MED Design Associates

MED Design Associates is one of Malta's longer-established architecture and engineering practices. Founded in 1983, it grew from a local architectural engineering consultancy into a multi-disciplinary firm working across infrastructure and real estate, with offices at Hercules House in Valletta. Its working motto is simple: manage, engineer, design.

For UK readers, the firm is most relevant to developers, investors and public bodies planning medium to large projects on the islands, but its range from villas and schools to bridges and hotels also makes it a useful name for anyone building or restoring in Malta. It appears in our directory of architects in Malta.

Who MED is and how it works

The practice is employee owned and describes its values as dedication to finishing jobs properly, good customer service and consistently high professional performance. Its founder, managing director and senior partner is Perit Charles Buhagiar, and the firm has a founding partner, Perit Alfred Grech, who sits among the senior project architects. A perit is the Maltese title for a warranted architect and civil engineer.

The team is organised into three divisions. Managers oversee the process from start to finish, engineers develop structural and civil solutions, and designers handle architecture and interiors. Sergio Marletta directs structural engineering, Ilona Parnis Debono directs interior design, and Perit Greta Bond is a senior design architect. Its people come from diverse sectors and backgrounds, which allows modern construction methods to be combined with careful project management.

Services

Architectural and interior design is the creative core, taking a client's brief through to unique spaces tailored to need. Civil and structural engineering covers the frames, foundations and infrastructure that hold a project up, including road and bridge work. Project management and development and construction management follow a scheme through its programme, while planning consultancy helps navigate permits and the planning process in Malta.

Other services listed on its project pages include quantity surveying, health and safety assurance, quality assurance, sustainability design, conservation design and restoration and archaeological consultancy. That mix matters in Malta, where so many commissions involve historic fabric, protected buildings or sensitive sites.

Sectors and selected projects

MED sorts its portfolio into commercial, hospitality, infrastructure, master plans, educational, residential and concepts. Commercial work includes the Embassy Shopping Complex in Valletta, completed between 1995 and 1998, a seven-floor scheme of shops, cafes and a seven-screen cinema, with an audiovisual show telling the story of the capital. Other commercial names in the portfolio include PAMA Shopping Village and the Zara and Dr Juice stores.

In hospitality the firm restored the Imperial in Sliema, a high Victorian building of 1865 that began as a hunting lodge, and converted it into a residence for elderly people. The project won the Hospitality, Tourism, Accommodation and Leisure award at the 2021 Malta Architecture and Spatial Planning Awards. Hotel work also includes the Seaview Hotel and the Qawra Palace Hotel, plus Buskett Forest. Educational projects include St Paul's Bay Primary School and the American University Malta.

Infrastructure, master plans and Gozo

Infrastructure is a major strand. The Kappara Junction scheme, financed by the European Union and completed in 2018, tackled traffic between San Ġwann and Sliema with a 193-metre bridge, the first of its kind in Malta, built from prefabricated steel beams and concrete slabs, with sound barriers added. MED provided project management, structural design and a live traffic management plan. Its portfolio also lists a role in the Delimara LNG regasification plant and in the Vjal il-Helsien road scheme.

Master plans include the Life Sciences Park and the Grand Harbour Marina at Cottonera, near our Three Cities guide, and Popeye Village, covered in our Popeye Village page. On Gozo, the Gozo Innovation Hub on the edge of the Xewkija Industrial Estate won the 2020 Sustainability award and an Honourable Mention at the Architecture Masterprize. It replaced the former dairy processing plant while preserving its silhouette, and offers 9,000 square metres of flexible business space, a story told further in our Gozo guide. Visitors keen to see the work can plan a day through our Valletta guide, Mellieħa guide and things to do in Malta.

Three projects in more detail

The Kappara Bridge was built in sections to limit disruption. Its structure was split into sixteen parts of between 23 and 27 metres, formed from steel beams made in Spain that weighed 520 tons in all, with abutments and piles built, moved and assembled in just eight nights. The deck is 9.95 metres wide, with two lanes in each direction, and the final phase repaired the wall along the slip road from San Ġwann towards St Julian's.

The Imperial covers about 6,000 square metres. Because little historical documentation survived, the team relied on visual inspections and a stratigraphic analysis of the building's construction to plan its conservation, keeping World War II shrapnel marks on the facade as part of its history. New additions were designed to sit comfortably beside the Victorian structure.

The Ministry of Agriculture scheme at Qormi, under way since 2020, turns a disused historic building on a site of about 6,500 square metres into government offices for 35 employees, with reception areas, meeting rooms, a multipurpose hall, an industrial kitchen and a courtyard garden. Extensions use triple-glazed frit glass to reduce solar heat gain, and existing metal parapets are replaced by glass railings.

Heritage and sustainability on Gozo

The Gozo Innovation Hub is a useful example of how the firm handles old and new together. The Business Centre block spans two floors, with open-plan units from 85 to 270 square metres that can be customised, vertical louvres that control solar heat, and a communal terrace above the car park entrance. The Administration block was conserved with its original finishes and openings, including a concave facade inspired by the shape of Malta's ancient temple fronts, and a covered walkway links it to the new building around a courtyard used for events.

If you are visiting Gozo, the island's temples and villages make a pleasant day out, and the hub itself sits beside the Xewkija Industrial Estate near the town of Xewkija.

In the capital, the Embassy Complex replaced a post-war building that once housed the embassy and ambassador cinemas, and it remains the firm's best-known Valletta project.

Awards and recognition

Recognition includes the 2021 Hospitality, Tourism, Accommodation and Leisure award, the 2020 Malta Architecture and Spatial Planning Awards, the 2020 Sustainability Award for the Gozo Innovation Hub and a 2020 Architecture Masterprize honourable mention. It was named Best Construction Consultancy 2019 in Build magazine, and also received certificates for Malta's Best Architect and Engineering Company of the Year 2019.

News on the site shows the firm taking part in industry events, signing a memorandum of understanding on the Considerate Construction Scheme in 2019 and backing equality and inclusion in construction. A day-care centre for older people in Rabat is also under way.

Working with MED and getting in touch

A first conversation usually starts with a brief and a site. If you are buying or developing property as part of a move, our relocating to Malta guide explains the wider process, and neighbouring directory members such as Perit Charles Azzopardi and A Collective are other architects to compare.

The office is at 9a Hercules House, Triq San Mark, Valletta. To ask about a project, use the VisitMalta.co.uk enquiry form on this page and we will pass your message to the firm.