Sketching spaces into life with Narinder Sagoo MBE

Narinder Sagoo is an architect, artist, and senior partner at Foster + Partners. Through drawing, design, and storytelling, his work explores how creativity, curiosity, and human connection can shape the spaces we live in.

In this episode, Narinder discusses his lifelong relationship with drawing, from sketching as a child in Leeds to shaping major architectural projects around the world. He talks about the importance of curiosity, authenticity, observation, and why drawing remains a powerful human skill in an increasingly digital age.

Website: https://www.fosterandpartners.com/people/all/narinder-sagoo-mbe

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Transcript

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Matt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Teach Inspire Create podcast. I'm Matt Mosley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. In this podcast, I speak to a fascinating range of people [00:00:15] who work all across the creative arts about how they have made their way into their roles, their impactful teaching experiences and the people and things that inspire them.

Matt: Through these conversations, we hope to show you there are endless ways to belong in the [00:00:30] creative world today. My guest is Narinder Sagoo. Narinder is an architect, artist, and senior partner at the Foster and Partners architect firm. In this episode, I'm gonna be talking to Narinder about his love for drawing, about his [00:00:45] process, his techniques, his materials, about how drawing informs his architectural practice and his architectural philosophy.

Matt: Hello, Narinder.

Narinder: Hi.

Matt: Thank you ever so much for joining us today on the Teach Inspire Create podcast. [00:01:00] It's wonderful to have you here. What I'd like to ask you about, if I may, is when did you first start drawing?

Narinder: As far back as I can remember. Well, I think it's like any child, I have little children and mark making [00:01:15] is our first form of expression, if you like, isn't it really?

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Before, even before we learn how to speak, I say that, but I can't really remember having an abundance of tools around me like my children [00:01:30] have today. So it was kind of the odd pencil here and there.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder : But I remember drawing four, five years old. I do have quite vivid memories of exactly where I was in our little house in Leeds, discovering a feeling [00:01:45] inside me that drawing gave a lucid state as a child where you kind of disappear.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Drawing was one of those things that allowed me to escape.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder : And enter that kind of [00:02:00] lucid world of creativity. We didn't really go on holiday or travel much when I was younger. So it was a form of escaping in my own imagination.

Narinder: And at the same time, exploring things around [00:02:15] me. I was fascinated with just kind of drawing what I saw out of the window or drawing the room where my grandmother was cooking.

Matt: Right. 

Narinder: It was really surrounded by a lot of creativity when I was, when I was little, that I was completely unaware of. At the time I [00:02:30] thought we were really hand to mouth as a family,

Matt: Right.

Narinder: Uh, as many were, and we grew up in this tiny little house…

Matt: So what forms of creativity did they… did that take?

Narinder: So well, my grandfather was a carpenter and my father was a metal worker, a [00:02:45] super skilled metal engineer.

Matt: Right

Narinder: Had a little workshop under the railway arches that I used to spend a lot of my time on the weekends, going to help him, avoiding homework and escaping, cutting metal, and I could still [00:03:00] smell… I still love the smell of welding.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: I walked past a garage recently and I had to go in and said, do you mind if I just stand here and smell? 

Matt: Just smell your welding for a minute.

Narinder: Because it took me back to my childhood. And my mother and grandmother were seamstresses, so they did piece work.

Matt: [00:03:15] Right.

Narinder: And so a guy would turn up in the morning and deliver this big bag full of pieces of jeans and shirts and garments, and they would spend all day sewing hundreds of garments, and then he'd come and pick it up and give him some cash at the end of the day. But it was [00:03:30] highly, highly creative post-war. All the kind of metal railings from Victorian houses disappeared because they were all taken and melted down to make tanks or whatever. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Narinder: And so my father made, his day-to-day business was making [00:03:45] fancy grills and gates and railings for people's houses in Leeds. And so he would ask me to draw some of the patterns and shapes that he could then turn into steel and weld. I remember that being significantly [00:04:00] different to just watching the pencil or pen dance around on the paper and follow your imagination through whatever it might turn into. As soon as it turns into something that has to be built and has to be made, it's a different [00:04:15] part of your mind and your heart that engages and still to this day, I think that's my challenge and our challenge as designers is to engage into that efficiency of using drawing as a tool for [00:04:30] not just communication, but instructing how things can be made.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Whilst keeping that childhood curiosity and imagination alive. One of the hardest things I think, that you have to keep practicing.

