HR: It's been okay. It's interesting, you know, because three months now is the same length time that we cycled on the P2P (Portland (Oregon) to Portland (Place) cycle ride). Although there were more people on the P2P journey than there are in my lockdown (laughs)

Which is kind of a bit ironic.

DT: Ha! Hopefully you haven't got an eye injury this time!

HR: I don't have an eye injury, no, but I do have COVID, or I think I did.

DT: Really? 

 HR: Yeah, right at the beginning of this. Literally, the week that lockdown happened I was here in Amersham and it was very funny because on the Monday my wife Jenny goes to work - she works at the NHS in Hackney. So she was busy there and on the Monday evening I got a really bad cough. I thought: this is like a cough that I haven’t had before. I don't recognise this. And then later that evening, during the night, I developed a fever. I took my temperature and it was up at near the 40s. I managed to get some sleep and the next day, the fever was just with me and I started feeling like somebody was sitting on my chest.

DT: Jeez!

HR: So I lay up on the sofa and I thought: ‘oh God, I feel dreadful.’ I watched Chernobyl, of all things – what a cheery thing that was! It was really, really good, but I will always associate that with my symptoms. Then I was taking paracetamol, as you do, but the fever stayed with me and I was absolutely drenched. And then it eased off a bit after four or five days, then I lost my sense of taste and smell.

And this was before that became a thing. It was very odd. So I think I had it, although it can't be tested. That said, because my wife Jenny works in the health service she had something similar and so did my daughter Ava. So all three of us think we had it. Jenny’s just been tested for the antibody test because they finally got round to people in the NHS, and she's tested positive for antibodies. So, all conclusions lead me to believe that I must have had it. 

That was the first week of lockdown… During that week, the office went into its 96 or so ‘branch offices’ around the country, and we had one guy in Spain. It’s been an interesting journey, in many ways: it has its good points and it has its bad points. You know, we've all got used to the Zoom environment which was probably quite novel in the beginning when we were all Zooming each other. But now I think the gloss is wearing off 

We only ever see the upper half of everyone’s body – if you’re lucky from the waist up. It's a very odd thing (laughs)

DT: (laughs) It’s a considerable impactor on wanting to go back to the office, I think…

HR:  Well, yes. People talk about new ways of working - I think that it will be a mixture of both. I think there are advantages to it, there are disadvantages. The advantages are that people can work to their own pace and stuff like that; have a better work/life balance and be in places where they don't have to travel in the rush hour, and all of that; I think that's really, really good. But the lack of contact with people and just not seeing people's expressions… you only ever see one person or a small visual of somebody else, but you never see expressions so you don't get that serendipitous thing. It’s the serendipity of life that that I miss the most.

DT:  Exactly.

I was thinking on the other day about how this whole pandemic has affected transport and public transport in particular and especially the tube. With so few people now using the tube that got me to thinking about Crossrail, and nobody's really talking about Crossrail because of that I suspect. And then when I started to think about some questions for you I thought about HS2. Are you still spitting fire about the way the way that HS2 made you close your lovely old office over at Euston and probably not have adequate compensation since?

HR: Yeah, absolutely. And if we were still in our old office we would be controlling our rent, because we owned it - or four of us owned it. And now we're in this very nice office in Farringdon which is great. You know, we made the decision to move there because it was nice part of town, there were a lot of other architects and our contemporaries around there, but given what's just happened we have nobody in the office and we're still having to pay rent. Now, in terms of surviving this whole thing that's a massive overhead to carry through this whole process. So you know HS2 has had an impact on that, but also, you start questioning again transport thing. Do we really need HS2? What this has brought into sharp focus is that, actually, investing in high speed broadband and connecting people is probably far more valuable than delivering them to Birmingham 20 minutes early. Connecting various parts of the country with efficient broadband and developing better platforms for communicating. I’m sure Zoom must have been absolutely delighted with what's happened because Zoom and Microsoft Teams and all of those things that we’re all using - they're kind of not sophisticated enough to replace what we were all doing when we were having face to face meetings. Now I think it's very interesting because I think a Zoom meeting could be very efficient and all the rest of it, but we are getting a little bit weary looking at people through here either our laptops or our monitors. We do need this human contact; it is absolutely vital for us to have that.

