Guest Editor Programme in the first six months

[edit] The Guest Editor programme

In September 2023, we announced our Guest Editor programme as a way to engage with our readers, contributors and supporters, finding out more from and about them. This process gave each of our invited guests a platform to reflect on their own work and the industry as a whole, with a focus on sharing knowledge and filling gaps. The guest editor slots included a short interview, items they selected for the news, articles from our site, and new articles, all rolled together for our Friday newsletter, which has more than 10,000 subscribers.

We had editors from historic conservation, academia, engineering, architectural technology, environmental engineering, a tech start-up, an EDI social enterprise, a writer and musician, an architect and artist, a project manager, a think tank, an architectural blogger, and a podcaster.

[edit] Some themes from the first six months

[edit] Value and its re-assessment

There is a need for a better understanding of financing, as it is an inevitable element of practice. The business side of architectural practice includes the skills required to run, for example, an architectural firm but also project financing. Skill sets that can go hand in hand with this include communicating effectively, chairing meetings, sales, marketing, and financial management.

At the same time, there is a need for industry and government to reassess value, not in financial terms alone but covering wider indicators such as social, environmental, cultural, community, and carbon values. Short-term financing is a theme, but it must be coupled with longer-term evaluations based on the whole life of buildings and the areas within which they sit, right through to eventual demolition and renewal. Establishing and defining these kinds of wider value assessments in frameworks and specifications will lead to better, more balanced, and more rounded cross-disciplinary collaboration, something the industry desperately needs.

[edit] Skills development

There is a huge need to support the development of skills, from environmental modelling and carbon assessment to the major changes brought about by the Building Safety Act and site-based skills. The industry and government need to do more work to communicate and show what 'good' looks like and what we mean by competency, not just in terms of the Building Safety Act but also covering broader themes. Many models of training remain traditional and must transition away from merely instilling deep competency in single, very narrow subject matters or professional areas but instead providing multi-disciplinary perspectives, supporting academic learning integrated with real-world insights.

Greater support for site-based apprenticeship skills and degree apprenticeships, with closer ties to industry. In this way, new professionals can communicate across professions and apply their cutting-edge learning through better collaboration. While research outputs need to be shared more readily with industry, studies show it can take nine years for new knowledge to be adopted; that is simply way too long. There is masses of knowledge out there if only it were shared and sensibly deployed, which is in many ways behavioural. There is no real incentive for new knowledge generated by research to find its way into an industry that prefers to do what it has always done the way it has always done it.

The construction industry needs to do better at attracting people; improving diversity opportunities and recognising the value of this may help stop going elsewhere and fill gaps in a win-win approach. Good people can collaborate well, but this must be supported by creating less litigious environments. Historically, the contract basis of most projects has made it difficult to innovate; stick ones neck out; collaborative contracting seems to be at least one way to deal with this.

[edit] Cross-discipline collaboration

Institutions are key in terms of breeding a cross-discipline collaborative environment. Frustration when one body produces a document but then there is another working group working on the same theme and they don't know. Knowledge transfer between organisations is key. Creating neutral forums, hubs, or convening bodies (i.e., those not being seen to be led by one particular sectoral profession or interest group) to bring together those from across the built environment, especially at higher and mid-levels. Investigate new roles focusing on innovation and partnerships, building capacity to engage with a wide range of coalitions, professional bodies, or campaigns to create more accessible specialist resources that are well communicated.

Cross-disciplinary knowledge sharing across institutions with real collaboration in practice is the hardest part. We often talk about collaboration across these boundaries, but we aren't perhaps quite as good at doing it in practice as we think. There needs to be a national conversation about energy transformation that covers all disciplines and the public, as with the transition from coal to gas, it needs to happen again on the same scale. This requires deep collaboration and communication; it’s not like flicking a switch that then sort of trickles down and changes the economy; it takes a more concerted and systematic approach and market transformation. There are some positive examples, such as joint action plans between institutions to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive built environment sector, but there could be more of this.

[edit] Counting carbon and net zero for real

There seems to be a lack of knowledge and awareness of what net zero really means, both in practicality and in reality. For the built environment, net zero must mean zero, not net with clever accounting or offsets. Putting decisions off doesn't work; all the scenarios that get to net zero by 2050 will require at least half the work to be done by 2030, and it's not always clear that the industry (or politicians) get that.

