Hi, Darryl - how are you? 

 

Very well, thank you. 

 

Good. I wanted to talk to you about the Foresight service, which you've just launched as a practice, and which, as I understand it, is a new consultancy arm. Could you explain more fully what it is, how it came about, and what you intend to do with it?

 

Yes, sure. Well, Foresight is a service that utilises insights and design thinking to help real estate companies and really any client that has a property holding ready themselves in what is a changing world, which means that, in I guess, contrast to what a lot of other consultants might offer, which is something based on past, nearest comparables, we're casting into the future. And the further you go into the future, those futures become uncertain. And so, you do need a kind of a methodology in order to think about the future in a structured way. That’s essentially what Foresight does. Actually, the whole built environment industry, if you are developing sites or buildings, you are future oriented to start with, and we feel as a practice that there needs to be another set of tools to arm clients to make better decisions about that future proposition.

 

So how do you differentiate it from what other consultancies offer? I mean, is it your own personal, dedicated, holistic thinking across different themes?

 

Yes - there are three aspects which would set it apart, I'd say. One is that we're unashamedly interdisciplinary on this, and we rely on a wider network to dip into neuroscience and customer trends and a lot of things for which we don't have specialisms in house. I think that's going to go further than what normal clients will draw into their decision making or strategizing process. So, we find that that's going to be super-useful, because we're intervening in society, and society is multifaceted. We take kind of a wide-angle lens on things. We look from outside in, so we're very much focused on what external factors come into play on a decision about a building or a site. And then thirdly, we're on the long horizon, thinking beyond current economic cycles or funding cycles, probably within that five to 10-plus year time horizon, which, again, is looking past I think what a lot of clients think of in terms of what their KPIs are that they need to hit. I think a lot of clients will say that they want to build that building for 50, 100 years' lifespan. But actually, when it comes down to it, they're driven by the funding cycles. And so there needs to be other inputs into that, in order to make decisions, to brief projects and get projects off to the best start. I think we found, as architects also that the further upstream we can be of decision making, the more influence we can have. And I think at the biggest level, Hawkins/Brown exists to make a positive impact on the world. And so, if we can be there with clients right at the start when they're thinking about what to do with their assets or potential assets, then we can have a bigger influence on how they shape a project. And we've always, always found that that's a positive benefit, whether it's because they have invited us in at the start of a project, or whether, you know, we found out that a brief that we've given could be refined, or, in some cases, turned on its head.

 

So this was piloted at Earls Court, and Rob Heasman, who's the CEO of The Earls Court Development Company, is on record as saying that the research helped in terms of insights across things like workspace and tall buildings, sustainability, technology, and enabled him to take a long term view - him and the team that is - 'on how cities will function in the decades ahead'. What sort of insights across those themes emerged? Can you just paint a little picture of some of the research findings from some of those areas?

 

Yes. So, Rob asked us to do a piece of research over a couple of months. It was a fairly quick turnaround, but it was across those broad range of themes. Because he is a CEO to ensure that Earl's Court stays for 100, 200 years in the future, just much like the Great Estates have survived. There were so many trends and confiners we had, it was quite...

 

What was the most memorable then? I mean, was there something on workspace, for example, in terms of how we might live in the future or, or even tall building, provision?

 

One of the things that stood out for me was the importance of culture, as foundational to the site's reason for being, or the history that they'd inherited with that site, set against the backdrop of falling number of venues, particularly mid-sized venues, but also the ecosystem that support those. But then as part of a property development, essentially - that's what Earls Court is - we could demonstrate the value that that had to residential and workspace in creating an overall place, because even the performances that happened in the old Exhibition Centre, 100 years on, are still remembered. You know, stories being passed from generation to generation. And we're always looking for, and certainly Rob's looking for, ways that a place can kind of congeal its own kind of mythology, its own stories. And so, culture doesn't become a kind of a loss-leading, alternate to retail provision. It becomes quite endemic to the space and place. And so, geographically, we could say that that's what's happening in Earls Court in its history, but also kind of London wide as a phenomenon of downplaying the importance of culture and cultural infrastructure in the city. And then the quite well trodden gestation of places from ones that are post-industrial through artists moving in because of low-cost rent that become trendy places to hang out and then realise higher property values is something you can embed in a sort of a non-gentrifying way, I guess, through having culture there. But if the funding for that is correct, you can still perpetuate ground-up culture, but still allow that to add to the value of the proposition; the property and the place in the end, if that makes sense?