And of course the interest in cycling - let's just heavily invested in cycling in London.

DT: Absolutely

HR:  Put that as a priority and downgrade the importance of cars. Public transport and bikes are going to be much more important.

DT: I was also thinking about the work you do in schools particularly, and whether or not you had any thoughts about how school design is going to change from your perspective 

HR: Well I think if you talk about school designs just dealing with a situation we are in hopefully we won't always be in this situation, so it may be temporary. So we're dealing with a temporary situation in terms of space, distances between people and so on. We've done some studies on that to see how schools could work but I think in the longer term maybe flexible schooling is an answer. Or changing the time so that it fits more into people's lifestyles. 

Two things that I hope come out of this: first of all is that we change how we value all the social things that we probably took for granted before. You know, the care workers, the hospital workers, the people who deliver post and things. I know they're doing their job, but we probably didn't value them as much as we clearly should be doing now. And secondly I hope it's an awakening call the next impending not pandemic but whatever the right word for it is, which is climate change. That's not something that you can control by developing a vaccine or anything like that or develop an antibody test to. it's just simply going to be looming on us. And I think if we are prepared for anything and all the other things that are coming out of it you know that you know the Black Lives Matter thing - that is hugely important. And it's not sufficient just to sit back and accept it. We have to effect change. We have to be alert to it and we have to make the necessary changes in our society to value everybody equally, and give opportunity equally, and really make a difference.

DT: Do you think that the way various world governments have in essence mobilised against some of the problems that Covid hasthrown up and now we're seeing in Black Lives Matter topic, that actually climate change stands a better chance for us again mobilising and actually taking things seriously and acting? Or do you think it's not changed at all?

HR: Well, at a human level, yes, because I have a great faith in people always eventually coming up with the right things. But I do think that what we've seen is governments - particularly the two largest economies in the world - not really coming together to solve this problem and actually you know becoming more nationalistic about it. I think it's a shame. I don't support Brexit obviously for very many reasons but I think the fact that we haven't been able to come together as part of the European solution to all of this and I'm sure stuff will come out and down the line… I also think to go back into nation states to try and deal with something that is a global problem is not the right solution. I haven't seen a great deal of evidence that gives me hope that the world will come together to deal with climate change.

It will do if we have the right leadership. And it's all about leadership. It is all about inspiration. And I think that's true of any organisation;  it's about leadership and inspiration; listening and then effectively trying to make a difference to improve things.

DT: One very last question: are you more hopeful about cricket season this season? 

HR: (laughs) Ha! Well our League was trying to see whether or not there’s any chance of starting, and there's tentative talk, but it will only be if we're allowed to. I was saddened the other day: I read an article that said that cricket in schools was the 8th most popular sport, and you kind of think, ‘wow’. It's way down there. Then somebody was writing about the demise of cricket as we know it and things like The 100s trying to gain more appeal to a wider audience. And yet we have these amazing test matches. I have been watching a few of them in lockdown and you think wow what an amazing thing. So I don't know whether we will have any cricket this summer; hopefully we will but if not definitely next year.

DT:  Yeah. Well I'm glad you've recovered; I didn't even know you had Covid it 

HR: Well it was really interesting David because it was before all the horrible things that came out and was not that bad – I didn’t have to go to hospital. I'm 65 and therefore in the vulnerable category but reasonably fit I would think and then as it sort of unfolded there were these horror stories of people on ventilators for weeks on end, and you think: ‘wow. I dodged a bullet there’.  That’s really reassuring, but emerging back into the world after this isolation and lockdown is going to be interesting.

DT: Yeah. Maybe I'll borrow some blood off you: some of those antibodies! Thanks Heinz, that's really great.

HR: Take care of yourself!