The Social Network – Architecture Today

What is your involvement with BCO?
I am the chair of the NextGen committee for the Midlands. We get together every four to six weeks and come up with ideas for NextGen members in terms of engagement, events, tours, things going on in Birmingham and the Midlands that members might want to visit. We have panel discussions and roundtables, and together with the wider NextGen membership, we’ve launched a fantastic ideas competition. It has to do with office design – what would your ideal office of the future look like? – so it ties into the whole idea of ​​having a NextGen arm. NextGen now represents a third of BCO’s membership. Of the roughly 1,000 delegates at the conference, 200 are NextGen, so it’s really growing. The idea of ​​the competition is a way of recognizing that the future of the office is those people coming out of university. They will be the people who will use them, so they are the people you should be designing for and learning from.

I have always been somewhat curious about BCO and thought that if you want to change things you have to get involved. If you want to have a voice and have a platform, BCO is the perfect place. It was one of the best things I’ve done. I got to see so many offices, whether new builds or retrofits, and I really enjoy the networking and the different connections you make. There is a lot of mentoring involved. There is a core committee, as chairman, that I attend those meetings and they have a lot of knowledge. NextGen has a lot of early career people and we mentor them. I really like it. The role of president is very recent; it’s an extra commitment and I assume a bit of personal growth.

How did you become interested in workplace design?
Before joining Howells, I worked as a workplace consultant at Squaredot in Stratford-upon-Avon, where I was confronted with the idea that you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to property. I used to go and spend a lot of time with different companies, really understanding how they worked and how they used their space day to day. Even before Covid the office landscape had changed massively. It was realized that call centers needed a completely different environment than, say, a law firm or the creative industries. Covid has really accelerated the fact that you can’t just say “here’s a nice space, let’s fill it with tables and chairs”, you have to focus on spatial quality in relation to how the space is used.

Arup’s Birmingham office is a good example of the flight to quality over quantity. If you live outside of Birmingham and work in the city center, you won’t necessarily be going to the office every day, so there’s no need for an office space for everyone, but if you can provide a high-quality environment, you can tempt people to spend more time at work. So it’s less about massive floor tiles and more about actually investing in the quality of the space, the materials you use. Young people in particular just don’t accept any unsustainable old buildings. Covid has definitely accelerated that.

Tell us about your role at Howells
When I left Squaredot, I went to live in Australia for a year. I was determined to go into interior design, but I actually worked in a coffee shop in Melbourne, which was great. When I came back I thought ‘I’ve lived in a big city, I want to work in Birmingham’ and I got the job at Howells. It’s very social, which I like. I work on a mix of workspaces – I’ve worked on Two Chamberlain Square and One Centenary Way at Paradise – but I also work on big projects like the Octagon.

I see the workspace and the edges as completely blurry. Residential spaces and workplaces are part of the same continuum. You could take a floor slab for the entry level of a residential development and assume it’s a workspace. Spatially, as an interior designer you can really blend the two. We offer co-working spaces and social spaces. Young people in particular want this variety, they don’t just want a desk by a window. That’s why Next Gen is really working to push development even further. Those best practice guidelines are continually evolving. I find it very interesting that we are building ecological systems that blur the line between work, live and play.