The Architect and The Surveyor: A Conversation

 

Amelia and Hattie “met” online during lockdown through mutual linkedin connections. After reading each others’ blogs and research we realised we shared views on how to make good spaces, despite our different backgrounds.

 
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Throughout the course of our discussions we realised that most architects and surveyors have little understanding of each other’s professions, despite our work being inextricably intertwined. Ultimately we are concerned that our built environments are suffering as a result of this lack of understanding.

Below we discuss our work, training, concerns and hopes for better integration in the future.

At the end we leave you with some practical ideas on how to improve understanding across the professions, as we are energetically hopeful that this will enable us all to create better spaces.

Amelia: So Hattie, hello! Let’s start off easy...how did you become a surveyor?

Hattie: Hallo, hallo! It sounds exceptionally uncool to say “I’ve always wanted to be a surveyor” but I’ve known for a loooonnnng time I wanted to work in the built environment.

Mainly due to childhood obsessions with Grand Designs and Changing Rooms, I wanted to be a developer and this led me to pursue surveying. 

After uni I joined a graduate scheme to train and qualify as a commercial surveyor. I now work in the central London development team, meaning I advise landowners on what to build, to achieve the best value for their land.

How about you?

Amelia: I became an architect because I wanted to combine my love of art and science. Ultimately we cannot escape our built environments so shaping their design feels necessary and exciting.

After university and work at Foster + Partners, I considered transferring to surveying. I had seen how the architecture profession involved a long training process, hard work and often unbalanced pay compared to the effort involved.

I applied to a few big surveying companies for graduate positions. But then one day, serendipitously, I bumped into my old Bartlett tutor and she told me that ‘you have to keep going, you are creative and can make it work!’. So I took her advice and I haven’t regretted it since.

Do you work with architects much in your day to day?

Hattie: Yes! I am lucky and get to work with many great architects. But this has made me acutely aware of how much my training focused on financial returns ahead of architectural integrity.

It can be the best building in the world, but if it’s not going to get my client their 20% profit, it has to change. Given that I got into surveying due to my love of architecture, that doesn’t sit well with me...

Despite this, I do understand that developers are doing a job, running a business just like any other and need to make profit and I think people sometimes forget this.

Amelia: Do you have any examples when you’ve had a particularly bad clash with an architect?

Hattie: Perhaps more of a “miscommunication” than a “clash” when working on a scheme in central London. The office entrance wasn’t striking enough so I asked the architect to make more of a statement.

They came back with a beautiful, dramatic office entrance. The only problem was, it made the retail space, on one of London’s most expensive retail streets, unusable, destroying c.50% of the value.

This taught me to explain myself more clearly and think about the architect’s perspective.

On the flip side, if the architect was more aware of the value-drivers for the developer, they never would have shrunk the retail space. 

I understand you’ve got a more, er, personal connection with surveyors, Amelia?

Amelia: Ha ha yes. I was always conscious of ‘the other side’ because my dad was a property investor. He used to joke that architects were typically arrogant, eccentric and tended to design schemes that were over budget. As such I was always a bit sensitive about this when I went to university.

However, after 5 years of study in a context where ‘big thinking’ and fantastical design schemes were encouraged, I was expecting to inject some of this energy and ideas into the real world.

It was a shock when I met an architect in practice who showed me the evolution of a scheme from a beautiful and ambitious initial concept sketch, to the final product which had all the ‘exciting’ bits taken out. He explained that these bits had been value engineered out in the later design stages.

Hattie: Eugh the term ‘value engineering’ makes me cringe! It’s classic english politeness disguising what is really meant - “let’s make this cheaper”.



Amelia: Exactly. I found it sad that he generated something creative only to have it slowly dismantled before him, bit by bit, until a ‘compromise’ form was left. I began to realise this happens quite frequently. Architects design something special to win a pitch but when the costs get firmed up, the innovative bits are stripped away until it becomes financially viable. 

