GP 63: Building for Society: with Simon Henley of Henley Halebrown

This episode takes its title from Henley Halebrown's recently published book, Building for Society, and we are privileged to have worked closely with Simon and the practice for over a decade, aligning elegant and economic buildings with the needs of people and place.

In this episode of the Grow Places Podcast, Tom Larsson is joined by Simon Henley, Director of Henley Halebrown, at the practice's studio in Perseverance Works, East London. Simon reflects on thirty years of practice built around a deceptively simple conviction: that every building, regardless of its budget or brief, is fundamentally for people and for society. From early work in interiors and adaptive reuse through to award-winning schools, health centres, co-housing and housing, he traces a career shaped as much by accident and curiosity as by intention, and explains how writing, teaching and practice fuel one another. The conversation explores how Henley Halebrown's recurring interest in courtyards, external circulation and civic responsibility has produced buildings that are both elegant and economic, solving practical problems around efficiency, microclimate and construction while elevating the experience of everyday life.

The discussion also delves into collaboration and the culture of design teams, with Simon reflecting on the value of intimate, discursive project meetings where people feel free to pose questions and challenge the status quo. Drawing on projects from the Hackney school that stayed open at 40 degrees to the Copper Lane co-housing scheme, from the Truman Brewery to the newly completed Barge Crescent on the South Bank, he demonstrates how buildings can reflect the social logic of the organisations and communities they serve. Simon also shares insights from his time chairing the RIBA awards judging panel, where he helped rewrite the criteria to ask better questions about what makes a good building. Looking ahead, he describes the practice's work in Winchester with Igloo, Peter Barber and Turner Works on what he believes will be the greatest transformation of the city in a thousand years, not through scale, but through the careful repair of streets, squares and medieval waterways. Ambitious yet grounded, his message is clear: keep your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds.

Transcript

Welcome And A Place With Soul

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Grow Places Podcast, where we explore the virtuous circle of people, growth, and place. Brought to you by Grow Places and hosted by our founder, Tom Larson.

From Interiors To Retrofit Roots

SPEAKER_02 0:15

Simon, thanks very much for joining me today on the Grow Places Podcast. Thanks for having me over at your lovely office. We're surrounded by models and maquettes and in Perseverance Works, which is one of my favourite places in East London. I was just saying to your colleague before we came on that it would be amazing if we could just continue to build stuff that had this feel and felt amazing like this, like it did in that period. But um maybe we can unpack some of that today together. But first of all, why don't we just uh do a little intro to yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Okay. Well thanks, Tom. Thanks for inviting me on. I'm I'm an avid listener. Um so yeah, uh so I have run a practice called Henny Hell Ram for 30 years. And um I studied in the University of Liverpool and a bit in the States, and I think I probably do owe quite a lot of my kind of concerns and interests actually to things like travelling to India early on as a student, studying in America, um and not not just to the architecture but to the to the societies and and particularly probably to the landscapes and the climate and how all those things relate to one another. Um and and and as a practice we we kind of uh started out actually just making interiors and and and what was really uh important about that in a way was the architecture was fairly humble but the kind of question of working with people, working with businesses, because we were basically doing uh you know offices. So we were we were almost like management consultants to to these businesses, changing the way they worked. So the architecture was light, but the but the the kind of the theories and the processes were interesting and kind of getting under people's skins. And I think you know that's that's kind of followed through our work and and another thing is that we kind of developed through um we moved through sectors because we started then doing adaptive reuse, what now people call retrofit. Started doing that 29 years ago. And that was huge you know, nobody said to us, have you done a you know housing scheme or a school or whatever? They would say, Have you ever adapted an old building? And if we said yes, then they say, Oh, by the way, we've then got a project which was such and such, and you go, Great.

