David Taylor talks to Fletcher Priest’s new managing partner Ed Williams about succession, projects, circularity, research, and the real temperature of the market for architects and building.
 

Hi, Ed, how are you doing?

 

Hi. I'm very well, thank you.

 

Good. I wanted to chat to you about your being elected as Managing Partner at Fletcher Priest, after having been with the firm for around 30 years. How has the transition been from Keith Priest retirement? And indeed, what do you think is the secret, if there is one, to good succession within practices or any business?

 

Well, as you'd expect me to say, it's been pretty seamless! I have been working on a substantial amount of the practice's portfolio for several years now. Essentially, I guess the secret to succession is that the leaders lead together as a team, rather than one person dictating from the top. And that is certainly how I want to pursue things moving forward. It's a team sport, rather than an individual sport, in my view, anyway. I've always played sports and typically been the captain in football teams and everything else. But I think it's still important to acknowledge everybody working around you.

 

That's interesting. As a captain, do you see a similarity in the sporting endeavour to the vocational one?

 

Yes. I mean, I think it's just nudging, giving direction, pursuing your own passions and skill set. And, where you're not good, making sure you have people around you who can fill the gap in your deficiencies. It's the old adage of bringing people in who are better than you as well, I think. I think that's the key.

 

To continue the sporting analogy, I'm seeing you as a sort of creative midfielder type. Or are you a holding midfielder within the office?

 

My passion is very much design and creating things, future thinking, and research. So, since Keith's early retirement about a year ago, we've really upped our game on research, and we've got Ben Koslowski, who's heading that now with a team of people, and they're involved in everything we do. So: from pitching forwards; from the blank sheet of paper, moving forward, and they're also doing their own research as well, that maybe isn't linked to specific projects. That then feeds into our project work, and our engagement with clients.

 

What kind of research are we talking about? 

 

Well, some of it I'll share with you and some of which I don't want to, for obvious reasons.  I'm a great believer in circularity, but I think, more importantly, it's about buildings lasting longer. I don't mean just in terms of their physical attributes, but also in terms of how they could potentially flex in the future, change use, have a mix of uses, or adapt to a completely different use at a later stage. So, we're looking at cladding that can last 120 years, and it's getting guaranteed for that rather than the usual 20 to 30 years; your glass towers in the City of London. But it's every component in that regard, and making it flex, and looking at different uses along the way.

 

That's a very sophisticated sustainable approach, in a sense, a sort of novel direction but a worthwhile direction, obviously,

 

Well, it's kind of novel and it's kind of you know, everybody says, what office would you like to be in, and they think of an Edwardian warehouse or Victorian warehouse, because they are robust, well made and maybe you have to change the windows every now and then. But that's about it. And there are usually generous volumes, and good daylight and all the things that we talk about when we're designing new stuff. So, in a way, it's new thinking, but it's kind of old thinking as well. And it's just looking to the past, to see how we can incorporate that in the future. But I think the biggest change for me, is the programming. We do a lot of workplace; the changing nature of that; engaging with communities, the public, from the start, I've got a meeting after this with a public engagement company on one of our big tower projects where the lower floors of that project will be given over to public uses. Some during the day, evenings, and weekends. So, it's a very different typology from the usual fortress-like down in the City of London, which you can see all around.

 

This brings me to ask you that sort of current projects. And I know you're in the process of completing Marylebone House. Could you just describe that project, in a nutshell?

 

Well, I call it small, but beautifully formed. I mean, it's a combination of retention, refurb, and a little new timber building. Funnily enough, it began during COVID. So, it was one of the designs I did at home, on my kitchen table kind of thing, which was an interesting process. Having meetings on Teams for the first time and talking to planners and public engagement, because there's a lot of residential people around and going round their houses with masks on and everything else. So, it's quite a complex and involved process. But in terms of the building, it is just finishing, and I'm very proud of it. I think it's kind of joyful and exciting. It's got lots of interesting colours and materials, design typologies there and it's very, very sustainable. So, I'm sure it'll work very well.

 

And what else are you up to as a firm? What other projects can we look out for?

 

Well, we secured planning for 55 Old Broad Street with Landsec just before Christmas. We're just finishing stage three of that and hoping to get it to stage four very soon with a view to getting onto site in a year or two. So that's a good one. That's a 25-storey building, at Liverpool Street. And again, we've adapted a lot of the thinking of longevity to that building. The cladding is designed to last 120 years plus on that project, so we're adapting our designs to suit our research on that, very much. We've kept some of the buildings going, and public use with the Guildhall School of Music; there are artists’ studios in it already in one of the buildings we are retaining. So, I'm quite excited about that mix of public use and occupant use, and how that works together.

 

Lastly, what is your view generally about the current market?  I spoke to one practice yesterday who said they were hiring; I saw somebody else was also hiring and then others of different sizes are really struggling at the moment, for various reasons. What's your take on the temperature of the marketplace currently?

 

Well, we're hiring at the moment, just generally. We're not kind of growing exponentially and we quite like being about 130, 140. Because we think that's kind of a Roman legion number where everybody can know each other well. We're all on one floor of workspace. We feel like that's super important. We don't want to get too big, and we work across all the disciplines. So, interiors is thriving, as you would expect in this kind of market. But architecture is holding its own. In masterplanning, we've got some really big, exciting masterplans, and we are doing some buildings from there. So, there’s Oxford North with life science, new buildings, very cutting edge – our interior guys are hoping to get involved in the fit out of those and the design of those labs as well. Research is all over those projects, in addition, so it's a really good example of all our different scales and design skills working together.

 

And so, is it your view that the bigger practices are currently not thriving, but doing okay, and the smaller ones are struggling a little? Is that you're feeling out there? 

 

Well, I think it's going to be harder for smaller firms, unfortunately. I mean, we're working with a smaller firm on some residential work. It's an ex-partner here who has smaller work with some very talented people. And so, we like that collaborative stuff. But it costs so much more to run a practice now, just from workplace to insurance issues to you know, paying for the heating, etc. So, our baseline is going up. We had a better year last year, but the baseline went up by 10%, as well. So, it starts to narrow that gap, unfortunately. It's harder, but I'm personally very optimistic. And I think as long as you're looking forward, and being innovative and future thinking, I think you've got a really good chance, and clients will come to you. Because they don't want to see what you did five years ago, or a boilerplate presentation. They want to get excited about new ideas, innovation and thinking.

 

Sure. Well, that's quite an optimistic note to end on. So, thank you very much for your time and for chatting about where you are currently. 

 

Pleasure!

 

Thanks a lot. 

 

Thanks David. Bye