Large-scale projects and the design of a practice have provided equally enjoyable challenges to Allies and Morrison’s managing partner Joanna Bacon
What does a typical day look like for the managing partner of Allies and Morrison? ‘My diary always looks like a toast rack,’ says Joanna Bacon as we settle down in a meeting room at the 300-strong firm’s London studio. ‘Chock-a-block with meetings, but they are very varied.’ Today she’s already been to the gym. Next up is a studio tour for an overseas visitor, followed by meetings with tenants in the firm’s mini-campus of three buildings behind Tate Modern. There’s a catch-up about tables at the Stirling Prize, for which its King’s Cross masterplan is shortlisted, and reviews with finance and project teams. Somewhere in there, too, Bacon will be selecting a model of the last major project she led – the 100 Bishopsgate tower in the City of London – for a forthcoming exhibition.
That high-rise, completed in 2019, was already in progress when Bacon took the job in 2012. Despite the manifold demands of leadership, she was determined to continue project work and is currently heading a compliance team novated to the contractor Multiplex, which is building the practice’s 220,000m2 ‘town centre’ for Elephant & Castle, half a mile to the south of us. Hard-hat site visits are still in the diary mix. There are limits, though: running complex schemes at design stage is too time-consuming. ‘I couldn’t possibly do that now,’ she says, ‘but I love being involved in the strategic overview; I’m good at setting up a team and getting them to take it on.’
Large-scale projects have been her specialism. ‘They require a clarity of thinking about what you are doing and why, and breaking them down into understandable components.’ She points to the BBC’s Media campus in White City, west London, which Allies and Morrison won in 2000, a year before Bacon became a partner alongside founders Bob Allies and Graham Morrison. There she delivered a clutch of big commercial buildings and swathes of new public realm. As the firm grew in response, Bacon took a lead role in reshaping it – a continuous process. ‘Every so often you hear creaking and have to adjust a bit,’ she says. ‘For the last 20 years I’ve been thinking about how to professionalise everything from finance to HR and IT.’
With studios in Cambridge, Liverpool, Dublin – and soon Jeddah and Toronto – the practice is a world away from the one Bacon joined in 1987, a week after qualifying, as the fourth member of the team. Allies had been her tutor at Cambridge, and Bacon recalls spotting a job ad and cycling straight round with her CV. Early work included stints as project architect on the crisply detailed British embassy in Dublin, and a couple of Cambridge faculty buildings. She also developed her interest in the way architecture gets done. When the firm got its first tiny computers, it was Bacon who laid the network cables around the small studio.
Despite its size, the practice had an ambition and self-confidence that are equally apparent – in a low-key way – in Bacon, whose manner combines easygoing humour and brisk efficiency. She recalls a mahogany-table interview with the Crown Estate for a Regent Street masterplan. ‘One grandee asked “What on earth makes you think your practice is up to the task?” And I cheekily said, “Why do you think we’d come to the interview if we didn’t?”.’
Her own career, she says, owes little to forward-planning but rather to following her interests. ‘You’re not going to get success if you are not enjoying yourself and inspired by work.’ Nor was she ever tempted to strike out on her own. ‘I have never gone home and thought “Why is my name not on the door?” – there was enormous pride and joy in the work we did as a partnership, including those projects where I wasn’t involved.’
There has been one break, when Bacon moved to Asia for three years in the late 90s, teaching in Hong Kong and then working as a site architect in Shanghai. While living overseas, she had two children which, she says, enforced good time-management on her return. ‘I used to say “I am going to turn into a pumpkin at 5.45. If we haven’t finished by then we are not working efficiently”.’ Until this year, she worked four-day weeks, initially spending the fifth at home, and latterly as a board member at the RIBA. ‘I felt that if I was no longer spending that time running around after my children, I may as well put it into something else,’ she recalls. ‘The RIBA – particularly the library – had been an inspiration when I was a student and it was give-back time.’
She wants to see a good work-life balance throughout Allies and Morrison, too, emphasising the importance of free weekends. Hers are spent tending a two-acre Dorset garden. It’s often said that architects have to put in crazy hours in order to be successful. Does Bacon disagree? Yes and no: ‘I may be good at time management but I’m never not thinking about the practice,’ she says.
One longstanding area of concern has been the experience of women in the profession. When Bacon picked her field in 1980, her father commented that women make ‘bloody awful’ architects – though he was later very supportive. Things have greatly improved, of course, and Bacon is proud that the firm achieved a 50/50 gender balance last year – and of the pay gap data it tracks. ‘But this is a long journey and the challenge is to make certain that female talent keeps moving up,’ she says. ‘We only have two female partners among 16 now and that’s not enough.’
Change will rely on the succession planning that has been underway for many years, with partners expected to step back at 65 to allow others to come through and build whole careers within the firm. For Bacon that will come in 2027.
So what attributes make a good leader in such a place? Bacon stresses collaboration and collective decision-making. ‘You have to be a good listener,’ she says, ‘and sometimes bite your lip.’ It’s vital, too, to have sensitive antennae, alert to future threats and opportunities. ‘You could get caught up constantly with the troubles of today, but you need to be able to stop and ask: what should I be thinking about now?’
The question is not merely rhetorical. Downstairs her next visitor has arrived from Shanghai to discuss possible collaboration in a city now primed for the practice’s historically-attuned urbanism. Bids for work in China have begun; an office might follow. It’s 10 o’clock, and shaping up to be another productive day.