Hi, Bronte, how are you?

 

Hi David, very well. How are you?

 

I'm very good. Congratulations on your new-ish role, which I read is more of a global role in the HLW leadership team. You're now overseeing things like speciality studios, which include strategy and discovery, which I’m presuming is research, sustainability, lighting and branding. Two bits of research really pop out in terms of what you're up to at the moment. First is desk-to-door ratio in offices, or how to avoid the distraction of virtual call noise. Can you elaborate a little bit about that before we go on to the second one?

 

Yes, sure; love to. So, our strategy and discovery team is called Ark and the Ark team obviously specialises in really delving into a user's or an employee’s experience, in this case, in the office. But also, they advise our architectural interior design teams on users’ experience in built environments. They also benchmark all the projects that we've got. Historically and traditionally, strategy teams have always benchmarked projects, looking at really simple, basic metrics. How many desks are there in the space? How many meeting rooms? What size are those meeting rooms? And as we start to come out of COVID, we were being asked a lot of other questions by clients in terms of, what's next, how do we get our employees to return? What does a good hybrid experience look like? Those types of questions, that I'm sure you've heard a million times. But we started to think about, what are the measurable elements that we can actually start using and seeing within the design that can inform productivity in space as we look at it today. So: desk numbers, whilst they might account for how many people you can support, they don't talk about the quality of space that we're delivering. So, a big oversight of trying to understand metrics that could inform quality of space and quality of experience. The desk-to-door ratio specifically talks to a user's accessibility to a space where they can jump on and off calls, but also a user's experience of how quickly they can get to a room to have a one-to-one, or how quickly they can get back to their team, in and out of - we all know what our diary looks like in today's world…

 

Yes, horrific.

 

…with back-to-back calls – that really drives down the quality of experience if you've got nowhere to be able to have those calls and have that agility within your working day to do what you need to do. So that ratio specifically talks to a measurement tool that we've started to look at that talks about the quality of being able to take calls and have access to a space that enables various types of conversations and activities.

 

The other piece of research that really jumped out at me was the use of wearables to collect biometric data to inform design. Can you unpack that? What does that give you?

 

Yes. Wearables are a huge thing in today's society. I think most of our friends and teens and families are wearing Fitbits or the equivalent that tracks many things in our lives. So, we've got the technology there. A member of our Ark team started a research piece quite a while ago, actually, in our New York office with a partner, looking at wearing wearables and data –biometric measurable elements – to try to track levels of happiness, comfort and stress in certain environments. We all can feel our body change in stressful environments, but how can we actually use wearables and neurotechnology specifically to understand how the body reacts in different spaces? We did a piece – it was actually pre-COVID, quite a while ago – and then we published surveys and observations around people and how they interact in space by actually understanding the human metrics that come out of those wearables. 

 

So, was happiness made up of components like stress and heart rate, for example?

 

Yes. I'm not the expert, but they have the data that understands how the body reacts. So, I would assume that it's things like heart rate, body temperature, stress levels, blood pressure, all of those. But also, specifically the neurotechnology element, which was part of the process – it is not the most attractive part of the wearables technology! You know, we all wear it on our wrist effectively today, but one of the neurotechnology measuring things is wearing like, effectually, a cap that quantifies the brainwaves and that...

 

Wow!

 

...is not something that we would want to wear every day of our lives yet (laughs), but I'm sure that as technology improves, it becomes a lot more subtle and very much an extension of other things that we wear. The brainwaves and the neurotechnology is something that's really exciting to essentially understand on top of those parts of biometrics that we already are measuring.

 

So, this kind of thing is to make changes to an already designed and inhabited office space, is it?

 

 

Yes. I think specifically we were looking at people in workspace. But I guess as we understand more, it has a lot more uses, especially around the neuro; the headsets that we have our users wear. But we can understand new versus old spaces, and: "have you actually increased and improved the quality of space?" So, it's not just a tool to measure that immediate space, but also being able to report on successful design and what that might look like in terms of how humans interact with it. 

 

It's really interesting. I was at a symposium recently at Thomas Heatherwick's Studios, where they had a neuroscientist talking about very similar things to this; connecting neuro responses to the environment, and particularly the aesthetics of buildings. So it's fascinating. 