Practice Teaching Writing Fuel Each Other

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Yeah, amazing. And uh and that journey is sort of as you say, fluid and meandering, it'd be great to kind of understand a little bit more about that today from you. Just something you said there. I would I would say naturally you're probably the furthest away from a management consultant I've I've seen. I can't imagine you sort of suddenly working for KPMG or uh something like that. But it's interesting the notion that you described there, like of the role of the architect and and how that's evolved for you over time, and and you now yourself and you as a practice of the highest kind of standing, you know, you have roles within the RBA and and other things around that. Um, so maybe that journey for you through practice, academia, management consultancy, how how do you see all those strands for you personally fitting together and and and why have you pursued personally being in academia, being in practice in equal vigour, really?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah. Um well I I mean I think an architect is is a polymath. You know, they're you at least you've got to be pretty good at lots of things. Also, you've got to know your limitations, and of course, one of one of the things is you've got to collaborate with people, you've got to collaborate with people inside your office, and you've got to collaborate with people outside your office. Um But uh I mean all these dimensions of of practice and writing and teaching, they all fuel each other. And you know, we've just we've just published a book called Building for Society, and I think that that's a very fair way of describing the way we think. That even though every project has a client, uh every project is for society. Um but you know, you know, writing gives you time literally to put your thoughts in order, and and teaching gives you an opportunity to voice them, and you know, in a way it's quite an it's quite an indulgence to to expect people to listen to you for hours at a time. I don't mean giving lectures, but just kind of um voicing ideas and voicing theories. So in a way it's a real privilege to teach. It's also a very it's a privilege to write when people I mean the nicest thing I think is when somebody five, ten, fifteen years, whatever it is, after you've written a book, turns out they've read the book and they want to tell you they've read the book or they've or that you know uh uh a lecturer has been recommending the book to students, or students have said, out of the blue, just email me and said, I really loved your book or something. But yeah, it's a I you know it's a culture. I mean it is a business being part of of of uh you know the world of property and construction, but it's also a culture, and and um that culture extends, I mean we organise something called dialogues, which are uh a slightly grandiose term for p talks, but we we've been doing them now for about a decade. And but of course the word dialogue is is important because really the point of the of of uh the talk is to bring a group of people together. Because there's dialogue just in bringing people together. Beforehand, everybody turns up and has a drink and chat, and it's social, but it's also thoughtful, and then of course the talk is thoughtful, and then it always ends up leading to questions and conversation and a dialogue, and then might end up in the pub afterwards. So you know, we are now one of uh almost you know well I have European architects wanting to come and talk here, European uh academics wanting to launch books here through the programme. So it's a kind of really broad church, and you know, we've got um artists and all sorts of people wanting to to you know use the platform, so to speak, of dialogues to reach a community of architects and artists and academics, but also you know, we've had developers speak, we've had all sorts of people speak. So it's a very kind of open forum for conversations about the world we all work in.

Let A Career Be Accidental

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yeah, that's amazing, it's super interesting. And um so if you're in if you're in a a seminar with one of your students, um it seems like the way you've described your journey through practice and also um the wider sort of sphere of architecture is is sort of following your passions or following what you're interested in, and and then that developing into other things as opposed to uh an overly controlled or overly kind of planned route through life or route through profession. Is that is that fair? And is that something you say when you're talking to students about sort of following their intuitions?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

To a certain extent, your life is gonna be a bit accidental. I mean I came out of college in 92 and it was a recession and it was hard to get a job, and and and so I started teaching straight away. In fact, I did get a job with an architect architect called Trevor Dann, who was a very well-known architect involved in the Royal Festival Hall with Leslie Martin. But we were just too far apart age-wise. So when I said I got the invitation to go and teach, he said, I don't think we can find you know, you working for me and teaching at the same time. So so that that in a way, you what you realise, of course, also is these threads of your life you know take directions that are unforeseen. Anyway, um about a year later I got a job, and um, but you know, I wasn't you know, I wasn't really working for somebody I really want to work for. All the people you wanted to work for, it was hugely competitive, those opportunities. And so actually it was it was that accident of not working for somebody you really wanted to work for that then meant there was an opportunity to set up on our own. And then who you set up with, and all these things are kind of to a certain extent accidental. But of course, Gavin Hale Brown and I were studying together at Liverpool. And in fact, when when we were very first set up, he was in Japan, very quickly joined, and then you know, here we are 30 years later. Um but that that kind of accidental nature to a certain extent is you know has taken us from where we started, I was saying interiors, into kind of adaptive reuse. And then you know you do competitions, maybe you don't win. In our case, there was a competition which we didn't win, but that led to somebody who was saying, you know, you're really interesting, and what we really want is for you to do so. We then did a piece of research on prison design, which was to do not to do with the negative aspects of prison, but the really beneficial things about reducing uh recidivism and improving the prospects of resettlement, i.e., reducing the risks of re-offending or likely re-offending, and how do you sort of prepare people for life outside of prison? And um that then led to a series of health centres, uh, which not only took us absolutely into making civic buildings, public buildings, because people at that point didn't really feel like they were making pup civic health buildings, they were making hospitals and very small sort of GP practices. Um and hospitals weren't civic, they were big machines that and they still are, you know, hospitals generally sit sort of slightly remote from the city, that they've got too much going on inside them. And then, you know, that that and then you kind of progress into education and housing, and and and then I felt we felt very comfortable, and we we did turn our back on interiors because we wanted to build and we wanted to move into a field where, in a way, every building's about people. Uh, and that's of course a truism, and it sort of almost doesn't sound substantive enough when you say it, but actually most architects are preoccupied with what they look like and how they're made, and maybe how they function. But function's not a great word when you're really dealing with people. So we were really interested in people, we were really interested in how they um sort of communality, intentional communities, unintentional communities. A work, you know, a working environment is a community. You every business has a kind of culture and heritage, but then you could transpose that to a school, you transpose that to all sorts of things. So those sort of human dynamics play out, and then you how do you plan a building to reflect that human dynamic? So, so although on one level I was saying you know it's an accidental career, in the way I think almost everyone is, what you take with you is your passion and your concerns, your interests, and our interests have always been about these kind of ideas of society, community, communality, people, perception, these kind of things.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Yeah, th thanks for sharing that. And then do you have a sense for you personally where those interests come from?

