Hutton was born in Norwich in 1957, the youngest of four children of an arable farmer. She read architecture at the University of Bristol until 1980 and at the Architectural Association in London until 1985, where she later taught, and worked with Alison and Peter Smithson from 1984 to 1988. In 1989 she founded Sauerbruch Hutton in London with Matthias Sauerbruch; winning the competition for the GSW headquarters took the office to Berlin in 1992. The practice — she leads it with Sauerbruch and Juan Lucas Young — is known for treating colour as a building material and for a sustained argument that low-energy buildings need not look ascetic. She held visiting professorships at Virginia and at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is a Royal Academician.