 

Absolutely. It's another trend that's very important, and we're looking at a piece on neurodiversity as well, because I guess those two pieces, hopefully down the line, can very much tie up together. I think there are a lot of people that have a good understanding of neurodiversity and how design plays on that; hopefully we can actually look at that in deeper way in the future, by looking at wearable technology. 

 

Yeah, really interesting. So back to HLW. Your promotion is part of a broader succession, I suppose, within the practice, is it? And lastly, if you could comment on the general office market in London, vis a vis the other countries that you now have oversight of? 

 

Yes, for sure. My new role is part of a global leadership team, which is really exciting. As you say, it's recently announced but it's been a few years in the making. HLW are over 135 years old... 

 

Wow!

 

It hasn't been that long coming!

 

(laughs) You're looking good on it. 

 

I'm holding my age pretty well (laughs). Since I've been at HLW, for the last 16 years, we've had two managing partners, and it's part of their transition process. We're still working through that on a global scale, but it's exciting for me to step away from my role as day-to-day managing director in the London studio, which I've been doing over 10 years, and which has been an amazing, rewarding experience. I've grown the team in London, and I'm very proud of what we've achieved, but now I’m able to partner with Pendrick [Brown], who's taking over that aspect of what I do, and I'm stepping in to oversee the growth and the development of what we call our speciality studios at HLW. So they are, as you mentioned, the Ark team, workplace strategy, our Beyond team, who specialize in environmental and sustainable design, but also WELL and wellness factors when it comes to design. We have brandx, who are our branding and experience and wayfinding team, and we have Spark, who are a lighting studio. All those elements are, in our view, speciality studios within the world of interior design and architecture that we have established, and we are looking to grow their expertise and the influence that can bring to our designs and our buildings and our interiors. So, my role is to oversee all those four studios globally and work with their global teams. They're an amazing team spread throughout all our offices, and we look to continue to grow and do things like research, beyond environmental sustainability, circularity; all those sorts of topics are so important to not just us as a firm, but the built environment sector specifically. So we decided to establish these studios, invest in these studios, and utilize them for our own innovation and focus, but also, we support other teams as well, and clients directly outside interior design and architecture. So,it's really exciting. 

 

And so, you now view London with a sort of more global eye, do you? Or can you? And if so,what do you think?

 

I do. You can take the interior designer out of the... I don't know what the saying is (laughs), but I'm very passionate about design and my clients and the industry in London. It's a bit of a split role. I'm still very much London-based. I work on London-based projects or UK and European-based projects with current clients. So, I'm not giving up my passion projects, and, you know, all those sorts of things. But in my spare time, that is the other element that I'm strategically overseeing on a global sense. So: understanding global markets specifically to those four studio specialities – it is important that I throw myself in and get to know globally what's going on in the world.

 

And what's the rough feeling about the office market in London? Can you encapsulate that? 

 

Yes. I feel like the world is coming out the other side. We were all kind of fumbling around, not really sure what was going to happen next in terms of end users and global clients and policy-making and: what's the purpose of the office? There are all those conversations. What's the right mix of time in office versus time out of offices? What's going to happen to the office market in major hubs like Manhattan and in London? So, it's been it's been interesting to get to know that. I think there are some big capital cities that are still slower when it comes to the office market, and there are some new clients that are still trying to work out exactly what's right for their business. I think the most important lesson that we've probably all learned in my perspective, is that no one solution is correct for one company or one client. I think you've got to look at your own culture and then decide what the right solution for Hybrid and Return to Office policies are. Look at your people and your users, and understand how they want to work, and specifically design an office that supports your business and your people. So, I see an increase in office projects. There's an uplift in lettings in London specifically.  I try to follow all the agents and the brokers' reports and what's happening quarter by quarter. There's a definite upward trajectory. I'd say that's in London, and I say that's in a lot of the states in America. So yes, it's an exciting time. I think the next 10 years is going to be exciting, and busy for us all.

 

And we'll all be wearing those wearable hats in our offices...

 

Yes, but they will just look like hats, not ugly Professor caps!

 

All right, thank you, Bronte, that's really fantastic. Good luck with it all

 

Cheers, David, nice to speak to you. Take care, bye.