Palpable Sustainability And Shared Responsibility

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Uh well I'd say I think it probably you can trace it back to our education. You know, you know, Gavin and I were both were both educated at Liverpool University, and although he went off to Japan and I went off to the States, I think we got a grounding in what we thought was you know, it was a good education, but I think it was a it was an education that that introduced us to to to good things, if you saw what I mean, made us think about I hope we have a certain humility, um, that that um you know that that well for example sustainability is an interesting point. We we were being taught about sustainability in the mid-80s now and and and of course there was the oil at that point, the oil crisis and the Yom Kippur War of I think it's 1973, seemed like a lifetime ago, because we were about five or whatever at the time. Um but you know, meanwhile in New Mexico and parts of sort of remote parts of the Midwest America, people were building these extraordinary houses out of petrol drums and all sorts of things, making tron walls and thermal mass and dealing with all sorts of ideas about how you you know, essentially zero carbon buildings. And then we were talking about that kind of stuff. We were drawing them, studying them, and um and I guess the thing that that we carry with us is this sense of that it that if you're gonna do it, the architecture should really convey it. You know, we talk about a palpable sustainability, we talk about a participative sustainability. My real fear is that sustain the solution to sustainability, one that is driven by engineering, is benign. It's a bit like an electric car. You know, you look under the bonnet and there's nothing left other than a box. And and it any I'm not gonna say it's wrong, but the unintended consequences of a benign solution to to the environment is that um in a sense you you cast the people who are going to use the building into a role of the consumer. And as a result, they think they have rights. Consumers have rights. Um whereas if you think of them, if you think of everybody as citizens, then they have responsibilities. And I think that you at the moment, I you know, I have no idea where the whole kind of question of how we respond to the environment is gonna go. But there is a risk that people become less and less uh knowledgeable of the problem, and simply the solution is is delivered, like so many aspects of life, by these professionals. And we are collectively, you, me, and others, we are part of that professional team. We have a responsibility to do some things, but I also think that if we invite people to understand the the kind of the way things work, then they can participate and then they can actually do things to make you know, it's like they sail the ship rather than, you know, just floor the motorboat.

Designing For Many Needs At Once

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Yeah. Yeah, and would you say, paraphrasing that, would you say that sort of that element of something being greater than the sum of the parts is where you know that architecture sensibility comes in and makes something a piece of architecture over, say, a collection of components. Like I'm I'm trying to something that have always struck me in your work and the relationship that we've had going back, you know, uh 15, 16 years now, is that you have a very particular skill of being very good at the practicalities of building, the economics of building, the way things go together, understanding the contractors' needs and desires and the clients, but then sort of elevating it still into something that is a award-winning, exceptional piece of architecture that I think few practisers are able to do in such a skilled way. So would you say that that that is kind of part of embodying that mindset?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

I think you know, a a good building is is dealing with multitude of things at once. Um it's dealing with uh kind of questions of efficiency, microclimate, uh perception and sensation for the individual, what they're experiencing. Um so it's sort of in a broad sense, there's there's sensation, there's the social thing, there's the construction, the there's the you know, there's the viability. Yeah, there's so many things. But you know, you and I have had these kind of conversations about aspects of a building. And um and it's great that that that conversation can slide between uh a kind of cultural ambition and a commercial reality. Not to the ex you know one to the expense of the other, but how do these things converge? Um and I think I think they can. I mean we we we we have been for 25 years now or something been exploring kind of the idea of external circulation in schools and housing and the workplace. Um and it it's you know it's equally relevant in all because we're talking about humans and we're talking about buildings and we're talking about but what we're talking about is things like um you know efficiency. If you take circulation out of a building, the gross area and net area get closer together. Um if you you know think of a school where the classroom, there's there's not that corridor and classrooms facing outwards, but you know away from each other. The class the corridor in a school is a real problem. It's kind of where it's classic, where sort of the antisocial behaviour and management of kids is at its most awkward, and you see lots of schools with a with a line down the middle of the corridor and people being treated like vehicles driving in opposite directions, which is you know demonstrates that there's a problem. The alternative, of course, is that you, as we did with our hackney in primary school, and I think the courtyard is a recurring theme in our work, it's not the only solution, but of course, when we worked on Troombury, again, we brought quite eclectic uses together around a courtyard and they were purposefully different, not homogenous. But going back to the school, you know, a the the class, the child, everybody has a direct, they just go out the door and they're in the outside, so they have a better understanding of the weather and time of day and time of year, which are all aspects of uh the environment. So, you know, not to dwell on this issue of sustainability, but you know, that's a really good way of teaching kids, as we've had, the the you know, the head of the primary school specifically said, Yeah, that's great. I can I can literally explain lots of things to these kids about the environment and therefore sustainability. And and that school um stayed open when most schools didn't, when the temperature hit 40 40 degrees C two, three summers ago. So it works as well as as well as all these other things. And and I think that for me that's a a really good there are other obviously other typologies and there are other solutions or whatever, you know, other kinds of ways of planning buildings. But um but you know that kind of uh overlap of a multitude of things is a really crucial thing to the successful building.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

