Building Our Future

What is the great rotation and how will it affect the built environment in the years to come?

Indy Johar is an architect, co-founder of Project 00 & Dark Matter Labs and Senior Innovation Associate at the Young Foundation. 

Dark Matter Labs is a field laboratory focused on radically redesigning the bureaucratic & institutional infrastructure of our cities, regions and towns for a more democratic, distributed great transition.

Project 00 is a collaborative studio of architects, strategic designers, programmers, social scientists, economists and urban designers practising design beyond its traditional borders. Through 00, Indy has led on multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham to HubLaunchpad.net; he has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc. He is now leading 00 on HubEng.in a development engine for a next generation of Impact Hubs.

Indy is a Director of Data Science London, an Advisor to the Earth Security Initiative and a non-executive director of WikiHouse Foundation. He is a regular writer on Medium.com and speaker at Ted Talks.

In this podcast:

• How is real estate connected to ideas like political polarisation, climate change and conscious consumerism?
• The great rotation of capital - what role does the built environment have to play?
• Should assets be based on productive utility rather than floor area?
• What alternative finance & capital forms are emerging in the built environment?
• Have we yet seen truly transformative technologies in the build environment?

Indy’s recommended book  for the BUilding Our Future reading list is:

Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society, Eric A. Posner

Indy’s favourite building more of moment; in terms of the feelings emoted by walking through Manhattan, New York. His technology to watch is smart property rights.

Can technology help the built environment better reflect people’s changing social and ethical consumption choices?

Ben is an economist, environmentalist and social entrepreneur. He has founded several businesses and charities, and worked for 6 years at the New Zealand Treasury - where he led the development of the Living Standards Framework. He co-founded CoGo while working at the New Zealand Treasury, and has grown the social enterprise to a thriving New Zealand movement with over 20,000 consumer members and 500 business customers.

Ben’s vision is a world where consumers and businesses work together for the good of people and the planet. Ben has recently moved to London with his wife and two children, to launch the platform in the UK.

In this podcast:

• How does CoGo work?
• Will people be happy to share banking data if it leads to social change?
• How can retail be changed by understanding the customer’s ethical prerogatives?
• How deep-rooted is the trend of conscious consumerism - what are people prepared to do to uphold these beliefs?
• Will a kite mark emerge for bench-marking & assessing the social values of buildings?

For his favourite building, Ben selects his self-build, straw-bale eco-house in New Zealand.

Ben prefers listening to podcasts than reading books so rather than adding to the Building Our Future reading list, his recommended podcast is The Environmental Economist.

Ben’s innovative technology to watch out for is the data collection and collation. Data is the building blocks of insight and those who are best at gathering it, will have access to the best analysis and ability to change things.

How can well-designed landscape & public realm help create better cities for people?

Alexandra is a chartered landscape architect in the UK, and also worked for a number of years in Canada where she was responsible for a series of innovative public realm projects for the City of Vancouver. 

In  2013, Alexandra founded URBAN with the stated aim of creating better cities for people through a synthesis of art, landscape and sustainability. 

Before starting her own practice, Alexandra led the Aecom Europe Design Team, and was also Practice Director for Martha Schwartz Partners’ London office. Aside from her work with URBAN, Alexandra acts as a Built Environment Expert for Design Council Cabe, and sits on the Highways England Design Panel. She lectures at architectural schools, conferences and is a reviewer at universities including Harvard and The Bartlett, UCL. 

In this podcast:

• Is the role & remit of landscape architecture misunderstood?
• How can you demonstrate ROI in landscape and public realm?
• What should good landscape seek to achieve?
• Does ownership impact on public realm and how can this be overcome?
• How is landscaping used as a medium for regeneration?
• Where in the world is landscaping most difficult & what can be learned from this?
• What role does future-proofing & innovations such as autonomous vehicles play in influencing the shape of the urban architecture?

For her favourite building, Alexandra selects Quai Brandley by Jean Novel & Patrick Blanc for its seamless integration between building and landscape.

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list is:

• Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

Alexandra’s technology to watch for is autonomous vehicles and its potential impact on the ways that cities are designed and in which people move.

Charlie Wade is UK Managing director of PropTech giant, VTS. In their own words, VTS is the commercial real estate industry’s leading leasing and asset management platform. Landlords use VTS to maximise portfolio performance by transforming their leasing and asset management process and unlocking real-time insights – enabling them to convert leads to leases faster than ever before,  and build informed data-led strategies. Brokers can manage their deal pipeline and get tenants into empty spaces faster, collaborate across teams and work easily with their landlord clients using VTS for Brokers.

