People · Podcast guest
Ste Taylor
From Setbacks to Success: Ste Taylor’s Journey to Head of Design at Turley
Ste Taylor is a Director and Head of Placemaking at Turley, a design code specialist and expert witness who moved from architecture into urban design.

- Current role
- Director
- Practice
- Turley
- Location
- Manchester, United Kingdom
Conversation
The thinking behind the work.
Episode 0230 · Architecture Social
From Setbacks to Success: Ste Taylor’s Journey to Head of Design at Turley
Ste Taylor’s career path is anything but traditional—starting in architecture, navigating difficult times and redundancies before ultimately rising to Head of Design at Turley. In this episode, we dive into his unexpected journey, from falling out of love with architecture to mastering design and planning on the client side. We’ll also get into the nitty-gritty of design codes, their role in shaping better housing, and why they’re more critical now than ever. With the UK at a crossroads in urban

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Selected work
Selected work.
Wirral, United Kingdom
Wirral Waters
A long-term docklands regeneration programme for which Turley leads planning strategy and detailed applications.
Explore the project ↗Bath, United Kingdom
Bath Quays
Planning and economic advice supporting a mixed-use waterside regeneration in central Bath.
Explore the project ↗Birmingham, United Kingdom
The Mercian, Birmingham
Planning, heritage and viability work for a 42-storey build-to-rent development on Birmingham's Broad Street corridor.
Explore the project ↗About
The story so far.
The person behind the work.
Ste Taylor is a Director and Head of Placemaking at Turley, leading the consultancy's design team across the UK. He has more than 20 years' experience as a designer, spanning architecture practices, in house roles at major housebuilders and urban design consultancy.
Ste studied architecture at the University of Sheffield before working in practice in Liverpool and Manchester. He moved client side as a designer with Bovis Homes and later Countryside Properties, then returned to consultancy at EDAW (now AECOM) and DPP Shape, specialising in masterplanning and urban regeneration. He joined Turley in 2010 and became a Director in 2015.
A specialist in design coding, Ste completed a secondment with the Office for Place, where he helped appraise the first 25 government funded design codes in England alongside his colleague Neil Harvie. He has acted as an expert design witness on several residential projects, is a Recognised Practitioner in Urban Design with the Urban Design Group, and is a visiting tutor at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Watch or listen to the full conversation in the Architecture Social CPD: From Setbacks to Success: Ste Taylor's Inspiring Journey to Head of Design at Turley.
The practice
Turley
Turley is an independent advisory business for the built environment, with 15 offices across the UK and Ireland spanning planning, design and sustainability.
Architecture practice · Greater Manchester
Expertise
What I bring.
- Current role
- Director
- Practice
- Turley
- Location
- Manchester, United Kingdom
- On the podcast
- 1 episode · 2025
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