Rachel Edwards — Designing for seven generations

Rachel Edward is Workplace Futures Lead at Lendlease, and if you're involved in workplace in London you'd be pushed to not be aware of her work. She's Rachel has been involved in a number of pioneering projects working on workplaces globally applying evidence-based design thinking. 

Rachel is all about how people use the places that we build. She is passionate about building sustainable workplace communities, with a focus on how the design of places can make a difference — to society, to lifestyles, to businesses, and to the planet. 

In our interview, we look at how we design for the future alongside what we need now, and how to integrate the workplace into larger schemes.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to the Spacecraft podcast,
conversations on how innovativedesign can transform the
workplace environment. Thispodcast is brought to you by
them with host Dan Moscraft.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
We're joined this morning by Rachel Edwards,
who's the Workplace Futureslead at Lendlease . Good
morning, Rachel. Good

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
How are you doing?

Speaker 3 (00:19):
I'm very good. Thank The Sun is out finally. It's
summer

Speaker 2 (00:22):
And you're back in your own , your own hos. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I used to live around Hor , which , uh, yeah.
Nice. How long ago was that?
Nice morning commute. Uh ,probably about six years ago.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yeah . It's , it's a bit cleaner now. Yeah , it is

Speaker 3 (00:35):
A lot cleaner. Now,

Speaker 2 (00:38):
I've met you a while back at a Workplace Friends
event. Uh , you talked aboutLoneliness Labs, which I'd like
to get into a little bit later.
Yes. Because I think a lot ofthat's still pertinent. But ,
uh, for the listeners, Ithought it'd be quite
interesting to talk about howyou got into what you do. You
obviously started at Universityof New South Wales, and every
now and then again, I can get alittle lilt of Australian come

(01:00):
through your accent. So watchfor that. But you studied
interior architecture? I

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Did. I am Australian. I'm interested to
hear stuff like this back.
'cause I grew up in Scotlandand moved to Oz when I was 12.
So every now and again, myaccent flips between them,
which is a weird thing. . So I started my, I guess,
working life at U N S Winterior architecture. It
wasn't my first choice , um,until the night before. In

(01:25):
Australia, you have toprioritize your university
choices and you only get oneoffer. So they basically,
basically go through until youget in and then , um, you get
that offer.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
What else were you looking at at the time?

Speaker 3 (01:37):
My first tour psychology. Oh, wow. Okay. And
the night before, I rememberthinking, do you know what I ,
I think this looks good. Andfor some reason, whatever I was
thinking when I was 17 at thetime, I'm gonna make this my
first choice. And I'm reallyglad that I did. Interior
architecture is a fabulousdegree. I had absolutely no
idea that this career was anoption. And I'm not sure anyone

(02:02):
going through university todaywould know about it. 'cause
it's not publicized widely. Soleft uni, and while I was at
uni, I was doing someconstruction research, and for
that we had to go to a bunch ofdifferent big construction
sites to see what they were upto. And I remember going to
Macquarie Bank in Sydney, andthe team that spoke to me spoke

(02:25):
a bit about construction anddesign, but they also spoke to
me about the people, thecultures they were trying to
drive through the business andhow that was directing the
decisions they were making. AndI thought, wow, this is so
interesting. I really wannawork for you. Um , and so I
did. And since then I've neverreally practiced architecture

(02:47):
and design. I went straightinto a role, which was more
about the, the people and theinteraction between people and
place. Right . And howworkplace helps to shape real
business outcomes from astrategic perspective.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
So who was that you worked with, first of all?
Sorry?

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Uh , Macquarie Bank . Wow.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Okay . Straight in.
Yes . Yeah . amazing.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, that was really exciting. And , and I
mean, lucky enough to get arole with them, it set me up ,
um, for what I wanted to do ,uh, which was nice. I was there
for about five years plus ayear while I was at uni, so
about six years. And thendecided, you know what? I wanna
move to London and I'm gonnapull beers in a bar and I'm
gonna travel Europe for a year.

(03:27):
Um , and when I landed, I wasintroduced to Richard Bial ,
the principal of InteriorDesign at TP Bennett . And over
at Coffee, he talked more aboutthe ice skating events that all
the team had been on and theWhiskey tour. And , and somehow
about a week later, I ended upworking there,
, um, and not called see . Andnow it's been almost 10 years

(03:48):
in London . Um , so yeah, that's , uh, sort of my,
that's,

Speaker 2 (03:52):
It does look like a really cool close to work.
Obviously p is still there .
Your partner's there .

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Interview Shane.
He's still there. Uh , workingwith Shane on some really cool
projects.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
The dream team. The

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Dream team , a team .

