This International Women’s Day we are celebrating our female staff. Today we are following Kate to see what life as a Director, Head of Interior Design and a Mum of two is like on a typical Monday…

6am My morning usually starts around this time when one of my two young sons awake. My husband and I take it in turns to get ourselves ready while the other supervises breakfast, play and morning TV. ASL are supporting the staff preference to benefit from hybrid working, mixing time in the studio with working from home. On days in the studio I bundle the boys into the car at 8am to do the nursery and school run, then arrive at the studio just before nine. My 4yr old son is a massive fan of The Beatles so the school run is usually accompanied by Yellow Submarine at the moment!

9am – Once in the studio I say a hello to colleagues and check my emails with a cup of tea and breakfast at my desk. I’m doing Slimming World to shift the recent baby weight at the moment, so today it’s porridge and sliced apple quickly thrown together in the office kitchen. This is where the ‘standard day’ ends until 5:30pm! What I love about my job is how different every day is. I meet different people and work on varied types of design schemes each week.

9:30am Today is a Design Team Meeting on video conference for a university refurbishment project. We’re discussing the best distribution strategy for the ventilation. It’s tricky as there’s limited head-height and next to no ceiling voids, so we brainstorm solutions. We are also assessing energy efficiency improvement options for the building envelope, and their payback times, to ensure we are making the new scheme as energy efficient as possible.

11:30am Cup of tea and divide up the actions from the meeting between colleagues in my team and brief them – on this project it’s Interior Designers James and Amy.  I’m privileged to work with a great team who work well together, so briefing is straightforward.

12pm Today is our monthly ‘all staff catch up’ on Teams with the fifty or so colleagues from our five studios across the UK. We take it in turns to do ‘magic minutes’ which are minute long presentations about our project. I love this section of the meeting, finding out more about what my colleagues are up to. Today, amongst others, there was a talk about a current project to convert an old convent into a luxury spa hotel near Stroud. I helped set the project up before heading off on maternity leave last year so it’s one I’m keeping a close interest in.

1pm Lunchtime coffee meeting in Starbucks round the corner with a contractor who we occasionally team up with to bid for new projects. We chat about potential opportunities and when they might come. Today I’m walking over to the shops afterwards to get some fresh air and buy some essentials. I find combining lunchtime break with a walk and some shopping is usually the best use of my time. I go to the supermarket to grab a chicken salad then the chemist to get some more formula for my youngest son who’s still on bottles.

2pm My email inbox is usually getting congested by this time if I’ve had a busy morning, with project query emails as well as those from colleagues, so I spend half an hour working my way through the most urgent ones while I eat.

2:30pm I need to put a fee proposal together for a new multi-disciplinary project, so calculate how much time it will need from various members of our team for the different stages before putting the proposal document together and emailing it out.

3:30pm Today I have a staff training planning meeting, deciding on the best strategy and priorities for ensuring staff are staying ahead of training requirements for their disciplines, pre-empting what we’re going to need to know and learn in the coming year. This is a good opportunity to catch up with colleagues in Glasgow for a chat too.

4:30pm We have a drawing deadline tonight for the university refurb project, showing the extent of demolitions required,  so I check over the drawings before they are sent out to the Project Manager (with a coffee and a biscuit which I probably shouldn’t be eating!).

5:30pm  After making sure the drawings went out OK I jump into the car to try and get home for six o’clock whenever I can. We sit down to dinner as a family at this time after my husband has collected the kids, so it’s a special time I try to make for the family. If I’ve been organised enough I’ll have something ready in the slow cooker, but today its left over spag bol and ice cream.

6:30-7:30pm is bath & bed time for the kids, then I tidy up the chaos of toys and dishes while my husband walks the dog. I’m doing some teaching and marking at the University Of South Wales tomorrow so I look through the student’s projects again to refresh them in my mind.

8:30pm I open my iPad in front of the TV with a camomile tea to go through some emails and do some doodles to get down some design ideas. We’ve been enjoying South Korean drama Vagabond on Netflix recently so we manage to get an episode of this in before bed. This part of the day is the most peaceful! After that I get a clean bottle and formula ready for the night feed that will inevitably come at around 2 or 3am then head to bed to get as much shut eye as I can before then!

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing a snapshot of what a weekday looks like for me. Juggling it all has its challenges but I’m lucky enough to love my job (no, honestly!) so wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂

Name
Valerie Tsang.

When did you join Austin-Smith:Lord?
October 2018.

What is your role within our Creative Collective?
Landscape Architect Assistant.

What are you working on at the moment?
Multiple project types from public realm and housing to education, all at different RIBA stages.

What inspires you most in your work?
Natural environment and cultural heritage.

