A ballerina from the age of two, dancing was her life. But in September 2021, that all changed when she was diagnosed with a neurological condition that affected her ability to stand, walk and dance.

So, what did she do? She promptly switched her degree from dance to design in the hope of eventually making the world a more accessible place by drawing on her own lived experiences.

Now, I could tell you Iona’s story. I spent hours talking to her last month at the British Council For Offices conference in Edinburgh where she was quite the most inspirational person I met - and the bar was high. But I’m not going to.

She is going to tell you herself. And I implore you to read on because what she has to say is worth your time.

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Iona’s words should resonate with everyone. Whether you are a developer, a designer, a planner, a graduate or just simply someone who uses, visits and occupies spaces and places - so that’s all of us, then - her take on the world is not one we often hear.

A huge thank you to this brilliant 23-year-old for speaking up and reminding us that an accessible building is a building for everyone.

“I had just started my second year of dance college, the first week back after summer. I began getting pain and severe cramps in my legs, but as a dancer you learn to push through and keep going. Then, one morning a few days later, I woke up and simply couldn’t walk.

It was my dad who insisted I go to the hospital. After countless tests, I was diagnosed with a neurological condition, and I started to realise that my life was never going to be the same again. Growing up, my mum used a wheelchair, so I thought I understood what my new life would be like. But I quickly realised how different it feels when it’s your body, your independence and your daily reality. What my mum did show me, though, was that you can still live a full, joyful life no matter what. That stayed with me.

Six months after my diagnosis, I made the decision to reshape my life completely. By September 2022 I had started my BA in Interior Design at The Glasgow School of Art.

Accessibility became central for me. An accessible building is a building for everyone; an inaccessible one quietly shuts out huge numbers of people: disabled people, families and older adults. Something as small as a heavy door can stop me from entering a shop. A few steps at an entrance can turn a simple errand into an impossible task. These barriers force disabled people to rely on others, and that reliance chips away at independence.

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There are countless obstacles wheelchair users face every day that many people never have to think about: tiny kerbs that become impassable, supermarket shelves that are just out of reach, theatre seating that doesn’t accommodate us, trying to find a home you can actually live in safely, or the terrifying reality of being stuck on an upper floor during a fire with no way out. These moments accumulate. They leave people exhausted, defeated and sometimes even afraid to leave their own homes.

That’s why accessibility matters so deeply. We must do better when it comes to designing buildings and spaces that give everyone the freedom, dignity and ease they deserve.

Developers and city planners need to recognise that accessibility isn’t an add-on; it should be the foundation of every building and every project, shaping how people move, live and feel. As a wheelchair user and as a designer, I would champion a shift from minimum compliance to genuinely human-centred environments.

That means moving beyond minimum standards. Take accessible bathrooms. Too often they are treated as a box-ticking exercise, squeezed into the smallest area possible resulting in a space that isway too small and inaccessible for many people to use comfortably. Step-free access should always be the default, allowing everyone to use the same entrance. Automatic doors should replace heavy manual ones. Clear and intuitive circulation routes, seating for people who fatigue easily, and shops, theatres, schools and homes designed with reachability, sightlines and safe evacuation in mind should all be standard. Small details matter too; ramp gradients and lift reliability for example, including having more than one lift so that people aren’t left stranded if one breaks down.

The current state of our cities too often determines whether someone can live independently or is forced to rely on others. I want to see cities planned with dignity at the forefront: accessible housing integrated into every development, inclusive public transport, tactile and high-contrast signage, and emergency strategies that don’t leave disabled people trapped.

When we design for disabled people, we create cities that work better for everyone.”

Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces and Harper’s Bazaar

Put bluntly, collaborative spaces aren’t right for everyone — and certainly not every moment of the workday. Personality types aside, not all professional tasks can be done in an environment akin to an airport departure lounge and not every moment spent in the workplace needs, or indeed should, be a social one. Space to focus is just as key to a productive team as space to connect — particularly in the age of hybrid work where an increased reliance on video calls creates a louder, more stimulating environment.

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The current prioritisation of shared space in offices across the globe stems, in part, from a post-pandemic push to reassert the office as a place of connection. ‘We saw, when we came back to more regular office attendance after Covid, that a lot of our clients had put in more breakout areas and open spaces to promote the fact that the office was a place for collaboration,’ says Yetta Reardon Smith, workplace and design lead at Savills. ‘In short, it went too far. Yes, the office needs to offer something people can’t get at home and yes, part of that is about connection. But within that there need to be spaces for everyone — not just those who thrive in a busy setting.’

And not just the decision-makers, either. ‘When there is a change to be made around something like working environments, employee opinions are usually canvassed and then run past senior leaders,’ says Tom Redmayne, head of Europe and global sales at Industrious, a co-working company with more than 200 locations across 65 cities. ‘But extroverts tend to be the loudest when those opinions are being gathered and leaders making the final decisions are often more towards the extroverted end of the spectrum. So, there can be a bias.’

Increasingly, that bias is being challenged by evidence. ‘We have done a study that shows 70% of people who work in our offices are actually introverts,’ says Redmayne. ‘They don’t want to play beer pong, and they don’t want big office parties on a Friday night.’ They want a quiet space to get some work done — which is why Industrious has actively embraced calmer layouts and colours, greater privacy and acoustic considerations across its portfolio. They have seating nooks, respite rooms, larger-than-average phone booths and quiet spaces overlooking nature. Puzzle tables, to promote mindfulness, are some of their most popular offerings, says Redmayne.

The new generation of office providers are particularly motivated to deliver precisely what their members want and need – if they fail to provide adequate quiet spaces, tenants can simply move elsewhere. They also have more freedom and flexibility to adapt spaces more quickly than large-scale developers. Occupier demand is absolutely driving change. ‘There are three key space composition types within workplaces to be aware of,’ says Georgina Fraser, head of human capital at CBRE. ‘Quiet, active and recharge. In the last three years, due to demand, we are seeing designers increasing the allocation to quiet spaces, with clients often telling us of the need to increase the allocation of quiet pods. We are also seeing a rise in the number of library spaces being put into offices.’

The library at Henrietta House, CBRE’s own London HQ, designed by MoreySmith, is a case in point. A collegiate-style quiet zone for research and concentration, it features low-level desk lighting and partitioned nooks for acoustic separation and focused tasks. A major draw since the redesigned HQ opened in 2022, this oasis of calm on the seventh floor of an otherwise bustling 145,000sqft building is proof that a space doesn’t have to be loud to gain recognition.

The design-led office developer Derwent London is also a fan of a library. It has allocated one in each of its lounges: two member’s club-style spaces open to all occupiers across its portfolio. ‘We’ve been very deliberate about balancing calm, contemplative spaces with more energetic social areas so introverts can find somewhere quiet to concentrate and recharge while extroverts have places to meet, collaborate and host clients,’ says executive director Emily Prideaux.

At 2 Finsbury Avenue, British Land’s £750m dual-tower in London due to complete in 2027, behavioural research by Danish architecture practice 3XN GXN has informed a more explicit spatial response to personality and working style. The needs of the big five personality traits used in psychology – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism — were applied to all communal spaces. In the high-traffic lobby, a café and an elevated, highly visible working area appeal to extroverts and people open to social interactions. For introverts there are booths positioned to the side and a seating area secreted away behind the escalators.

‘Our approach is to design spaces around people, recognising that different personalities and work styles need different environments to thrive,’ says Mike Wiseman, head of campuses at British Land. ‘Design isn’t just theory – it’s essential to observe how people actually use space and adapt accordingly. Offices need to make sense for people and work for the widest possible range of needs.’

‘The best workplaces now need to support downtime just as much as collaboration,’ adds Oliver Knight, head of workspace at the developer Landsec. ‘In MYO, our own flexible serviced offices, we’ve spent time thinking about that balance, from quieter booths and lounges for more focused work through to shared meeting areas and terraces designed for collaboration and social interaction. The aim is to create a workplace where people have more choice across the day and can move naturally between different environments.’ Because that’s the thing about how we feel from one day, hour or minute to the next – it’s rarely set in stone. While there are people who might define themselves as inherently introverted or extroverted, we all have the capacity to be both, depending on the circumstances.

‘How we work best is not just different for different people, but changes for us at different times of the day or week,’ says Samantha McClary, chief executive of the British Council for Offices. ‘Workplaces that offer both space for concentration and contemplation and for collaboration, and that can flex easily between the two, will be the workspaces that no only deliver the best for the people that occupy them, but that enable those people to be their most productive selves, which is a great investment for the business occupying the space.’

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An original version of this article appeared in The Spaces, a digital publication exploring new ways to live and work

Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces and Harper’s Bazaar

Forest bathing, a mindfulness custom developed in 1980s Japan also known as shinrin-yok, is the ultimate in natural immersion therapy. Once billed as ‘the new spa day’, the practice is now believed to offer a great deal more than simple relaxation. It can be medicinal.

Research from the NHS, Harvard Health, the American Psychological Association and even the Mayo Clinic suggests that ensconcing ourselves in nature for as little as 20 minutes can reduce blood pressure, lower stress, improve cardiovascular and metabolic health and lift depression. The healing properties have been widely recognised within the medical profession, as evidenced by the growing trend for ‘green social prescribing’, which sees healthcare professionals refer patients to non-clinical interventions in nature.

The good news is you won’t require a prescription. On a basic level, forest bathing is simply access to, and mindful appreciation of, the natural environment — quite literally an exercise in seeing the wood for the trees. But as the trend gains momentum, those who want a more elevated experience have options. Here are five design-led forest bathing retreats across the globe.

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Casa de Baños, Mexico

This circular bathhouse in 450 mountainous acres west of Mexico City offers the ultimate forest bathing experience. Designed by Robert Hutchinson Architecture and JSa Arquitectura with vertical tongue-and-groove pine siding and southern yellow pine, the 700 sqft structure is more than just a loo with a view. Intrinsically connected to nature, it looks out to the forest from all of its four distinct zones: hot bath, sauna, steam shower and washroom. And a cold plunge pool at the centre opens to the sky.

Shishi-Iwa House, Japan

It comes as no surprise the country that popularised forest bathing is a pioneer in intuitive natural design. The 34-room Shishi-Iwa House hotel unfurls over three architecturally striking buildings in the small forest town of Karuizawa, less than an hour outside Toyko. The first two were designed by renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban in 2018 and 2022 and the third by Ryue Nishizawa in 2023. The gardens feature more than 250 trees — evergreens, cherry blossoms and Japanese maples — and natural materials throughout. Every room has a private balcony overlooking the gardens, forest and mountains, and interiors have been kept purposefully stripped back and simple to allow a deeper focus on the outside world.

Wulingshan Eye Stone Spring spa, China

The juxtaposition of this industrial-style structure against the cliffs and forest of Wuling Mountain’s Yanshi Village adds to the distinctiveness of Vector Architects’ spa design. Created to look like a ‘piece of hot spring apparatus’, the bathhouse is topped with eight lightwells that resemble chimneys. Surrounded by poplar trees 30 metres high, the prime location is something of a double-edged sword. With the lower levels suffering from a lack of natural light, shower and changing facilities were built at the bottom, benefitting from the natural veil of privacy. Further up is a relaxation room with floor-to-ceiling windows in the thick of the tree canopy. The spa itself is at the top.

Treetop Hotel Lovtag, Denmark

Nine treetop cabins perched six to eight metres off the ground on Denmark’s Als Odde peninsula have nature at their heart, quite literally. Not only do each of these Sigurd Larsen-designed cabins, part of the famed Lovtag retreat, have unbroken forest views over the treetops from their panoramic windows, they also have tree trunks running through their interiors. Outdoor showers mounted to each façade allow for forest bathing in a very real sense.

Arcana, Canada

Part forest bathing experience and part optical illusion, this immersive cabin retreat two hours north of Toronto harnesses the power of reflection to blend into the woodland. Snaking along 3,000 feet of waterfront, the 23 steel structures meld into the forest, each designed to facilitate solitude and minimise disruption so no interaction with staff or fellow guests is required. Open year-round, the retreat leans heavily on its location to promote and support a deep connection with nature.

Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces and Harper’s Bazaar

What is the first thing you notice when you walk into a space? Chances are, it’s more than mere aesthetics, even if you don’t consciously realise it. We live in a multi-sensory world where everything from scent to sound can significantly impact how we feel. Certain smells have the power to instantly transport us back to moments in time, unlocking memories that shape how we feel about a place in the present. The texture of some materials can evoke a sense of grounded security whereas others might feel cold, harsh or unappealing.

In our homes, workspaces and specialised environments like hospitals and care centres, our senses play a critical, often subliminal, role in how we connect with the places we pass through over the course of our lives. And a growing number of designers and architects are proving that a multi-sensory approach not only boosts wellbeing for the end-user but also drives tangible returns.