 

It does. And was there anything on green space, for example? Because I note that from the master plan that there's a fair bit of that in the Earls Court scheme.

 

Yes. Well, I mean, clearly, there's an imperative to be regenerative in the framework. There's a lot of soak-away surface to deal with water-runoff, or to minimise water runoff.  I think it's 50% of the site is open space. A lot of that is green and integrated into the contouring of the site, so that water then becomes a feature. But the longevity of the place is something which can, not only in a functional way, make nature function better through biodiversity corridors or through not delivering more runoff water into an overloaded sewer system, but also give a quality of life and a set of values that the people attribute to themselves, that they want for them, either their home or their or their work space. So, I know that that's something that was key to Rob's vision.

 

I note that the original research commission was with studio Egret West, but Foresight is presumably your own - just Hawkins/Brown’s - proposition? Or are you going into partnership with them on this too.  

 

It’s just ourselves.  

 

Okay. But you do have a sort of loose affiliation with other bodies that you join forces with in terms of those other areas you mentioned before, like psychology, behavioural psychology, etc?

 

Yes. We do. I mean, we have our collaborator network, just through the architecture practice, but I think through Foresight, we're establishing a network of generally smaller, super-specialised experts who we can draw on as a project needs. So, it's generally, probably not the typical collaborator lineup that we would do for a master plan or a building,

 

Yes, because it's more theoretical and distant from the central architectural themes?

 

Yes, exactly. I mean, it takes a certain knowledge of the methodology, a certain kind of imagination, certain mindset. The people that we had at the launch event were exemplary of the kind of thinkers that we would have. I mean, we had someone who was a speculative designer, Anab Jain from Superflux, we had Bengt Cousins-Jenvey who works in the AI entrepreneurial space. We had Issey Gladstone, who works in the climate change broadcasting space, but very much from quite a radical way of changing people's minds. So, there's a lot of skills from culture change through very technical disciplines that we want to leverage. 

 

Yeah brilliant. Well, what's next, then, for Foresight? Is there another project that you're already embarking on?

 

We've had a lot of really good conversations with clients. What we're excited about at the moment is running it within projects that are on our books already, so I can't say what those are (laughs)! One is, you know, a multi-site portfolio piece, and we're working it into emerging briefs for projects as well. And so being able to offer that at the outset is a real ask for projects. So, another one is a public space regeneration project that we're working on, and we're going to integrate into a briefing workstream, I guess, background information. But it's really saying to clients, you need to look broader, and you need to look further into the future.

 

Well, that's a good place to end, because that's what we're all trying to do, I suppose, in various ways (laughs). Well, good luck with this. Was it your idea in the first place? 

 

It was, yes. 

 

It came to you when?

 

Probably a bit over a year ago. I mean, really, we've started research here in a formal capacity about 12 years ago. And this is kind of the culmination of that, in many ways, enabling clients to have greater intelligence, to make decisions, enabling us to make decisions as well. Research and thinking laterally about problems is built into the DNA of Hawkins/Brown. This, in many ways, is kind of a consolidation of those ways that we can talk to clients about their strategic aims, their business plans, their pain points, and not necessarily, well, how should we get this building delivered? You know, what is it you're trying to do in the world, but specifically within the built environment –there aren't many foresight consultancies or generalist specialist consultancies.

 

Brilliant. Well, good luck with it. It sounds fascinating, and I hope it bears fruit further down the line for you.

 

Yeah, we do as well! (laughs) 

 

Thanks Darryl.