How many people are in your practice?

At the moment it is just myself and two fantastic assistant architects, Harry Thomson and Jack Hudspith, both of whom are great designers and have a well developed understanding of the profession for their age.

Why were you originally motivated to start your own practice?

I think after so many years in a creative industry, when you have been giving at 100%, it comes naturally to want to be an equal decision maker in your professional life, as it is such a large part of our lives. 

What hurdles have you come across?

The rhythm of projects is not always what you plan ahead for. Clients can put projects on hold for whatever reason which can influence the project cash flow. This can be good for us in some ways as it gives us a bit of flexibility but it makes resourcing harder to manage. Architects charge for work done in arrears and so you have to deal with overheads before you have been paid for the work you did. We are only a year old and most of out projects are at planning stages so resourcing can be challenging. Also we are trying not to focus on a specific sector which I think in the long run will be good for us as it will make our workload healthy and balanced but it does mean we are not establishing as specialists in an area. I believe good design is good design and can be applied to any project. This is a philosophy which my previous practice, Duggan Morris, followed and it proved to be successful.

Is scaling up a goal or would you like to maintain the size of your practice?

At the moment I don’t want to scale up for the sake of it and I don’t think architecture is a particularly profitable profession,  but I am hugely passionate about architecture and I want to make quality buildings, so if we need to grow a little, we will.

What are the benefits of having your own practice? And staying small?

The benefit for me is being able to deal directly with clients and make the necessary decisions required to make the projects a success for everyone. I enjoy doing everything, including marketing, PR, client liaison as well as the design process and the nitty-gritty, including details and the technical stuff. With my own practice I get to do all of that. I also choose the kinds of projects we work on and what we spend our resources doing. At the moment we are making models of everything which really helps explain our design process to clients, especially private clients who are not always as design literate as commercial ones