‘I am so appreciative of our senses, how they guide us through the world and how we can design to appease them,’ says Franky Rousell, founder of sensory-led interior design studio Jolie. Rousell was born deaf and only began hearing at age five, after undergoing corrective surgery. ‘I have a heightened sense of smell because of this early hearing loss, and I am really aware of anything I do hear because I was void of it for so long.’

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Projects including Victoria Riverside, a major residential scheme in Manchester, and the Nest, a sensory-led restaurant in Frankfurt, use bespoke landscaping, ambient music and ‘fragrancing’ to engage end users without overwhelming them.

A light touch is important, says Rousell, because different people will have varied reactions to sensory cues based on their personal experiences. ‘Some people might have a negative association with a fragrance that is deeply encoded in their memory bank. We can’t control that, so everything we do is very subtle — a quiet ribbon in the background so that people often don’t even consciously notice.’ At the Nest she infused spaces with aromas like green fig, juniper, cedar, sandalwood and citrus.

These cues, Rousell adds, are designed to help people feel intuitively more connected to the built world around them. ‘Our emotional connection to a space happens in under a second,’ she says. ‘Around 90% of that initial reaction is based on how we feel — which mainly stems from how our senses engage with a space before we even realise.’

Appealing to that intuition can be lucrative. Jolie’s in-house research, supported by a team of neuroscientists, suggests that multi-sensory environments are up to 70% more memorable than visually led spaces. ‘If you turn your back on four other senses, you’re missing out,’ says Rousell. ‘Sensory design pushes up perceived value, looks more expensive and encourages people to stay in a space longer because they feel emotionally attached.’

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And this emotional attachment comes with huge benefits for the end user, which increase the more impaired their senses.

Carpe Diem Dementia Village in Baerum, outside Oslo, is a prime example. Designed to offer the best possible quality of life for residents, its sensory design brings comfort, fosters a sense of community and even sparks recollections. ‘For the residents, the senses are a shortcut to their memories,’ says Camilla Heier Anglero, partner at Nordic Office of Architecture and designer of the 180,000sqft scheme.

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The gardens are home to over 7,000 non-poisonous plants that residents can touch and smell, and a water feature that changes the soundscape. These are important, says Heier Anglero, because they distinguish between spaces and zones. ‘We used different sounds and materials for a range of outdoor spaces, including one where there is an echo quality. This makes part of the village feel more like being in a city or urban environment — the sort of place many of the residents used to live in and therefore what is most comforting and familiar to them.’ The scheme also makes use of different materials underfoot to help people work out location by feel — some pathways use gravel, others small rocks, grass or sand (the latter is particularly effective for evoking childhood memories).

Carpe Diem’s 136 communal housing units (an additional 22 high-intensity care units are reserved for residents who need them) are designed to look and feel individual. They are arranged around communal areas with kitchens where residents and their visitors can gather. The reception area feels like a hotel; staff wear plain clothes, not white coats; and medical equipment is kept out of public spaces where possible. ‘Care centres often have a human scent,’ says Heier Anglero, but we have done everything we can to eliminate that by keeping the medical side of the village in the back office.’

Heier Anglero considers sensory design the pinnacle of ’empathetic architecture’. ‘For some people this will be the last place they live. If we can reduce stress levels, move away from an institutional feel and create individual rooms that look out into nature through ambitious, brave design, we should.’

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The same goes for neurodiverse spaces. ‘Good sensory-led design can make places less anxiety-inducing,’ says Ben Channon, head of inclusive environments at engineering practice Buro Happold. ‘The biggest misconception is that inclusive design is just about accessibility. It’s about so much more than that. Patterns are a good example. They can be excellent for bringing life to spaces, but if done wrong they can be overwhelming even for someone who considers themselves neurotypical. For neurodivergent people bright, harsh patterns can be really disorientating, so softer, nature-focused designs are a good option.’

Adaptable lighting, well-considered layouts and intuitive signage are all part of Buro Happold’s inclusive design remit. The practice is also a staunch advocate for sensory maps, which detail which spaces are loud, quiet or bright within a gallery or museum. By offering predictability, they help create environments that are welcoming to all.

And what about when sight is impaired? In 2024, a nine-storey affordable-housing building for the visually impaired opened in Chicago. Designed by LBBA Architects in consultation with blind architect Chris Downey, the Foglia Residences incorporate customised under-cabinet lighting, black light switches against white walls and textured flooring for wayfinding.

This kind of design is ‘everything’ to someone who cannot rely on sight, says Jolie Studio’s Rousell. ‘You can absolutely stir an emotion in someone without sight by considering other senses including texture and scent,’ she says. ‘The fingertips of someone whose vision is impaired are their eyes in the world. A tactile, fragranced sensory environment can help someone find a place that feels truly comforting.’

• An original version of this article appeared in The Spaces, a digital publication exploring new ways to live and work

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  Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces and Harper’s Bazaar

  

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I had travelled to Paris. The only place she had any availability to meet me. And the reputation that preceded her became clear as soon as I walked through the door of the exhibition centre. Wearing a trademark, structural black outfit she looked up for a split second, made no eye contact and barked: “Who is that girl in the red dress? Remove her from my eyeline.” So I was. Promptly, and in no small panic given my editor had agreed to the rather extravagant interview location because it was, well, Zaha.

I waited for two hours, only to be told she was just too tired. She had no energy for an interview that day after all. Not prepared to take no for an answer - a trait I suspect Zaha would have approved of even if she didn’t show it at the time - I broke through the crowd that made up her substantial entourage and pleaded with her face to face.

It was a high-pitched, fast-paced ramble. She let me talk for a while – no doubt to her great amusement – before breaking my spiel with five simple words. “Sit down,” she said. “I will speak.”

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And speak she did. About life, love and work. About giving up smoking, singing and coffee – “everything I have ever loved”. About her designs, her ambition and her relationship with men in the world of property and architecture. She gave me what is probably still the quote of my career: “Men don’t listen to women. That’s why I give them hell.”

A decade on from her death on March 31st 2016, I wanted to share that interview in full once more. And so, with thanks to Building Magazine’s editor Chloe McCulloch, please find it below.

An extra dose of Well-Placed for you courtesy of Zaha. An inspiration. With a wicked sense of humour.

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• The original version of this interview appeared in Building Magazine in May 2011.

“I know people are scared of me,” says Zaha Hadid, leaning forward and avoiding eye contact. “But I don’t want them to be.”

Then she turns with a look that is both deadly serious and mischievous. “No one will ever come to me and say ’I don’t like you’ or ’We are scared of you because of x, y and z’. I have asked people so many times what it is about me and they won’t say. But I think it’s because they are scared they can’t control me. Developers can deal with a man like me, but not a woman. If you are a woman and you are strong, you are difficult. And men don’t listen to me. It’s genetic, I think. Men don’t listen to women.”

So how does Hadid get over this problem? She breaks into a rare smile and her eyes brighten for just a second: “I shout at them. I give them hell!”

Of course she does. Intelligent, ruthlessly honest, direct and to-the-point, Hadid is not afraid to give one-word answers, she smiles sparingly and laughs only when she is really amused. Her sense of humour is desert dry, her own jokes so deadpan, it is almost impossible to tell whether she is being funny or utterly serious.

Today, the 60-year-old, Iraqi-born, world-renowned architect is sitting in the centre of her critically acclaimed Chanel Mobile Art pavilion in Paris, the day before its opening. She is wearing a black, ruffled, structured dress and is surrounded by two matching Prada handbags, three mobile phones and a half-metre long roll-out makeup case. “I buy these things in America,” she mutters, flinging open the case and fishing out one of five Tom Ford lipsticks for a last-minute touch-up. “They are so
useful for organising cosmetics and things like this.”

A quick hair brush later and Hadid is ready to share her thoughts about moving into the London commercial market, her career highs and lows, and how, over the years, she has given up “everything I enjoyed”.

London calling

The last six months have been mixed for Zaha Hadid Architects. Although the firm posted a pre-tax profit of £4.1m in February - triple what it was the year before - it
was badly hit by the downturn in Dubai and, more recently, the political unrest in North Africa. Millions of pounds worth of schemes in Dubai have been halted, as have three projects in Cairo, and the practice’s conference centre scheme in Tripoli, worth £250m.

Clearly, something had to give: “In architecture in this day and age you can’t predict what will happen. We have to be very careful and we have a lot of work finishing up at the moment. Then, with what happened in the Middle East and North Africa, it might take a while to pick up and I can’t wait. It would be different if we were 20 people. I can take a risk and wait. Maybe wait for a year. But 450 people - no.”

So the practice cut the workforce by 100 last month and now Hadid has 350 staff, all of whom have been working on huge commercial projects and skyscrapers across the world - China, Singapore, Egypt, Dubai … The question now is where to direct the talent. While China is high up on Hadid’s list - “I may think about reorganising people by setting up an office there” - London is at the top. “Yes, I am looking at London,” she says. “I have lived there for 40 years. There needs to be a development strategy in London to make sure there is a successful juxtaposition between the old and new stuff. We need masterplanning and I think tall buildings should be part of that.”

Patrik Schumacher, partner in Zaha Hadid Architects, says: “I think the UK is ready for this. Look at what’s going on now in east London, in particular beyond Canary Wharf and Poplar. These are all the sorts of projects we have thought about experimenting with and creating, the sorts of things we have been doing in Singapore and China and Dubai. We know London and how to deliver projects that will work with the landscape with an added twist. We will be looking into commercial and residential tall buildings with lots of amenities.”

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Hadid doesn’t agree with recent arguments that we are about to see the death of the tall building: “No,” she says simply. “No. We haven’t even seen the start. There needs to be a strategic decision because there is so much pressure to have high density in London and if you don’t build tall, then buildings are very low and dense on the ground and you have no open space and less air. Personally I think it’s better to grow tall but there needs to be a masterplan so it works with the skyline.”

So does she think London is ready for the Hadid treatment? “Oh, well, I don’t know. There are lots of great developments in London. I think the Shard is fantastic. But we don’t do anything the same so everything would be a surprise.” As to where she would be looking to work, Hadid shrugs before saying that the south and the east of the City might be a good place to start: “There are lots of areas of London that need attention. Southwark is still not properly developed and it should be. That area, I think, has so much potential. Even London Docklands. That could be a fabulous place to live.”

However, her reputation precedes her, which is a problem for her London plans: “I think developers in London are scared of me,” she says. “But why? They should be able to deal with it.”

The good and the bad

Hadid is best known in the UK for her aquatics centre for the Olympic Games, (she hates the temporary stands but “on the inside it will look beautiful”), and the design she has come up with for the Central Bank of Iraq in Baghdad. But her press coverage hasn’t always been favourable. She certainly doesn’t cherish the memory of Cardiff Bay Opera House, her 1995 project that collapsed after failing to gain support from local councils, and after a media battering that she still resents. “It was a very bad time,” says Hadid. “It wasn’t our fault, it was the nature of the work and I thought it was a very unfair, unjust experience. I remember very clearly that I had to make a conscious decision afterwards not to let it all get to me to the point where I couldn’t move on. Because that could have finished us. We had no work, no money. It was an awful time.”

She did move on, of course, and one high point has been winning the Stirling prize last year for the Maxxi national museum in Rome - after three years of being shortlisted but failing to triumph. Hadid was described that night as the “Meryl Streep of architecture”: always shortlisted, always worthy, but never a winner - until now. “It was very exciting to win. I had no idea and it was a huge surprise and very, very important to me. And as for Meryl Streep - I have seen Mamma Mia and she is a great actress, though I prefer some of her earlier work.”

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All smoking, all singing, all clubbing

Hadid doesn’t really do “relaxed” but she does open up and she softens slightly. “Not everyone has to like what I do but I think at this stage of my career, for someone to dismiss it is wrong. I am always irritated by fellow architects who say bad things about me as I think it is unprofessional. I learned when I came from Iraq to the UK that, as a foreigner, you have to wait for people to accept you and then you have to accept them back. People need to be more flexible generally.”

And what about an insight into the life of Zaha? What’s the first thing she does when she gets up in the morning? “I pick up the phone. I call the office. Just in case.” Really? “OK, I have a tea sometimes maybe. Only ever peppermint. I don’t drink coffee any more. Coffee and cigarettes were my biggest vices.

“I gave up 10 years ago. There was a period, though, when I was in the office drinking cappuccinos and smoking all night long because I wouldn’t sleep until 5.30am. I used to call my friends in New York and when they went to sleep I would call my friends in California. And I used to sing. I loved it. I don’t even sing in the shower now. I used to go clubbing and dancing all the time but I stopped that too. I stopped everything I enjoyed. I think I just got too serious.”

Inspiration

Hadid may still find it a struggle at times to get men to listen to her but her success, and world-wide recognition, means she is an inspiration to many young women, especially those who want to be architects: “Someone said to me years ago: ’You realise you are a role model?’ And I didn’t. I think that now it’s becoming more clear when I go to give a lecture and I have a huge number of women coming to me for assurance that it can be done.”