Beyond his role at VTS, Charlie’s an influential figure in promoting technology within the property industry and has a background firmly rooted in the traditional industry.

In this podcast:

• Life as a unicorn; how did it happen and what comes next?
• Data gathering to big data insight; are we on the cusp of an analytical revolution?
• Tech first mover advantage; is there room for 2nd place in PropTech?
• Democracy and data; is value derived for SaaS or the data that is collected as a result?
• Where is the real estate market on is journey of technology adoption?

For his favourite building, Charlie selects the somewhat vague historic London; from Pall Mall to Westminster.

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list is:

• Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm
• Matthew Dixon, The Challenger Sale

Charlies technology to watch for is sensor-led technology, influencing design and usage of buildings to influence the future of the workplace.

You can find & follow Charlie on social media via Twitter for further information.

Is there really a Retail Apocalypse? Why is the retail industry in the state its in and how can property owners help to rebuild towards a brighter retail future? 

Mark Pilkington is author of the newly-released book, Retail Therapy: why the industry is broken and what can be done to fix it. Mark has enjoyed a successful and varied career in retail. After graduating from INSEAD, he joined Cortaulds, later becoming CEO of Gossard where he was responsible for initiating the huge global success of the Wonderbra.

He then founded Splendour.com, the world’s first direct-to-consumer commerce brand, with the backing of Marks & Spencer. Subsequently, he was CEO of KOJ Group, a leading retailer with 850 stores across the middle east and north Africa. Currently, he is director of MarkPilkington.net, providing strategic advice to brands and retailers
 

In this podcast:

• Is Retail Apocalypse a hyperbolic way to describe the state of the industry?
• Can we better understand the future of the industry by really learning how it has reached its current state?
• How can the physical store compete in the digital world?
• How, in Mark’s view of the new retail paradigm, physical stores can be a key advantage for even direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands

For his favourite building, Mark opts for a slightly wider view in Haussmann’s vision of Paris, including the view down the Champs Elyseé, for its role as a work of art.

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list is:

• Tony Robbins, Awaken The Giant Within

Mark’s emerging technology to keep an eye on is the emergence of 3D printing as a conduit for providing mass consumer customisation at-scale.

You can find & follow Mark on social media via Twitter for further information.

Can technology nurture greater community engagement in the shape of develop projects and will this help “democratise” real estate? 

My guest today is Savannah de Savary, founder and CEO of Built-ID; a prop-tech platform that “showcases the built environment projects of today and transforms community engagement to better shape the projects of tomorrow”. Built-ID connects architects and consultants with potential clients on an online hub which has been described as the Shazam of property.

After graduating from the University of Oxford in 2013, Savannah joined Thor Equities before founding Built-ID in 2015.  Savanah has won “Young Entrepreneur of the Year” at the Property Awards, was voted in Property Week’s ‘Power 100: Top 20 Ones to Watch’ and as one of the Top 20 Proptech influencers in a poll by the UK Proptech Association. She is also a regular columnist for Property Week and sits on the Legacy Foundation Board of Trustees and the ULI Young Leaders and Urban Art Forums.
 

In this podcast:

• The origins of Built-ID and problem that Savannah set out to solve
• The consequences of amassing a photos library of building interiors and exteriors in excess of 250,000 images - what happens next?
• “Give My View” - Built-ID’s innovation to bring more people into development consultancy process; how does it work?
• What is democracy in the context of the built environment?
• What are the developer’s responsibilities in respect to the local community?
• What emerging building trends can Built-ID help identify?

Understandably given the designs she encounters in her job, Savannah has too many favourite buildings to choose a specific one but Bloomberg’s London HQ was the first building that sprung to mind! 

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list is:

• Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things

You can find & follow Savannah on social media via Twitter for further information.

Building communities at the scale needed to meet the challenges of the UK’s housing shortage.

In 2018, Fiona Fletcher-Smith left City Hall (where she was Executive Director of Development, Enterprise and Environment) to join L&Q where she is Group Director of Development and Sales, responsible for delivering the Registered Provider’s stated aim of constructing 100,000 new homes in the next decade.

One of L&Q’s flagship projects is Barking Riverside, an 443 acre site where the vision is to create a brand-new riverfront town in East London and deliver a thriving, new eco-district comprising: 10,800 homes, new schools, commercial and cultural offerings, along 2km of Thames river frontage.

In this podcast:

• What are the growth plans for London largest property owner?
• How does L&Q role as a long-term owner of assets influence planning and design?
• What is the approach for designing new urban settlements, as at Barking Riverside?
• How can you help create communities within development projects?
• How do you manage meanwhile uses in long-term projects?
• How can residents be brought into the discussion about future plans and continual shaping of the project and the masterplan?