What aspects of your work are you most proud of?
Knowing the positive contributions my day to day work adds to the environment that surrounds  everyday life.

What lessons have you learned in your work?
Ask questions!

What is your favourite place?
Anywhere with the blue sea. It brings a sense of calm but also represents adventure that lies beyond the surrounding different elements and wildlife.

What fictional place would you like to visit?
Laputa, an island in the sky from the Hayao Miyazaki movie.

Complete the following –  “I couldn’t get through the week without……..”
Ice cream.

If you could pick only one country to visit for the rest of your life where would it be?
Taiwan, because of the openness to the mix of cultures, all the elements nature has to offer, the friendly locals and the food.

Name
Jonathan Jones.

When did you join Austin-Smith:Lord?
June 2015 (although I’ve been around since 2012 really if you count my post-Part 1 year!)

What is your role within our Creative Collective?
Architect, as well as the South’s ‘BIM Champion’ and IT Coordinator.

What are you working on at the moment?
Primarily several education projects covering multiple levels of education:

• • Ysgol Gyfun Gwynllyw, a Welsh Medium Primary School in Trevethin, which is nearing completion. A beautiful site, with stunning views of the Gwent valleys.
  • Maendy Primary School, our first Passivhaus Primary School, to be built in Cwmbran, which will feature incredible energy efficiencies and low-carbon construction.
  • Extension to Block C for Coleg Y Cymoedd’s Ystrad Mynach Campus, which will provide additional decorating bays for their existing offering
  • Sports Centre of Excellence for Coleg y Cymoedd, a new sports and teaching block enhancing their Nantgarw campus.

What inspires you most in your work?
Finding elegant solutions to the needs of clients, in order to produce buildings that not only exude quality, but provide spaces that are perfectly suited to the activities within.

What aspects of your work are you most proud of?
Driving forward the use of emergent technology, and pushing the use of parametric design through Revit across the practice. Whilst not specifically design related, I am immensely proud of the willingness of my colleagues to embrace tools like Revit and Twinmotion, which have enabled us to be not only more efficient in design, but democratize visualizing projects.

What designers / projects do you most admire and why?
Has to be Bjarke Ingels – the logical, step-by-step process by which they arrive at their designs is both fascinating and inspiring. Blending different typologies and breaking down conventional barriers through almost every project; who else would have thought to add an artificial ski slope to the roof of a waste-to-energy power plant?

What is your favourite place / building / landscape and why?
Whilst it’s a somewhat dark subject, I have to say The Jewish Museum, Berlin. I don’t think there’s a better example of architecture marrying the subject matter contained within as this. Symbolism is rife throughout, whether it be through inaccessible or invisible voids, or the undeniably poignant ‘Holocaust Tower’, the building is as much part of the exhibition as the collection itself. Every single space, light and finish feels as if it’s designed to specifically evoke something – and it does.

What fictional place would you like to visit?
The OASIS from Ready Player One – one of my favourite books, which became one of my favourite films. Being a massive self-confessed nerd, the virtual universe of pop-culture and gaming references has an undeniable draw for me. With the advent of an often mentioned ‘Metaverse’ we might not be far off that either, with some major Architecture practices already designing buildings for it…

What’s something you’re planning on doing in the next year that you’ve never done?
Wedding planning! Just over a year to go until the big day, so plenty to be done…

Complete the following –  “I couldn’t get through the week without……..”
Music. It may be a cliché, but I need a soundtrack to my life. Anything fast, heavy, and loud to keep the energy up – in fact my favourite band are a metal band called Architects! Fun fact: they were actually once reported to the ARB for misuse of the title, by someone with clearly a bit too much time on their hands!

In the spirit of one of our core guiding principles ‘Knowledge Sharing + Life Long Learning’ which seeks to champion knowledge sharing, mentoring and career-long learning towards continuous improvement, research and development, we are delighted to be an RIBA Future Architects Student Mentoring Practice 2021/22.

Mesha McManaman and Tope Balogun are mentoring students from University of Liverpool and Ravensbourne University respectively. They had introductory sessions with their mentees recently and are both raring to provide support for the next generation. The students will benefit from having an introduction to life in practice and receive one to one support. Mesha and Tope will undoubtedly also find this highly rewarding and beneficial.

Mesha says: “I am very honoured to be a part of the RIBA mentoring programme this year, and very much looking forward to influencing the next generation of architects from our local universities. The Future Architects scheme is a fantastic way to demonstrate the different skillsets required for daily practice life, as well as encouraging and supporting students as they begin to identify their own career goals and direction.”

The practice is also looking forward to developing long term connections with these schools of architecture to help shape and support our profession.

Name
Rich Cronin.

When did you join Austin-Smith:Lord?
August 1996.

