Nigel Heath Sinclair and Christine Patricia Bartlett, both of Richard Long & Co, were appointed joint liquidators of the company by its creditors.’
They added: ‘The company’s employees have been released as part of this process. The joint liquidators, together with Ben Adams, the company’s sole director and shareholder, are presently realising the company’s assets, which include, where agreed, the on-going projects for the benefit of all creditors.’
The statement of affairs also reveals that Adams, as sole director, had amassed company loans of £1.13 million – monies which he owed back to the company.
The company is also due a section 455 refund from the HMRC of £226,000 – a mechanism to recoup tax paid on a director’s loan when it has been repaid, released or written off.
The liquidators said that because Adams was ‘taking steps to repay the sum he owes [the company], this should also enable the s455 refund to be recovered from HMRC’.
It is understood that the practice’s Los Angeles office does not form part of the UK liquidation process.
In 2023, Fora Shoreditch, Montacute Yards, by Ben Adams Architects and Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, was shortlisted for an AJ Architecture Award in the workplace project (£20 million and over) category.
In the same year, Ben Adams Architects won approval for plans to retrofit and expand Minerva House, a 1980s Thameside office building, on behalf of developer Great Portland Estates. The former office of Grindlays Bank was originally designed by Twigg, Brown & Partners.
Ben Adams has been approached for comment.