Mark Hines is a British architect whose documented career has centred on conservation, refurbishment and the adaptive reuse of historic buildings. He is particularly associated with the repair and conversion of BBC Broadcasting House in London, where he worked for MJP Architects, and he later established Mark Hines Architects. He is also publicly known as the husband of historian and broadcaster Lucy Worsley; they married in 2011.
The architect is more precisely identified in public company records as Mark Andrew Hines, born in June 1967. That distinction matters because several unrelated people share the name Mark Hines, and some online biographies appear to combine their careers. The strongest record of this Mark Hines is architectural: his work on Broadcasting House, his training through the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and his later advocacy for keeping significant older buildings in use rather than replacing them.
Key takeaways
- Mark Hines is a British architect and conservation specialist whose best-documented major project is the refurbishment of BBC Broadcasting House.
- He trained with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and is identified by SPAB as one of its Scholars.
- He established Mark Hines Architects in 2006; the associated limited company was dissolved on 24 September 2024.
- Hines and historian Lucy Worsley met through the historic-building world around 1996 and married in 2011.
- As of 3 September 2026, Hines is an active director and secretary of Miller House Limited, although his present architectural employment or practice has not been publicly established.
Mark Hines profile summary
| Detail | Verified information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Mark Andrew Hines |
| Born | June 1967 |
| Nationality | British |
| Profession | Architect |
| Professional focus | Conservation, refurbishment and adaptive reuse of historic buildings |
| Major documented work | Repair and conversion of BBC Broadcasting House |
| Professional training | Lethaby Scholar; trained with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings |
| Spouse | Historian and broadcaster Lucy Worsley |
| Married | 2011 |
| Former company | Mark Hines Architects Limited, incorporated 2006 and dissolved 2024 |
| Current documented corporate role | Director and secretary of Miller House Limited |
Training and the conservation tradition
The most reliably documented part of Hines’s early professional background is his connection with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, or SPAB, one of Britain’s longstanding conservation organisations.
A professional biography accompanying Hines’s own writing describes him as a Lethaby Scholar who trained with SPAB. The organisation’s 2014 annual review also identifies him as an architect and SPAB Scholar, giving independent institutional support to that part of his background.
That training is important because it helps explain the thread running through his later work. Rather than treating historic architecture as something that should merely be preserved unchanged, Hines has repeatedly written about how older buildings can continue to function, accommodate new technology and meet contemporary environmental demands.
Details sometimes published online about a particular university or architecture school attended by Hines are not supported by the stronger public record. His documented SPAB training is therefore the more reliable account of his formative professional experience.
The Broadcasting House project
Hines’s strongest documented career milestone is his work on BBC Broadcasting House, the Grade II* listed headquarters in central London.
In a 2011 essay on conservation and sustainability, Hines wrote that by 2000 he was running a substantial part of the Broadcasting House refurbishment while working for MJP Architects. His earlier first-person account for the Twentieth Century Society, published in 2006, describes the architectural problems involved in repairing, extending and adapting the building.
That distinction is worth keeping clear. Hines was not the sole architect of Broadcasting House, nor was the entire BBC redevelopment his project alone. The documented description of his role is more specific: he worked within MJP Architects on the refurbishment, and later professional material describes him as project director for the repair and conversion of the historic building.
The work demanded more than preserving an exterior. Broadcasting House was created for an earlier era of broadcasting and required extensive adaptation for modern use. Hines’s writing shows an interest in the tension at the centre of conservation architecture: how to retain the significant fabric and character of an older building while making it practical for a fundamentally different technological and operational environment.
His involvement also led to a book. In 2008, Merrell published The Story of Broadcasting House: Home of the BBC in association with the BBC, with Hines as author, Tim Crocker as photographer and Sir Terry Wogan contributing the foreword.
Building a practice of his own
Hines established his own architectural practice in 2006. Public Companies House records for Mark Hines Architects Limited show that the company was incorporated on 9 August that year.
His later professional work continued to emphasise conservation and the alteration of existing buildings rather than straightforward demolition and replacement. In his 2011 essay on conservation and sustainability, Hines argued that reusing and upgrading existing building stock could be an important part of reducing environmental impact.
The argument anticipated a debate that has since become increasingly prominent in architecture: whether the carbon and material costs embedded in an existing structure should weigh more heavily when deciding whether to demolish it. Hines’s contribution was rooted in conservation practice, but it also framed historic-building reuse as a practical environmental question.
By 2014, SPAB’s annual review recorded him chairing a seminar concerned with new design in old buildings, further showing that this was not simply a theme attached retrospectively to his work.
Richmond House and the case for reuse
That same line of thinking appeared again in 2019, when Hines worked with SAVE Britain’s Heritage on an alternative proposal for Richmond House, the modern government building in Whitehall that had been considered for redevelopment in connection with the restoration of the Palace of Westminster.
