It’s time to see ‘the system’ – planning, procurement, regulations, viability – not as a damper on design, but as a series of opportunities for architectural creativity and problem solving in their own right, argue Pooja Agrawal and Finn Williams. The pair has just been named creative directors for this year’s Guerrilla Tactics conference in November.
Together they are the founders of Public Practice, the ground-breaking social enterprise that has been successfully placing a new generation of architects and planners in local government planning departments to inject some creative thinking with the unabashed objective of working for the public good.
Under the title of ‘Expanding Practice: Navigating the architecture of planning, procurement and property’ they are promising some dramatic enactments of the system in action at this year’s event.
‘This conference will help small practices learn how to expand their practice by creatively engaging with the hidden iceberg of regulations, rules and forces that define the everyday realities of practice,’ says Williams.
A ‘live’ planning committee, interspersed with presentations from a cast of planning officers, local politicians and objectors will give architects an insider’s view of real-world decision making and the constraints that the development control system has to operate within.
A behind-the-scenes look at a procurement scoring process will demonstrate how the client side really makes its choices. The interactive format will allow delegates to score bids themselves to see how their own value judgements compare, and rethink their own approaches to bidding for work.
Guidance on diversifying your practice’s workload and demonstrating social value are on the agenda, but so too is that essential ingredient of any project, development finance.
‘By hearing from innovative developers, viability consultants, estate agents, quantity surveyors, and contractors from across the industry, architects will gain an understanding of the competing financial forces that are driving the system. They will learn how to shape the economic dimensions of projects more directly and so make their businesses more viable,’ explains Agrawal.
Professor Sadie Morgan (dRMM Founding Director, NIC commissioner, GLA Mayor’s Design Advocate and HS2 Independent Design Panel Chair) and Dan Hill (Associate Director at ARUP, Head of ARUP Digital Studio, GLA Mayor’s Design Advocate and visiting Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) will open the conference as keynote speakers, talking about their experience of designing without drawing, and how designers can creatively engage with the policies, politics and processes earlier upstream to shape the conditions for architecture.
On the public-sector side, the conference will present planning officers, local councillors and public commissioners in action, including Alice Lester MBE (Head of Planning, Transport and Licencing at Brent Council), Pippa Goldfinger (Cllr. Independents for Frome) as well as members of the first cohort of Public Practice’s own placements.
It will also bring together leading economists, estate agents, procurement experts and viability consultants, including Professor Tony Travers (LSE), Albert Hill (Modern House), Russell Curtis (RCKa and Projects Compass), Tina Jadav and Rae Whittow-Williams (Greater London Authority; Architecture, Design and Urbanism Panel leads).
The programme will connect delegates to a new network of public sector commissioners, community groups, economists and institutions that will offer an alternative perspective on the role of small practices, and potentially open up opportunities for new work.
Guerrilla Tactics 2018 – Expanding Practice: Navigating the architecture of planning, procurement and property – the RIBA’s flagship professional event for small- to medium-sized practices will take place at the RIBA on 13-14 November 2018. Full details are now available and booking is open.
Pooja Agrawal and Finn Williams explain their thinking further in the new issue of RIBAJ.
Thanks to Pooja Agrawal and Finn Williams, Co-founders, Public Practice.
Text By Neal Morris. This is a Professional Feature edited by the RIBA Practice team. Send us our feedback and ideas
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Posted on 26 July 2018.