So what you've been describing there, Simon, is for me at least, is that um you know, you you take these practical constraints or or these aspirations around a brief or the economics of building, um, and you kind of elevate them through the use of you know, external walkways or other things like you just referred to with a school that are both a practical solution but also a very humane solution. And I think that's something that I'm quite passionate about is the fact that we we can have these what on the surface could maybe seem like competing agendas, you know, the sort of humanity of a place and their kind of hard economics. But if you do something where everyone is in the room at the outset and and everyone's kind of objectives are clear, actually like the the strength of the project and the uniqueness of the project can kind of come out of that, and I think that's where we see value in what we do, and um maybe that the school we you might say was quite a good example of that.

Courtyards External Circulation And Better Schools

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah, yeah. But but so are other things. I mean, I I'm thinking of well, first of all, the work we did at Edith, and then we did with the Poppy Factory, and then more recently done at Truman Brewery. Each time, you know, you and Ron and and your team brought a kind of uh you know a wisdom and a and a set of um let's say responsibilities. But then similarly we did. But it it's not so much about who said what or did what, but it's actually the idea that when we work together, um you kind of don't quite know what's going to happen, and um but and and and I think I mentioned it earlier, there's this kind of capacity to move between these kind of great ranges of of things which I can remember when I first started working with you, Ron, which is going back as you say like 16 years or something, uh I sort of thought, dare I say what I'm thinking? Dare I re d dare I reference a 17th century church or something? Right, I'm gonna do it, you know. And you both of you didn't look kind of completely like, oh, what is he talking about? You know, this is really not relevant. So, you know, there's a you temper perhaps the extreme uh interests in things or whatever it might be, but but it's great that we could have those conversations because you know the you know it's 300 years since Vanbrugh died, and and you see that Van Brah had most of the same challenges, you know, that that we have. And then I don't just mean architects, but he he was an architect, and here we are. Um and we sort of often think that life's just getting more and more difficult, but actually it was ever thus, you know these these things. But but I think that I'm thinking of the Truman Brewery and and what you it's funny, we had most of our meetings in in our in the project meetings we had in our office in our meeting room. And it's not a very big room, and uh but it was a you know it was a reasonably big team and some people online. And maybe there's something about the intimacy of the room, but there was also a lot about the way you uh conducted the meetings and and um and and and people were Able to I suppose people didn't necessarily just turn up with their preconceived ideas. I think you know i i things have changed and and if you do wind back twenty or thirty years, you you could have had a team of kind of architect, quantity sphere, structural engineer, and service engineer, and pretty much they might have had quite big teams behind them, but they may have been sort of of course, sorry, and the client, but you know, small design team working with a client, dealing with you know, working with the planners, they were also a small team. So half a dozen people, and in fact, n those half a dozen people will probably never be in the room together, four or five of them would be in the room together. It's like a kind of supper round a table. The kind of conversations and the kind of freedom to be wrong and all those kind of things. I think it was it was easier in the past, and also there was less information and less regulation, and and there were less, you know, sort of less channels expertise. So now you're dealing with, we are dealing with a world with with multiple channels of expertise. And I think most people, their solution to that is you, in a way, I offer this information and I just keep saying the same thing in every meeting, whoever it is, whereas I think on the Troombury and and and other things we've done, that doesn't happen. There's a there there is a confidence in that group of people to pose questions and promote scenarios that in other more um formal and process y processes that there isn't that opportunity. And it's not, you know, and it's not, it's it is a consequence of the time that we find ourselves in that situation. But actually seeing a way through and creating a culture that that uh works within that, works better in the current context of uh many, many people being involved is is a great thing, asset for you.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Thank you. Yeah, yeah, and I agree. I think um it is quite core to the culture that we talk about. You know, you've talked about dialogue and um that that being very important to to how we we um make better places, make better buildings. Um would you say that like with that you obviously like I take the example, you know, whether it's removing balconies from a scheme because you know you don't really need a balcony on 30-story building, you know, you want it better to have internal space. Well, you're pushing against regulation or you're pushing against the status quo, but you're doing it from a place that that maybe maybe does have um groundings in multiple things. Maybe it is a better um economic way to build, but maybe it is actually uh just a better home for someone. Yeah. Um that takes a level of kind of gravitas, a level of confidence, um uh, however you want to talk about that, from the project team, but also from you individually. And so back to this sort of that I think is particularly interesting about you, um, is you're not practice scholar, um, education, and that's not unique to you, but but that kind of series of things. Do you think that that actually makes you a better practising architect? Because you you have more conviction, you can bring up the sort of obscure 17th century reference, or you can you know do something that uh uh elevates the conversation from the kind of the now into something contextual?