Speaker 2 (04:04):
What was it like to work there at TP Bennett ? So
while you were there, was it ,is it good social, good
culture,

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Fantastic culture?
Oh , obviously moved from a man, massive corporate, tens of
thousands of people globally,like really connected globally.
Mm-hmm . . So youfeel like you are part of a
really big business to, at thetime, TP Bennett were 150
people. Everyone was reallyinterwoven in each other's
lives and work. And it was areally lovely culture. Um , and

(04:31):
I think it still is by thesounds of it, but they've grown
now to about 400, which Wow ismassive. Really nice to work on
lots of different types ofprojects with different
businesses. And

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Was that more of a strategy role? You were working
down there

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Yes. Strategy in the strategy team,

Speaker 2 (04:45):
And then you went on to Space Labs,

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Space Lab , uh, very different. Again, 60 people at
the time, reallyentrepreneurial thinking.
Nathan Lonsdale, if he , youknow ,

Speaker 2 (04:57):
I know of him. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
He just wants to change the world, really. He'd
be happy to do interior design,architecture, you know,
anything else that wouldremotely come into it, he'd
just go, yep . Let's bring thatinto our business model.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
And then obviously you've become chair and
co-chair, you're co-chair of Bc o chair at CoreNet , and then
onto Lendlease while you'redoing all this as well.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, yeah. Um, I've been at Lendlease for nearly
five years now, which is areally, I, I needed, I wanted
to do something a little bitdifferent still workplace
strategy, workplace futures,but this is more embedded in
what is very, very long termthinking. Yeah . So as a
developer, you're not thinkingthe 10 to 15 years strategies

(05:43):
that you might, whenever youare with a design firm or even
within an organization, you arelooking at how will people in
50 to a hundred years time beusing these buildings that
we're investing in and theplaces that we are creating. So
the look ahead is sointeresting. Mm-hmm .

Speaker 2 (06:00):
It's such a big responsibility as well, right?
Yeah. The legacy of a cityeffectively, or certain areas
of a city.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Something quite interesting in it though,
because you're, when you lookthat far ahead, you feel almost
quite removed from it until youget into Yeah . And the reason,
the reason I'm so interested init is because we need to try
and make people across ourindustry think more about the
real impacts that we're having.
Yeah . Which is coming to thesurface more. Now, you've just

(06:26):
made me think of this reallyinteresting philosophy, which
is Native American i choirprinciple called the seven
Generations Principle. Theprinciple is the , this Native
American practice, thedecisions we make now have to
have good sustainable outcomesfor seven generations to come.

(06:47):
But when you actually countthat on your fingers and think
That's my kids's . Kids, kids,kids, kids, kids kids, yeah .

Speaker 2 (06:52):
It's about 500 years.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
It's , yeah, well it's probably about 200. I've
said 200. But yeah, somewherein between those. And part of
that practice is keeping a seatvacant next to the chief so
that you're reminded of thegenerations who aren't born
yet, and you're giving them avoice. So I love thinking about
that. Now, if we are making adecision here, someone who's
not born yet, what would theybe saying to us? What would

(07:15):
they be challenging? What wouldthey be trying to get us to
think about more deeply beforewe make those decisions?

Speaker 2 (07:22):
I was listening to a book recently, actually. Uh ,
the title escapes me. It'sactually quite dated. Um , but
I think it's by Napoleon Hill.
And he created a sort of aboardroom full of big names and
people that he respected, sortof like Napoleon , uh, was one
of them. And loads of others,you know, sort of like J F K
and things like that. And heasks them advice and his dreams

(07:44):
and it's quite bonkers. But Ilove the fact that you can just
sort of channel differentpeople. But I love the idea of
being able to channel people ofthe future into that and asking
me their advice.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
So it's basically the opposite of the question.
If you were gonna have dinnerwith someone who's famous and
dead, who would it be? If youwere gonna have someone in a
big decision who's famous fortheir world, changing views,
but they're not born yet, whatwould they be trying to
champion?

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Obviously lend least massive developer doing some
really interesting work at theminute. How does your work
influence decisions on theground? You know, so you've got
these huge big developmentsgoing on. What , where do you
get your information from? Whatinspires you? I know there's
lots of questions firing at youat once, but ,

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Um , it's massive. . Yeah .

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Huge, isn't it ? How do you start to, to sort of
navigate that and , and feedinto things? Lendlease

Speaker 3 (08:34):
Are huge. So starting from the start, it's
big urban regeneration we'retalking about. Yeah . The
important thing about that iswhenever we're talking
workplace, we're not justtalking buildings or the design
of spaces that businesses willgo into. Yeah . We're talking
about the whole ecosystem. Thatthat's part of. And when we're
looking at those places, we'renot just talking about the red

(08:55):
line that we have. We'retalking about how we plug into
the community beyond the , thecouncils we are working with.
Mm-hmm . The other developersmay be on our sort of perimeter
to make sure that we're doingsomething much better than we
could if we're just doing it byourselves. So that's really
important. But then coming backto my role in it, it's very

(09:15):
much advocating for the waythat, that we understand people
will be working in the future.
How is technology and, you know, all the things we're hearing,
ai, blockchain chat, G B t,robots gonna change the way
that we interact with work.
What industries will bedisrupted? What new industries