Matt: That's, that's [00:04:45] one of the things that I enjoy so much about looking at your drawings is you can really feel the interplay between the functionality of something and that desire for creating imaginary [00:05:00] spaces or imaginary places. How do you kind of approach that?

Narinder: Well, the other thing is, I think at school, I wasn't that academic, but I used to use drawing at school to get through subjects, coloring maps and drawing in geography or drawing the [00:05:15] apparatus in science and the bunsen burner, and that was my way of adding fun to something that I found difficult.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder : And I think it's a technique that perhaps I still use, is that when we're in the serious world [00:05:30] of architects and engineers and all serious disciplines come walking in thinking we've gotta be grown up and solve some real world issues. There's still a child inside me that feels that I need to add a bit of fun to this process.

Narinder : [00:05:45] Drawings, my way of doing that, it’s my way of breaking boundaries, my way of seeing the written word at school in a fun, visual, pictorial way. So I say to my kids when they're struggling with [00:06:00] perhaps writing a story, I say, if you can't say it, draw it. And if you can't draw it, write it, and if, or say it, and combine these different languages together.

Matt: Sure. Yeah, this idea of visual communication is incredibly powerful, [00:06:15] isn't it? The world opens up in a different way. So you are up and running as a drawer. You’re navigating your sort of early education life through drawing. Was there a moment where architecture presented itself to you as a [00:06:30] potential route that you'd like to follow?

Narinder: Uh, yes. Hit A-levels, hardest time of my life - probably like everyone. Getting through A-levels and having that pressure of finding a profession? Well, I was looking at engineering and then realized that it would be not as much [00:06:45] fun for me as I would've liked. And then I found architecture as this perfect balance between making, dreaming, and also using my love of drawing.

Matt: Hmm.

Narinder : Yes, through it. And perhaps naively so, [00:07:00] because not all architects draw, it's particularly in a digital world, drawing becomes a rarity. But it was almost made for me as a career path.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: And my careers advisor at school said, you're never gonna get the grades.[00:07:15]

Narinder: It was difficult 'cause I didn't really have a portfolio because I didn't study art. But I did have the graphic communication portfolio, and I very quickly had to kind of fill a few sketchbooks with sketches to take along to my architectural interviews. My favorite sketch being of [00:07:30] two wheelie bins outside my mom's kitchen, which I still love to this day because I always tell my kids that stop trying to draw beautiful things like unicorns and rainbows and flowers, try to draw the most banal objects and [00:07:45] make them beautiful. It feeds the curious part of your brain that allows you to see opportunity in the simplest of objects and places and environments that we take for granted.

Matt: And it's always accessible, isn't it? It's always right [00:08:00] there on the doorstep. It seems all through your kind of process of drawing your development, of drawing the things that were right in front of you were the things that spoke to you the most.

Narinder : Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's easy to look back and say this, but [00:08:15] to follow something you love doing and not giving in, not taking anyone's advice that might deter you from following that dream. And even when people had said, I would stop drawing because you'll never make any money out of drawing.

Narinder : I used [00:08:30] that to energize myself to do it even more. 

Matt: Yeah. It galvanizes you in a way, doesn't it?

Narinder : And I still do that to this day. I love being faced with these challenges that you can turn into a positive. I have to say, I also did work experience when I was 15,

Matt: Right

Narinder: [00:08:45] 16, which was amazing. I found a little architectural practice in Leeds, which was in a beautiful old brick building by the river, and all I did was traced a few drawings, went and made cups of tea and folded drawings and… [00:09:00]

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Went to get the fish and chips on a Friday and so on. But it was amazing being in that environment and understanding the dynamic and seeing what an architect looked like. And seeing how they dressed and what their character [00:09:15] was like. You also fall in love with

Matt: Sure.

Narinder: The personality behind, behind these, these professions.

Matt: Yah, it’s a package, isn't it?

