Following my last blog on the size of London's architectural economy, I was interviewed for a programme on BBC television about the impact of Brexit. Jack Pringle, UK head of Perkins and Will and ex President of the RIBA, was also on the programme and showed the presenter around his office and quizzed his staff about where they were from - "Italy", "Slovakia", "Spain" they responded.

The president of the RIBA Jane Duncan said that if London cannot “keep the skills that it currently employs then it will lose its competitive edge”. J-J Lorraine of Morrow and Lorraine, a smallish practice employing 20 people, suggested that the economic atmosphere was not unlike the recession of 2007 which is when he founded his firm. He was positive about his ability to adapt to the changing demands of the market place.

My own contribution appeared rather ridiculously bullish as I took an optimistic view of the future with all my caveats left languishing on the BBC's cutting room floor. I listed places outside the EU that provided opportunities for architects skills and suggested it was in the tradition of the profession - as it was for the masons of medieval Europe - that it moved to where the work was.

The president of the RIBA Jane Duncan said that if London cannot “keep the skills that it currently employs then it will lose its competitive edge”. 

This is what practices have been doing throughout my career in the design business. In the 1950s Jane Drew and Max Fry worked around the world and most famously were invited by Indian Pandit Nehru to design Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab. Drew convinced Le Corbusier to take on the master planning and she worked mainly on the housing. However, such was the state of global communications at the time that in order to carry out the project Fry and Drew had to close their office in London and move lock, stock and barrel out to India for the early stages of the project. This is recorded in correspondence displayed in the Chandigarh museum which describes the problems associated with moving, including the loss of the firm's annual turnover of £40,000. Even on smaller jobs, it was not unusual for Drew to spend time in the places where she was designing in order to fully understand the climate.

Around the same period Raglan Squire was making a name for himself as the first of the global architects, starting with buildings in Rangoon University in Burma (now Myanmar) in 1952 and moving on to work in Singapore, Malaysia, Iraq and Iran. In his autobiography Portrait of an Architect, Squire describes how the introduction of the jet engine, and particularly the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first commercial jetliner, made it possible for him to operate in the way he did.

John R Harris was another globe-trotting architect of the period making his name with schools, hospital, infrastructure and master planning in the Middle East, particularly in the Emirates, where British Petroleum were a major client.

International communications in those days were not easy. In my book Saga of Sydney Opera House I describe the problems that Arup had in managing that project at a time when a flight to Australia cost as much as a three bedroom house and telephone calls were expensive, indistinct and had to be booked in advance.

 In his autobiography Portrait of an Architect, Squire describes how the introduction of the jet engine, and particularly the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first commercial jetliner, made it possible for him to operate in the way he did.

In the 1980s, YRM represented the next generation of international architects with major work in Africa and the Middle East. Their largest project was Sultan Qaboos University in Oman where the firm undertook master planning, building design, services, engineering as well as interior design. The modus operandi was to move staff out to Oman for the duration of the project with regular visits from partners to keep things on track. At about the same time Fosters were designing the HongKong and Shanghai Bank, mainly from the London office. But it wasn't working. The client was on the verge of firing the practice when the decision was made to move the design team to site. On Friday they were all in London, Monday morning at their desks in Hong Kong. It was a brilliant move and saved the job.

By the time of the 90s economic crash communications had only marginally improved for those wanting to work overseas. Plane travel was faster and affordable, but drawings were shared by fax and the World Wide Web had only just been invented.

Things were very different when the world economy took a nosedive in 2007. If an architectural practice wanted to work overseas all they needed was a plane ticket and a laptop. Design work could be carried out in one place, drawings in another with everything coming together in the Cloud. No longer did you have to relocate. The mechanism for global working were all in place; architects of record and local design institutes did good business.

Things were very different when the world economy took a nosedive in 2007. If an architectural practice wanted to work overseas all they needed was a plane ticket and a laptop.

The RIBA President is right to be worried about London's competitive edge as design hub. The RIBA's own statistics show that the significant growth in demand for architects' services over the next few decades will be outside Europe - markets that Brexit will have little impact on. The danger to that competitive edge is not only the UK's departure from Europe but the draconian constraints on immigration steered through by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary (2010-2016), the problems overseas graduates at British Universities have in practicing in the UK at the end of their courses and the impression that the country is less than welcoming to those from other countries than it was.