There is no excuse in 2023 to be putting gas systems into buildings; there is still a sense of waiting for the technology, but the table is already set. In terms of the list of scalable and viable technological options, you can't go and buy a hydrogen boiler right now. What is on offer, we know about now, and it should be employed. Sustainable practices need to be integrated into routine operations across the entirety of the built environment lifecycle while maintaining economic viability, which is definitely possible.

The Pareto Principle can be applied to building design, where 80% of the 'simpler’ aspects of a building can be achieved with 20% of the effort, but the ‘tricky’ remaining 20% of the building, particularly in terms of services, can take up 80% of the effort. There are practised methods out there, though perhaps signals are becoming confused, especially for the public. We need to simplify climate change and the solutions to dealing with it in communication.

[edit] Measured studies and demonstrators

Solid case studies where good and best practice sustainability aspirations that were challenging but were achieved are something that needs to be more in the public domain. Post-occupancy evaluation and measured studies are a great example of where the intention and the benefits can be quite well laid out, reported on, and shared. There is a need to delve into projects, to look at what they achieved and where they failed, and although sometimes hard, the benefits of transparency and honesty in this can be significant. Seeing the building process as a learning opportunity, support this by creating demonstration projects with communication campaigns to help get the knowledge out there freely and avoid making repeat mistakes as an industry.

In reality, in practice, there is still very little performance verification or post-occupancy evaluation as a standard element, but there are very good grounds to do this, perhaps a combination of building safety and climate regulations, backed by funders and insurers. It is sometimes not so much the litigiousness of the industry that acts as a barrier as the perceived litigiousness of the industry. Perhaps it is the fear of the 'what if' that actually stops the sharing of lessons- learned and being as innovative as we could be. At the same time, planning, conservation, and all the other professionals in the professionals in the built environment should also be campaigning vigorously to showcase the many examples of successful plans to demonstrate wider values and look beyond capital investments to begin the fight back against detractors.

Retrofitting our ageing building stock to improve its performance is key and will continue to be so. In terms of whole life, it has had significant embodied carbon invested. It has historically not been a focus, but there are some realisations hitting home. Often, there are obvious things that can be done to improve performance, which should have happened some time ago, but there is a point where it becomes much harder to make improvements without huge disruptions and costs. Work is needed to develop standard solutions, quantify the long-term benefits, and ensure there are no unintended consequences.

[edit] Unified, diverse voices

In construction, projects pass through many hands, each with different skills and backgrounds. This diversity means there's no unified voice or goal representing all stakeholders, making widespread buy-in crucial for change. It can be a sector composed of silos, too many transactional relationships, no feedback loops, and, crucially, no one owning the whole process.

Connection points that cut across silos can help; courage is where culture and collaboration meet. Design should aim to be anticipatory, not reactionary; it must move closer to medicine, from the curative to the preventive. Expanding the diversity of the industry can help it become more incorporative of the public and private clients it serves and its users.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion should be joined up, not individual players running individual initiatives, but be a core element of the industry. Improving the representation across the built environment by enabling and empowering a collaborative movement for inclusive change becomes a route to providing a better service for the diverse users of the built environment.