Narinder: Yeah. I want to be him. I remember this guy coming in and drawing the most amazing hand drawn perspectives of these projects that this practice were working on. [00:09:30] And he was like the hero of the studio of, I dunno, maybe about 20, 30 people.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: I thought I want to be him.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder : That's what I want to do. And I want his desk, which overlooks the river. And now I kind of sit by the River Thames. I always think about that, that you never give [00:09:45] in on these kind of visual dreams as well and the forms of self affirmation.

Matt: And I'll never tire of seeing people draw live. You can hold people in the palm of your hand by just allowing them to observe this process of [00:10:00] drawing.

Narinder: It's a difficult thing to do. It takes a huge amount of courage just to walk in, especially if you don't know people and to be the first person to make that mark on the paper.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder : And I think the message to people and just joining, [00:10:15] even at university, I think being in an unfamiliar environment.

Narinder : And expressing your own thoughts through drawing. You have to do it step-by-step. But the more you do it, the confidence builds up and you become almost the most powerful person [00:10:30] in the room because you are expressing through extreme honesty. And also what I really love about drawing is that I talk about a lot and most of my books are full of thoughts that some of them are, of course my own, but they're [00:10:45] always collective thoughts. Drawings a very powerful way of bringing everyone's thoughts together in that room. So, it's not walking in and saying, ‘Hey, listen to me and look at what I have to say, because I think I have the solution.’

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: It's always a [00:11:00] collective we, and what I love doing is listening to everybody in the room and using that to almost seduce everyone together to follow your pen whilst you bring [00:11:15] everyone's thoughts together and through that kind of humble act of listening, which is probably the most powerful tool we have through the pen, start to express your own thoughts as well.

Narinder: If you are a younger person at the beginning of your [00:11:30] career, using that level of humility in drawing, we've talked about observational drawings, it's the same thing really. It's observational or you are listening to people's ideas and exploring them. It's the best way of exploring misunderstandings [00:11:45] or, and to be able to kind of draw something and say, is this what you mean?

Narinder: And they said, well, actually I did say that, but maybe I'm wrong. And it speeds up everyone's thinking. It starts to channel everyone together as a collective. So, it's a very [00:12:00] powerful thing to do, and as a young person, if you start doing that purely observationally as you have as a child, and start to use it as that powerful tool for listening to other people gradually, slowly, you can [00:12:15] express yourself more and more through the pen.

Matt: How important is repetition? [00:12:30]

Narinder: I mean, I feel like I'm still practicing all the time. 

Matt: Yeah, always a student of it. 

Narinder: Always a student. I look back and there's tens of thousands of drawings and hundreds of sketchbooks where I can see progression. I can see this year's sketchbooks better [00:12:45] than last year's sketchbook.

Narinder: Or I look through hundreds of drawings where I'm kind of really not proud of them at all. And then there's a few drawings in that huge collection that mark significant moments of [00:13:00] improvement or dedication.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: That I'm really proud of, and I might publish or kinda show in an exhibition, for example, but there's so many that I wouldn't show.

Narinder: Like anyone, you, you're kind of not embarrassed, but they're part of your training,

Matt: But they all [00:13:15] contribute in a way to that moment.

Narinder: Yes, they do.

Matt: Of transition to the next thing, don't they? Do you draw every day?

Narinder: I do draw every day. Yeah, I, yeah, mostly. I did a drawing over November, December, January for charity.

Narinder: That was [00:13:30] a high degree of repetition. I was drawing 10,310 little characters who represented young people that a charity that I'm an ambassador for had helped since 2009, and I wanted to draw every single one of them and then [00:13:45] to auction this collective composition of all these thousands of figures for the charity, which was very successful.

Narinder: But as a result, I've got a little bit of RSI.

Matt:Really? Wow. 

Narinder: So I've been resting a little bit, but I can't [00:14:00] help it. It's my happy place. But I still have that same feeling of disappearing into a sketchbook or a sheet of paper, and then looking at my watch and two hours have gone by.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: And sometimes when you're in a large practice like ours, you're [00:14:15] surrounded by a lot of activity and noise or wherever you are.