Fiona is a huge fan of tall buildings (in the right context) and her choice of favourite building is the Shard for its design and positive impact on the regeneration of the locality. Fiona’s hot pick for innovation in the sector offsite construction. 

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list tackles collaboration in problem-solving, which is:

• Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking:  Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance: The Surprising Truth About Success

One man’s mission to live in painted cities; how can street art transform both buildings and communities?

Holding a PhD in Evolutionary Mathematics from Cambridge, Lee was a former break-dancer with the Soul Mavericks Crew where he represented the UK and he has travelled the world extensively documenting street art world-wide. 

In 2012, he co-founded Global Street Art with a mission to live in painted cities. This is achieved in three ways:

1. Curating the world’s largest online street art platform with artists from over 100 countries and hundreds of thousands of photographs and over half a million followers on social media;
2. Organising legal street art murals; having organised over 2,000 since 2012;
3. Forming an agency that works on commercial projects.

In this podcast:

• What is street art and how is it already shaping our cities?
• What role does art have in helping to create vibrant communities?
• How are brands helping to fund the growth of street art?
• How does street art retain authenticity as it enters a new, “legal” era?
• Is street art designed to challenge communities or represent them?
• Can we measure the impact of street art on a location?

Lee’s favourite building is the Schindler House  in West Holywood; an experiment in 1920’s social architecture and arguably an early forbear of the current trend of co-living. His hot pick for innovation in the sector is Gyana AI, focused on retail analytics. 

The recommended addition to the Building Our Future reading list is:

• Frans Johansson, The Medici Effect: what elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation

You can find & follow Lee and Global Street Art on social media via Instagram or Twitter for further information.

Image courtesy of Tony Briggs (http://www.tonybriggs.com/_photo_15181401.html)

What is Artificial Intelligence and how is about to reshape our approach to work? Will this mean that SpaceAsaService becomes the new normal for the build environment?

 Antony is a renowned speaker in the property world and a globally recognised expert on PropTech, Artificial Intelligence & SpaceAsaService. A pre-eminent blogger in the world of AI, he’s recently been voted as the number one non-US person to follow on Twitter. Having founded several PropTech companies, he still retains an active role in them and recently founded PropAI.

In this podcast:

• Where do we stand on the PropTech journey?
• What actually is AI and how can we expect it to affect the built environment?
• Are there tangible examples of AI at work already in real estate?
• Why is AI suddenly at the forefront of everyone’s minds?
• How can business embrace AI to stay relevant in the digital age?
• Is AI a threat to jobs in the built environment? How can we stay relevant as individuals?
• Is SpaceAsaService the natural consequence of AI?
• Why are we about to enter a “Golden Age of Real Estate”?

Antony’s favourite building is Giotto’s Campanile in Florence as an “insanely elegant” structure. His hot pick for innovation in the sector is Gyana AI, focused on retail analytics. 

The recommended additions to the newly formed Building Our Future reading list are:

• Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: work, progress and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies
• Hannah Fry, Hello World; How to be Human in the Age of the Machine

You can find & follow Antony on social media via LinkedIn or Twitter (@antonyslumbers) or see his blog for further information.

Do we give enough thought to the impact that the design and layout of our workplaces has on our individual & collective productivity & well-being? I delve into the world of workspace science to find the answers.

Ros Pomeroy is a co-founder of Brainy Birdz; a consultancy specialising in the unpronounceable (for me, anyway) ‘zusammenarbeit’ - that’s to say, how people work together. Together with co-founder Dr Kerstin Sailer, Ros is at the forefront of using data to help diagnose what makes a workplace tick and what role design plays in this.

In this podcast:

• What is workspace science and who should it be of interest to?
• How is design enabling the growth in co-working that we’re seeing?
• How can seating & proximity plans be optimised to bust silos in the office & bring people together?
• What’s the importance of visibility within the work place?
• Why are open-plan offices getting such a hard time of late?

Ros’s favourite buildings are the new Google Campus & The Francis Crick Institute at Kings Cross for their design-led focus on collaboration & knowledge sharing. Her innovation to follow is the growing trend of data-led decision making across the build environment.

The recommended addition to the newly formed Building Our Future reading list is Neil Usher’s The Elemental Workplace (see here for her review).

You can find & follow Ros on social media via LinkedIn or Twitter (@rosamundpomeroy). 

For more references, do have a look at the Brainy Birdz blog. Also, Ros and Kerstin run regular workshops for anyone interested in learning more.