SPEAKER_01 25:29

I think, well, probably at this point I should firmly say it's not me, is it? It's it's you know, there's 30 of us and and uh Gavin and uh and our associates and and our whole kind of leadership team, but then everybody else, down to people who've only just come out of college in the last couple of years. Every everybody's got uh perspective and skills and and strengths. Um especially of course when you know when you've been working with somebody for 30 plus years, and when you've got people, other people who've been working with us for 29, 17, whatever it is, you know, 20 years. There's twenty there's people who've been working with us for 20 to 30 years. So we really do know each other and we really do know our strengths, and uh and so I think but but I think what I might and others will bring is curiosity. Maybe it's as simple as that, just to keep um exploring questioning things, you know. Um but we also have a certain amount of as you say, this kind of it's that conviction and curiosity, because on one level you remain open-minded to the solution until you think you've got the right solution, and then you might might actually sort of be quite determined and say, no, I really think this is the right answer. And and maybe you know that that that scenario with the the tower, with the where we got where we managed to design out the balconies. I mean, that was you know it was a regulatory requirement, but it was by by by us and Ron working with um you know the housing people, the regen people, all the planners, all these people with within Hammersmith and Fulham. And they were all able to engage, they could see the kind of conflicts within the assumed solution. And so, you know, whether it was to do with people not understanding whether a winter garden, you know, which bits of the winter garden were gonna affect their heating bill, or whether the child on the balcony was vulnerable. Anyway, so all these scenarios one plays through, and in the end you arrive at something which is kind of unexpected, and you say ultimately was was was going to be, will be a better home.

Collaboration That Challenges The Status Quo

SPEAKER_02 27:45

Yeah. Um and and and where do you see that, you know, we talked about client relate architect relationship there a little bit. Are there are there other examples from from your work, not not directly with ourselves, but uh other people, where you go, okay, actually I you know, I I don't know, Copper Lane maybe comes to mind, like the co-housing that you've done there, or maybe you've got other examples.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

I there's probably lots of examples. There's ones that sort of yeah, the Copper Lane was interesting because it was a first co-housing scheme, and we in London, and one of very few in the UK, there are more. Um we reason we we won that competition was because we said there's m more to co-housing than just calling it a co-housing. You know, you needed to develop a plan which um which reflected that communality, that that intentional communality. And I mean it was really uh I I feel like there are various instances over the last whatever it is now, three decades, where you feel kind of humble, it's hugely humbling when you see people themselves taking huge risks or um uh you know and then in that case, yeah, people were taking huge risks. The risk to arrive at something where uh people you know within that little community, people were pulling in quite different directions, they were under kind of quite a lot of economic stress. There were all sorts of things which made it, you know, it was to say it wasn't, it wasn't that it wasn't a professional process, but if you're if you've ever designed a house for a family, that's very stressful for the family to commit to having a house designed and built, not for the architects. We put six households together. Yeah, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of stuff going on. Um but another example was a project work which we did best best part of 20 years ago for a for a school, and um and we had three groups, three groups of clients, I guess. We had the trustees, and we had the senior leadership team, and we had the um um it was a it was a Catholic school, so that they had monks still, and we and we were sort of talking to each of them, and the whole process happened very, very quickly, and I would go to various meetings, and there was an autumn where we were working towards plant vacation, and every time I went back to see the monks, one of the monks had died. Literally, two or three monks died over a three-month period, and you just realised how some there was just something about that sort of mortality and the permanence of the building and the commitment they were making at the tail end of their lives to to the process, to the well, to the building, to the to the which was you know, for kids, children, this kind of investment in these things survive beyond us. And it was just that was particularly kind of poignant. But you know, it doesn't matter health centres or or office buildings or you know, the work we did with Talkback to make that office was you know was extraordinary to not not it was extraordinary, but the process, the f the freedom we were given again through this kind of conversation about what might a place where people work be like. Could it be like a kind of cloister? Could it be a almost like a planned around a garden? This was this talkback in those days was making comedy, but what they were doing was that they were kind of like a research lab. So that idea of a kind of monastery for funny people is kind of what it was. Um, and it was uh in a way it was very direct because they could all see each other, because they could all come out, you know. We replaced all the windows and doors, created decks and balconies on every floor, and then it made the the organization, these were 300 people who came together to make programs. Uh, they had a lot of people who would come and go to the production teams get built, as it were, for maybe six-month process, and then people would dissipate. But what actually happened was they were sort of regrouping around the building in all the different production offices, and then there'd be a kind of core group of people who were who were who were sort of permanent. But then you know you could sort of see how it was a bit like a university with uh the staff and the and the undergrads and this kind of fluidity and this energy and but also this wisdom, and how a piece of architecture could reflect that culture and that process. And so I think what I like is when I can look at a project and describe how the building reflects the organization and it it may be a place of work, it may be a health centre, it may be a school, it may be housing. You know, all these fields are kind of equally fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

