GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
People Make Places, with Becca Thomas
What if architecture focused on touching as many lives as possible, rather than creating exclusive spaces for the privileged few? Becca Thomas, Creative Director of New Practice (part of Civic Group), brings this refreshing perspective our latest episode.
"A building isn't anything until you put people in it," says Becca. This simple yet profound statement encapsulates her human-centered approach to creating spaces that truly work for diverse communities. As an architect who proudly admits she'd be happy never designing another façade, Becca focuses instead on how people use spaces and making them accessible to everyone.
The conversation explores the true meaning of placemaking – that sweet spot where considerate urban design meets the authentic needs of citizens. We also delve into Becca's preference for retrofit and renovation over new builds, and her vision for vibrant ground-floor spaces filled with "super risky, weird stuff" instead of corporate chains.
Join us for a conversation that will change how you see the buildings and spaces around you.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Reagency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Becca Thomas, creative Director of New Practice, part of the Civic Group, who is an architect, placemaker and passionate advocate of projects that deliver social value to communities.
Speaker 3:So Becca works on built environment projects at a wide range of scales, from pavilions I love a pavilion Public realm works, renovations, creative workspaces, cultural and community buildings, art hubs. In 2019, becca was appointed to the Glasgow Urban Design Panel and in 2021, was made a trustee of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. So, becca, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Damma and myself. Thanks for having me Fabulous. So, before we go deep, dive deep into placemaking and engaging the communities, it'd be nice to kick things off with just a personal note, really. So what drives new practice and you personally to do things differently to other players in your field? I?
Speaker 4:think for me, the thing that architecture can do really well is touch a lot of lives.
Speaker 4:So, you know, when you think about architecture, I think a lot of people think about, you know, the bougie houses or the kind of one-off spaces that, like maybe four or five people get to enjoy, and for me, the thing that I really love doing is creating spaces that are going to work for kind of everyone and that a lot of people will get to experience. So, whether I do that through kind of a community conversation, trying to get people into the decision making side of a project you know, an urban scale, city scale or whether we're talking about, when we are talking about architecture, whether talking about reuse of existing buildings that people already have a connection to, that already is in their story, and that we're making better, like those are the ways I want to do architecture. I want architecture that, um, yeah, speaks to as many people as possible and it's something they can actually touch and get involved in and, like, truly have ownership of and empowerment within, yeah, whether that's a city or a building dear god, that doesn't sound like any architect I've met before.
Speaker 3:What's what? What is, what is this alien thing?
Speaker 2:well, becca, that's, that's impressive what do you think about human stories and inclusivity and accessibility something like that? I?
Speaker 3:thought humans mess buildings up. They're annoying, aren't they? No?
Speaker 4:No, see, this is the problem. I see so many architects take the final picture of their building and there's no one in it. Like a building, isn't? I mean, it's just a thing until you put people in it, so the end user that's true of cities, it's true of buildings, it's true of all the bits that we build around us. So you put people in them, they're just stuff. But once they've got people in them, those end users, they're the thing that makes them come alive, right.
Speaker 2:I think that's the first, steve, because for the first time one of our guests just gives us the big quotation just in the beginning and now we're just oh God, what are we going to say more about this? But let's deep dive on it, because it is clear that placemaking is in the heart of new practice, and we hear that a lot placemaking in different contexts actually. So could you just elaborate this a little bit and tell us what is placemaking in different contexts actually? So could you just elaborate this a little bit and tell us what is placemaking really?
Speaker 4:It's a huge question because I think placemaking.
Speaker 4:I think it's one of those words we all use and we maybe have our own version of what we think that is. For me, placemaking is the point where, like, considering the end user, the people of the city, the, the citizens, whatever we want to call them and the urban design that's where they come together. So it's again that that point. You know, a place isn't a place without people, it's just a space. So we're not space making, we're really considering who is going to be using it, how they want use it and what they need to get out of that, and that makes it a place. So, yeah, it's urban design, but really considerate and inclusive urban design.
Speaker 3:That's an excellent definition. So all of you urban design, planning and architecture students listening to this podcast can now make sure you captured that. Don't try and get it through ai, just use what becca just said. It's the right answer. And so now, now that we've nailed placemaking, which I did I wasn't sure whether we're going to get there, but we did. Um, let's go on to another sort of signatures of new practice. I'm here drinking out of my uh women who changed the world mug, uh, which I I feel is appropriate for this next question. Um, so, your practice of inclusive design and that's another one of those phrases that gets knocked around and kicked around like a ball in the park um, for example, designing places and spaces for women and girls, which I actually think is really interesting. Play space, play spaces and parks and their design, for example. And uh, girls is interesting. And but if you were in campaign, if you're able to write a bit of a mini manifesto on this becca, a manifesto for inclusive design, what would it say?