Is she proud to have such an influence on young women’s lives? “Yes, I am. It’s fantastic. But I want to be seen as an architect - hopefully a good one - rather than as a woman. If people say to me: ‘You’re OK for a girl’, I reply with something rude. Always.”

Quickfire questions

My most prized possession is … I have no idea. I suppose all my drawings
My last meal would be … Peking duck in Beijing
I love … beauty
I hate … lazy people, hypocrites, opportunists
I will always regret … not driving. It would have liberated me. People say: “But you would have such bad road rage you would be killed”
Favourite film … I have a lot. Blade Runner
I wish I had invented … something. Anything. Something useful so I could retire

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces and Harper’s Bazaar.

I’ve long been fascinated by places that spark visceral reactions.

Responses led by emotion over logic, we can form lifelong associations with, and deep-rooted feelings about, pockets of the world within a matter of seconds.

It goes to show that however carefully a space is designed or an area is cultivated, there’s no accounting for gut reactions. Reactions that so often determine our personal taste.

I write regularly here on Well-Placed about examples of successful human-centred design, and I stand by them. But how we respond to our surroundings is, ultimately, subjective. And that’s OK. Neither development nor design need to be universally applauded to be effective and places don’t need to be universally loved to be inspiring. If anything, the more divisive something is, the more it has to teach us.

Take Dungeness. A shingle desert on the Kent coast now considered one of the world’s most unlikely hubs of architectural expression, my sister Jennifer and I have often discussed our equally visceral yet diametrically opposed thoughts on this raw, unforgiving wilderness. A beautifully bleak edge of England that has, in turn, taught us as much about each other as it has about ourselves.

We visited regularly as children and while time spent here was the highlight of my trip, Jennifer would sometimes refuse to even get out of the car. Over three decades on, my thoughts on the area haven’t changed. Neither have hers.

One extraordinary place. Two very different takes. Read on to hear from us both.

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“There is nothing more life-affirming than spending time somewhere wild” - Emily, lifelong Dungeness lover

For as long as I can remember, Dungeness has held a special place in my heart.

Overlooked by the hulking silhouette of a decommissioned nuclear power station, this desert-like sweep of shingle is a place of unpredictable contrast. One where untamed natural beauty and man-made structures knit improbably, but seamlessly, together. Where abandoned rail carriages, salt-scoured fishermen’s huts and the hulls of upturned fishing boats are interspersed with flashes of modern design.

Yes, it is a place of endurance, where low-slung buildings brace against the elements and where little vegetation survives. And yes, it is a place of meteorological extremes - the storms here are so powerful they regularly remodel the beach and force water through saturated brickwork under the pressure of high winds. But, for me, this is all part of the appeal. There is nothing more life-affirming than spending time somewhere intrinsically, reliably wild.

The peninsula is defined by its curiosities: former railway carriages dot the site – sold off in the 1920s as DIY homes for rail workers after the line serving the area was decommissioned, later dragged onto the shingle – and miniature steam locomotives chuff through the estate each day winding their way along the world-renowned Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway.

Aside from the power station and two landmark lighthouses, the site is largely devoid of visual clutter. There are no boundaries, gates or fences, few trees, little vegetation. The result is an expansive, canvas-like landscape flooded with natural, ever-changing light.

As a child, I loved the drama of the space, anchored by the stoic permanence of the power station. I loved the grey squall of dull, rainy days and the area’s stubborn rejection of perfection and polish. I still do. And now, both as an adult - and as a design journalist - I love the architecture too.

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Though long associated with Prospect Cottage - the home of artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman until his death in 1994 - and its shingle garden, Dungeness’s creative identity stretches far beyond a singular landmark. Today, it is as much a living laboratory for contemporary design and creativity as it is a site of artistic pilgrimage.

From the charred black timber of NORD Architecture’s Shingle House to the “improvisation and bodge” of Simon Conder Associates’ Black Rubber House and El Ray and from the unassuming rust-red exterior of Fiona Naylor’s Radar to the weathered, silver-hued wooden façade of Guy Hollaway’s Pobble House, the area is home to a broad range of architecturally arresting yet understated contemporary properties.

What endures here, above all else, is resilience. Buildings that may seem modest against the elements reveal spaces of warmth, light and quiet contemplation within. It is that tension — between exposure and shelter, austerity and comfort — that continues to draw architects, designers, creatives and dreamers alike to this mystical seascape.

“As a child, the desolation of Dungeness - both futuristic and historic - genuinely scared me” - Jennifer, would rather be in Dorset

The problem with Dungeness is that it looks like the end of the world. And not the good kind of end, with palm trees and the calming sound of windchimes. The apocalyptic kind. Nuclear wasteland. The presence of a decommissioned power station in the background doesn’t exactly help the mood.

Shingle stretches as far as the eye can see. The wind terrorises your face, no matter the season. It’s hard to inhale. Nature is bent sideways by the elements, turned a ruddy brown. The only things that seem to survive here are wooden bollards and rough, hardy succulents. There is little colour. Even the lighthouse is sepia-toned, blasted by years of howling gales.

Old war bunkers dot the coastline, and it doesn’t take much to imagine the barbed wire that once stretched across the shore in the 1940s - visions of young men marching across the flat sand. As a child, Dungeness genuinely scared me—the desolation, both futuristic and historic.

It was also, unhelpfully, the best place to eat fish and chips. So it became a means to an end for a ten-year-old obsessed with potato.

Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces and Harper’s Bazaar.

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The transformative power of public art should not be underestimated. Fragments of creative expression, whether sculptures, murals or mosaics, public artworks can evoke a sense of community, promote well-being and facilitate shared experiences. The right piece in the right place can pack such a punch in terms of social impact, developers are increasingly integrating accessible artworks into their schemes. In fact many UK councils now require it as part of a planning application.

Yet impactful public art needs to be fuelled by more than a sense of obligation. To create something meaningful and longstanding requires passion — from developers as much as artists.

‘Where it really works is when we see a proactive approach from the developers,’ says Richard Wolfstrome, a public-art consultant who helps real estate companies integrate pieces to enhance the overarching value of a scheme. The trick, he adds, is to deliver art not just for the people living or working there, but for passers-by. Or, better yet, people who are prepared to travel out of their way just to catch a glimpse. ‘We know of projects that people are visiting just to see the public art,’ he says.

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Take Moda Living’s residential scheme in Hove, near Brighton, anchored by the multi-hued ceramic sculpture Cascade by architect-turned-artist Adam Nathaniel Furman. So alluring is Cascade, Wolfstrome says people purposefully detour just to experience Furman’s bold use of colour. That’s good for the area, the developer and, above all, the public.

‘We like art for the same reason we like nature,’ says Furman, whose other public artworks include the pedestrian thoroughfare Croydon Colonnade and a vivid 50-metre curved metal wall in Paddington called Abundance. ‘It allows us to escape and feel calmer. The right public art can take you out of yourself for a minute, and there is so much value in that.’

Furman believes that bold, attention-grabbing injections of artistic expression can add to, rather than detract from, value if approached with more vision, a bigger budget, and a view to being more permanent from the word go. 'The removal of colour from the built world has become a cultural go-to linked to the idea that it can negatively impact reselling and commercial value,' he says. 'We have been conditioned to believe that if something is going to be a liquid asset, then it must not have any aesthetic that might not be considered universal. But colours embedded in materials like ceramics are never, ever overwhelming. They are actually quite subtle. They change with the light; there is an air of translucency, the colour is not too bold, and people respond so well to them. That’s when these pieces can start to add to the overarching value of a wider development or scheme.’

And it’s this value developers need to embrace. ‘Public art might be one of the smartest investments we can make in a scheme,’ says Martyn Evans, creative director at Landsec, whose redevelopment of a 24-acre brownfield site with a 6.5-acre park at its heart is a hive of public art. Called Manchester Mayfield, it also has an art trail aimed at promoting wellbeing and mental-health awareness called Six Places In a Different Light. ‘Pieces like these should be seen as a gift to the people,’ says Evans. ‘Art is what makes a place truly memorable. It’s what people Instagram. It’s what they tell their mates about. It’s the landmark they use when giving directions. And yet, too often we treat it as a bolt-on. When we developers take art seriously, though, it can change everything.’

It’s a concept not lost on Brookfield Properties. The developer behind towers throughout London takes public art so seriously, it employs an in-house curator. With over 15 years’ experience in the field, curatorial director Saff Williams programmes art and culture across Brookfield’s 5,000,000 sqft office portfolio. ‘In London,’ she says, ‘our buildings sit in the heart of the Square Mile and thousands of people come past them every day. Our job is to create moments of connection, curiosity and community.’ When art is approached as a late add-on, she says, it can feel disconnected from its surroundings. When embedded from the start, a narrative can be shaped that links the artist, building and community.

A great example is Squiggle, a family favourite by the design practice NEON, installed outside Citypoint tower. ‘It always amazes me when we see kids who gravitate toward works designed primarily for adults,’ says Williams. ‘There’s clearly a demand for something more playful and accessible in the City.’

Indeed, the role the built world can and should play when it comes to supporting children and young people is something I have previously written about at length here on Well-Placed.

The power of public art goes beyond elevating a much-used building or well-trodden area. It can also breathe life into vacant or derelict spaces. Forefront, a platform designed to bring art into empty buildings, was founded by Sadie Morgan, of design practice Drmm, and Dicle Guntas, director of developer HGG. Forefront’s launch exhibition, Living Cornice, featured lumino-kinetic sculptures by Jason Bruges Studio in the still-empty ground floor of a new building in Shoreditch. ‘We believe design, development and culture are more powerful when they work together,’ says Guntas. ‘Our ambition is to show that cultural experimentation can add demonstrable social, economic and communal value.’

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Indeed, those returns don’t always have to be linked to yields, rental income and capital value alone. There is much to be said for ‘the kind of value you can’t measure in pounds per square foot, but which pays off a thousand times over,’ according to Landsec’s Evans. Art makes an address more desirable, spaces stickier and streets busier. It ultimately drives footfall, which makes areas safer.

‘It can be a natural security measure,’ says Serra Ataman, director of public art at MTArt Agency. ‘And there is some really interesting research that shows how introducing public art can make certain areas safer for women, particularly at night.’ In terms of social impact, this is a significant return on investment, she says. And one she makes clear to the property developers she works with. ‘When done right, public art is a brilliant way to keep a place alive.’

Ataman also worked with the Knightsbridge Estate to commission art for a series of vacant retail units undergoing restoration. The project, by British-Nigerian artist Àsìkò, combined fashion photography and symbolic collage, and set a precedent for transforming in-transition spaces with art by up-and-comers.

And that’s the thing about successful public art. It sparks conversation, challenging social norms and bringing people together through shared experience. ‘Buildings alone don’t create legacy,’ says Landsec’s Evans. ‘Places do. And places need art to make them feel richer, warmer… odder. To give them moments of delight and surprise.’

• The original version of this article appeared on The Spaces, a digital platform exploring new ways to live and work.

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ.

If ever there was a time to celebrate the unifying power of belonging, it’s now. As the theme of this year’s London Festival of Architecture, it has sparked a myriad responses, debates and conversations around the unique role the built world can play in bringing people together. The same built world that can just as easily divide, separate and silo - not only in London and the UK, but across the globe.

Let’s be under no illusions here. There are plenty of ideas out there about what it means to belong that are at stark odds with the pursuit of a more diverse, inclusive world.

Belonging in 2026 shouldn’t be about cliques and inner circles - belonging prior to 2026 shouldn’t have been about cliques and inner circles either, come to that but we are where we are - it should be about countering exclusion. To achieve that, belonging needs to be so much more than a concept. It needs to be a clear, visible reality. And that’s where the tangibility of places and spaces comes in.

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“Belonging is not simply a social aspiration; it is a design challenge and an urban management imperative,” says Landsec’s creative director Martyn Evans. “Buildings, neighbourhoods and public spaces either invite people in or signal, subtly or bluntly, that they were not considered in the making of the place. The question for architects, planners and those who manage the places where we work and live becomes: how do we shape places where more people feel they belong?”

The answer, he adds, is undeniably complex. But designing for the realities of everyday life is a good place to start. Homes that support multigenerational living, streets that invite informal gathering and public spaces that feel safe and comfortable for all ages and all kinds of people. Developments that weave together workplaces, community spaces and small independent shops to actively create conditions where people will naturally encounter one another. Design that fosters connection rather than detachment and dissociation.

The idea that progress, revolution and modernisation could be anchored by something so nourishing and sustaining is reassuring - particularly against the backdrop of ongoing geopolitical unrest. But is it realistic?

In pockets, yes. This isn’t a new concept. Successful human-centred design is, and always has been, about creating spaces where people feel like they belong. Places that help us to better understand what it means to be us, both as an individual and as part of a community.