What is your role within our Creative Collective?
Chief Operating Officer.

What are you working on at the moment?
Major transport and industrial jobs across the UK.

What inspires you most in your work?
The people around me. There are so many talented young folk in the Creative Collective I often just sit back and listen!

What aspects of your work are you most proud of?
Our transport and industrial back catalogue.

What lessons have you learned in your work?
To pick my battles and remember that the client is (usually) always right.

What is your favourite Austin-Smith:Lord project and why?
AMRC in Broughton. It was a great building to develop with Welsh Government and Airbus which was repurposed during the pandemic to develop ventilators, showcasing its flexibility.

What fictional place would you like to visit?
The Cantina Bar in Star Wars.

What is your pet hate?
Inconsistency.

Complete the following –  “I couldn’t get through the week without……..”
A walk with my family, dog and camera.

Name
Peggy Tsang.

When did you join Austin-Smith:Lord?
September 2021.

What is your role within our Creative Collective?
Landscape Architect.

What are you working on at the moment?
Healthcare and education projects, including Ayrshire Hospice.

What inspires you most in your work?
Learning from my colleagues, and good team collaboration.

What is your favourite place/building/landscape and why?
Bruges. Such a pretty and romantic city, plus it has great waffles!

What are the key issues facing our design professions in the 2020s?
As a Landscape Architect, people sometimes don’t know quite what we do! Our skills and qualities are sometimes overlooked in projects.

What aspects of your work are you most proud of?
Being able to contribute to local communities, and seeing people enjoying the space.

What’s something that recently made you smile?
Good food 🙂

What’s something you’re planning on doing in the next year that you’ve never done?
Getting married!

Complete the following –  “I couldn’t get through the week without……..”
My snacks.

Name
Tom Clarke

When did you join Austin-Smith:Lord?
September 2021

What is your role within our Creative Collective?
Finance Apprentice

What are you working on at the moment?
Chasing debt – the most interesting job…

What inspires you most in your work?
Learning new things

What aspects of your work are you most proud of?
Applied my coding knowledge from school to create macros within excel

What lessons have you learned in your work?
Office experience

What is your favourite Austin-Smith:Lord project and why?
Liverpool Central Library as it combines the old and new

What fictional place would you like to visit?
Willy Wonka’s Factory

What is your pet hate?
Numbers

Complete the following –  “I couldn’t get through the week without……..”
Asking Allan and Terence lots of annoying questions

Name
Mesha, or ‘Meesh’ to most.

When did you join Austin-Smith:Lord?
August 2015.

What is your role within our Creative Collective?
Architect. I am also a RIBA Future Architects Mentor and a CPD Coordinator.

What are you working on at the moment?
A real mixed bag at this very moment; jumping between Inverness Life Sciences and Innovation Centre, Glasgow District Regen Frameworks, been working up a walk-through video of a one-off house development and have a Logistics Hub currently in planning.

What inspires you most in your work?
My peers – we’re not called the “Creative Collective” for nothin!

What aspects of your work are you most proud of?
Problem solving – the satisfaction of finding a solution that has the end user at the forefront of the design… oh and then seeing it in use, functioning as intended. Bliss.

What is your favourite place / building / landscape and why?
I’m a sucker for a good sunrise/sunset. I think its the restorative effect, and how they somehow make time slow down. A great time for reflection.

What is your favourite Austin-Smith:Lord project and why?
Either Liverpool Central Library or John Ryland’s Library. I love it when old and new collide (or should I say, when it’s done well!).

What are they key issues facing our design professions in the 2020s?
Other than the obvious issues surrounding sustainability and the need to target net zero, I think competitive bidding is becoming far more aggressive, with a growing pressure to do more for less.

What’s something you’re planning on doing in the next year that you’ve never done?
Skiing and getting married (not at the same time!)

What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
“Nothing worth having comes easy” – Dad, repeatedly Est. 1991.

Complete the following –  “I couldn’t get through the week without……..”
My mini dachshund, Sydney. She is my little sidekick.

Name
Catherine Cosgrove

When did you join Austin-Smith:Lord?
February 2006

What is your role within our Creative Collective?
I’m an Associate, an Architect and our sustainability champion. Having dual sustainability and conservation accreditations means I work on a wide variety of projects.

What are you working on at the moment?
Fabric repairs to New Register House in Edinburgh. With it being a Grade A listed building containing a one of a kind collection we’re being very careful in identifying all the current problems before working out the repairs required.

What inspires you most in your work?
Learning and doing. Each project has a unique set of challenges and problems that leads me to searching out knowledge and information in all sorts of places. This then feeds into the next project and I can bring the knowledge together in new ways. There’s so much to learn from existing buildings that we’ve forgotten or overlooked.

