Hello, Emma. How are you? 

Hello, I'm very well, thank you. How are you? 

I'm very good, thank you. I wanted to talk to you about the structural changes at Ben Adams Architects that have happened recently, and what they mean for you and for the business going forward. Could you give us an outline of what's happened essentially? 

Yes. So recently, we've changed the practice structure; we have five directors - that's me, Ben Adams, Leni [Popovici], Francesca [Pont] and Patrick [Hammond]. We've all been at Ben Adams Architects for more than 10 years, and we each, of course, have our specific skills and specialisms that complement each other. So, there's a real strength and depth in the leadership, and that's what we want to convey for the practice. We're still covering the same sectors that we did before, and more - our specialisms are hospitality, residential and commercial, especially in central London, and the commercial retrofit market is where our strength particularly lies. But we're open to working across a variety of sectors, and that's what we enjoy. That's what keeps us all excited about things, and we love that variety. 

A lot of practices tend to view this as a kind of succession move, don't they? Is that broadly the scenario here, or is it about keeping key talent? What's the raison d'etre? 

I think there's a few different things. Making sure that we are using, utilising those skills that we have within the practice, and making sure that it's broader and not all focused on just one person - because we are able to go out there and individually work with clients, and we don't feel that the clients should feel that they can only go to that one person. I think spreading it out like that just makes it broader. Succession is one of the things as well. So: bringing younger, senior people through and future-proofing and thinking about further down the line, because we don't think there needs to be a succession plan immediately, but it's good to have that in place for when it might need to happen. We have been talking about options in the future for how we might change the business model, such as we've talked about, employee-owned trusts, that kind of thing. But that's further down the line. At the moment, we're just concentrating on having this depth of leadership, this broader leadership, 

Is there any new direction in terms of the projects, or the geography of those projects that you're working on? Because I know you have, I think, an LA office, don't you, as well? 

Yes, we do have an LA office. That opened, I'd say about seven years ago. It's a separate office, almost entirely residential. So, it's house, and housing. There is some overlap between the two. They're separate offices, but there's some overlap in terms of learning from each other - how we can apply what we've learned in London to LA, and vice versa. I guess on our side in London we've learned a lot about housing, so that fed into the kind of housing that we do here. We continue to work with heritage buildings in London, because there's so many of them, and they need to be upgraded to meet modern-day standards. The expectations for offices have changed so much over the past five to 10 years, I think, especially post-Covid. So that's been a really interesting shift. There's a challenge in listed buildings, in making them sustainable, but also retaining that heritage aspect, which is something that we enjoy working with. 

To a degree, have you moved away from hospitality projects? I noted that you worked on things like Nobu in Shoreditch in the past. Has that market dwindled a little bit, would you say? Or are you just focusing on other areas? 

Not at all, hospitality is still a big thing for us. Because some office buildings, or there's one particular one, Leman Street, that I'm working on at the moment, which is a repurposing of an office building to hotel. That's a really interesting case study, because there are certain areas of London where office demand is struggling. There's just not the demand for office, in particular areas. That's in Aldgate. Tenants seem to want much more central locations. You know, just being that little bit further away from certain tube stations is making it harder to rent those buildings out. With a lot of developers, with office buildings, we've been exploring different options for what those buildings could be. So, there's that shift in thinking in how we approach developing buildings. We're helping to support developers in how they can make the best investment. It doesn't have to remain as an office building. You're talking about repurposing. So, in this specific instance, we are looking at a hotel. We've designed a hotel in place of the office; we're retaining the building, extending it, and converting it, repurposing it. 

Interesting. Is it predominantly London that you're working in at the moment, in those kinds of areas? 

Mostly. That is mostly where our work lies. But we have worked - you mentioned LA – and in Romania, and we've been looking at Germany as well. We're very open to working across the globe and wider fields within the UK as well. So, one of our Fora buildings is in Cambridge, for example, where we have, designed the fit out… 

…Do you do a lot for Fora? 

Yes, we did Shoreditch Montacute Yards as well, which has been really successful, and it's got a very bold, vibrant character. We had a lot of fun with that one! 

Is there a kind of template to the to the Fora projects, or is it different each time? 

Both! They do have a way that they like to design. They have a local story. They have guidelines, they have principles of how they want to design. But then, it's based on the context of the area. They don't look the same because they respond to the environment that they're in. So, yes, it's a fun one to work with. 

So, is Cambridge an interesting one historically, then? 

Yes. The inspiration for that one was the Botanical Gardens. There's a lot of very natural materials in that one: woven bamboo and timber, lots of planting. In contrast with the Shoreditch one, which also has lots of planting, but it's got bolder colours with more motifs, whereas the Cambridge one is more subdued, I'd say. 

Slight change of tack now, Emma: I ask a lot of people about prospects for the year ahead, and what the atmosphere is like. What's your sense of 2026 and how it's shaping up for the market in central London, predominantly, but also just being an architect and workload, etc? What's your feeling? How would you characterise it? 

I'm feeling really positive about 2026, actually. It feels like over the past six months, end of last year, beginning of this year, we've had a lot more inquiries, and things have been moving forward more quickly with a variety of projects.  I've been working on some private houses, for example, and another one’s come up. It's really exciting! And then with our office clients as well, it feels like there's more activity, and it's feeling more lively. I wonder whether it's partly to do with... 

Spring? (laughs) 

(laughs) Yes! Spring, springing! It’s partly to do with interest rates, I think, a little bit coming down. I think with the Building Safety Act, I know that was a little bit of a challenge last year, and the previous years of getting to grips with that; I think people are feeling that they're becoming better understood. I think there's quite a few things that are helping to get things moving, which is feeling really good. 

Well, that's a good, optimistic note to end on. Thank you for your time, and good luck with everything! 

Thank you so much. It was really nice speaking with you. 

And you. Thanks, Emma.