Narinder: I like to exercise that ability to disappear,

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: In drawing. And I draw on the train, I draw on the tube, I'll have my headphones on, listen to music, [00:14:30] and, and by the time I look up, I'm at the end of the line.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: And I'll, I will have drawn more in that moment, in that one hour of commuting than perhaps the whole day.

Matt: Yeah. And do you have preferred materials? Do you have a [00:14:45] go-to?

Narinder: It's a good question. I do. I mean, in our studio as architects, we used to be quite formal in the days of all plans and sections and all architectural drawings being hand drawn, everything was so [00:15:00] perfect and tidy and there were go-to pencils and pens and the architect.

Narinder: Kind of, you know, different thicknesses of pen to draw different things. It was so disciplined, which has a beauty to it, and of course it has an order [00:15:15] that is applicable to architectural storytelling. But my connection through organisations like The Big Draw, allowed me to visit people like Quentin Blake and Gerald Scarfe and Roger Penrose, and I just [00:15:30] went and met all of our patrons.

Narinder: As I was a trustee back then, I'm now a patron myself of The Big Draw, but I remember going to see Quentin Blake and his studio near Gloucester Road at the front of his house [00:15:45] was exactly the way you would expect Quentin Blake studio to be. He was almost like in a physical drawing.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Surrounded by pens and quills and paint brushes and sheets of tracing paper. You know, you, you also learn [00:16:00] about those thousands of drawings that lead to what appears to be a perfect drawing to the public. Comes through thousands of sheets of practice and masters like Quentin still exercising that. And I was fascinated by his [00:16:15] workplace and visiting every different artist's workplace and coming back to our studio, I just felt that I'm gonna break all the rules and just surround myself with…

Matt: Amazing

Narinder : …an abundance of tools.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: So I now make sure that I've got paint brushes and [00:16:30] pens, and I might not use those paints for months. And then occasionally I'll…

Matt: But knowing that they're there gives you a sense of freedom that you can...

Narinder : Yeah, and that creative environment that you're in is so important not to tidy up at the end of the day. And for you to be able to [00:16:45] walk into that environment. I think one of the best pieces of advice that I've always been given is, of course, find something you love doing and pursue it until your heart's content, but surround yourself with people that are [00:17:00] better than you.

Matt: Hmm.

Narinder: And as my career has developed, I've been so lucky to surround myself with an amazing team, but we're about 45 artists, architect artists just like myself who studied architecture or different kinds of design, didn't really [00:17:15] know this job existed where you could just draw all day and paint either physically or digitally or using 3D tools. And I found kind of like-minded people.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Who create that creative environment around [00:17:30] me. So the people are just as important as all the, as all the tools. And a long way of answering your question, my favorite tool which is at the moment, I've got a lamy, a fountain pen that just allows [00:17:45] ink to flow so easily.

Narinder: And it reminds me of Quentin's drawings 'cause he used to draw with a quill. When I saw him, he was like a fountain pen or, or a quill that.

Matt: Creating a beautiful scratchy line, narrative lines.

Narinder : And the sound of it! And just watching him make marks that [00:18:00] were almost unintentional, but then suddenly turned into this beautiful figure. I find that this pen and the flow of ink through it allows me to explore something between an architect drawing and someone illustrating a children's book [00:18:15] and exploring those beautiful kinds of stories.

Narinder: I have these everywhere 'cause I always forget them and I use good quality sketchbooks that don't fall apart 'cause they do go through daily rigor of being constantly open and [00:18:30] pulled apart. And, but this also, this pen also allows me to make those happy mistakes. It's not precise. It sometimes kind of…

Matt: So of forgiveness to it.

Narinder : Yeah. Or it, or it kind of makes marks that you then tidy up and turn into something beautiful in your book. [00:18:45]

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Or I always describe it as watching it dance on the paper. And it's almost like it's doing the thinking half a second before your brain is working out what it is.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: Or it's, there's half a thought and the pen's [00:19:00] allowing you just to speak.

Matt: Yeah.

Matt: How important would you say it is to develop [00:19:15] an identity as an architect so that a Narinder drawing is identifiable? And then maybe, as you mentioned, you're surrounded by many other very talented people. Is it crucial that you develop that sort of [00:19:30] creative voice for yourself that is clearly your own?

