Hi, Justin. How are you? 

Justin Nicholls  

Very well, thank you, David. Nice to speak to you. 

And you. Congratulations on reaching 10 years as a practice, which you commemorated with a party last week - sorry, I couldn't be there! The last time we did an interview like this was at your fifth year anniversary. What has it been like over that whole 10 year period? In fact, has the last five years been different to the first five years, because you had to negotiate Covid and various other things in that period? How would you characterise the first 10 years? 

I think we've ended up with some really lovely clients, pretty much on day one, and that's made a lot of difference – people who are enjoyable to work with and committed to that longer term design quality and challenge; University of Oxford, Kings Cross Estate, among them. So that eased the pains of navigating through what was described to me the other day as a once a decade crisis every two years. The last five years have been pretty much the same as the previous five, to be honest! We would love a year of stability and growth, but I think that makes us stronger, and I think it makes us think harder about what we're doing, and to use those kinds of lateral thinking skills that I think architects are good at to solve those problems. 

We've just launched a new website, so do take a peek when you have time. I think what's nice about that is you do that reflection thing and sort of evolve how you are thinking. We had done very little retrofit, very little interiors, when we started, and that's probably the bulk of our work at the moment. You pivot into that, and unpick those problems... 

Is that a sign of the times commercially? 

Justin Nicholls  

It's a sign of the times, yes, but we wanted to do complicated work and complicated buildings on sensitive sites, and I think that has led us to be able to do that retrofit much more easily than if you're used to razing something to the ground and starting again, which is pretty straightforward. So, you know, listed buildings, estate strategies, doing everything across, and kind of evolve that, and sometimes tweaking. You can do small interventions to make quite a large impact. We are working down at Harwell, which is the Rutherford Applewell Laboratory in Oxfordshire, and that's super, super-specialist. It's very, very complicated technical work, but we're trying to stitch workplace and placemaking in and around these huge facilities. That has been really fascinating. 

In terms of how you perceived where you would be 10 years in, are you roughly how you'd envisioned it? Were there any stages where you were thinking it might be difficult even to negotiate the choppy waters of the economic conditions that many smaller places are? 

Justin Nicholls  

We started with that big blue sky vision of being 30, 40, 50 people over 10 years. What's been really interesting is you can do much more being much smaller. 

What are you, 15? 

Yes, so we fluctuate around 15 to 20. It'd be nice to get to 30, but keeping that boutique personal service and feel I think is really important to us, and that's made it really enjoyable. We know our team really well. We've got a lovely team of people, which takes time to nurture and culture. And then it's about being really nimble. So, as the market changes, we've managed to develop our internal systems, if you like, so we are quite efficient. We've got foresight of what work is coming up, what work is not coming out. We can pivot into the dreaded business development, or we can pivot into really focusing on tricky design solutions, or high-risk buildings; all those kinds of other things that are thrown at us. I think being open-minded, going back, for people who are thinking of starting out, able to be open-minded and really flexible and determined - or stubborn, as my family likes to call it! (laughs) 

David Taylor  

(laughs) You obviously left Make to set up Fathom. If you were offering any tips to either graduates or people from practice who wanted to set up on their own, what would be the bedrock of those tips? 

I think be as clear as you possibly can, to have a vision for what you want to do. I think that helps you focus your niche in a very broad market of architects. 

Do you mean in sector terms? 

Well, we're locked into this idea of complex projects and sensitive sites, and that's very pan-sector. Sometimes we quite like the idea of a simple building, and that can be quite counterintuitive, but I think that's just aligning your skill set where you'd like to be with where the market sits at the moment, and be determined and just stick with it. For a long time, we struggled on some of the bigger projects, because a lot of clients like to see a corporate track record, when we had only a personal track recording on larger buildings. That was always a kind of a hurdle. We said we've just got to keep going, there's nothing we can do about that until we tick the box, and you know, 10 years later, we have finally got a couple of projects out of our network, Farringdon Road, Lower Marsh, down at Waterloo – we are now over that hurdle. 

Other things you can influence; you can go and upskill on AI or Revit or Safety Regulator... 

I often see you at events, conferences, and so on. How important is the networking dimension, would you say, to practices and winning new work? 

I think that's super-critical. We've gone through Covid, where we were all at home, we thought we could do everything online, and I'd like to think the world has come back to realising that meetings in person, working in person, going and seeing people in person is super-valuable. And I think being generous with your network is really important; so helping others. We do a lot of work with Narrative Practice and host events here to help people from non-traditional backgrounds into architecture. It's a really tough gig, getting into architecture at the moment, so, I think that's very important. I was joking to the team the other day that I have kept every business card I've ever been given since 1993 I think... 

Really? 

Justin Nicholls  

 (laughs) …and I was at an event during COVID actually where I was with someone and said I can't remember who you are - he said “I was the lift engineer on a project you worked on at Foster's, now technical sustainability engineer for one of the big clients”. Those things come around, but they take a long, long time, and those relationships are really important, because I think if someone's worked with you before, they trust you - or not! (laughs).  And that's much better than just going in and giving a sales pitch for half an hour. 

Yes. I'm intrigued where you keep all these business cards. Are they in folders? 

Justin Nicholls  

They are in Outlook now. I think I've slowly digitised them over the years! 

Wow. So, lastly, last weekend I think you celebrated Father's Day in an unusual way. Do you want to just talk me through what you did? 

So, I guess going back to your earlier question of thinking of starting up a practice, I think make sure you've got an outlet for your stresses and take a break from work. One of mine was trying to keep healthier, so I got a Brompton in lockdown. I had been thinking about it for a few years, and I used to take my one hour of exercise a day to go north, south, east, or west today, and go visit a building - go down to Croydon and visit some of the housing. And I cycle around town all the time on my little Orange Tangerine Dream, as I call it. So, I thought I should do something a bit more challenging and thought: London to Brighton - that seems kind of doable. So, I did some training for that. I've never trained for anything in my entire life! I thoroughly enjoyed it, going out from southeast London down to the North Downs either side of the kind of the M25 and through the countryside, climbing some fairly hefty, short steep hills. It was something like - what was it on Sunday? - 28 degrees? 

Yes, 54 miles, 28 degrees! 

54 miles and a very large hill 

Ditchling Beacon. 

Ditchling Beacon at the end. I thought, I've done this training, I've got to get up this hill. 

How was that? 

The rest of the ride was fine. I got there, and I thought, I'm going to do this. I'd watched a YouTube video the night before I Googled, “Brompton, Ditchling”, and I watched the guy go for 12 minutes. So I thought: that's what I'm going to do. I got halfway up and put some very loud dance music on, which got me up the second half. It was absolutely fine. 

David Taylor  

You made it - because it's got the false finish, hasn't it? 

Yes, and I was aware of that, so that was probably the best thing, but it was really good example of mind ever matter. And yes, I did the whole thing non-stop, down into Brighton, and dunked myself in the sea at the end. 

And you met your family there, I think. Lovely. Well, it just proves preparation is everything, including punctures! So, congratulations on 10 years, on doing that ride, and here's to another 10. At least! 

Nice one. Thanks David, and thanks for the opportunity as well.