(09:36):
will pop up? How will peopleplay a role in what that work
looks like? Yeah . I've heardall sorts of horror stories
about . You know , it'sall robots and we do nothing. I
think there's a nice balancewhere we'll probably end up
just working alongside all ofthis. I think I was talking to
you about this before. I'vebeen introduced by someone I

(09:56):
work with to Lex Friedmanpodcaster. He does these like
three to four hour podcasts, ifanyone's interesting in just
sort of mulling over the natureof all the relationships
between these sort of bigfuture questions. That's a
really interesting one to haveon in the background. It does
go for a very long time, though. That's a sort of the bigger

(10:16):
side of it. And then workingalongside, I , I sit in quite a
central team in developmentwhere we're called Place and
growth, where anyone who playsa strategic role in place. So
there's , uh, head of placeretail, street life. So
meanwhile you send a thing thatactivates the , the culture of
the streets . Yeah . Masterplanning and me from a

(10:37):
workplace perspective. So weare working together to make
sure that all the stuff they'rethinking about, you know, how
are streets changing with, youknow, technology and cars and
new retail methods through toresidential and workplace, and
how that all can interconnect.
So there's the long-term viewon it, but then there's also

(10:58):
the, the today stuff, the stuffthat's just constantly at the
tip of everyone in design andworkplaces, tongues, health and
wellbeing, sustainability. Howdo we drive diversity and
inclusion? All of these reallyimportant topics, which we are
, we're still making sure weare removing hurdles to people
be being able to do really goodstuff. It's really just making

(11:21):
sure, plugged into theindustry. There's loads of
reports coming out just nowfrom World Economic Forum, have
just released their future ofjobs report. There's like all
the like, great stuff thatDeloitte constantly releasing.
Gensler have just releasedtheir future of work report.
You've been working more withLeesman , right ? Leesman , I
mean, Leesman have data comingout their ears. Yeah .

(11:43):
. So , so we are , um, yeah,really happy to be working with
them on, it's a small report,but it , it's looking at the
future of work and how it intoplace with place and what
leadership need to be thinkingabout. Um ,

Speaker 2 (11:55):
I think what was interesting me with Leesman is
that although you said smallreport, the amount of data they
use to get

Speaker 3 (12:03):
That information, I say small , it's not small, but
compared to the stuff thatthey're publishing, it's quite
small . Um , but it's,it's an opportunity for us to
engage with leaders and lookat, well, here's what all the
data says. What do , what doesthis mean for the way that you
need to work in future? Mm-hmm. , there's stats
on the, like, commute forexample, and how to earn it

(12:25):
mm-hmm . , um, onsustainable health and
wellbeing practices and thesentiment that that's driving
through business cultures. So ,

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Sorry, on the, on the commute, how to earn it.
Mm-hmm . Sorry, I don't quiteunderstand that one .

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Between , so like , oh , so that's been sort of
thrown around the past fewyears as people have been given
this flexibility to work fromanywhere. Yes . Yeah . If you
want them to come into yourbuilding, you're gonna have to
earn it. You're gonna have haveto earn people. Right . Yeah .
Yeah , yeah . People's commutesin. Yeah .

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Yeah . We're constantly surprised. There's
so many people who think theycan just say, office is open,
come on back, everybody.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Or the mandate's coming out just this week. Yeah
.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Yeah . It's crazy.
We try to encourage us to , tohelp gentle nudging and, you
know, doing things like talksand stuff like that to try and
get people wanting to come backand enjoy the

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Space. Are you getting involved in the sort of
return to

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, although what we do is more
about branding space, we findthat that is playing a part in
getting people back to theoffice. 'cause a lot of it's,
you know, I said branding place, but it's a much bigger
delivery of what you do in anenvironment that connects
people to the culturebasically. So layers and layers
and layers of different things.
But a lot of that is involving,you know, how do you connect

(13:35):
with staff? How do you talk topeople? What can you do to
encourage people back in? Sopeople are always looking for
advice and , and trying to getpeople back. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
It's really interesting. And I think that
definitely comes under the earnthe commute. Yeah . As opposed
to mandate. That's

Speaker 2 (13:47):
It. 'cause we were given so much time back. We ,
we were speaking, I speaking toIvana Stanek a couple of weeks
ago. She was just telling mehow much she got done having a
young baby and literally justbeing able to throw a wash load
on and then know you can bethere to dry it. It just
changes your life, you know?
Yeah . Yeah . So what , whatelse, what else came outta the
Leadman report? Sorry,

Speaker 3 (14:05):
We are launching in a few months, so we're still in
progress. Sort of diggingthrough the data and pulling
together what we wanna get outof it.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
What research have you discovered or what's really
surprised you, you know, whenyou're looking at sort of the
future proofing of space, notjust the workplace, but like
areas and things like that. Isthere anything that's you , you
pulled out and thought, oh wow,that's a really, that's got a
really interesting angle to itthat you were surprised at

