Creativity, filmmaking, whole-life carbon and the sex of trees were all discussed by the latest cohort of RIBAJ Rising Stars at a recent roundtable
Take six Rising Stars, nourish well and add a sprinkling of piquant questioning about the issues of the day. The resulting lively lunchtime discussion, supported by Origin Global, ranged widely from creativity to embracing failure via such seemingly disparate subjects as the sex of trees, the power of filmmaking, and the challenges of calculating whole-life carbon.
Contributors
Education, education, education
As lead mentor at Narrative Practice, Dhruv Gulabchande kicked off proceedings with a subject close to his heart, calling for mentoring to be instilled into practice and academia to create a more supportive system for people from diverse backgrounds in architecture.
‘The issue in the industry right now,’ he said, ‘is there are lots of voices that aren’t currently being heard from lots of different backgrounds, whether women, the disabled community, UK minority ethnicities – and the systems aren’t there to support them.’
But there was, he argued, a solution. ‘Everyone in their own discipline has a part to play, whether it be community engagement, housing, exploring lots of different types of precedents in your education – I’m sick of hearing Le Corbusier being given as a precedent.’
There was general agreement that architecture just wasn’t visible enough as an option for school children. Ben Brocklesby of Origin Global was concerned about the broader issue of creative subjects falling by the wayside due to schools’ increased focus on their grade profiles, and the impact this might have on future career paths. ‘Creativity gets killed so early,’ he said.
Katie Fisher of CARD Projects raised the issue of declining numbers studying art at A-level, and worried that this would contribute not only to art but to architecture being ‘for the elite’.
She added: ‘That’s not to say that you need A-level art to get into university, but it certainly makes it more difficult, because you have to provide a portfolio.’
Another concern was a general lack of understanding of the nature of architecture. Too often, for example, teachers stressed the need to study maths and physics and didn’t understand that it could be a creative subject too.
Nor does creativity have to be artistic. It could, according to Gulabchande, be technical, related to writing or general problem-solving. ‘Being creative about the brief is creativity as well,’ he added.
‘There is space for people who really do enjoy the technical side of architecture, and also a space for people who really enjoy the art,’ added Dion Barrett, an architect-turned-architecture filmmaker based in Birmingham.
Part of the overall problem, it was agreed, was a lack of general understanding in society of what an architect actually does, not helped by the profession failing to communicate this.
‘The perception of architects is totally different to what we are today,’ said Fisher, citing a recent conversation with a guest at an architectural function who was surprised to realise that not all architects were smartly dressed and loved jazz.
Architect wellbeing and fees
Stephen Parker, an architect and mental health planner at Stantec Architecture, brought up the subject of mental wellness in the architectural profession.
Fisher cited a study that found higher levels of mental health issues among architects than in the general population, and it was agreed that contributing factors were the culture of all-nighters, a strive for perfectionism, and the feeling that you could always do more.
‘You’re taught to always reiterate your work,’ she said.
She mentioned how junior employees are sometimes asked by their practices to opt out of the EU Working Time Directive, opening the door to longer hours.
Against a backdrop of perfectionism and blame culture, it was also important that architects learn from any failures, said Fisher. She has set up a Friday Fails social media campaign where industry people share and reflect on recent failures or mistakes in an attempt to normalise failure.
‘The more that we can acknowledge our mistakes, the faster we can learn,’ she said.
In the discussion, the Rising Stars also explored the link between unrealistic fees and what impact this can have on working hours and mental health.
Dion Barrett of Architecture.Film felt there wasn’t enough emphasis on business management at Part 3 level. Parker talked about a lack of understanding about how to build realistic top-down bottom-up fee proposals, adding that if the senior manager putting in the fee proposal doesn’t understand the amount of work required, it’s borne on the shoulders of the project architect to make the outcome work.
Brocklesby of Origin Global raised the question of how much transparency on business performance was helpful for employees.
Parker thought it was beneficial for even the youngest member of staff to understand fees and resourcing and their role in working towards the bigger goal.
‘There has to be a collective and individual joint sense of purpose, and I think transparency really helps that,’ said Parker, who welcomed the agency he now had in putting together fee proposals in his work at Stantec Architecture, which is based in Washington DC, USA.
Fisher added that at a time when practices are concerned about how to charge higher fees, ‘the Building Safety Act is the biggest opportunity for architects to increase their fees in a really long time’.
Regional variation in the market is also, as ever, a factor in business performance. Birmingham-based Barrett talked about the current mass of cranes in his city, and businesses relocating there in recent years. However other areas such as the North East, for example, were generally more likely to feel the impact of negative economic trends first, with Newcastle-based Catherine Sinclair commenting that the local market had felt ‘quite turbulent’. In London, Fisher mentioned the cycle of redundancies and rehiring over the last few years.
In praise of trees
Marina Strotz chose The Politics of Street Trees as her Rising Stars book prize, sparking a discussion about the benefits of trees and green spaces in urban areas, and the relevance of the sex of a tree to pollen and hay fever.
‘The more trees in an area, the better off that area is,’ said the Birmingham-based architect and horticulturist, who is interested in finding out more about such issues as who controls access to nature and who decides where to plant trees
‘When thinking about green places in the city, the big question around it tends to be about maintenance and budgets for maintenance,’ said Fisher, citing the example of the Elephant Springs public space in London’s Elephant & Castle, where the maintenance is funded through the service charge of the surrounding high-rise housing.
Parker said that, in the states, the amount of accessible green space per zip code was linked to fewer Emergency Department visits for mental health issues, and also referenced the influential research by Roger Ulrich on how quality views of nature reduce the length of hospital stays.