Yeah, no, I think that's really um really beautiful way of describing it, actually. And I'm sure whether it's that kind of monastic principles or lifestyle, or as you say, people who are really kind of passionate and purposeful about what they do, that that must over the years back to sort of culture and community within your organization, that must have shaped how you think about the world. Like, so I don't know are there any other specific examples where you would go, God, you know, we really learn you know from spending time with the monks and learning about their their approach to life, that really kind of became a bedrock of maybe the next five years of projects, or I don't know if it if if it's easy enough to think about it in that way.

Co Housing Monks And Workplace Culture

SPEAKER_01 33:27

I think uh that you know the there are certain things that we perhaps r re revisit. So I've talked about courtyards quite a lot, but also the idea of a building being civic. So, you know, a courtyard suggests that something's inward-looking, not introspective, but the fascinating thing about a courtyard is it actually gives every if everybody faces the courtyard notionally, then they can all see each other. So they have a really strong visual image of themselves as a group of people, which works in many, many fields. Equally, you know, a a building has a civic responsibility, it it it's it's part of the city, it shapes space. I mean, you know, we so when we're making a building, we're we're shaping uh the spaces that people use who are using the building, but also shape the spaces that people use as they're kind of passing the building. And I think you know we you can see how one project leads to another to a certain extent, and certain patterns repeat. And on and on, you know, there it's less it's i just just sort of broader broader questions. For example, there's a chap called Robin Dunbar, something called Dunbar's number, which is you know a piece of research done by an anthropologist, sociologist who's looking at uh well things like trust. You know, how many people can you know and trust? How many people would you I don't know share a pot, pot and pan? How many people do you share a pot and pan with? How many people you you know go around to their house, how many people would you stop on the corner of a street? And they you know the without sounding very dogmatic, there are scalar patterns of sort of social structure that that work, you know. You you know, some people are really gregarious and somehow have the capacity to hold m a multitude of friendships and relationships, but most of us will fall into a certain pattern, which means that the buildings or places, uh, settlements, communities, they they do sort of they they follow that pattern. And and I think you know that that I find that fascinating. It doesn't tell us what to do, but it but it sort of guides you in how to and we learned a lot of this stuff right back at the beginning. We're not saying about working in um in in the workspace, in offices and stuff, because what you realised was that that they were continuously managing large groups of people and and for example if you were an if you were, so to speak, an important person in the office, the thing you needed to do was be able to hide. If you if you were a young, new person in the office, what you needed to do was sort of be visible. So actually, rather than just sitting everybody at desks, we developed a a model, you know, we it was that point in time where mobile phones, laptops, wi-fi, in no not so much Wi-Fi, but internet. So in other words, the work environment was radically the working life was radically changing, therefore the working environment started to change radically, and people had started on a hot desking, but actually what that was was just shrinking the available space in which people worked. Whereas what was much more interesting was that you could make a working environment which in a way was like a kind of microcosm of the world outside. It wasn't necessarily functionally doing it, but there were times when some people needed big surfaces or or quiet spaces or whatever, but also it was just it has that kind of complexity that people could see themselves in and they could find places, and it's not like they would only use one part of the office, depending on what they were doing and whether they needed to concentrate, whether they need to see people, they would kind of inhabit this this uh ecosystem, this habitat, in a way that suited them, depending on who they were, time of day, whatever it was, whatever they they were doing. But um, yeah, so the the these real underpinnings of social logic, yeah, I think are really important. But also we were interested in the fabric, you know, a a really well-made building is also a really dignifying and and so that kind of you it groups of people, especially when you're making affordable housing and public buildings, which may be fairly humble, like a health centre or a school. Um offices slightly different, but you know, so you but these these buildings they they need to project a confidence in the people who are using them. Um and uh and and give people you know respect. Yeah. And and that the durability of the building as well as the organization of the building. They work in concert and they're part and parcel of that's that same ambition, I think.

From Phone Call To Clear Concept

SPEAKER_02 38:21

Yeah, it's fascinating. Fascinating to hear your um your process there. And then maybe just like practical example, if we stay on kind of how you work for a second, like I don't know, the phone rings tomorrow for a new site, new client, um, almost the land use doesn't matter for the second. Yeah. You've got that window of time between the phone ringing and your first meeting with the client. Like, how do you how does the practice, how do you sort of find your way into a project that means that that first client meeting has that image of a chapel next to an office building or what you know, whatever it might be. Like what is that what is that kernel of process for you guys that sort of summarizes everything that you've talked about and brings it practically into how you work?