Introducing the Guest Editor Programme. Interview with current editor Dan Rigamonti. September 7, 2023. In practice, time is short, in an industry that is besieged by new definitions, targets, and technologies, the sharing of knowledge freely is, it seems to me, ever more vital. A key aspect of Designing Buildings, to act as a repository and conduit between disciplines and knowledge bases.
Seán O'Reilly Director of The Institute of Historic Building Conservation. Interview September 18, 2023. Helping shape professional conservation practice and standards, training and services across industry, government and education. We discussed all things from conservation to car manufacturing, carbon, financing, training, the meaning of value and back to construction.
Phil Henry Genuit Group and Chair of CIBSE Resilient Cities Group. October 4, 2023. Helping Construct Excellence and Resilient Cities Group for net zero. Modern Methods of Construction, Blue Green roofs, and low carbon sustainable water solutions for the built environment and strategic planning for training, skills, mentoring and collaboration. We discussed all water to fire, carbon to contracts and collaborating between teams.
Aaron Gillich Professor of Building Decarbonisation and Director of the BSRIA LSBU Net Zero Building Centre. October 17, 2023. Joint venture between BSRIA and LSBU with the aim of accelerating decarbonisation in the built environment. We spent time catching up on what is needed to understand, share, and accelerate our path to net zero, its link to indoor environmental quality, infrastructure changes of the past, and historical fabric.
Natasha Watson; UK lead for embodied carbon at Buro Happold. October 31, 2023. Familiar with Designing Buildings for some years and receives our biweekly updates. We discussed how it feels from the practice side as a specialist keeping on top of all things net zero and how this is affects project processes as much as projects as a product, managing information as well as relationships in projects and where things seem to be heading.
Jon Clayton MCIAT, Chartered Architectural Technologist and founder of Architecture Business Club. November 14, 2023. The weekly podcast for solo and small firm architecture business owners. Jon has worked in architecture for over two decades and runs his own design firm that specialises in home extension projects. Jon’s mission is to help sole practitioners, architects or architectural technologist build a better business on their terms.
Ankita Dwivedi CEO & Co-founder Firstplanit. November 28, 2023. From Fortune 100 firm projects across the globe for 20 years to an intelligent planning tool designed to simplify product decisions for rapid decarbonisation, health, resource efficiency, and future proofing, working to transform the construction industry. A patented technology that takes the mystery out of selecting green building products aligned with multiple sustainability goals quickly and easily in a single workflow.
Rebecca Lovelace of Building People and CIOB EDI Individual Award Winner 2022. December 12, 2023. ‘Chief Dot-joiner’ in a sector struggling with skills shortages but lacking joined-up connections to the many organisations working with people from under-represented groups that help to plug these gaps. Her social enterprise has brought together a ‘Network of Networks’ of over sixty organisations that provide built environment careers support to a wide variety of people from groups under-represented in the industry.
Ian Wray. Planner, writer and musician. (IHBC Vox pop). December 26, 2023. Former chief planner, honorary professor at Liverpool University’s Heseltine Institute, and a steering group member for the UK2070 Commission, an independent inquiry into regional inequalities. The difference between reading music and improvising is the difference between reading a book and having a conversation. You have to listen, respond and react, rather than accepting the tyranny of the dots.
Robin Nicholson, convenor of the Edge and fellow of Cullinan studio. January 10 2024 As COP26 came to a close and the outcomes, or lack of, were clearer, we talked. About experiences and activities, the Edge policy proposals, as well as the Edge Biannual Report‎. Now stepping back from practice, Robin continues to remain a key industry figure, happy to talk openly and frankly about successes and failures, both at the policy and practice level, where it seems to be heading and where perhaps it should be heading.
Rosie Thirlwell AT emerging talent award winner and senior architectural technologist. January 20 2024 Rosie wasn't able to recieve her award at the ceremony due, as Storm Babet had other ideas, so we wanted to give her a platform. She is a proud ambassador for the Architects Benevolent Society and forms part of FaulknerBrowns’ Well-Being and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Groups as well as staff mentoring programme. The Building Safety Act, net zero carbon targets and the value of post occupancy are key.
Gregor Harvie. Co-founder and director of Designing Buildings. February 9 2024 A focus on creativity, the construction industry can get bogged down with delivering projects and sometimes forgets just how creative buildings can be. At the most basic level, every painting needs a wall to hang on and lighting to illuminate it - but as I hope the articles I have selected show, the possibilities for art and architecture are limitless. Once in a while we need to remind ourselves that buildings can be imaginative and even fun.
Stephen Trench, third generation project manager and Managing Partner at Onyx Partnership. February 20 2024 A third generation project manager, also qualified in architectural design, he advises on opportunities to enhance real estate performance and manage the execution of construction strategies. Operational considerations are often ill-considered at the early design stages of construction, whilst knowledge is like an iceberg, which until recently much of which had been hidden from transparent view.
Norman Fellows; Anticipatory Designer and prolific archi-blogger. March 10 2024 Founded his practice in the 1970s alongside roles in education and assessment and since early 2000 under his experimental practice pseudonym Archiblog he has been writing. A prolific independent contributor to DB or archi-blogger, he talks of anticipatory design, disaster planning and historical precidents. "My business is question-asking." he says, candidly.
Ashley Wheaton HonRICS, UCEM Vice Chancellor. March 22 2024 Passionate about the transformative power of education, the need for links between universities and industry, aswell as supporting industry placement courses. He is driven by a particular focus on sustainability now at the heart of UCEM’s core purpose and aims, embeded its principles. Previously at BRE and Microsoft he continues an active interest in technology and how can improve the sector, particularly environmentally.