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Early on in the pandemic, talking about Leesman
, they've been correlating datawith what they've flagged as
the really high performingworkplaces that they've got
their leesman index, if youknow. Yeah , yeah . The
workplaces that have prepandemic resulted as really
high performing. And the peoplewho worked in them did a bit of

(14:50):
not explaining this very well,did a bit of research that
shows the people who worked inthe high performing workplaces
had said they were more likelyor interested to go into work
more days a week post pandemicthan the ones that had low
sentiment. Absolute no brainer.
Yeah . Is , you probably don'tneed a , a report to say that,
but it's really, reallyinteresting to see it laid out

(15:12):
in front of you, of like, wow,this is like a , a really clear
line that shows the , the , thebetter the experience is .
Whenever people show up into aplace together. I always get a
bit awkward about saying like,workplace, because we work from
lots of different places Yeah .
To show up to this place thatthey're gonna spend the day
versus No, actually it'srubbish and we're not gonna

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Come. There's , there's a lot , there's a lot
of good research in that one. Iremember reading , it was quite
a while that came out. I thinkit was at a workplace trends .
It was presented actually. Mm .
But there's loads of great dataon the quality of people's
workplace at homes to work inand, you know, the quality of
that sort of general workplace,how likely they're going to
come in. There's a lot of stuffyou can compare against each
other that gets some reallynice,

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Interesting outputs.
Yeah . Gensler's recentresearcher said something
similar. They gave, I think itwas eight different options of
the types of workplace stylesor amenities that people might
come in for. So it's sort of a,

Speaker 2 (16:07):
They were looking quite a lot at the , the wider
space around it as well.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, they were. And I think the average result of
that was that people just wantdiversity, but they're more
likely to come out of theirhomes and be together and, you
know, be in a place if it's gotother amenities. So we work
with Equi on our digitalexperience platform in
Stratford. They release anannual report as well. And

(16:32):
there was a stat in the lastone that said something like,
people are 2000%, this is fromthe year before. More
interested in the retail andexperiences around the office
than they were last year. Wow.
Which is really, really huge. Ineed to check that number
'cause it sounds massive.
That's huge . But I'm prettysure it's right. 2000% more
interested. And we are , we areseeing that as well with a lot

(16:55):
of the occupiers aroundStratford. The stat was global.
It wasn't for Stratford. Butwhenever I'm speaking to some
of the businesses there now,they're constantly talking
about, we didn't realize thatthere was this new restaurant
or bar opening. Or you cancycle through the park on lunch
and things like that. That ,you know, the more people are

(17:17):
together and having thesedifferent experiences, the more
opportunity there is toexplore. And then you wanna
explore more there . There'sjust, you know, a a , it

Speaker 2 (17:25):
Becomes part of your culture as

Speaker 3 (17:27):
It workplace , isn't it ? It's like psychology and
kind of mindset around the ,the way that you work. You're
not commuting to sit at a deskall day and just be in the
building. You are , you'recoming together to have
different experiences thathopefully nudge opportunities
to connect with people withinyour business that you might
not usually speak to outsideyour business.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Just picking out some of the projects you've
worked on. Then one of the bigones is obviously , uh, the
International quarter inStratford, which is the , on
the Queen Elizabeth Park , uh,the Olympic Park. There's
obviously a lot going on upthere. You've got sort of here
east, you've got the, theWestfield Center , but you are
working on this internationalcourt , which is a , a series
of different buildings, whichis workplace, all sorts of

(18:08):
different things going on. Andit's sort of, it's got a real
nice character to it. There'slots of things starting to
emerge there, I think.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's changed so much in the
past few years since I joinedLendlease . Even the park is
really interesting. I don'tthink too many people really
know about it. Whenever I bringpeople out there, it's like,
wow, where did this come from?
560 acre green space. Butthere's six universities
directly on it. And he reachedover in the old media center

(18:37):
Pleo there, there's like 800businesses in that. And we are
all working together at themoment. So all the universities
are talking to each other.
We're talking to them and toPlex and to he re and there's
also the culture strip who areB B C music, Sadlers Wells and
the v n a cultural

Speaker 2 (18:57):
Sort of thread running through too. And

Speaker 3 (18:58):
They're all sort of experimenting with like future
of media and consumption and ,and that type of thing. So
there , there's this sort ofreally interesting mix of stuff
going on. We are sort of inbetween the Westfield and that
cultural strip. Right . Sort ofa minute walk from each
at the moment. A million squarefoot of office space. Another
million and half, just amillion . Yeah . Just, just a

(19:20):
small million . Anothermillion and a half to come. So
one building should be toppingout in a few months. And
there's quite a bit ofresidential going on in there
as well. So there's two newresi towers, which will come as
well. Mm-hmm . plus some more next to the v
and a . There's some really,really exciting staff . There's
still cranes up , but also lotsand lots of really interesting

(19:44):
architecture to see. For somereason the greenery stands out
a lot more now with all of thatas the , the backdrop. I