Narinder: I think there's a, perhaps a myth that faces young people that they need to, I mean, you need to be absolutely authentic, I think, and authenticity is a [00:19:45] difficult thing to achieve.

Narinder: Perhaps if we're in a world where we follow trends, and we want the same thing that our friend has, and I like your jeans, and I might buy the same pair and we're at different speeds following the [00:20:00] same trend. To be authentic, as an individual, is probably one of the hardest but most fun things to discover.

Narinder : And in any profession, I think there's no harm in finding characters, inspirational figures, [00:20:15] and sometimes mentors and important kind of figureheads without them even knowing that they have that position in your life that you imitate and you might imitate someone's style of drawing.

Matt: Hmm.

Narinder: As soon as I saw Quentin drawing live in his [00:20:30] studio, the first thing I wanted to do was go back and try it out. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Narinder: And, and not think, oh God, I can't copy Quentin Blake. Why not? You can!

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: And you can learn his style and you can learn so much from sometimes [00:20:45] imitation and then combining it with another influence and another, and another, and not being apologetic about that, but like going through thousands of drawings where you then discover your own self.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: And your drawings [00:21:00] become unique, authentic. Nothing's ever unique. There's no such thing as a unique idea. It's always a collection of many, of many influences. Of course it is. So, at some point you then [00:21:15] get known for your own voice and your creativity. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Narinder: And your style of drawing. But when I look at my drawings, I can see all the influences from different people.

Matt: For young people, they often look at the work of others that they [00:21:30] aspire to be and the distance between where they are and where their hero is, is so great that they feel it's an impossible journey. But you realize that it's a set of skills that you could develop over time through that iterative [00:21:45] process of development, isn't it?

Narinder: There's a wonderful Japanese philosophy of things called kazen, which is becoming a better version of yourself every single day, piece by piece. It's not an immediate transformation that turns you into [00:22:00] an artist or an architect, it's just it doesn't happen on graduation day.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Narinder: You still have to learn how to become that person, and I think in that sense, surrounding yourself with these influences and figures [00:22:15] that you enjoy the company of, you enjoy their character, and it's more about the way they design. It's more about the way they draw and the way they are as professionals. It's also about their character. It might be one person's [00:22:30] humility and might be another person's stature.

Matt: So it's important to always be looking.

Narinder : Yeah, I think so. And being authentic. I think in the world that we face where authenticity can become [00:22:45] flattened and become planar because we're using the same tools. I think young people have to focus even more on their authenticity than ever before.

Matt: Right.

Narinder : Because the same pen in the hands of thousands of people can produce so [00:23:00] many different things.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder : But digital tools are starting to flatten the way we speak and the way we communicate, the way we express ourselves, which can be quite frightening.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: At the same time, it can be quite [00:23:15] enlightening that we need to reconnect with that authenticity even more.

Matt: And on the idea of the same pen in a thousand different hands, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about The Big Draw, if I may. Can you tell us a bit about what The Big Draw is for those that maybe haven't heard of it?

Narinder : Sure. I mean, [00:23:30] so The Big Draw when I got involved was this incredible festival of drawing that was a huge one-off event. We had one in the British Museum, we had one at Somerset House. It's everything that [00:23:45] encourages the message that everyone can draw. Everyone should draw, whatever age, ability, and place you are, wherever you are in the world. Whether you're in the city and you have an abundance of [00:24:00] tools around you and influences around you, or whether you're in part of a world where those tools are very minimal, the humble pencils still… It's ubiquitous and it's somewhere. But that whole thing about children stopping drawing and being [00:24:15] told that they should do less of it and focus on reading and writing and so on. The Big Draw really champions the message that everyone should use drawing as a language.

Narinder : And there's no such thing as a bad drawing, there's no such thing as a mistake. And when I got involved, we would go to these huge [00:24:30] festivals of drawing that was known as The Big Draw festival where people of all ages would gather in the city. And now, I've been involved for 20 years I think, it's much more than that. You might see [00:24:45] these incredible festivals and celebrations surfacing, but on a national and international level, in schools and communities, and I was judging a prize for The Big Draw last week and it was incredible how [00:25:00] communities had got together with, wherever they were, whether they were in Dorset, and they were a little village hall The Big Draw event or whether they were in a school in Southeast London. 