But, as I said right back in my very first Well-Placed post, designing this way is not always a guarantee - or even a consideration. In fact, it often isn’t. “You would assume,” I wrote, “that given that the success of the built word ultimately relies on how well it supports the people existing within it, that human-centred design and development is a given. It isn’t. Certainly not often enough. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t pockets of brilliance.”

And it’s those pockets we should not just be celebrating, but learning from. So, inspired by the London Festival of Architecture’s own brilliant move to put belonging – both the concept and the reality - front and centre in 2026, so will I.

Over the course of the year, I will continue to use this platform to home in on the built world’s response to, and responsibility for, supporting real life - highlighting those aforementioned pockets of brilliance in the process.

Please do join me for the ride. We’re all in this together, after all.

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At a time when culture, heritage and a sense of belonging have never been more important, cities have the power to bring us together. More than just economic machines fuelling the overarching health of a country’s fiscal performance, the most successful urban hubs also serve as beacons of design, architecture, art and innovation. Here are five to watch in 2026.

Barcelona, Spain

How does a city with iconic historic architecture blend its heritage with modern planning? Barcelona – famed for its Gaudí buildings and modernist design — is doing just that. Designated UNESCO-UIA World Capital of Architecture for 2026, it will demonstrate, in fine detail, exactly how to protect its trademark style while future-proofing through sustainable urbanism.

Throughout 2026, Barcelona will host 54 workshops, open-houses, neighbourhood talks and events — and two exhibitions at the former Gustavo Gili building that map plans for Barcelona’s urban transformation. The city is the world’s first to host the UIA World Congress of Architects for a second time — that takes place in June. The redevelopment of Fira Montjuïc, an enclave where heritage monuments meet new-build showstoppers, is at its peak in 2026. And the renovation of Camp Nou will turn a football stadium into a modern, mixed-use venue.

Frankfurt, Germany

In its stint as World Design Capital for 2026, Frankfurt Rhine-Main is poised to showcase architecture as a tool for urban transformation. Selected by the World Design Organisation as a global case study for how cities can integrate design into everyday life, the city will send its sustainably built, modular, mobile WDC Pavillion to cultural landmarks in the region.

Anchoring the festival is a 10-day international design symposium in June, when the greater city will showcase new brownfield redevelopment schemes, public transport innovations and urban spaces that foster social cohesion. Take OstStern Frankfurt, which saw an underutilised Mercedes-Benz HQ in the city centre transform into a vibrant mixed-use quarter.

Mexico City, Mexico

A UNESCO Creative City of Design and a major textile, ceramics and furniture centre, CDMX is home to big-impact architecture like the CENTRO University campus, by TEN Arquiitectos, and the Mercado Roma community market, adapted from an industrial hall by Michel Rojkind. The city will see in 2026 with a full schedule of events and launches. In February it hosts the largest art fair in Latin America, Zona Maco.

And it welcomes British designer Lee Broom for a creative residency at the historic Diez Company house. The Estadio Azteca redevelopment will bolster liveability just as the recent overhaul of Metro Line 1, Mexico’s oldest, has transformed infrastructure.

Kyoto, Japan

Home to 17 UNESCO World Heritage sites, Kyoto will celebrate the 10th anniversary of one of its biggest festivals in 2026. Bringing together modern art and heritage, the Kyoto Nippon Festival stages immersive theatre and large-scale installations from February to May on the historic grounds of Kitano Tenmangu Shrine. The city will also host an impressive run of exhibitions at the Kyoto National Museum: traditional ceramics, lacquerware collections, archaeological relics and Buddhist and medieval painting.

Visitors can book into the new Imperial Hotel when it opens on 5 March in the historic Yasaka Kaikan building — the redesign was led by Tomoyuki Sakakida of the New Material Research Laboratory.

Montreal, Canada

Next year will see the launch of Montreal’s first ever city-wide design week. From 28 April to 7 May, Semaine Design de Montréal will take over the recently reconstructed Grand Quai du Port de Montréal with exhibitions and talks. Architecture and design tours are scheduled throughout town; the public can see inside emerging design studios and explore creative urban interventions. Modular parks and pocket gardens will tour underused streets, and designers will set up bespoke street furniture, AR murals and sculpture across Old Montreal and the Plateau.

Design labs will pop up in neighbourhoods, where citizens can collaborate with professionals to reimagine parks, streets and public facilities. The city hosts a slew of international design conferences throughout the year, as well as Art Souterrain, where the unique underground concourses transform into temporary art galleries.

• This list of design cities to visit in 2026 originally appeared in The Spaces, a digital platform exploring new ways to live and work.

October’s launch of Foster + Partners’s global headquarters for JP Morgan Chase — a ‘£3bn monument to work’ in Manhattan — is a case in point. Boasting everything from spin rooms to drone ports, a Michelin-star vegan restaurant and a café serving protein shakes, the 60-storey Park Avenue tower isn’t merely a place to house 10,000 bankers but to attract and retain them. ‘A workplace needs to be a destination,’ says David Arena, the bank’s head of global corporate real estate. ‘It needs to be commute-worthy. It needs to provide an elevated experience for employees, for clients and for visitors.’ Despite mandating this year that all employees return to the office five days a week, the employer still wants staff to want it. Nothing dampens productivity or dents employee retention more than a disgruntled workforce.

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Is hospitality-led design the panacea? The world’s largest real estate company appears to think so. In September, CBRE appointed former Facebook exec and future-of-work strategist Annie Dean as its chief strategy officer. Dean is a vocal advocate for making offices worth the commute by running them more like hotels. Think homey, artfully mismatched furniture; fully stocked marble islands; on-site artisanal bakeries. ‘We need to take these physical spaces and make them live up to the promise of what an office can and should be,’ she says.

But what does that look like in reality? And who’s getting it right?

Fuelled by flex

The concept of offices as experiences has partly stemmed from the rise of co-working and flexible office space. ‘We massively increased our experience at a particular set of sites and the number of people attending those spaces three days a week jumped from 62% to 83%,’ says Tom Redmayne of Industrious, a co-working business with more than 160 hospitality-led locations worldwide. ‘We are the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the industry because experience is how we drive revenue retention.’

This isn’t about gimmicks like beer taps and ping pong. A careful curation of design features and services has stood Industrious and other fast-growing serviced-office providers in good stead. Convene, for example, launched in 2009 with a single New York location and a mission statement: ‘What if you ran an office building like a boutique hotel?’. It now has 37 venues in the US and UK with annual revenues of more than $150m. Then there is Fora. Set up in 2016 before merging with The Office Group (TOG) in 2022, the design-led coworking brand has spaces “resembling boutique hotels and private clubs” in 60 locations across the UK and Germany. Famously hospitality-inspired, Huckletree reached full occupancy at its new Bishopsgate, London, location in just three months thanks to ‘amenities that facilitate connection’.

And the Design District, a campus for creative industries in Greenwich Peninsula, London, has hit 95% serviced-office occupancy fuelled by ‘clear demand for higher levels of design standards, convenience and service,’ according to Greenwich Peninsula director Laura Flanagan.

Give more and prosper

‘The shift to our offices being “more than” isn’t new,’ says Samanatha McClary, chief executive of The British Council for Offices (BCO) ‘But it’s now an expectation from occupiers and an absolute demand from consumers of the workspace. Those that make it standard practice, rather than a nice-to-have, will likely be the ones that prosper.’

Derwent London, the real estate firm behind architecturally significant office buildings like the White Collar Factory, Tea Building and Brunel Building, has spent the past five years designing and building two club lounges to anchor its 5.5m sqft portfolio: DL/78 in Fitzrovia and DL/28 in Shoreditch. Run by former cabin crew, ex Virgin Clubhouse staff and Soho House alumni, they’ve not only contributed to occupier retention and attraction but an uplift in rents. ‘We are not trying to make a profit from the lounges themselves,’ says executive director Emily Prideaux.

‘The value for us comes from the additional rent we are capturing across the rest of the portfolio. We are already seeing occupiers prepared to pay a premium because they know the lounge access will attract and retain talent.’ In terms of design, the lounges share timber interiors, rich, timeless palettes and warm, low-level lighting – all hallmarks of contemporary hospitality design, rather than commercial spaces.

Dutch developer Edge, known for its intimate entrance halls, has also seen positive leasing patterns off the back of its hotel-style developments, reporting that 38% of new office leases cited hospitality and design as key decision-makers. ‘These findings underline how a well-serviced, people-first workplace not only attracts tenants but also strengthens their long-term commitment to the building and its community,’ says managing director Vivian Suhr.

Back in London, the 77 Grosvenor building calls itself a ‘reimagination of the office inspired by the spatial flow of a five-star hotel’. Designed by TP Bennett, it let five out of seven floors within three months of completion — and at record rents exceeding £200 per sqft.

Habitats for humanity

Some argue the hospitality-led workplace belongs to a broader concept — the humanisation of office space. ‘To unlock value, it is essential to reframe the workplace from a cost to control into an experience to elevate,’ says Despina Katsikakis of commercial property firm Cushman & Wakefield. ‘That can only be done by putting people at the centre.’

Canadian developer Tyler Goodwin, who painstakingly restored Space House in London’s Covent Garden, agrees. ‘I do believe in the hotelisation of the office market but often it’s not properly integrated,’ he says ‘Some hotel-style reception areas, you go in and it’s all state-of-the-art, so you have to punch into a screen. I hate that. It might look like a hotel lobby, but the receptionist is sitting there not even engaging and there is a wall of technology between them and the customer. It needs to be about human interaction. At Space House we have two Canadians from Vancouver working on the front desk. They are incredibly personable and very chill. I like to think that naturally makes us a little more informal than people are used to.’

The most successful offices of the future will offer an intrinsically human experience, according to Redmayne. ‘People don’t come to an office because they want to play pool on a Friday night,’ he says. ‘What they want is for someone to know they drink oat milk, not whole milk. They want someone to know their name.’

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• This feature originally appeared in The Spaces, a digital platform exploring new ways to live and work from co-working clubs and hybrid hotels to new retail hotspots, restaurants, and residences that are changing the way we interact with the world.

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ.

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Do you know what impact, positive or negative, your home has on your health?

What if you had access to that information before you committed to moving in? Would your decision to buy or rent a property be influenced by a score, not unlike an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), measuring health outcomes?

Olga Turner Baker, founder of Ekkist - the UK’s first health and well-being consultancy for the built environment, firmly believes that everyone has a right to know exactly where their home, or potential home, sits on the health and well-being spectrum. That’s why she has spent the last two years developing a framework to quantify just that.

“It seemed crazy to us that you can look up your council tax band or EPC rating in seconds, yet you have no idea of how your home affects your health,” she says. “That’s why we developed the checklist.”

A science-backed assessment tool and registry designed to help developers, designers, and decision-makers evaluate and improve how residential buildings support human health in the UK, The Healthy Home Checklist (HHC) launched on the open market this spring and is already being used by developers including Almacantar, Quintain, Barratt, and L&G.

The tool, which includes 130 practical recommendations covering everything from materials to daylight and from air quality to layout and ventilation, can be used to assess individual homes and portfolios before offering developers and architects advice and feedback on improvements that could be made. Homes that have undergone the analysis will be added to a nationwide registry of health in homes.

“The feedback from the developers and companies already using the tool is that it does a lot of the work and research around how to create the healthiest homes possible for them,” says Turner Baker a chartered surveyor specialising in the WELL Building Standard - a system for certifying buildings that are designed to support the health and well-being of occupants. The checklist, she adds, is not just good news for the end-user, but developers and investors too as homes boasting wellness features can result in a value uplift of between 10-25%.

At a time when buildings represent “one of the greatest public health opportunities of this century” according to Harvard University’s Healthy Buildings Program director Joseph Allen and when we spend 90% of our time indoors where 72% of our chemical exposure occurs, Turner Baker says the HHC has been designed to equip both developers and residents with the knowledge they need to make better, more informed decisions.

I caught up with her to find out more.

EW: Before we get into the details of the Healthy Homes Checklist itself, could you tell me a bit more about how and when you found yourself drawn to exploring the power of healthy cities and homes?

OTB: Like many surveyors, I started on a graduate scheme. Mine was with Savills where I did rotations in valuation, planning and the international consultancy team. Off the back of that I took a permanent role as an advisor on large European regeneration and development projects. I was still very young at the time, and it was a dream job having the opportunity to lead on such high-profile projects. I then moved to CBRE to focus on UK regeneration schemes which saw a departure from luxury developments towards mainstream housing. And this is where my real passion lies. I led the advisory on the Thamesmead regeneration project in East London for Peabody for two years and on Earl’s Court in west London for Capco, who owned it at the time. It was during this time that I came across the WELL Building Standard and the concept of health and well-being as a core metric in development, and suddenly everything clicked. The advice that I had been giving for years which seemed just good common sense to me such as prioritising daylight, good views, interesting architecture, using natural materials, having high quality landscaping, shared surfaces and pedestrian friendly environments and walkable cities could all be substantiated through the scientific sense of health and well-being. It was then that I decided to set up the UK’s first health and well-being consultancy for the built environment and became one of the first practitioners in the UK to qualify as a WELL AP and WELL faculty member.

