To celebrate the end of 2016 we’re looking back on some of our highlights from the past year.

To kick off, we’ve complied a list of the five most-viewed architects and designers, past and present, from our Directory throughout the year.

1  Eric Lyons
Having worked for Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry, Eric Lyons (1912-1980) co-founded the development company Span in 1948, along with Geoffrey Townsend and Leslie Bilsby. Lyons’s Span houses are all about space and light, and blurring the edges between outside and indoor space.

2  Blee Halligan
Greg Blee and Lee Halligan see themselves as creative problem solvers. They have designed houses on difficult sites, for instance a pair of houses set within historic stone ruins, and have adapted old, undervalued buildings into bright, spatious, flexible homes.

3  Walter Segal
Walter Segal (1907-1985) was a Swiss-born architect who devised a system of self-build housing. The “Segal Method” eliminates the need for wet trades such as bricklaying and plastering, using a modular, timber-frame system that allows for ease of construction and low maintenance.

4  Berthold Lubetkin
Berthold Lubetkin (1901-1990) was one of the most important figures of the Modern Movement. Born in Georgia in 1901, he studied in Berlin and Paris, before moving to London in 1931. The following year he founded the famous Tecton practice with the Architectural Association graduates Anthony Chitty, Lindsay Drake, Michael Dugdale, Valentine Harding, Godfrey Samuel and Francis Skinner.

5  6a architects
Founded in 2001 by Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald, 6a architects is best known for its contemporary art galleries, educational buildings, artists’ studios and one-off residential projects. Closely aligned to the arts, 6a’s work spans doorknobs and exhibition design to large cultural buildings and international housing projects.

Read more about all of our featured architects and designers on our Directory.