It’s often said that much of the world’s best architecture has never been built. This is quite shocking and demonstrates there is something seriously out-of kilter.

Which leads to our different understandings of value...

Hattie: In my professional world, it’s all about financial returns over a 5 - 10 year hold period.


Amelia: This is such a contrast to how I was trained.

For architects the “value” is the capacity to benefit users in the space. The highest value space therefore has good quality light, sound, temperature and proportion etc. It also must be designed, built and maintained in a way that is sensitive to the environment.

We are taught to find creative ways to make buildings look beautiful and feel wonderful to be in, as well as meeting their function.

This applies both in the macro sense by bringing a positive impact to the local community and townscape, and in the micro sense by directly impacting the senses of the people that will use it.

Ultimately shelter is a fundamental human need. We need space to cater for our physical needs, to keep us warm and safe. But we also need space to meet our mental needs.


Hattie: Hearing you say that makes me realise how simplistic the surveyor’s (/my…) view of value is. 

However, before I sound like a complete capitalist philistine, the majority of my clients are looking after investors’ money and many of those investors are institutions such as pension funds.

This is where the idea of “value” becomes really complex. Whilst we would ideally live in a world with only beautiful spaces, many ugly buildings were built cheaply to maximise financial returns for our pension funds.

So that begs the question, is it always right to build a “better” place if that comes at the expense of someone’s financial security?

The flip side is the issue highlighted by the Grenfell tragedy. There, safety, not just beauty, was compromised to reduce costs. And that has to be our moral bottom line - that safety comes first.

But, just to delve further into this rabbit hole, this links back to your point about mental health and space. If a place is unpleasant to spend time in and has a detrimental impact on a person’s mental health then isn’t that also “unsafe”?



Amelia: Yes I believe so. And this again highlights how limited the term ‘value’ is. Could a space that enhances one person's wellbeing, be depressingly lifeless for someone else? 

In my design practice, Space A, we are working with a researcher in neurodesign to better understand some of the evidence that impacts how we quantify the value of spaces that are good for both our mental as well as well as physical health.

Currently the ultimate definition of value is dictated by the party who holds the most clout in the project, usually the person funding it. And so this gets us back to the starting point that whilst value is so much more than money, throughout the time the architect is involved in a project,  financial returns are the dominant metric over health and wellbeing. Whereas, over the lifetime of the building, it could be the exact opposite.

So another aspect in this conflict is the timescales. As you say, Hattie, you’re normally thinking on a 5-10 year horizon?


Hattie: Yes, at most. Sometimes I’m even looking at profit made in 1-2 years…

Amelia: Well, exactly. That conflicts with both an architects’ training and their professional code, where we are taught that we have a moral responsibility to build beautiful places that will stand the test of time, creating long-term value for both users and the environment.

But that’s in direct contradiction to the financing of projects, wanting a return on investment in less than 3 years.


Hattie: Yes, it’s a problem. How can we build truly brilliant, valuable places when we are being dictated by opposing time frames?


Amelia: I think we ideally need to start finding common ground early. Those of us established in the industry need to try and examine our own biases.

If I reflect on my own training, my perspective was shaped by more creative and art based education where we were taught to think abstractly, beyond the bricks and mortar to the wider context of the relationship humans have with space.

There was a sense that profit was a dirty word, but perhaps more damaging was that this conflict, between good design and how much it costs, was very much internalised.hat the ‘true’ architect would find a way to design beautiful spaces regardless of budget. 

On the one hand, this was an inspiring idea, teaching us to challenge the status quo and create projects that were resourceful, imaginative and philosophically fantastical, with the grounding principle centred around buildings serving the  people that use them. But by almost entirely rejecting the notion that someone pays for those buildings the real danger is we further remove  the discipline of architecture from these discussions, and that our education sits outside the realities of practice and the real estate economy. I believe this has historically led to some level of siloing between architecture from other professions, largely alienating architects from other built environment professionals later in their careers. 

Hattie: That’s interesting that you’ve seen those silos starting very early on in architecture training. Once it’s expanded out into the wider industry the issues are exacerbated further. 