EW: Tell me more about the Healthy Homes Checklist. How will it work in practice?

OTB: The plan is to create an EPC-style passport and comprehensive assessment for newbuild, Built to Rent and deep retrofit projects that instantly flags the things your home has (or doesn’t have) that directly benefit your health. The assessment is built on transparency, and each achieved item has a simple phrase attached to it starting with “this home has…” so you know exactly what the property is doing for you. Our ultimate aim is to build a National Registry of Health in Housing with an ambition to map all 1.5 million new homes that this government aims to deliver. We want this checklist to become the ultimate reporting and disclosure tool for developers.

EW: What compelled you to set it up?

OTB: What we, as a society, are battling with today in terms of barriers to health and wellness across our cities and within our homes. The single biggest issue we face is air quality. Most of us still live in places that regularly breach World Health Organisation air quality guidelines. This is often even worse indoors where building materials full of toxic chemicals in our homes, schools and offices are coupled with inadequate ventilation and a cocktail of chemical-based cleaning products. Our respiratory and overall health is suffering and, simply put, not enough is being done to tackle this. We must prioritise clean energy, urban greening and tighter control of building and cleaning products.

EW: What stage are you at with the checklist’s development?

OTB: It was piloted in beta-phase for 2 years before being launched in Parliament this spring. It is now officially available to the open market for use on Build to Rent and co-living by Housing Associations and private developers. It has already been trialled across building portfolios by Housing Association Clarion and L&G and on individual buildings by developers including Barratt, Almacantar, Igloo, Socius and Quintain.

EW: What has the response been so far to the checklist and what do you think the reaction will be from the end-user more widely following a roll-out?

OTB: There is so much interest and information out there about what we eat and drink and our fitness levels but almost none on how our environment supports our health. I think that, when people start to see and learn how their homes can either harm or improve their health, there will be a massive and collective lightbulb moment. This checklist will ultimately mean that people can select where they want to live -whether that’s rent or buy - based on the home’s health credentials as well as other key deciding factors we are all currently aware of such as style, location and EPC rating.

EW: Why do you think the launch of a Healthy Homes Checklist or similar hasn’t been seen before now in the UK?

OTB: Standards simply haven’t traditionally addressed the practical aspect of what it means to design and deliver healthy homes and plainly communicate those benefits to consumers. That’s what we are here to change.

EW: What are the main barriers to delivery?

OTB: Scaling quickly enough to respond to demand. We are actively doing a funding round right now though, so watch this space.

EW: Some quickfire questions for you now…where do you go to breathe?

OTB: My garden. We live on a hill, and the views are stunning.

EW: And to think?

OTB: A stroll through the woods - we are more connected to nature than we think

EW: Where in the world do you feel the happiest and healthiest?

OTB: The palm district in Marrakesh in the middle of winter. Being transported to mid-summer in January and to be surrounded by sun and palm trees is just such a treat and much needed energy and morale boost. We get involved in the fitness classes and make use of the running track there and spend time swimming with the kids and enjoying beautiful slow cooked tagines and warm evenings.

EW: What do you tell people you do for a living?

OTB: Help make places better for people.

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ.

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In cities across the globe, vast swathes of space have sat untapped and underutilised for decades.

From tucked-away enclaves of still calm to expansive aquatic thoroughfares, public access to our urban waterways has long been limited — often to the point of complete exclusion. But now the tide is turning. Fuelled by the outdoor wellness movement and ambitious commitments from several cities to clean up their rivers and lakes — the €1.6bn project to sanitise the Seine ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games being a prime example — swimmable cities represent a significant leap forward in urban future-proofing.

Whether improving aquatic ecosystems or building climate resiliency and elevating the wellbeing of urban communities, wild swimming promotes myriad benefits, says Chris Romer-Lee, an architect and co-founder of the Swimmable Cities Alliance, an advocate for the right to swim in urban waterways. ‘No one ever regretted a cold-water swim,’ he says. If that swim happens to be in a natural, chlorine-free environment, so much the better.

And herein lies an important distinction. Contrary to popular belief, or simply a fair assumption, a lido does not a swimmable city make. While valuable and often nature-adjacent and architecturally arresting, the majority of outdoor pools are treated and therefore do not qualify as ‘natural water’. That designation is reserved for lakes, rivers, ponds and reservoirs located within and meandering through our urban hubs. Free, easy access to these bodies of water makes a city truly swimmable.

Bringing them up to standard is no picnic, however. For a city to boast clean natural swimming facilities, it must overcome three main barriers: shipping controls, sewage redirection and advanced filtration. It’s no surprise many are in Europe, where robust legislation dictates high standards for water quality. Many swimmable cities have also found design-led solutions to create safe environments for wild swimming. Here are five leading the charge.

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Copenhagen

An urban swimming pioneer, the Danish capital is where the ‘harbour bath’ concept rose to prominence. Floating docks act as barriers to separate swimmers from waterway traffic and allow them to bathe in a controlled environment where otherwise the waters flow fast. The timber and concrete Copenhagen Harbour Bath project, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group and launched in 2002, demonstrates the power of investing in the clean-up of urban waterways. Locals are not only happier and healthier as a result, says BIG founder Bjarke Ingels, they spend more time in the city, contributing to the local economy. ‘We showed that by having a clean port, instead of driving hours to get to the beaches, the citizens of Copenhagen could jump into clean water in the heart of the city.’ Harbour baths have since been rolled out in Basel, New York and Oslo.

Paris

The €1.6bn Seine clean-up saw the emergence of three new dedicated swimming areas with wooden decks and lifeguards, opened for public swimming for the first time since 1923. One of the most ambitious urban waterway restorations ever undertaken, the project was integral to the Paris 2024 Olympics bid and one that urban-swim advocates would like to see replicated, despite the high costs. ‘People have argued that €1.6bn is a lot of money to spend on getting people in the water,’ says Romer-Lee of Swimmable Cities. ‘But it’s important to remember that these waterways were all polluted by us. We have a responsibility to clean these places up, and the by-product is that we can get people swimming in them.’

London

From designated swimming off the Royal Docks to the Hampstead Heath ponds, London has a lot behind its swimmable status. That said, more can be done to make free, open-water swimming more accessible, according to Romer-Lee. ‘We have a wonderful portfolio of water here in London but 99% still has a cost attached,’ he says. Architecture practice Studio Octopi adopted a Scandinavian approach when it designed the green-bordered Thames Baths for a central section of the Thames. And plans are afoot to transform Royal Victoria Dock into ‘one of the most welcoming and democratic public spaces in London’, according to Ted Maxwell, development lead at Royal Docks Management Authority. ‘The western half of Royal Victoria Dock has 30 acres of water,’ he says. ‘That’s the size of 10 Trafalgar Squares. We are exploring how floating leisure, hospitality, residential and green spaces can encourage more people to spend more time by, on and in the water.’

Helsinki

Depending on the quality and safety of the water, a city doesn’t always require major infrastructure or cleaning to become swimmable. Sometimes it can be as straightforward as introducing an access point. The Finnish capital is a case in point. As well as its famous Allas Pool, a network of three pools built into the sea with five accompanying saunas, swimmers can also climb straight into the Baltic Sea at the nearby Löyly Sauna, via a simple set of wooden steps down into the water. Watch this space on the former, by the way, as Nordic Urban, the developer and operator behind the Allas Pool is on a mission to expand its network of floating well-being hubs to the waters of great cities across the globe.

Zurich

One of the world’s best known swimmable cities, thanks to the cleanliness of — and free access to — both Lake Zurich and the Limmat River, Zurich has urban swimming embedded in its culture. And this is a Switzerland-wide phenomena. Following a typhoid outbreak in Zermatt in 1963, the government at the time committed to cleaning up the country’s waterways — found to be the source of the epidemic. By 1971 high-standard wastewater treatment had been written into Swiss law, and the country now boasts some of the cleanest water in the world, commonly referred to as ‘blue gold‘. From Zurich to Geneva and from Basel to Bern, if it’s natural, urban swimming you are after, you could do a lot worse than taking the plunge in Switzerland.

• This feature originally appeared in The Spaces, a digital platform exploring new ways to live and work from co-working clubs and hybrid hotels to new retail hotspots, restaurants, and residences that are changing the way we interact with the world.

Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ.

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Back in the early 2010s, a co-working brand was finding its feet in New York. It had just opened a new building and the first month was not going well.

In the first week, the air conditioning went down but everyone stayed at their desks in the midst of the hot, sticky Manhattan summer and carried on working. In the second week, the plumbing jammed up. It was unpleasant to say the least but still, everyone stayed put and continued to work. In the third week, everything looked to be back on track but then, in the fourth week, a digger working on a site next door severed all of the fibre optic cables into the building, instantly cutting off the internet. Everyone stood up from their desks, picked up their laptops, and left.

Digital connectivity facilitates our daily lives. Almost entirely. Often thought of as the fourth utility after electricity, gas and water there are many who argue it has now become the most critical of all.

“In the 21st century, you can work without air conditioning,” says William Newton, chief executive of WiredScore, a global certification system that assesses and promotes the digital connectivity and smart technology infrastructure of buildings. “You can even work without sewerage. But you can’t work without the internet.

“Digital connectivity not a sexy topic in and of itself, he adds. “But it’s like oxygen. We don’t notice it until we don’t have it. And there are very few outcomes that people want in life that don’t now rely on it.”

And yet, countries like the UK are slipping further down the global rankings for mobile download and broadband speeds year-on-year according to a new report released last month by property consultancy firm Cluttons.

The big question now is whether, and indeed how, this trajectory can be reversed before major global players are left behind in the great connectivity race.

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The cost of poor connection

Finding ourselves digitally disarmed in the modern world is, for most of us at least, not simply a mere inconvenience. It’s demobilising, disorientating and isolating.

From a human-centred design perspective, connectivity plays a major role in ensuring buildings, places and spaces are not only fit for purpose but functional on a basic level. This applies as much to our homes as it does to public buildings because many of us use the internet from the minute we wake up in the morning. From the alarms we have set to the train times we check and from the people we contact to the directions we punch into our mapping app of choice, connectivity is a crutch that, whether we like it or not, holds up our society.

We rely on it at transport hubs, in shops, bars, cafes and restaurants. And, of course, in offices where it is “completely foundational for any organisation to be able to function,” according to Tom Vaughan-Fowler, WiredScore’s regional director for the UK, Ireland and Middle East.

The cost of connectivity downtime or an outage in financial terms alone? Around £220,000 an hour from lost revenue, productivity and recovery costs, reckons Vaughan-Fowler. And that’s for a medium-sized business. For a larger organisation, it will be considerably more. “Whatever the size of the business, an hour of outage is likely costing them more than a quarterly rent bill,” he says.

Here in UK, the amount of data we use on our phones has more than trebled since 2019. At the same time, the country tumbled to a ranking of 53^rd globally for mobile download speeds last year according to Cluttons’ report on future-proofing digital connectivity infrastructure. Not only that, it is looking increasingly likely that the UK will miss its own target for rolling out standalone 5G across the country by 2030 and while data usage over broadband across the country has risen more than 1600% since 2013, it sits in 44^th place globally for broadband speeds and fibre connections.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg given that digital infrastructure increasingly underpins the provision of services critical for the wider functioning of society including energy, transportation, financial and emergency services. Indeed, in July this year the Health Minister Wes Streeting announced that single patient records accessed via the NHS app would soon become ‘critical national infrastructure’. That app, says Cluttons’ head of digital connectivity Darren Zitren, will be “completely reliant on good connectivity.”

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Then there is the small matter of the rise of AI. Already creating a new global landscape, especially for business, using this technology requires unprecedented levels of strong, reliable connectivity - both in the workplace and at home - to function effectively.

Challenges, opportunities and the battle against obsolescence

One of the biggest blockers to future-proofing digital connectivity in the UK is a lack of investment. And not just directly into the infrastructure itself. “One of the most immediate and impactful changes would be greater investment in the skills pipeline,” says Charlotte Goodwill, chief executive of The Institute of Telecommunications Professionals. “Telecoms is a fast-moving and technically demanding sector and, without a steady flow of well-trained professionals, the ambition to build a world-class digital infrastructure simply won’t be realised.”

Off the back of its report, Cluttons is also now calling for a National Information Campaign to help the general public better understand the links between good connectivity and the infrastructure required to deliver it, an acceleration in planning changes and the appointment of Digital Placemakers to work alongside local authorities across the country with funding from central Government. Their role? To “lend expertise and insight on all aspects of connectivity to bring stakeholders together, both public and private sector, to take strategic decisions on how best to serve communities.”