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Think one thing that struck me is , although there's
lots of different architecturalstyles going on, it all works
well together in contrast tosay what's going in in some of
the buildings in Voxel . Mm .
Uh , and there's a big lack ofgreen space there as well. But,
you know, there's lots of nicethings to pick out there, but
it does feel really wellconsidered as a master plan.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
Absolutely. It's really cool actually to, to be
there now. And when we aretalking about like walking
meetings and that kind of thingmm-hmm . Getting outside the
box of the , the building thatyou work in mm-hmm . When I go
there, 'cause we, we workthere. I'm , I'm there maybe
once or twice a week when I'mnot in Elephant Park or
Birmingham , um, or our headoffice. The experience isn't

(20:32):
really about going in and likebeing in the office. You spend
more time sort of walkingthrough the streets or should
we just go for a walk over tothe park? Should we just go and
see sort of

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Cottages outside meetings

Speaker 3 (20:45):
And things like that? The ucl l developments
come ,

Speaker 2 (20:47):
You sort of mentioned inclusive innovation
there and that seems to be areally interesting thing that's
happening , happening now withthe different universities.
You've got Plex and they're allsort of connecting with each
other and, and it seems to becreating a , a something that's
some of the parts that's moresignificant individual
universities. Is that somethingthat you deliberately curated

(21:08):
or is it sort of naturallystarted to happen?

Speaker 3 (21:10):
So the universities are naturally working together.
There's lots of differentpartnerships between the , the
businesses and the unis. Andfor example, T F L who are
based there are working down inPlex cell then with Ford
Mobility and Road Labs . Andthere's , there's lots of , um,
kind of connections that havealready been made across the

(21:31):
park. But London LegacyDevelopment Corporation have
been for the past few yearsspearheading , um, basically a
, an innovation district. Butit , it feels like more than
that. It's a , it's inclusive.
So an inclusive innovationdistrict because it's not just
about the universities and thebusinesses. Yeah . It's
bringing in the , the wholecommunity. And it's a

(21:53):
demonstration district becausewe've, the way it's set up,
we've got an opportunity to usethe park as an area to
demonstrate future sustainableliving for communities. So the
way that this demonstrationdistrict's been set up is
around three themes. Health andwellbeing. Yeah .
Sustainability and mobility.

(22:13):
And they're all based on , uh,a lot of the work that the
businesses who are currentlybased on the park are doing. So
the TLS road labs , freightlabs, testing, we had , uh,
bird scooters a few years backand testing electric scooters.
And we've had , um, driverlesscars and all that kind of thing
across the park. But as part ofthe innovation ecosystem

(22:36):
thinking, what we're trying toset up is a space where you've
got networking and events.
'cause the social capitalacross the park is what is the
mm-hmm . the mostvaluable. How do you connect
the dots between a lot of thepeople who are doing this, but
also the data. How can we startto share more data between the
different people who are doingthings to unlock opportunities
to do it faster, to come outwith different ideas and

(23:00):
opportunities to innovate. U CL for example, have the campus
is set up with all newfaculties mm-hmm.
. Oh . But what'sinteresting is that it's not
designed around faculties. It'sreally designed around
challenges speaking . Right .
Okay . Speaking to theoperations director there, she
was explaining that the way itwill operate is you'll have

(23:20):
these challenges and then sortof multidisciplinary groups
working together on them.
Mm-hmm . , whichis a model for the way that we
hope future industries willoperate to tackle some of these
things like climate change, forexample. So that's quite
interesting. But thefacilities, there are then
there's sort of labs, wet labs,dry labs, robot labs. There's a

(23:41):
lot of , um, digitalintegration into all of the
other industries that will comeout of there. So built
environment plus digitalfinance plus digital and , and
, and just connecting the dotsbetween things that haven't
previously worked togethermm-hmm . At a university level.
So that's really, reallyinteresting. And, and whenever
you look at something likethat, or U C L U A L , college

(24:03):
of Fashion and opportunitiesthen to go, okay, there's like,
there's , there's fashion andthere's the future of
sustainable fashion mm-hmm .
and there's thefuture of like sustainability
and health and like greentechnology and that type of
thing where we start to seecrossovers where there's these
sort of new sweet spots. It'sjust really interesting. Yeah.

(24:23):
It

Speaker 2 (24:23):
Sort of feeds into the sort of sharing economy
like the , the the knowledgeand data

Speaker 3 (24:28):
Talking about sharing economy 'cause the ,
the sharing economy knowledge,data, technology, but also
physical space. Yeah . And the, that sort of physical
opportunity to permeate betweenbusinesses or projects. Yeah .
Um , so a lot of the talking weare doing is about what assets
can we share mm-hmm .

