News 2009
Time to start reading the financial papers
Date posted: 05/11/09
Architects must get to grips with finance if they are to adapt to a changing world, argued the three speakers in a session entitled ´Creating value: housing.´ Indy Johar, director of London-based Architecture 00 bemoaned the fact that few of the students he teaches read the Financial Times. ´We have a core capability missing,´ he said. ´We have to learn to operate in a socio-economic sense.´
Johar´s practice has carried out a number of projects that qualify for that hideous word ´proactive´, including designing a new kind of business centre called The Hub in which he sold shares to multiple small investors. He is currently working on a self-build housing scheme for Sheffield, in the north of England, where he is designing ´the process, not the product´.
Cezary Bednarski, whose eponymous practice is also in London, believes that the architect must move on from the role of conductor of the orchestra to writing the score. He has been involved in projects in Nairobi, trying to find ways to empower the residents of the slums of Kibera and Kariobangi to finance the development of improved housing. Ironically, his work at Kariobangi won an award which had unforeseen consequences. The attendant publicity gave value to land which was previously valueless. As a result, the owners of the land were able to sell to developers and build themselves new homes elsewhere. While Bednarski´s projected homes were never built, his overall objective of moving the residents out of the poverty trap was achieved.
Roger Zogolovitch, the trained architect who runs development company Solid Space, has come up with an idea for a modular design of building interiors, which would bypass the notorious conservatism of British planning laws by not dealing with the external fabric. ´Housing is increasingly unaffordable and unattainable to all but the elderly who are long-time owners and the very rich,´ he said. ´We need a new architectural language of carved and crafted spaces.´ He also argued that architects need to get to grips with money. ´The failure of our ability to understand methodologies and capital structures is a short fall,´ he said. ´We have to change the credibility gap so that the world of investors and valuers recognizes the inherent value of design.´