Then there are our buildings themselves. For commercial properties in particular, there is plenty that can be done to ensure the strongest, most reliable connectivity possible from installing in-building boosting equipment to upgrading connections. It’s not always easy, says Cluttons’ Zitren and landlords might well find themselves caught up in complex, lengthy negotiations with a myriad different providers.

But, says Wiredscore’s Newton, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Not least given the fact it will be central in promoting stronger business and economic performance across the country – and indeed the globe.

“Building owners and developers are not being penalised for not investing in the right digital infrastructure,” he says. “But if we flip that and look at the opportunity for buildings with first-class digital backbones, we quickly see greater returns for landlords, up to 2.7%, and overall tenant satisfaction increasing.

“The future will be shaped inside our buildings,” he adds. “Some of the biggest challenges of our time – from delivering seamless connectivity to driving carbon reduction, improving health and wellbeing and strengthening cybersecurity – will be solved through in-building digital infrastructure. Without robust connectivity at the core, businesses risk lost productivity, individuals are shut off from essential services and buildings themselves face rapid obsolescence.”

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ.

A critical component of success in both life and business, the power of a wandering mind is not to be underestimated.

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It takes some commitment to pull off these days, though. Once a given, the practice of rumination has become a something of a luxury in today’s modern world where we have technology and an ocean of distractions at our fingertips 24/7.

For many of us, specific places and spaces can help get the cogs turning. And so, in honour of August - that time of year when businesses used to slow down and embrace the summer lull but now invariably find themselves just as busy as ever thanks to the fast-growing demise of the OOO - I asked 12 leading CEOs from across the globe where they go to ponder.

Apart from throwing up a fascinating array of contemplation spots, their answers reveal so much about them as people from how they tackle problems to what makes them tick and how they find inner peace.

Read on, enjoy and please do take this instalment of Well-Placed as your sign to have a good old think. Wherever that might lead you.

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Bjarke Ingels, founder, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG)

The stark beauty of geological landscapes is very good for the mind. I love arctic nature and deserts because, in both cases, the harshness of the environment means the biosphere is challenged. This reveals the geological landscape that always sits behind or beneath that biosphere and reminds you that you are walking on the surface of a planet floating through space. It shows you that even the things you think of as solid rock are in motion. Mountains are essentially very slow waves. A volcano is a very slow bubble. A river is essentially a conveyor belt of rocks. These places remind us we are one tiny piece of a very, very large puzzle.

Helen Gordon, CEO, Grainger plc

I do my best thinking by water; I am lucky my office overlooks the Thames. There's always been something about water that's very inspirational, It’s ever-changing just like the business environment. One of my favourite roles was as non-executive director with British Waterways, now the Canal & River Trust, which looked after rivers and canals across the country.

Simon Carter, CEO, British Land

I get on my bike. It’s important to have a bit of balance in your life. You can be focused on the job 24/7 but that isn’t healthy. We all need time to think. I go on the bike to get some exercise but it’s amazing that, as I am travelling down the road, the problem I have been battling with all day comes into my head and I start to think ‘ah, that’s how it unlocks’. All without actively trying to think about it at all.

Don Peebles, CEO, The Peebles Corporation

I think in the movie theatre or the theatre. There are no phone calls, no distractions, no talking. Just the performance. I can listen, watch and also daydream a bit.

Christian Ulbrich, President and CEO, JLL

I think in the mornings doing sports and swimming. I also do a lot of thinking on planes and I am in fierce opposition of allowing phone connectivity on them. I don’t want access to my phone when I’m travelling. When I fly from Europe to the US, which I do a lot, I am uninterrupted for 6-8 hours and I get so much thinking done. So, it’s the pool and the plane for me.

Elizabeth Brink, co-CEO, Gensler

I go on long walks with my dog. Often to the beach, out to Malibu. Getting out and moving is so important for me when it comes to thinking. And it has to be out in nature, always.

Stephanie Crosland-Goss, CEO and founder, Interrupted Art

I spend a lot of time with clients across central London so have built quite the black book of coffee spots where I can sit and reflect with my notebook (which goes everywhere with me). A lot of people say they can’t think in a public space, which I understand. But the buzz of activity feeds my thoughts and creativity. Unhealthily, holidays are also where great ideas spring up and the distance from the everyday can really help you see things differently. My co-founder is my husband, so escaping business entirely is very challenging for us both, and we often find ourselves shaping our best ideas over a late-night glass of rosé.

Mark Allan, CEO, Landsec

I am thinking all of the time in all sorts of random places. If I told myself ‘right, I’m going to do some thinking now’ I would almost certainly run out of things to think about. But if I had to give an answer then I guess it’s mainly when I am travelling.

Tripty Arya, CEO and founder, Travtus

I work with my husband and have a five-year-old daughter so I sometimes find myself a bit lost with nowhere to think at all. I have discovered that a nightly shower – where I can’t be followed - is the answer. In the middle of the day, I sometimes hide in the bathroom with my notebook. When I have the time, a walk up the hill in Greenwich Park is my other prime thinking location. I have a spot under a tree with the most fantastic view of London. But, yeah…mostly the shower.

Luke Petherbridge, CEO, Link Logistics

I have found time to think through a new routine. This year I have got into the habit of not checking my phone for the first hour of the day. I walk, listen to music and that gives my mind time to wander. It could be that I think about work, my family in Australia, my wife, the kids…I just let my mind wander for that hour. Once you look at one email, that’s it. It narrows you into focussing on the job at hand rather than the larger perspective.

Samantha McClary, CEO, British Council for Offices (BCO)

I don’t necessarily need to go anywhere to ponder but the nearby field where we take Fozzie (the dog) for his walk is always as good as any mountain. My best pondering is done when I’m at the kitchen table with a LEGO set. It empties my mind, so creates space for solutions.

Emily Wright, Well-Placed

OK, so I’m not strictly a CEO*. But editing rights allow me to make up the dozen to say that I go to think wherever I can see the horizon. This summer I managed to do the impossible and spent at least seven seconds in deep, calm thought overlooking the Tuscan hills (horizon very much present and correct) as my four-year-old and two-year-old daughters practised their ‘yoga’ alongside me while discussing - in great, great length - their favourite varieties of sandwich filling. And I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

*Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces and WIRED and GQ.

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For entities with no propensity to demonstrate a shred of human emotion, robots have done an excellent job of really getting under our skin.

Whether we should go so far as to say that the exponential increase in their digital and practical capabilities in recent years has evoked widespread anxiety, it is certainly true that for all of the intrigue and fascination around their rise, there has also been an awful lot of fear.

Fear of the unknown, yes. But also fear of something very real and entirely understandable; the loss of human jobs.

Put bluntly, in plenty of cases this concern is well-founded - particularly when AI is thrown into the mix. We have all seen the stories of entry-level roles being cut by as much as 29% as the grunt work traditionally taken on by graduates for so many years is now being done faster, cheaper and more efficiently without the need for a human workforce. Furthermore, a McKinsey report has projected that 30% of jobs could be automated by 2030 with 60% significantly altered by AI tools within the same timeframe.

But when it comes to physical robots - many of which are on construction sites across the globe right now doing everything from crawling up and down lift shafts to manufacturing energy-efficient housing from sheet timber - the evidence suggests it might be a different story.

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The experts behind these machines insist that, rather than posing a widespread threat to jobs, they are simply either plugging a pre-existing skills gap or doing the tasks that are unpleasant or unsafe for humans. And now, the real estate companies and designers deploying them have started to say the same.

So, what are these robots actually doing (be sure to check out some videos of one in action below)? And what impact is their work having more widely on the future of the built world?

The concept of construction robots is not new. Machines designed to automate everything from bricklaying to excavation have been around for decades demonstrating varying degrees of failure due to high costs, a lack of standardised tools and systems that, quite simply, weren’t up to the job. The difference now is that the technology has caught up with the ambition.

At a gathering of the Innovative Breakfast Club in London last month, we heard from both the minds behind, and the end-users of, some of the robots changing the way we design and build across the world.

Robots like Emma, a robotic installation system for elevators (RISE) currently being deployed by developer Skanska and investment manager BGO in the lift shafts of 105 Victoria Street, a commercial development in the heart of London. Emma is one of five RISE units in existence and the first to be used in the UK. The others - Lea, Laura, Sara and Ella – are working on projects around the world, in Australia, Brazil, Dubai and Singapore.

Their job, and what Emma is currently doing between 8am and 8pm each day, is to move up and down the lift shaft, drill holes in the walls and fit bolts which will support brackets. Not an extensive role, but one that would take two humans far longer to complete in difficult working conditions.

“We are using the robot within an installation of lifts for a limited amount of maintenance and repair work because it is an environment that humans actually struggle to work in,” said BGO’s development director Alexander Morris speaking at the Innovative Breakfast Club. “So, it’s an important improvement.”

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“Robots can revolutionise our industry by essentially optimising design and manufacturing processes,” added Mollie Claypool an associate professor at UCL and co-founder and CEO of Automated Architecture (AUAR) which is building a global network of mobile, robotic factories to create sustainable timber housing.

The practice, which raised £5m in funding last month, works with developers and housebuilders across Europe and the US. It uses the mobile micro-factories to manufacture energy-efficient housing from sheet timber which is then cut into components and assembled into modular units by robots before being transported to construction sites.

The result, added Claypool, is that these factories and robots can reduce construction costs by 40%, labour hours by 75% and waste by 97%.

As for the impact on jobs, particularly given the reduction in labour hours, Claypool said that not only does she believe what AUAR is doing is another example of plugging a gap in the market rather than replacing jobs, systems like theirs could actually start to attract more people into the construction and real estate sectors.

“We will start to attract people who may not have thought this industry was for them at the very beginning of their careers by creating jobs that are essentially tech jobs,” she said. “The roles that are being created off the back of these advances and innovations will allow people to become leaders in technology.”

This is a sentiment echoed by Dr Basaran Bahadir Kocer, a lecturer in aerial robotics at the University of Bristol who is currently researching how drones and flying robots can be used for on-site building construction and could be deployed in inhospitable, hard to reach environments including, but not limited to, other planets. “Looking ahead, we will need people who can operate the drones,” he said. “We will also need robot technicians and people who can understand the sensor data.”

So, the experts and the end-users have said their piece. They firmly believe the deployment of robots to help us create the built world around us can not only lead to safer, more sustainable approaches to construction and development, but could also open the floodgates for a swathe of new jobs within the sector.

Are they right? Here’s hoping. And, in the interim, anyone out there actively considering a role in construction or real estate off the back of these technological advances and the rise of the robots, do get in touch. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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• Join us for ING Media’s third Innovative Breakfast Club on healthy cities on September 24th 2025 @8am. Curtain Road, London, EC2A. In association with Well-Placed.

Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.

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Bright lights, plastic seats and the constant crackle of the deep-fat fryer; the humble chicken shop has long been a high street staple.

Largely considered the realm of students and late-night revellers, these fast-food outlets do not typically boast the most salubrious of reputations. In fact, you would be forgiven for not immediately recognising what they have to do with human-centred design at all.

The answer, for many people, is everything.

First, a bit of context.

Chicken shops are firmly on the agenda off the back of the exponential rise in the popularity of posh chicken. From The Times and The New Statesman to BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours programme earlier this month, much has been written and discussed about the growth of the gourmet fried chicken market, fuelled by the expansion of premium outlets such as FOWL, Wingmans, and Yard & Coop.

A report by market intelligence researcher Mintel published in May showed that fried chicken or “posh poultry” is the fast-food option of choice for 53% of “better-off Brits” - that is those with a household income of over £75k. This is compared to an average of 38% across other fast-food outlets. Fried chicken, the report concluded, is now considered a posh meal.

But what does this mean for the traditional high street shops? The most likely outcome, and one discussed on the aforementioned You and Yours programme, is the emergence of a two-tier offer; posh chicken vs. the cheap and cheerful originals.

And we mustn’t underestimate the power and value of the latter.

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I first realised this a few months ago when, at an event I was hosting about designing cities for children and young people, talk turned to how isolated this demographic feels when it comes to both urban planning and how teenagers and young adults are viewed when they leave their homes; particularly when they gather. They are often shunned, judged and avoided said Dinah Bornat, an architect who specialises in shaping communities for children and young people. Put simply, they are made to feel that certain places and spaces within urban communities are not for them. She added that often but, in her opinion, wrongly maligned chicken shops were part of the solution, not the problem.

It was when a 17-year-old student, who happened to be in the audience on work experience, came up to me at the end of the event and asked if she could explain what those chicken shops meant to her in more detail that I truly understood.

These are places, she said, where she feels like she belongs. Where she can socialise in a warm, dry environment. They are places where her and her friends can go to feel welcomed rather than judged - or even feared. They are places where they themselves feel safe and protected. “They are well-lit,” she added - a reference to those previously mentioned bright lights with a very different spin.

And they are affordable.

“People might wonder why we go to them,” she said. “But we are young. We don’t have much money. We can’t drink or go to pubs. So, where else are we meant to go with our friends? When we are in those chicken shops, we are off the streets, off our screens and safe.”