(24:48):
, like physicalassets, how can we design so
that places are more permeable.
So spaces to work outdoors hasbeen a big theme for us. And
the international quarter forthe past few years, we've been
designing sort of structuresthat you can like plug into
power and sit and work for theday with other groups of people
and things like lobbies,entrances, you know, more

(25:12):
accessible, welcoming so thatyou don't feel there's a
boundary there whenever you'rewalking in. Things like that
all come together to create,you know, these physical places
that people feel they canpermeate and they're welcome
and there's access to be partof something much bigger.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
That's really interesting and it sort of, it
reminds me a little bit of thechat we had the other day about
this sort of trend towardsscience parks. I've been
speaking to Nick Gaskill, who'swe've recently recorded a
podcast with, I know speak to acouple of guys there , shepherd
Robinson . They're all seemingto be working on these big sort
of science buildings that are acombination of labs , office
space. So they're really sortof hybrid. And a lot of the

(25:49):
stuff you were saying aboutthat fits in really nicely
about this sort of permeablespace .

Speaker 3 (25:53):
The thing I find really interesting about that
is there's lots of researchjust now on the, like the power
of proximity and the fact thatsharing a lot of these
environments, like the lifescience parks of , you know,
there's so much investment fromthe government in them .
They're seen as, I think mostareas are calling themselves a
life science district becausethey wanna attract this big

(26:16):
opportunity into the areas. Butthe , this power of proximity
piece, and similar to what wewere talking about before, like
how do you connect things toinnovate just by having a lot
of these functions. So thatsort of labs and amenities and
the administration around itand like different people
testing different things. Youstart to innovate within the

(26:37):
small areas of like workingprocesses as well. Mm-hmm.
. Mm-hmm.
. Which is whythat's all. Yeah. It's really,
really, it's really cool.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Obviously we talked about the international
quarter, you've gotSmithfield's going on in
Birmingham, which

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Smithfield Yeah , Smithfield, sorry. Smithfield
is, it's the site of theCommonwealth Games from last
year. So we've partnered withthe Birmingham city Council to
deliver, what is it reallyamazing development that sits
within in Birmingham just southof New Street Station and the
bull ring . Mm-hmm .
. Mm-hmm .
on the right handside is Digby, on the left hand

(27:11):
side is south side. So gayvillage, Chinese quarter , like
really sort of cultural, bothreally cultural parts of
Birmingham. Very young, veryvibrant. And to the south of
the site is Rio Valleyresidential neighborhoods. So
all of those areas are veryunique and we've got a really
good opportunity to createsomething that compliments all

(27:34):
of them because it has to ,we're we're sort of on the
edges of all of these verydifferent parts of Birmingham,
but has its own unique cultureas well. It's a mix of brand
new market building. It's onthe original site of the
markets in Birmingham. So thislike rich industrial history ,
um, where , so where industrybasically started and office

(27:55):
landscape along with cultureand residential and new Green
Park all plugged in togetherinto this really amazing place.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Obviously the Olympic Park and you've got the
Commonwealth Park. Is theresimilarities or you had to
approach it completelydifferently? Or do , do you
pick up stuff you've learnedfrom the Olympic Park and carry
on the good stuff? Or what'sthe difference between the two?

Speaker 3 (28:16):
I think very different. The Olympic Park is
a , a lot of bigger government,quite a modern

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Space as

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Well, isn't it?
Yeah. It , it is. There's awell

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Than jumping into , uh, an existing

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Sort of, and it's a lot of different developments
working together across , uh,what was the Olympic Park, but
a lot of infrastructure alreadythere because of the Olympics.
This is a bit different in thatit's, it's sort of starting
with scratch from scratch froman in infrastructure
perspective. But still lots ofpartners working on the, the

(28:47):
roads that will go through thestreetscapes. How we, how we
plug into differentpartnerships in Birmingham. You
know, they're , they're very,very different and they feel
different. They're differentcities.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
I find it so interesting. 'cause I mean what
we do is effectively graphicdesign and build things, but
you know, you're talking aboutsomething with such a
permanence to it. You know,you've got what, 5,000 years
worth of legacy . Yeah . Soyou're spending a bit of time
up there at the minute. I amwatching it come to life.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
I am one, it fluctuates between zero days
one day or two days a week.
, there's an awful lotgoing on. And we're, we're in
planning at the moment, stagetwo, planning for the master
plan and starting to look athow we sort of seed an element
of the culture that we wantedto have early mm-hmm .
. So meanwhileuse , um, across the site while

(29:35):
we start to build

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Obviously big challenges on the retail front,
you know , retail sectorsstruggling a little. Obviously
all those considerations havecome back into it. And you've
got the market that you'replacing there and what , what
sort of things are you tryingto do differently on a retail
front? Just to put you on thespot on trying to solve the
whole retail industry there.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
I'm not an expert in retail, but I work closely with
the retail team who are , um,and I always loved listening to
their conversations. 'causethey're not just talking about,
and neither should workplace bethe sort of daytime economy,
but they're talking about a a360, a 24 hour lifestyle Yeah .
For retailers because all thestuff that happens overnight to

(30:16):
make sure that everything'soperating during the day, the
very early retail hours, thethe sort of midday early
evening, the , your sort ofpeak time evening and then late
evening lifestyles that are allquite different to one another.
What's really interesting aboutfuture of retail, just coming
back to the sharing economy ,is I think I've seen a few