The Richmond House proposal published by SAVE Britain’s Heritage argued for retaining and adapting the building rather than demolishing it. Hines’s associated report set out a scheme intended to show how the structure could continue to serve government needs.
The environmental and financial advantages claimed for that proposal were part of Hines and SAVE’s advocacy and should be understood as such, rather than as independently established outcomes. What the project does establish clearly is the consistency of Hines’s professional position: significant existing buildings should be examined for intelligent reuse before demolition is treated as the default answer.
That approach connects his later advocacy directly with the problems he had already confronted at Broadcasting House.
Lucy Worsley and Mark Hines
Hines’s name is often searched because of his marriage to historian and broadcaster Lucy Worsley, but their relationship also has a direct connection to his professional world.
In a 2013 Guardian interview, Worsley said she had met Hines while she was working for SPAB about 17 years earlier, placing their meeting at around 1996. She described him as an architect and referred to him as her husband.
The couple married in 2011. Contemporary and later reporting supports the year, although the exact wedding date is less securely documented in authoritative public material and is not necessary to understand their biography.
Worsley’s career developed in museums, historic buildings, broadcasting and popular history, while Hines’s professional record developed in architecture and conservation. Their meeting through SPAB therefore gives the relationship a documented connection to the historic-building sector without requiring speculation about their private life.
Hines has remained far less publicly visible than his wife. Worsley described him in the Guardian interview as a “very private person.” That makes it sensible to distinguish what is publicly documented from the large amount of personal detail that biography sites sometimes attach to him without strong evidence. Recent reporting has continued to identify Hines as Worsley’s husband.
What happened to Mark Hines Architects?
One area where older web pages can be misleading is the current status of Hines’s architectural company.
Although business and design directories may still display profiles for Mark Hines Architects, Companies House records show that Mark Hines Architects Limited was dissolved on 24 September 2024.
That corporate fact does not establish that Hines retired, stopped carrying out architectural work or left the profession. Dissolution of a limited company and retirement are not the same thing, and no reliable public evidence reviewed for his current biography establishes a new architectural employer or practice.
There is some evidence that he has remained publicly connected with his best-known work. A local-history programme in January 2025 listed Hines for a talk titled The Story of Broadcasting House: Home of the BBC, revisiting the subject with which his career is most closely associated.
What is Mark Hines doing now?
As of 3 September 2026, the clearest current public record concerns Miller House Limited rather than an architectural practice.
Companies House records for Miller House Limited show Hines becoming company secretary on 4 November 2024 and a director on 8 July 2025. Lucy Worsley is also listed as a director. The company remains active and is registered for television programme production.
Those filings establish Hines’s corporate role, but they do not show what his day-to-day work consists of or whether he is currently practising architecture elsewhere. It would therefore be inaccurate either to present him as the continuing principal of Mark Hines Architects Limited or to describe him as retired.
Confusion with other people named Mark Hines
The bare name “Mark Hines” produces an unusually high risk of mistaken identity.
Online results include people working in art, education, finance, sport and other fields. Some newer biography pages appear to have combined those records, describing Lucy Worsley’s husband as an artist or attributing craft work to him without providing authoritative evidence tying those activities to Mark Andrew Hines the architect.
Similar problems appear around his education. Claims that he attended a particular university or architecture school are repeated on some biography sites, but a reliable primary or institutional source establishing those details has not been identified.
The safest biography is therefore the narrower and better-documented one: Hines is a British architect with SPAB training, a significant role in the refurbishment of Broadcasting House, a later practice focused on conservation and reuse, and a publicly documented marriage to Lucy Worsley.
Why his architectural work matters
Hines’s career is most interesting when viewed through a single recurring question: what should happen to an important building when its original purpose no longer matches modern needs?
At Broadcasting House, that meant adapting a celebrated but ageing broadcasting headquarters to new technical requirements while retaining its architectural significance. In his later writing, Hines expanded the argument into a broader case for upgrading existing buildings. With the Richmond House proposal, he applied it to the debate over whether a functioning structure should be demolished at all.
That continuity gives his public career more shape than a list of projects would. Conservation, in Hines’s work, is not presented simply as an effort to freeze a building in time. It is a method of deciding what deserves to survive, what can change and how an older structure can remain useful.
Conclusion
Mark Hines is best understood not merely as Lucy Worsley’s husband but as an architect whose documented work has consistently focused on the future of existing buildings. His role in the refurbishment of BBC Broadcasting House, his SPAB background and his later arguments for adaptive reuse form the clearest thread through his professional life.
The public record becomes thinner when it comes to his current architectural work. Mark Hines Architects Limited was dissolved in 2024, while Hines now holds documented roles at Miller House Limited. What remains firmly established is the body of conservation work and writing that made Broadcasting House—and the question of how historic buildings can continue to serve modern life—the defining subject of his career.