Matt: Right. 

Narinder: And pulling together the tools they had and weaving. There was an [00:25:15] amazing one where they were painting and drawing on strips. These are hundreds of people taking part in these events, painting on strips of paper, then weaving them through fencing that you normally find around building sites. This really [00:25:30] horrible, cheap fencing that they were weaving the paper through like a tapestry, and they created this amazing installation together. So these festivals and these events bring people together through the act of mark [00:25:45] marking. Hopefully it starts to change the perception through education as well for schools to highlight the importance of art, not just drawing, but any kind of mark making in the lives of young people.

Matt: Wonderful. If people wanted to get involved with The Big [00:26:00] Draw, how would they go about doing that?

Narinder: It's very simple. There's so many events on the website that you can just attend, but if you're an organizer or you're a teacher, or you have any place where you can find the ability to be able to organize an [00:26:15] event, you can contact the team and they'll send you a pack.

Narinder: You register and everything's laid out for you in terms of how to run the event, which is also wonderful that there's a small team. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Narinder: Really beautiful, humble [00:26:30] team that work wonders at The Big Draw. But really the organizers are the members of the community, the teachers in schools and so on. And we just give the tools out for them to run the events by themselves. It couldn't be easier. [00:26:45] 

Matt: Great. Yeah. Yeah. Let's encourage people to join in. That sounds wonderful.

Matt: Yeah, so I loved how you said that [00:27:00] you'd found the job where you can draw every day. Could you tell us a little bit about how your day goes in terms of the projects that you mentioned you're working on and the materials that you surround yourself with?

Narinder: It's a good question. The beauty I found in architecture is that [00:27:15] it's not just about materials and engineering and making structures stand up and so on. It's about the spaces in between. It's about the places that change people's lives, and most of the drawings that I'm fortunate to [00:27:30] indulge myself in are visions of humanistic experiential drawings describing the feeling of architecture. And so, most of my drawings will be, sometimes analytical and [00:27:45] sometimes to do with how buildings are fitted together and how they work.

Matt: So you're trying to solve a problem or work something out with those things?

Narinder: Yeah, but they're really something that's perhaps young people entering architecture don't expect. So they expect to see [00:28:00] drawings that tell builders how to build buildings, but most of my drawings are about feeling, they're about experience.

Narinder: They're about being in the place, being with other people, your connection with nature, your connection with placemaking, these analog [00:28:15] experiences. And then the architecture is actually a backdrop within most of my drawings, it just becomes something like the stage set in a theater behind the actors, and you are the actor, you are the protagonist.

Narinder: People are the most [00:28:30] important piece, if you like. So I always find myself drawing people and scenes and environments and places that will change people's lives within our projects. And then the building behind. So [00:28:45] it's a good question because like I said, a lot of young people think of architecture as something very different.

Narinder: It's just about building buildings and it's just about doing these drawings that get planning permission and building control, and you get a contractor to build it and it's just, it's a piece of [00:29:00] physicality in the city. But actually for me, and for us as a team, architecture is about spaces in between the buildings. It's the spaces we create that change people's lives, whether it's a building or whether it's the design of a [00:29:15] table or a chair or a light fitting and or indeed a pen. We've designed so many different things in the practice. And in that sense, architecture has an incredible responsibility because we're [00:29:30] responsible for the way people live their lives within cities and within the world and how they respond to one another and the environment.

Matt: It's so liberating. It sounds like fun. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun, I think some of the students that I've worked with in the [00:29:45] past have become quite anxious about their ability to technically draw, and actually what you are talking about as someone who's worked in the industry for a long time and is very successful with it. That doesn't need to be the process. The process is can be [00:30:00] playful and can be fun and can be imaginary.

Narinder: I remember a good 20, 25 years ago, someone saying, what are you gonna do when the computer takes over hand drawing? And I kind of thought, I don't care. I'm having such a nice time. But it was a good [00:30:15] question.