(30:39):
examples recently of retailspaces who are sharing
throughout the day mm-hmm.
. So in themorning it might be got , yeah
. There's , there's one inparticular a pie in mash place
in the evening. It turns into acocktail bar and the place on,
and I , I haven't spoken tothese guys, I dunno how they do
it if they're the same operatoror not on Broadway market who

(31:00):
are a butcher during the day inthe evening, they're a
restaurant. Yeah . And if youhadn't seen it during the day,
you wouldn't know that themarble tabletop you're eating
on had, you know, raw meatlying on it earlier. But I
think that's really interestingbecause you , you can start to
look at one opportunities tosort of support retailers
better by having that sharingeconomy, but also by activating

(31:23):
places across the , the full 24hours because you've got
different people doingdifferent things. And that's
quite interesting.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
And when is Smithfield going live? When's
that starting to open? Up

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Between 2027 and 2028. Um , oh, okay. Okay. So a
lot sooner. We should , weshould be having a , a lot of
the first phase brought tolife.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
The other big one you're working on is Silvertown
the Royal docks in London.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
That's really exciting. That's , um, the
Millennium Mills building, ifyou know of that. And the area
around it, the royal docks is Ithink the only enterprise zone
in London.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
So what sort of things are happening in
Silvertown? What are thetenants that are moving into
that kind of space? Or whatsort of people are , are you
looking for for that sort ofthing ?

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Uh , silver Town's one of those places like Bat
Sea Power Station that's had amillion developers Right . Go
through it. Yeah . We are justgetting spades in the ground
now to start building. So atthe moment there's, there's
quite a lot of residentialcommunities surrounding it.
Mm-hmm . and it'son the Thames. So Thames, it's
directly across from the RoyalDocks. D l r station and

(32:28):
Customs House. Yeah . The newQueen Elizabeth Lion Station.
So that's about a five minutewalk. We're dropping in a new
footpath to walk across thewater. And then you're sort of
met by this at the moment,quite eerie presence of this
massive factory, which makesthis huge statement on the
water. So part of it'srejuvenating the Millennium

(32:50):
Mills building mm-hmm .
, which is 1930sbuild flower mill that's been
empty since the eighties. Andsince then, it's really just
been a place for raves, for filming music movies.
Coldplay have a , is it calledTeardrops? But yeah, things
like , uh, like Spider-ManLuther, anywhere that people

(33:12):
are taken to be killed, really . Um, it's one of those
places it's got such acharacter, like a really, it's
the big

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Open space. Just Yeah .

Speaker 3 (33:21):
Big , massive , massive red brick building.
This big , big factory. The bigderelict space. So it's a
massive area around that, whichwill have 6,000 new homes,
about a million square foot ofoffice space. Mm-hmm .
, including therejuvenation of the Millennium
Mills building. Uh , it's

Speaker 2 (33:37):
Your favorite number for office space.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
A million. A million. A million. Just round
it . A million. a newschool. There's , there's a mix
of sort of grade a officespace, millennium Mills, like
amazing cultural hub and thissort of light industrial space
, uh, called Silver Works ,which will be a bit more of a
mix of that making, doingprobably more akin to the here

(34:00):
East Yeah . Model. Yeah . Lotsof small makers, that type of
thing. But yeah, there's,there's a real big drive there
to try and give. So from aculture perspective, try and
give the community access tothe water on the, like the
Thames, there's really minimalpoints that you can actually
just kind of step down anddirectly sort of touch water.
Yeah . Yeah . So there's, we'relooking at how we pull some of

(34:23):
that river into the, like,there's some current docks
there. There's the , the twoheritage buildings are the
Millennium Mills and an oldsilo like grain silo building,
keeping them sort of restoringthem as part of the
neighborhood. But then yeah,bringing, bringing a lot of the
like, water in through likecanal systems and putting

(34:45):
leisure on them. So swimming ,uh, I'm thinking like paddle
boarding, kayaking, that kindof thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
The Thames isn't somewhere I'm desperate to jump
into, although I'm doing theLondon triathlon this year. So
I'm not massivelyexcited about boots swimming
the Thames, but , but I , Ithink yeah . Bring it to life
like that. It's such a niceidea. Mm-hmm . And such an
amazing building as a sort ofcentral piece as well, if you
all

Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah. So I think it will have a really different
character to anything that weknow right now in London. Yeah
. Yeah .

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Nice

Speaker 3 (35:11):
Big bold industrial access to the terms . Yeah .
Like sort of green swimminglifestyle, like the mix of the
two is something that reallyexcites me.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
One thing we haven't covered, and one of the reasons
I , one of the things I firstmet you over was the Ness Labs
you were doing with , uh, NigelOsland for Workplace Trends.
Was it with , with Nigel Labs ?