This isn’t a story about young people in isolation, of course. Access to affordable food and a safe, warm environment is important to many people across all ages and demographics.

And there is a cultural heritage to consider, too. As Jonathan Liew said in his New Statesman article, “gentrification is nothing new - but posh chicken shops are an affront to working-class culture.”

Me, I think there is room for both. I certainly hope there is.

The way I see it, everyone is talking about chicken shops because they matter. More than many of us might have realised. And the originals need protecting. The emergence of a gourmet tier of the sector is one thing. The widespread gentrification of the entire market is another.

After all, there is no chicken wing too posh - no matter how many times it has been marinated - to co-exist alongside places and spaces that make people feel safe.

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.

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There is a building in west London that has shaped everything I believe about the power of architecture.

It’s not a big building. At just under 4,000 sq ft it fits, albeit snugly, into the corner of a hospital car park.

But despite its limited sprawl and understated location, this bright orange-clad structure changes lives. Day in, day out. And it has been at the forefront of my mind since plans for a 1 million sq ft research and treatment centre at the London Cancer Hub in Sutton (which we will get to in just a minute) were submitted last month.

It is the light-filled, life-affirming haven that is the RSHP-designed Maggie’s Centre for cancer support on the site of Charing Cross Hospital. Grounded by an innate sense of purpose, it is one of the finest examples of human-centred design I have ever seen.

That said, I wish I didn’t know so much about it first-hand.

It is a place where I spent a great deal of time with my best friend, now over a decade ago, during her cancer treatment. Then in our twenties, Maggie’s was so much more than a place to grab a coffee, sit in a beautiful space and have a much needed catch-up. It was an escape to normality in the face of great uncertainty.

In contrast to the whirring, beeping, clattering cacophony of the hospital, it was - and indeed still is - a sanctuary in the darkest of times. A place where harsh strip lights have been replaced by the gentle glow of table lamps and pendants. Where rigid, plastic furniture gives over to cosy, sinking armchairs and a rustic, farmhouse-style kitchen table. Where the comforting aroma of coffee and home baking, rather than disinfectant, prevails.

Every inch of this Tardis-like haven was designed with the end-user in mind from the covered bench outside to support and acknowledge the fact it takes three of four attempts for some people to actually walk through the doors, to the purposefully oversized bathroom cubicles allowing enough room for a chair to create private spaces that feel calming and soothing rather than claustrophobic.

When Maggie’s West London opened in 2008, it was one of the first of its kind. Now, nearly twenty years on, there are 17 Maggie’s Centres across the UK, Europe and beyond designed by world-renowned architects including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Daniel Libeskind and Rem Koolhaas.

What these spaces all have in common, and what makes them work so well, is their innate connection to what it means to be human. They have all been designed to support the end-users during times of great fear, uncertainty and loss but also to promote love, connection and the pursuit of joy in the face of adversity. In the words of the centres’ namesake and the driving force behind their creation Maggie Keswick Jencks, the gardener and designer who died of breast cancer just months before the first centre opened, “above all else, what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying.”

Now, we are seeing this crucial focus on human-centred design being deployed on a much larger scale across the healthcare and life sciences sectors, not just to support patients, but clinicians and researchers. And Gensler’s designs for a ground-breaking new cancer treatment and research district - submitted for planning last month by developers Aviva Capital Partners and Socius - is a prime example.

Proposals for the £1.2bn district, which would be built on a 12-acre site at The London Cancer Hub where The Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust’s Sutton treatment centre are already in situ, are about as far from a cold, sterile healthcare or research facility as you can get.

That’s not to say the treatment and lab spaces, of which there will be 1 million sq ft comprising wet labs, large-scale provisions for global pharmaceutical companies and smaller, flexible labs for start-ups, are not suitably clinical or fit for purpose.

It is how these world-class scientific facilities have been framed as part of the wider scheme that elevates them from impersonal and isolated to connected and human-centred.

Rather than being cut off from the rest of the district, the treatment and research centres will be woven in and around pockets of healthy homes, acres of green space comprising 150 new mature trees, a 1km running trail, restaurants, cafes, a creche, neuro-diverse friendly environments and mothers’ rooms. All designed to be easily accessible for patients and staff alike to promote activity, recovery and to foster human connection.

It is, in short, a life sciences hub that celebrates and supports life.

“The London Cancer Hub is more than a development,” says Richard Harrison, co-managing director, principal at Gensler. “It’s a bold placemaking vision for the future of science. By blending low-carbon design, vibrant public spaces, and cutting-edge facilities, we aim to realise a true global destination for innovation and impact, designed to transform and accelerate the future of cancer research.”

There can be little question that such a carefully considered focus on human-centred design will be vitally important for patients. The widespread success of the aforementioned Maggie’s Centres attests to that.

But there is also much to be said about the impact these places and spaces have on the clinicians and researchers working within them - particularly when scientific discovery is paramount.

It is one of the greatest misconceptions within the built world that life sciences buildings need to be cold, clinical fortresses, says Fred Pilbrow, senior founding partner at architectural practice Pilbrow & Partners and the designer behind the world-famous Francis Crick Institute in London. It is arguably an even greater misconception that the people working within those buildings don’t want, or indeed don’t need, to work in places and spaces that have been designed with human beings in mind.

“Scientists are humans, too,” adds Pilbrow. “While the lab environments have obviously got to be quite clinical and generic, collaboration spaces in life sciences buildings can, in contrast, be much richer and more materially diverse. I want these workplaces to be sensual and stimulating, not soulless.”

If anything, spaces in the life sciences and biotech sectors need to deliver more than traditional commercial buildings when it comes to end-user satisfaction. With very particular skill-set requirements, attracting and retaining the best talent and the brightest minds is everything. Human-centred spaces that promote well-being, collaboration and the sharing of ideas and information are not just a nice-to-have. They are of paramount importance to globally significant scientific discoveries and breakthroughs.

With the right vision, designers and resources, the opportunities to deliver a fresh tranche of modern, human-centred life sciences schemes are vast. With 27.5m sq ft of space currently in the development pipeline across the Golden Triangle - the name given to the area between London, Oxford and Cambridge widely considered the centre of the UK life sciences sector - alone, the next generation of modern life sciences space is hitting the market.

This includes British biotech company Bicycle Therapeutics’ HQ in Cambridge complete with Lego walls and meeting rooms named after Game of Thrones locations designed by Pilbrow & Partners and overseen by design consultancy Greenspace, Scott Brownrigg’s Daubeny Project – a three-storey lab complete with a café and coworking space due to complete for the Oxford Science Park in 2026 – and Sheppard Robson’s flexible campus in Melbourn, Cambridgeshire for science incubator TTP.

As for the smaller, more focussed spaces and places designed with an unfaltering commitment to supporting people in the face of great fear, pain and uncertainty? They simply cannot be overestimated.

And there is a building in west London that has shaped everything I believe about the power of architecture to prove it.

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.

The UK is littered with hundreds of abandoned multi-storey car parks. Poorly maintained hunks of concrete no longer fit for purpose left to fall further into disrepair with each passing year.

But all of that could be about to change.

This week, Manchester-based developer Capital & Centric’s landmark plans to transform Midway car park in Newcastle-upon-Lyme into 111 new homes were approved. A decision that could pave the way for a whole new tranche of innovative regeneration.

The first redevelopment of its kind in UK history, the completed project - which will comprise a mix of apartments and roof-top houses - looks set to be more than a quirky, one-off win for a real estate company committed to breathing new life into unloved and underused buildings.

“I’ve already been contacted by car park owners and councils across the country about other multi-storeys off the back of the plans,” says Tim Heatley, co-founder of Capital & Centric and the visionary behind the scheme. “I think we will see lot more of these old buildings being repurposed in this way - especially once we have finished the first one and have shown people what can be done.”

So, how will it work in reality - both aesthetically and commercially? And can Heatley and his team quell an inevitable (and growing) barrage of criticism by delivering a successful enough UK-first to silence the naysayers?

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No such thing as a bad building

“It’s obvious to me that demolishing the old concrete frame of a car park to build a new concrete frame for apartments is absolutely nuts,” says Heatley. “There is a disposable mentality across the real estate sector resulting in a lot of rebuilding. That breaks my heart. Not because I think these original buildings are beautiful, but because it is such a massive waste of time, money, effort, carbon and architecture.

“We always ask ‘can this be repurposed, repaired or restored?’ There is no such thing as a bad building, just a badly maintained one.”

And badly maintained though Midway car park and others like it may be, these buildings come with a myriad benefits given the nature of their former use - not least an abundance of subterranean parking.

“Car parks also already have roads leading to them,” says Heatley. “They already have power and drainage in place and they have shops nearby. Those might be tanning salons and vape shops now, but they will eventually become cool bars, delis and bakeries because we know the sort of occupiers these kinds of redevelopments go on to attract down the line.”

That said, in the case of Midway, there will be plenty of challenges to overcome when it comes to repurposing the building itself. From limited floor-to-ceiling heights to a lack of natural light, Heatley and his team have had to get creative. “We knew we would need to leave either the floors or the ceilings exposed so as not to shrink the height too much,” he says. “We have decided to go with the latter and this will mean exposing all of the wires and pipes so they will have to be beautiful, symmetrical and look intentional. And we will need to punch a big, new, rectangular lightwell through the centre of the whole building which will probably be open to the elements.”

Any areas of the building that still don’t get much natural light will be used for services and amenities such as gyms and co-working spaces.

In terms of the external aesthetic, overflowing green planting will cascade down the front elevation to evoke a “post-apocalyptic, nature bats last” style and the repurposed building will be topped with pitched rooftop houses and a network of roof terraces.

Innovative and bold it may be. But none of this would be happening if the scheme, which includes the redevelopment of a disused 1960s shopping centre and a nearby vacant brownfield site to create a wider new residential-led neighbourhood, didn’t make commercial sense.

“If a project is good for the environment, is affordable and looks cool then that’s great but it has to work commercially as a starting point,” says Heatley. “We are out there to make money. If you can do good stuff at the same time, that’s very nice. But we can’t run the business that way round and we wouldn’t be doing this if it didn’t stack up.

“I’m just surprised it hasn’t been done before. There are hundreds of these buildings across the UK. They are going begging.”

Navigating the naysayers

That’s not to say everyone shares Heatley’s vision. “I get a lot of stick and criticism,” he says. “People commenting online have claimed the building will collapse because they think the apartments will be heavier than the cars. Which, of course, they won’t be. I mean, would you park two cars next to each other on the first floor of your house? No. You wouldn’t. They would be far too bloody heavy. Other people have said ‘but what about all of people’s stuff’?’ OK, you might own a lot of books but you are going some for them to weigh as much as a car.

“I don’t actually mind taking the stick,” he adds. “If you know that you are fundamentally doing a good thing then it really doesn’t matter what people say. Sometimes developers aren’t doing a good thing beyond looking after their own financials and that must make it harder to respond. I know what we are doing here will be celebrated in the end, we will prove people wrong and the naysayers will disappear.

“And, ultimately, I also know that if we knock down all the buildings from the 50s, 60s and 70s, we will look back not too long from now and say ‘yeah, we probably shouldn’t have done that.’”

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.

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If that subject line pinging merrily into your inbox didn’t grab your attention, I don’t know what will. As far as quotes go, I rather like it. And not just because I am the one who said it.

Time for a little context perhaps.

In over 20 years writing about and reporting on the wonderful world of real estate, I don’t think I have ever told anyone, firmly on the record, what I actually think of the sector. Until now.

In a rare turn of the tables, I recently found myself answering rather than asking the questions in an interview with fellow human-centred design evangelist and impact-driven developer Tom Larsson for his brilliant Grow Places podcast.

We talked about everything from how far attitudes towards well-being within the built world have come over the past two decades to why there is no shame in wanting the creation of spaces that support and nurture that well-being to be commercially viable. We discussed how the real estate sector has the power to reach people “on a visceral level” - something many of us don’t fully appreciate despite being the industry’s ultimate end-users on a near 24/7 basis. And, as the headline of this Well-Placed post suggests, we talked about shoes, makeup and pants. Or, more accurately, lack thereof.

Flippant though it may appear on first reading or listening, that “no shoes, no makeup, no pants” comment (which, I must confess was actually a joint effort of a quote) turns out to be quite pertinent. Not least because it neatly encompasses everything I believe human-centred design can be; real, natural and relaxed.

Perhaps it’s a personal preference but in all the years I have been touring buildings and public realm around the world, nothing makes me happier than seeing how good design can work on the most informal and stripped back of levels. Quite literally in the case of the building I was talking about in the clip below, the incredible Lӧyly Sauna in Helsinki which I have written about in more detail here.

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If you want to hear more about some of the places and people transforming the world we live in who have inspired me over the course of my career - effectively a mission statement for what I have set out to convey and showcase through the launch of Well-Placed - please do check out the full podcast on YouTube or Spotify. In the interim, here is one final snippet to whet your appetite.