Narinder: And right now we're asking ourselves, what are you gonna do when AI takes over your role? And we are thinking about this all the time, every day, and I think it might replace the kind of mid-to-mid process of [00:30:30] creating those technical drawings perhaps, or producing. It might be manufacturing components of buildings without any drawing in between.

Matt: Yeah,

Narinder: But what it can't replace is that childlike curiosity that we talked [00:30:45] about, the ability to explore human voice through the design process, critical thinking, being able to find beauty in mistakes and think with empathy. The tools that an architect would [00:31:00] perhaps have to develop more now than ever before are not the technical drawing skills that have been replaced many, many times.

Narinder: The draftman got replaced with the computer and now the person controlling the computer might be [00:31:15] replaced with another computer that doesn't need the human sat there anymore perhaps. But what it can't replace is the human value that we give into architecture.

Matt: Humans have an unpredictability and a spontaneity and a [00:31:30] way of approaching things that doesn't always seem initially sensible. That's where amazing things happen, isn't it? And sort of innovation occurs. I wondered if, as someone who is constantly visualizing things of the future, [00:31:45] are there particular themes or things that you're having to think about in your design process now?

Narinder : I think, like I said, we have to, uh, be really focused on the places between buildings and between [00:32:00] spaces that we don't normally consider as architecture, but are so crucial to human life. I fear that through AI and through digital platforms, in the same way that we've just suddenly got used to making [00:32:15] friends, keeping touch with family, finding our future partners in life through apps, that it's taking away the kind of the beauty and the serendipity in our lives where you might actually bump [00:32:30] into someone and become friends or fall in love, and I don't think a computer can replace that.

Narinder: Our responsibility is to create those places to think about how magical a light might be coming through a tree, hitting a bench, and what the view from [00:32:45] that bench might be into the city, across a park, and how the park frames the city beyond, or the town or the church spire or the street. The placemaking in between that forms our human lives that perhaps we take [00:33:00] for granted when we, particularly if we disappear onto the underground and pop out somewhere, but still, that journey from A to B is what makes us human.

Narinder: If we let go of that, then I think we're in trouble in the future. If you get this kind [00:33:15] of flattening of spatial value in cities, that disappoints me, so my advice to myself constantly every day, and I think to younger people, and I say to my children as well, is that a lot of [00:33:30] the jobs around myself and adults that you're looking up to at the moment might well be replaced in the future.

Narinder: There might be so much that we have a reliance on technology for, that you need [00:33:45] to dial up even more than ever before, are human values that we have. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Narinder: Our ability to look eye to eye and listen to people. Our ability to sometimes write a letter or drawing a birthday card [00:34:00] rather than buying it online. And our human empathy, that can't be replaced by a machine.

Matt: Yeah.

Narinder: So in architecture, I think perhaps some of it might be replaced, but we need to increase our kind of [00:34:15] empathetic processes through creativity, through drawing, through discussion, listening. Perhaps that comes at the end and the beginning and that critical thinking, that's so irreplaceable.

Matt: Yeah. Narinder, I mean, [00:34:30] amazing. It's been so wonderful to talk to you. And drawing, I think, feels in very good hands with people like you championing it and seeing into the future, so thank you ever so much for all that you are doing. We always like to end [00:34:45] the, the interview, the discussion with something that people can take away, do and work on today. Is there something that you'd like to challenge our listeners to do or think about?

Narinder: I would say perhaps continuing what we've just said, be humble, be curious, be [00:35:00] authentic. Enjoy the analog moments we have in our lives, and balance those with the unknown future that's ahead of us.

Matt: Fantastic. Yeah, I'm gonna take some time today [00:35:15] to get away from the screen and just, yeah, look at some stuff. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you, Narinder. Thank you so much.

Narinder: Thank you so much.

Matt: Thanks ever so much to Narinder. It was amazing to hear from him about the power of authenticity [00:35:30] and about how drawing can be a vehicle to take you on many wonderful journeys.

Matt: If you want to know more about Narinder's work, we will include links to his website and other useful resources in the podcast episode description. Hope you're enjoying the podcast. Please subscribe and [00:35:45] share wherever you can and please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening - until next time, bye-bye.