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah. Yeah. So we, so Lenley back in 2018, take it
further than that. 2017, theBritish Red Cross New Economics
Foundation co-op did this bigbit of research on loneliness
in the uk and , uh, found that9 million people were lonely.
Over a million of that wasoffice workers. The stats

(35:53):
surgeon general in the us VivekMurphy , um, announced an
epidemic. He had a , a statthat said it's the , with the
patients he's seeing it has thesame mortality rate. So like
death rate as smoking 15cigarettes a day. Wow. So
that's massive costingbusinesses 2.5 billion pounds a

(36:14):
year in absenteeism, likewellbeing, presenteeism being
there, but just not productiveand like low tenure burnout,
all that kind of thing. Likereally awful. So within
Lendlease, we just, around thetime I joined, someone had the
idea, why don't we look at thesort of the interplay between

(36:35):
place design, like how peoplespend time in places and the
impact of that on loneliness.
Can we design places that nudgemeaningful relationships or
give a higher sense ofbelonging? So we went on this
journey of what was supposed tobe 18 months and ended up being
about three years of reallydeep diving into understanding,

(36:56):
you know, how place plays arole in that. But we couldn't
do it by ourselves. So becauseit's , it's such a really huge
topic to tackle and no oneshould look at that by
themselves. Really. You getlonely for start . Yeah.
Because you get lonely. You getlonely and you don't really get
anywhere, do you? And so wepartnered with a , a grassroots
business called collectivelywho were brilliant. Um, and

(37:17):
between us brought in about 800business like businesses across
government and councils anduniversities and, you know,
technology businesses andarchitects just to look at,
well, you know, what are wedoing here? How can we create
something better? And as wewere sort of going through
that, we realized, well, it'snot really place , is it?
'cause programming plays suchan important role in it. And

(37:39):
back to the conversation wewere having on like the value
in social capital and networksand that kind of thing. It's
not just about designingplaces, but how you activate
it. So yeah. So that , that'sreally important. And then the
policies that you put in place,we had the opportunity to
present to the A P P G allparty parliamentary group,
, um, with TracyCrouch, who was the previous

(38:02):
minister for loneliness, juston some of the findings that we
had across workplaces, homesand public spaces, community
spaces , um, universities, thattype of thing. So covering all
areas of life. But yeah , somereally interesting research
came out of it. We, from aworkplace perspective, we
brought Nigel Osland in mm-hmm. . Um , so that

(38:24):
was the connection to workplacetrends. Uh , he worked with us
to set up some of the kind ofearly workplace desktop
research to see what was outthere and it's wasn't much.
Mm-hmm . There was a lot on thepolicies and behaviors and
structural things, but nothingon the physical side. So that,

(38:46):
that was nothing really tostart with, but also like ,
good 'cause we, you know , wecould really deep dive into it.
We ran some workshops, we did asurvey, which interestingly
'cause we did this piece onwhere do people feel lonely
whenever they're working andpeople in offices, which is
like a bit of a no brainer.

(39:06):
You're , you're by yourself,you're isolated. Also the roles
of people in offices tend to beconducive to a bit more
loneliness. But remote work andthen homes were the most
lonely, but mobile working wasthe least lonely. So the only
thing I can take out of thatis, well, mobile workers can
choose where they wanna work.
But yeah, that was, yeah ,really, really interesting. And
I think

Speaker 2 (39:26):
The surprise for me was the scale of it. How big a
problem it was. 'cause and Ithink , um, Nigel and yourself
mentioned it when you did theinitial talk. How, how big the
problem was. Yeah . You know ,and I think we're quite shocked
at what you'd done Earthedinitially.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Yeah, absolutely.
It's really scary and reallysad. And we were working
through this , um, projectwhere we'd always stop and have
check-ins and encourage aculture that we've sort of walk
the talk, encourage the culturethat we're trying to encourage
through this research. And thenwe'd sort of remind ourself ,

(40:00):
oh, like we we're so happy andexcited about this. But
actually, you know, it's reallysad I've made so many friends
through just doing that aswell. 'cause it's such a, it's
such a human topic. It's, Imean , belonging is a basic
human need, but the like, beingpart of it kind of strips you
back to think about times inlife that I've felt lonely and
your experience will bedifferent. And sometimes, you

(40:23):
know, I feel lonely 'cause I'mjust in back to back meetings
all day and I'm talking topeople the whole day. But I
don't

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Actually Yeah , no , that's not connect

Speaker 3 (40:30):
With anyone sort of connection. Yeah. Yeah. I've
obviously met you through it. Imet someone through it who we
spent an hour every maybe twoor three weeks talking through
lockdown about the lonelinesslab. And then a year in, we
realized she lives just aroundthe corner from me.
. And now we catch upall the time. But just a coffee
or a wine locally. Yeah . But ,um, it's so interesting 'cause

(40:52):
we could have just been havinga coffee or go for a walk as
opposed to sitting onlinetalking to one another. Yeah .

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Uh , Rachel, that was all fascinating. Thank you
so much for your time. It wasreally interesting. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Thank you. That was a good chat. You've

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Been listening to the Spacecraft podcast ,
conversations on how innovativedesign can transform the
workplace environment . Thispodcast , Dan .