‘During the pandemic, you couldn’t put a dollar figure on access to green space or a balcony,’ he said.
There are other benefits too to greenery in the city. Sinclair described examples in Newcastle of communities coming together to green the alleyways behind classic terraced housing. ‘It not only makes it feel nicer, but probably feels a bit safer,’ she said.
RIBA Journal editor Eleanor Young talked about the additional benefits of people collaborating to instigate such initiatives. According to Strotz, it doesn’t take a lot of money to ‘own’ a space.
‘It’s largely just time and a bit of pride and understanding, and having people in those communities who can bring people together,’ she said.
This led to a discussion of the inadequacies of community consultation, including the issue of architectural jargon as a barrier.
Calculating whole-life carbon
Catherine Sinclair talked about her work integrating whole-life carbon (WLC) calculations into the early stages of projects, undertaken in her role as a knowledge transfer partnership associate at Northumbria University based at Space Architects.
She touched on the many challenges to greater consideration of WLC – calculations can be very data and labour-intensive, and done too late in the design process. There are also many different assessments, all done in different ways. Lack of legislation on embodied carbon was also a barrier to change.
‘I’m making more of a design-based process that will be more architect-friendly,’ she said. ‘Even if it is very high level and simple, it will encourage people to make the right decisions.’
Her WLC framework aims to embed calculations at an early stage so that all design decisions are considered for their embodied carbon. This doesn’t necessarily have to end up costing the client more – removing cantilevers from the form of the building, for example, can save both money and embodied carbon.
Early engagement is also critical when considering circularity. ‘With design for disassembly, it’s quite hard as you need to start planning right from the beginning, and look at things like material passports,’ she said. ‘It’s very hard to integrate that for a low cost.’
Other Rising Stars were receptive to earlier consideration of whole-life carbon. Gulabchande wondered if there was scope for a ‘slightly tuned-down version’ of the life cycle assessment currently done at Stage 4 that practices could use at earlier stages, or to add a clause about this from NBS specification into performance specification requirements.
Parker had seen an increasing awareness of embodied carbon in his sphere, with some US and Canadian jurisdictions requiring mass timber considerations. But he said that good data recording was a challenge, with a lot of duplication of effort and inconsistency in different types of carbon calculations. He suggested having a data standard ‘so that when you start creating modelling/BIM tools to measure these efforts accurately and meet goals, you can make sure that you’re on the same page’.
Filmmaking and storytelling
Architect-turned-architectural filmmaker Barrett talked about how, as a dyslexic person, he was interested in the potential that film could give to ‘consume the discourse of architecture in a different medium’.
Barrett, whose practice clients include We Made That and Jestico + Whiles, described the accessible and experiential nature of film, and its ability to convey atmosphere.
In his own work, he says he likes to film in an engaging way without dumbing down the subject, and for there to be some form of learning. Filmmakers are often brought in at the end of the process, but he prefers to encourage architects to talk not just about the finished building but about the design process before it, with architectural models a particularly useful tool for this.
‘If we need to, as architects, explain our value, it’s the process we need to explain,’ he said, adding that this has to be about ‘more than pretty pictures’.
There was much discussion about the use of film in different forms of marketing to raise awareness and understanding, and the importance of understanding different audiences and platforms.
‘It’s about creating films that are going to be seen by the right people and spark the right conversations,’ said Barrett.
He feels architecture filmmaking is still very much in its infancy, and sees the potential for film-led online architectural publications.
Apathy and action
Fisher of CARD Projects was concerned about the lack of response to the many ongoing crises facing architects and society in general.
‘We’re in a series of crises – the housing crisis, the climate crisis – but for the most part, it doesn’t appear anyone is acting as if we’re in a crisis,’ she said, adding that this, at worst, shows a sense of apathy, and at best, a stifling of agency because people are ‘so overwhelmed by systemic structures’ and think someone else will sort it all out.
She wondered if there was an opportunity for the Rising Stars cohort to do their bit to ‘empower agency in our respective areas’. Parker welcomed the possibility of a collective sense of purpose. ‘Out of a cacophony, you can make a chorus of the conversation,’ he said.
Book choices – how the Rising Stars are spending their book prizes:
Dion Barrett
Architecture Filmmaking by Igea Troiani and Hugh Campbell. Intellect, 2020
Katie Fisher
The Inclusion Emergency: Diversity in Architecture by Hannah Durham and Grace Choi. RIBA Publishing, 2024
Many Voices: Architecture for Social Equity by Everardo Jefferson and Sara Caples. RIBA Publishing, 2022
Dhruv Gulabchande
Thrive: A field guide for women in architecture by Sumita Singha. RIBA Publishing, 2023
Building Communities: Rehabilitation and Housing in Barcelona and Zurich by Studio Eva Prats/Flores & Prats, ETH Zurich D-Arch, 2024
Stephen Parker
Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing by Jenny Roe and Layla McCay. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021
Trauma-Informed Design: A Framework for Designers, Architects and Other Practitioners by Christine Ann Awad Cowart, Janet E Roche, Adrienne Erdman, and J David Harte. Trauma-informed Design Society, 2024
Catherine Sinclair
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie. Chatto & Windus, 2024
Down to Earth: Designing for the End Game by George Brugmans and Dirk Sijmons. IABR nai010 publishers, 2023
Cradle to Cradle: (Patterns of Life) by Micahel Braungart and William McDonough. Vintage Publishing, 2019
Marina Strotz
The Politics of Street Trees by Jan Woudstra and Camilla Allen. Routledge, 2022
Rising Stars is produced in association with Origin Doors and Windows