SPEAKER_01 39:07

I'm not sure a lot happens in that first 24 hours. That sounds terrifying. No, no, yeah. It's all done.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

Uh yeah. It's well, I think you know, you you you you do want to get an insight into who it's for. You you need to be I mean uh it's interesting to be interested in the people you're working with and for, and it's interesting to look at the place that this thing might happen in. And in a way, I think they're probably you'd expect me to say this, uh, but to really mean it, to really be curious about those things. And that's probably as much as you can do in the first, you know, to to to want to to to ask the questions you need to be able to ask. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Well extend it out to the no stage zero stage one then. Are you are you reaching for a book? Are you sort of going for like how do you kind of navigate that phone call to concept stage, if you want to call it that?

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Well, I I I do think that you start with kind of kind of quantums of of of people and activities. Um and you know, for I suppose it's interesting to take something like um the new office building we've just completed, uh Barge Crescent on the south bank, and it replaced a series of office buildings which were sort of you know unimpressive, let's say, built in the late 80s, early 90s. They were deeply illogical in terms of efficient inefficiency. Quite I mean, they weren't big buildings, nor is the the the new building that big. But um in a way, they were they were faced this fairly nondescript street. It's a bit of upper ground, you know, um behind the Oxford Tower, so very close to to the you know the kind of significant buildings on the South Bank, or at least some of the significant buildings on the South Bank. But it was next to a park. And the last yeah, this is this little crescent of buildings, and none of them looked at the park, none of them seemed to because the park is the connection to the Thames, and the Thames is the connection is is London, and and London is is the world kind of thing, as in it's like scale. I'm I'm talking in terms of scale, but you know it's almost like you could write a very quick way of describing how to get to this building by saying, well, you start in the world and then you go to England, then you go to London, then you find yourself next to the Thames, you go to Burning Spain Gardens, and and you find the building. It's yellow. Um but the the thing the building does is the new the new building, although it's built on the original foundations and it's doing lots of things which are you know efficient and carbon efficient and whatever, but it orientates itself to the park. So it's looking at the park, and in the process of looking at the park, it's looking at the Thames and therefore looking at London. And so, you know, I think you know, why did I say that? I suppose you know that that we didn't start with we had a client as in a developer, but we didn't have we didn't know who was going to use the building. So the buildings there are briefs for buildings which are implicit about exp explicit about how they're gonna get used. The activity in the room, the number of people in the room, and and and the and the list of things and rooms. Um that's more like things like you know, town halls, schools, health centres, you know, um arts arts projects. But of course, um an office building is is pretty vague, you know, the way it's it's about creating an environment uh to work in uh and and to make a building that can accommodate that working environment and to kind of have a sense of how it might organise itself, but not to dictate it, that's the worst thing. You want it to be people to be able to reinterpret it a time and time again. So it's kind of a it's like a good shed, and if it's got multiple stories, it's it's like a multi-story good shed. So then you're sort of talking about things like how do you find it, what characters it got, and other kind of qualities. What's the quality of daylight? How does the yeah, how do you how do you air movement and you know, comfort, comfort and aspect, and then of course you might start thinking about much more pragmatic things like the economics and the construction, but they all they are all interrelated, and you know that building you know is in it really an essay in how to make a facade, which is about light and air, because it's a mixed mode building. That creates you know, with the introduction of the terracotta colonnettes, that that makes the architecture of the two primary elevations, and then the logure is the entrance, and that is you know, is both an entrance but also a a place to step out on every floor. It's the outside space, which you know we know is is necessary or it's you know something we again go back talk about that you go right back to 1999 when we were exploring the the importance of outside space in office buildings. It's it's the first time we've actually managed to uh well the first time we've completed a new office building with ideas that we've been carrying around for twenty seven years or whatever. And have come become now common common parlance. But yeah so that yeah that the the the the way into that building and the things that matter are very different from a building where the where the activities are much more explicit.

What Makes A Building Award Worthy

SPEAKER_02 44:43

Yeah yeah interesting and then stepping away from practice you're you're chair of the ROBA judging panel aren't you or have you I was yeah yeah yeah yeah no I'm I'm I'm not maybe not this year but so so so in that capacity then what do you think makes a good building? What what is award worthy within architect circles? Because I wouldn't say that's necessarily the same thing that's award worthy in other circles which are probably quite right but what makes it yeah what how does that process work?