Enjoy and keep an eye out for my next post where I will bring you the story of the developer with ambitions to convert disused multi-storey car parks across the UK into a new generation of homes. The style? Post-apocalyptic nature takeover.

Has he been met with a barrage of naysayers? Of course he has. Is he going to crack on regardless? Of course he is.

Trust me, if you are not already signed up, this is one you are going to want to hit the subscribe button for (conveniently positioned directly below this very paragraph for ultimate ease) to make sure you don’t miss out. Go on, you know you want to.

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist freelancing for titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.

The architect behind the “world’s first” fully AI-driven architectural project, Fu unveiled his designs for Lake Bled Estate - seven luxury villas and the surrounding landscape on the shore of Lake Bled in Slovenia - last week.

And he has pulled no punches as to why, in a sea of debate and deliberation around the possible impact of AI on design and architecture, he has taken some (near) concrete action and put the tools to the test.

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“Human mediocrity is under threat,” he said matter-of-factly at AI in Architecture, an in conversation event with Wallpaper*s Architecture and Environment Director Ellie Stathaki, last week. “For so long, humans have been the thinkers and the creators and machines have been the fabricators. AI has disrupted that.

“It has started to create better poetry than mediocre poets, better music than mediocre composers and, now, better visuals than mediocre visualisers. What I would say is that the people creating the highest standards are the ones who are going to drive that machine with their own values. For that reason I feel like we are still safe if we maintain the highest standards for the machines to either replicate or transform.”

This is why he has taken the bold move to deliberately “enable the machines” and “welcome them into the creative process.”

So, what does this mean for the future of design and the people working within it? And how can we ensure the right values are being fed into a machine we are edging ever closer towards trusting to help create the built world of the future?

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Speaking from experience

Having now created a fully AI-driven project design, Fu is in the relatively unique position of being able to report back from the other side of the process.

Perhaps most reassuringly, he says that despite solely using AI-driven tools including generative models and algorithmic optimisation to create the design itself, his work on the 22,000 sq m Lake Bled site still required a significant, not to mention crucial, dose of human creativity.

Hand-drawn sketches were used to prompt those AI tools - “a very intentional, human endeavour” - and decisions around what should serve as inspiration and data points for the finished plans were also made by humans; in this instance Fu and members of his team. This involved, among other things, selecting examples of century-old designs for the AI tools to base the final design on. These included the work of Jože Plečnik, one of Slovenia’s best-known architects who worked on the original Lake Bled site back in 1909.

“We wanted to create a world-class hospitality experience while respecting the area’s cultural heritage ,” says Fu. “To do that we had to combine our own, human ideals with AI’s ability to bring the ideas of heritage and luxury hospitality together. We wanted it to interpret the Slovenian style of architecture in a way that is contemporary while also resonating with the past.”

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AI as a superpower

Of course, the use of AI in architecture isn’t just a tool to optimise design. It also vastly accelerates the creative process. This brings with it a raft of efficiencies that Fu believes has made his practice more competitive than ever before.

“Our team can write a long list of things we have currently replaced with AI to make life easier and us faster,” he says. “First and foremost, CGIs. Traditionally we would approach a CGI company to produce renders for us. We would send our design and 3D model to the company, they would come back to us in a week, we would consult with them, they would then go away to fine-tune for another week, two weeks maybe. Now we do that in a day. Another example is our diffusion visualisation workflow, where we can plan architectural programming while AI generates design options in real time.

“AI has superpowered us and that’s why we are trying to spread the word to other design practices.”

That word is one of encouragement and reassurance but also urgency. Because while Fu’s ultimate takeaway is that AI “frees architects up to think more about human-centric design” - music to multiple ears here at Well-Placed if this is genuinely the case - those who don’t move fast enough might find themselves struggling to catch up.

The concerned evangelist

“AI in architecture is here,” says Fu. “It has arrived and people really do have to adopt now because we are starting to see jobs within this sector being replaced. Just because I sound like I am an evangelist for AI, that doesn’t mean I’m not concerned. I am concerned. As a studio we are concerned.

“This is why it is so imperative for us to understand that the workforce is going to change. Part of our process here is trying to work out how we deal with that and what roles of the future will look like alongside AI so we can be prepared.”

In the midst of a cacophony of noise and debate around AI in design and development, it is refreshing to see an architect put their money where their mouth is and test the available tools.

To be clear, Fu’s work - and the work of others including an announcement this week by US-based tech company cove on the launch of its new, AI-driven architecture practice - does not eliminate important (and largely unanswered) questions of regulation, client pushback and the ongoing debate around where we are in the AI Hype Cycle. But it does start to paint an increasingly clear picture of design practices of the future.

“AI in architecture is absolutely an inevitability,” says Fu. “It’s scary. But it is what it is. It’s time to get on with it.”

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist contributing to titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.

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It might take a minute to recall. That’s OK. It’s not a question we are used to being asked as adults, is it? More on that later because, spoiler alert, it is not an insignificant observation.

For now, back to that memory.

I have some follow-up questions for you and I would like you to imagine that they are being put to you in a room full of people. Everyone is being asked the same thing at the same time and everyone starts off standing up. For as long as your answer to each question remains ‘yes’ in this fictional scenario, you remain standing. If, at any point, the answer is ‘no’ then please feel free to take an imaginary seat.

First up, does your chosen memory involve playing alongside other children; friends or siblings perhaps? Secondly, is it one where adults are not participating (or even present) and, finally, does this particular memory of play involve a degree of risk - no matter how minor?

I would hazard a guess that a large proportion of people reading this are, like me, still figuratively standing up. Not only is this to be expected, it is to be harnessed.

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The proportion of people in a group left standing following this exercise is similar every time says Dinah Bornat, director of ZCD Architects, a leading expert in child-friendly design and author of All to Play For: How to Design Child Friendly Housing.

Speaking last week at the launch of the Innovative Breakfast Club - a new quarterly events series from ING Media and CREtech in association with Well-Placed – on shaping playful cities, Bornat made the point that to better understand what the children and young people who make up 25% of our global population need from the places and spaces around them, adults should be thinking less for them and more like them.

Purposefully and deliberately tapping into our own early memories is a highly effective way to do this she added before pointing out that while the world may have changed beyond recognition over the decades, children’s instinctive approach to play (peers present, adults absent and an element of risk thrown in for good measure) has not.

That’s not to say that playful cities should be designed to exclude adults or tap into young people’s propensity to take risks by becoming inherently dangerous, said Bornat. It is more about challenging our perceptions around what we, as adults, think children want from their spaces and places by transporting ourselves back to a time when we were part of their demographic.

She was, by the way, speaking to a roomful of people basking in the nostalgic glow of their own childhood memories of play at the time. The majority of whom were on their feet.

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The importance of thinking more like, and better communicating with, young people when it comes to designing spaces and places for them was, without question, the central thread running through the entire Shaping Playful Cities event.

Magali Thomson, project lead for placemaking at London’s world famous Great Ormond Street Hospital and Kate Honey, group community advocacy lead at developer LandSec - the two other speakers presenting at the event - both came armed with powerful case studies demonstrating just how powerful, not to mention commercially compelling, finding an effective way to speak to this demographic can be.

Sometimes that means taking a completely different approach, said LandSec’s Honey whose fresh take on engaging with young people kickstarted a pioneering move for public consultation last year.

By transforming Lewisham Shopping Centre into the world of Fortnite, a popular video game among the demographic LandSec was hoping to reach, the developer was able to far more effectively consult with young people on its plans to redevelop the site and transform the town centre over a single weekend than it had previously been able to do for months.

“We had tried to speak to young people by just approaching them around the shopping centre and asking them questions and we managed to have around 5 conversations,” said Honey. “After changing our approach and bringing the plans for the area to life through Fortnite, those conversations went from 5 to 400. Young people have a voice. It is just about finding the right way to access it.”

And that voice, said Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Thomson applies to all children and young people, no matter how vulnerable they are.

Speaking to the room about her work at the world famous children’s hospital, where she is hoping to transform the polluted, grid-locked roads surrounding it into a network of “healthy hospital streets and Play Streets”, she made the point that “all children need to play.”

Her plans with LDA Architects are driven by an unwavering commitment to create spaces and place that will evoke joy, bring a moment of calm respite and a sense of normality for these children, some of whom have “not left their beds for months”.

And the ultimate key to getting this right? Designing and developing not just for them, but with them.

I caught up with Thomson to learn more about the plans she hopes will breathe new life (and cleaner air) into the streets around Great Ormond Street Hospital - please do check out what she has to say in the interview below.

Because when it comes to the built world stepping up to protect and ensure childhood memories of play for future generations, there are few examples more powerful, more profound or more moving.

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Not just designed for the children but with the children; a bold new vision for Great Ormond Street Hospital

Magali Thomson, project lead for placemaking at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) sets out her plans to transform the streets surrounding the world famous children’s hospital into places and spaces that bring joy, calm and respite to young people and their families at the most vulnerable and challenging times of their lives

EW: Before we get into the details of the vision, can you explain how your role as project lead for placemaking at GOSH came to be?

MT: Yes, it is an interesting one as it is a role that doesn’t really exist within the NHS as a rule. I am a trained architect but then, in my mid-40s, I applied for a programme called Public Practice where built environment professionals are deployed within the public sector. I got onto the programme and assumed I would then be placed at a local authority as that’s what normally happens. But because I had spent so much of my career designing for children, including leading the education team at Marks Barfield Architects working on schools and spaces for young people, I ended up at Great Ormond Street in a role that didn’t previously exist. They are currently building a huge new Cancer Centre there and saw this as an opportunity to rethink the entire street. The role has grown and developed since then so the idea now is that I am working on a number of streets around the hospital campus.

EW: What has been the driving force behind your vision to repurpose those streets?

MT: As the hospital becomes more of a campus, there are various buildings you have to walk to and the arrival experience for the children and their parents and carers has not been properly considered. I wanted to push the idea that there is no point treating children for respiratory illnesses, for example, if they then step straight out onto polluted streets - and the main street directly outside the hospital exceeds the World Health Organisation limits for nitrogen dioxide every day - afterwards. Air pollution really affects babies and toddlers in particular as they take more breaths. So, the proposal is for a healthy hospital street. One we are trying to design in a way that is replicable as an approach other hospitals might be able to take as the areas around hospitals are very often pretty unpleasant. In the case of GOSH, we don’t own the streets. They are owned by Camden Council who we have been working in partnership with - and they have been incredibly supportive.

EW: What key changes will you be looking to make to improve the street experience for children visiting and staying in the hospital?

MT: The main thing would be to take out the cars and banish the grey. We want to widen the pavements and flood the streets with nature. While we are not keen on putting in play equipment as such, we want to create a playable, joyful landscape. By that I mean street furniture that promotes incidental play. The design also takes into consideration sensory elements as there are a lot of partially sighted children at the hospital. That means using tactile materials and, ideally, including some sort of water element because it is just innately sensory. It is worth saying too, that our plans are designed with the children in mind but they are also for the parents, families and staff who have to deal with a lot of stress and distress. Providing a space for respite or a place that encourages parents to get outside that doesn’t mean they have to go too far away is just so important.

EW: A vision like this, one that has no precedent, can take time to implement. What are you doing in the interim as you push these plans forward?

MT: Yes, the concept design by LDA Design has been costed at around £4m. So, the next stage will be a negotiation involving the hospital and the local borough around how it is funded. In the interim, we have been creating - and will continue to create - Play Streets once a year as pilot events to help people to see and understand better what we want to do here. These Play Streets allow children - some of whom have not left their room in months - to do just that, play. Because it is literally on their doorstep as opposed to them needing to walk even five minutes to a green space. For children who are connected to equipment, for example, that is just too far.

EW: What about interaction with the children at the hospital themselves? They, after all, are the people you are ultimately creating this vision for. What do they want and need from the spaces and places you are looking to redesign?

MT: I have engaged with the children through the Young People’s Forum which is a group of children and teenagers who either have been or are still being treated at the hospital and their siblings. They get involved in all of our projects and designs. I have spoken to them about public realm and greening our cities and they are all so knowledgeable and engaged. They care about green space, nature and sustainability. It is the same with the children in the Cancer Centre where I am leading on the roof garden - which is over 100 metres long - and the balconies which will all be heavily planted. The vision for this was led by the children who came up with the idea that there should be a view of nature from all of the beds. I think that’s wonderful.

EW: Do you ever find the nature of the work overwhelming given the fact you are working alongside children and families at such a difficult time in their lives?

MT: I have three children myself and just seeing some of the children arriving at the hospital makes me well up. But working on a vision like this is so important. It certainly overrides any of the frustrations that come about when you are working in an organisation as big and complex as the NHS. Ultimately, the children are the reason I do it. They are amazing.

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Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist contributing to titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.