What aspects of your work are you most proud of?
I’ve been involved in sustainable design for more than 30 years and during that time it has moved from being a niche subject to being central to our profession. During that time my confidence in speaking out about sustainability has grown and I’d like to think that the people I’ve worked with have all picked up some of my knowledge and enthusiasm.

What lessons have you learned in your work?
No question is too silly to ask, especially when you don’t understand something. That’s how you learn. And to add in a couple of spare incoming services ducts before the concrete floor slab gets poured.

Which designers / projects do you most admire and why?
The many sustainability pioneers that I’ve met over the years and their dedication to keep reaching for the best sustainable design despite the problems in their way. Howard Liddell and Sandy Halliday of the Gaia Group have probably been the most influential in how I approach projects.
Image in header: Howard Liddell and Gaia Architects’ house Plummerswood. Photograph by Sandy Halliday

What is your favourite Austin-Smith:Lord project and why?
Two that I worked on at the same time: South Lanarkshire College Low Carbon Teaching Building; and Kew Garden Great Pagoda. The Low Carbon Teaching Building is the most sustainable project that I’ve worked on – net zero energy use, environmental certification for all materials, zero waste in construction and BREEAM Outstanding. The Kew Pagoda was more about restoring the Grade 1 building without making it look like any new work had been carried out and adding in the 80 new dragons! Both were incredibly challenging in different ways and I learned a lot in a very short space of time.

What’s something you’re planning on doing in the next year that you’ve never done?
Learning how to make films using my mobile phone. One step closer to an ASL vlog!

What’s something that recently made you smile?
Shaun Keaveny’s Community Garden podcast

What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
Don’t tie your shoelace in a revolving door

Complete the following –  “I couldn’t get through the week without……..”
Music, music, music! If there’s no music around me, there’s always music playing in my head…

Blog by Graham Ross, Chief Executive, Austin-Smith:Lord

There’s been a blizzard of declarations and pledges made by governments and businesses at COP26. Net zero targets have been set and commitments to reduce emissions, carbon and waste and restore nature have been pledged. These have been met with some accusations of ‘greenwashing’ and skepticism that climate action will fall short of the commitments made.

At the time of writing negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow are ongoing, grappling to find global agreement to address climate change. It is easy to feel a sense of powerlessness in these circumstances. However, undeterred, Austin-Smith:Lord remain focused on doing what we can as a Creative Collective design practice, and as a business with Studios in five UK cities, to continue to advocate for net zero and circular design to reduce carbon, energy, waste and restore biodiversity.

At Austin-Smith:Lord, following all staff workshops earlier this year, we adopted our refreshed Mission, “to enhance life and environments by design”. To address the urgencies of our time, and inspired by our founders’ guiding principles, we also restated our commitment to promoting, Design Excellence, Sustainability, Health and Wellbeing, Collaboration, Integrity and Professionalism, Knowledge Sharing and Life-long Learning.

We also agreed, following our 2021 all staff conference in September, to commit to be a Net Zero Emissions practice by 2030. To this end we have submitted our SME Climate Commitment to the UK’s Climate Hub (part of the UN’s Race to Zero campaign) to be Net Zero Emissions by 2030, and to monitor and report on progress against this annually.

We are currently developing our Net Zero Action Plan and considering the Greenhouse Gas Protocols, direct and indirect emissions and the implications of Scope 1, 2, and 3 categorisations on the way we work and the work we do. It will be a challenge. We will seek expert guidance and publish our Action Plan as part of our next, and first, Annual Report.

Initial analysis would suggest that we can achieve our Scope 1 and 2 targets far sooner than 2030. To this end we will seek to identify and publish incremental targets for 2022 and every year thereafter through the coming decade. This should ensure early impact and avoid deferring action to a later date.

We were also proud to endorse the RIBA / Architects Declare – Built for the Environment report and its recommendations and we restate our support and eagerness to work with our peers and others in the design and construction community to progress this agenda. We also welcome the recent publication of Architects Declare Practice Guide 2021 which outlines a Practice Roadmap alongside a Project Design Guide which we will look to embed in to our way of working.

Austin-Smith:Lord has a long track record, demonstrable commitment and expertise in sustainable design practice. But we recognise the urgent need to do more and to make a positive impact by design.

Today the UN COP26 Climate Change Conference theme focusses on Cities, Regions and the Built Environment. As architects, landscape architects, conservation architects, urbanists and interior designers we want to ensure we can make a positive impact. Working together, and in collaboration with others, we intend to make effective progress and to learn from others, share knowledge and advocate for climate action in our professions and through the work we do.

Image Credit: Glasgow Science Centre and HawkAye Scotland