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Well that's interesting because I actually could be very kind of pragmatic about that. I mean it's not on one level the judgment obviously applies there's 24 or 25 people on the committee so it's not a single person's view but we kept it really discursive um we chose not to vote we just kept talking until people felt comfortable there was a collective view. But what I was able to do was uh not alone but with a number of other people on the panel we we rewrote the criteria because there had been I can't remember about 21 criteria and they sort of kept getting added and some were very similar and and really sensible things weren't even mentioned. I mean literally until a year or well yeah last year was the first time we we used the new criteria it didn't say has it got a good plan elevation and section it kept using the word innovation no mention of tradition or history. I'm not obsessed with history I mean the program we go forwards and you know we we we go backwards to go forwards if you saw what I mean as in we look back to go forwards. But also culture is you know cyclical whereas technology is generally forward looking and you know the architecture or the building is is is a combination of technology and culture. So it is by its very nature cyclical and forward looking and um so so it was we got it down to ten but ten they basically they were kind of questions. So again they were questions posed to the people who were submitting their project for awards and they're questions posed to the juries in the regions and the the the the uh the national jury that I chaired questions that we all had to answer. So when you looked at a project there were these ten questions and sometimes it was a sort of supplementary question that came out the point from a couple of different angles but that was the first time since I'd been on the committee which would have been five years so you I did six years four of them not as the chair but to be able to be uh we were much more concise and a bit more discursive and and um and I think it was more rounded you know that that kind of question of what makes a good piece of architecture and so I don't know an answer the question because of course you every time you're confronted with a project that it's interesting and one of the things of course is when you get to the Sterling price shortlist pe you know projects are competing with each other but actually up until that point through the the ROA awards all around the country and the national awards they're kind of competing with themselves it's simply do we collectively think is that a good building as opposed to is that a better building than that building.

SPEAKER_02 48:18

Yeah but um yeah I think the you know hopefully uh one of my legacies is a good set of criteria that's good and uh one thing you've said to me in the past is this notion of kind of as an architect just keeping your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds would you say that that kind of epitomizes kind of how you think about maybe the judging or your work generally?

Winchester Belgium And The Next Chapter

Closing Thanks And How To Follow

SPEAKER_01 48:42

I think our I think the work of the office generally I think you know we we are not uh in you know we're not hugely involved in cultural projects um we're not involved in big budget projects where in a way those things you know where the practicalities matter less um we're always working to a budget we're always working with strict sort of needs uh we we are building you know I said sort of I'd like to say you know as the book title says we're building for society and yes you you you've got to have your feet on the ground head in the clouds because if you if you don't do those two things you can't be ambitious but also you can't ground what you do in in in common sense and also that other people can share your you've got to be able to share your values not seem like you're at odds with everybody else and then go oh god bloody architects I hope that that's not the way we're we're seen you know that we're seen as really collaborative down to earth thoughtful but ambitious yeah you are definitely and as I've I've said um many times and also earlier today I think you you're in a very small club who actually able to do that very very well to to be very practical to be grounded to understand what different stakeholders want and to do something that is exceptional in terms of its kind of quality and elevates the experience of kind of everyday life so I think that that's a testament and um maybe just to kind of bring this conversation to a close then if you were to kind of think in that mindset about you know the rest of um the next few years or or broader than that I know you said you don't like to sort of plan too much but do you have a sense of what that kind of holds for you of for the practice um well we a few years ago we won our first project abroad in Belgium and most of our work has always been in London but again more recently we've we've been working on a project in Winchester where I live which we're working with other architects we're working with East Peter Barber and Turner Works uh our client is Igloo and we're working closely with Winchester City Council and you know we're it will although it's not going to be a big building it's not a tall building but it will be the greatest transformation of Winchester in a thousand years because it's a piece of land right next to the high street and the Broadway within the original Roman walls a piece of land which was sort of neglected or abused let's say with multi-story car parks bus stations and and sort of fairly you know poor quality shopping centre we're making new streets making new squares or small squares small public spaces new streets but opening up medieval waterways that were culverted huge you know many many years ago so I think you know I have huge ambitions for that not for its scale but for its kind of plausibility that when we're done people won't see it as this new bit of the city as a kind of odd thing but actually just as a repairing the the we were right at the very beginning there was this question about is is there a master plan and I said well no I don't think there's a master plan I think it's a series of jigsaw pieces because you know one end there's a there's a 19th century almshouse or almshouses you know a beautiful little garden on the other extreme there's a 1980s 1990s shopping centre but if you and if you picture literally piecing a puzzle together the pieces of the puzzle you find you know that you if you you know the analog take the analogy you'd be the pieces you'd be looking for to go next to the shopping centre are very different from the pieces you'd be looking for to go next to the arms houses but as you build the picture and you get to the middle the two things join up so I think you know that to me that's uh that's going to be an important project but you know there's there's lots of good things going on in the office schools uh housing student housing stuff in London with a variety of and it ultimately it's the it's the it's the working relationships it's like you know more more more more projects with you exactly that's what you want you really want to work with people you want to work with I mean yeah otherwise you know it's a service or something it's not yeah exactly it's not a whole lot of fun yeah no one wants to be a management consultant no we've got that to bring it full circle yeah yeah Simon thank you very much for your time today thanks Tom privilege thank you for listening to the Grow Places podcast for more information visit growplaces.com and follow us at We Grow Places across all social channels see you next time