Amelia: It sounds hopeless when you put it like that...but I am hopeful! Partly, unexpectedly, due to COVID.

Hattie: Go on…

Amelia: How the spaces we’re in affects us, and what the values were that drove the design of them, especially our homes,  is something we’re now acutely aware of. Those fortunate enough to have access to decent, clean, spacious, light and high quality space have thrived. Those without, have suffered hugely.

During COVID we’ve seen more and moref evidence and research pointing to how buildings have such a significant impact on the wellbeing and health of those in them. But, pre-COVID, people could choose to ignore that evidence.

Now we’ve been stuck inside for months, we don’t need the research to tell us this. Our environments influence all elements of our lives and to live better lives, we need better spaces. 

I think this is a chance to rebalance the understanding of value in real estate value. 

Hattie: Yes! I hope so.

Because we are so much more aware today of how a space makes us feel, if a space doesn’t feel good, we won’t spend time in it. And if people don’t spend time in a space, it can’t generate any financial value.

Ok so it still comes down to financial value but at least the financial value is increasingly dependent on higher-quality space, whereas previously they two have been fairly independent.

Ok, so Amelia, this sounds awesome and like we’re poised for change. How do we actually make it happen?

Amelia: On a project level, we need teams to align on shared goals and values. Taking time at the beginning of a project to ensure that there’s  mutual trust and understanding between everyone in the team. A developer I know always starts projects by gathering the team for a shepherd’s pie supper. This allows everyone to get to know each other on a personal level, and I suppose creates a bit of empathy for where everyone is coming from. Ultimately getting a building delivered is long and can be stressful so you have the best chance of the best results if the team dynamic is set up properly. 

On a personal level, I think it’s all about really trying to engage across silos. To break the echo chamber.

Home working, remote working, video calls, the internet. Suddenly there are no physical barriers anymore. Different professions can technically connect and share and break silos that might have existed before. It takes energy, persistence and positivity to break the mould.

I also recommend joining some cross-industry bodies (a few listed below). I think it also comes down to some personal reflection - what things have I taken for granted in my career and why might others have different perspectives to me?

Ultimately we need each other to do our jobs and so the more we understand one another, the better places we will create. Which really is the ultimate goal!

FURTHER READING - What's already being done?

Professional Bodies :

Existing Co - Groups :

  • YADA - Young Architects and Developers Alliance

  • Building in Quality Tracker - An initiative in the construction industry to improve the long-term quality of the assets it builds

  • Joint institution campaigns - Collaborative group to discuss the impact of Covid-19 to the built environment professions

  • Value Toolkit - Collaborative effort to develop a new industry - wide definition of value

  • Urban Land Institute - A great global network of people from all parts of the built environment

  • Urbanistas - Women-led group encouraging the sharing of ideas to make cities better for everyone

Education - Combined Courses/Schools :

Awards :

Podcasts :

Further Articles and Information :

For comments and questions from this article, or to add more resources to our collected list above, do contact Amelia at amelia@spacea.co.uk or Hattie at h.walker.arnott@gmail.com 

Amelia Hunter is an architect who co-founded Space A in 2018. Space A combines interior design and architectural rigour with psychological, neurological and historical research to understand how space affects the thoughts, feelings, rituals and routines of the users. Prior to this Amelia worked with Studio Weave, Foster + Partners and Eva Menz Design across numerous scales - from large scale urbanism to specialised installation design. Amelia is a council member of the International Federation of Housing and Planning.


Hattie Walker-Arnott is a chartered surveyor specialising in real estate development and regeneration. Hattie’s professional work is focussed on maximising asset value for real estate investors and developers. In her personal time Hattie explores questions around the built environment with the aim of understanding why some buildings make us happy and endure the centuries, when others induce despair and decline in a matter of years - her blog is called ‘People, Places, Spaces'. She hopes that by examining this, we can learn to make more. 

 
Anna Drakes