Speaker 4:I think inclusive design is about compromise, because we can't make everyone get everything they need, and so at the moment, we build worlds that work really well. If you are able-bodied, if you've got privilege, if it's easy for you to move around it, we do it pretty well. But for me, the inclusive design step is understanding where other needs are going to come into that. So that's everything from you know like occasionally I have to push a buggy around town. That isn't always accounted for in the street design. So the inclusive design isn't just those little things. It's also, then, considering every type of disability, every different user, and we're all different users of our cities. We all have our own requirements and our own needs. So inclusive design is the compromise of trying to make it work for as many people as possible so that our cities aren't actively disabling people and I really do think that it comes down to that, like understanding of a social model of disability and a social model of inclusion.
Speaker 4:So the the place can be disabling, it's the space that's disabling and the world that's disabling, not necessarily what your body can do, what you need to do in that world. So, yeah, thinking really carefully about what the compromise is and knowing that we're going to make the end goal might not be a place that works for everyone, but it'll be a space that works the best it can for as many of those people as possible so sorry, can I just come back?
Speaker 3:I know you want it, you've got one, but I want to come back on that becca because I'd like to challenge you a little bit if you don't mind, and we're not. We tend to be a very agreeable podcast, but I I just on that do we have to frame because where this is also about our podcast, often about comms right and communications and the message Do we have to frame what you've just described as a compromise, or can we reframe what you just said as a position of strength, resilience and perhaps excellence?
Speaker 4:I think we can, and also I think we have to, to tell the right story. I think the truth is we'll be having conversations around compromise and who's going to get what and what needs will be met first. But I think, in terms of telling the story and making sure that narrative says you are welcome here, this is a space for you. That I don't. I don't think they, I don't think they compete. I think that they're aimed at different audiences.
Speaker 2:She's good right, I know they're aimed at different audiences. She's good, right, I know. Okay. So I'm gonna go off script a little bit too, because you are opening some uh windows for me to look at and peek into your brain.
Speaker 2:Um, when you talk about inclusive design and designing places or cities that determine how we live, it just rings a bell with something else. When we talk about communications and when we talk about our vocabulary, we always say that the vocabulary you use also frames the way you think. So I think it's a bit similar in the architecture, and correct me if I'm wrong. So when I look at that story of architecture and urban design, I see that for ages, as humans, we have designed big cities, big buildings, big everything that will dominate us and show the strength and the power in quotation marks, because no one is seeing me yet now but now we are talking about designing new cities that will enable us to live in a more equal way of life, to give more chances to everyone and to include every part of the society. So in that cycle, what do you think changed and tripped the scale towards a better world?
Speaker 4:That's a big question, but I think it's part of other things that are happening. So when you start, you move. I mean, we're on I don't know what wave of feminism now, but you move through these waves where other people gain power. So you're, you know, the master architect is a white Roman dude, right, that's who the master architect is. And then they get to make lots of decisions and then they have lots of power and then you give into.
Speaker 4:Their voice isn't the only voice, and for a long time we've had lots of voices, you know, largely white men and white women in the Western world making those decisions. And then we're moving into a world where more and more people have space and can take space, and I think that's the change, because no one's expecting to be able or to have to take a backseat. So you're getting into a space where equity more generally and access more generally, within education, within all these other spaces, is then making sure that we build cities in that way, so that cities then have to meet this need that's coming from people, from its communities.
Speaker 2:Well, great, and from abstract to the application and the daily life I have to come, but I really want to keep up this conversation. So let's talk about communities and the idea of co-designing new projects, hand in hand with engaged local partners. What's your approach to engagement and how does it strengthen the outcomes of the project? How do you hear more voices in your projects by recognizing when I need?
Speaker 4:to shut up. No, that's a very pithy answer. Um, the. I think the.
Speaker 4:For me, the engagement stuff is central. Right, the conversation as an architect, when I'm the designer. So we work in two ways one where we're the designer and one where we are a consultant advising the designers. So when we're working as the designer, in my view my architecture is made better by starting into conversation. So I rarely start a project by drawing.
Speaker 4:I start a conversation by talking to the people who are going to use the building. So that is normally within spaces that are already kind of in use. So, figuring out what works, what doesn't work, what people like, what they don't like, what they need to see continue, what are the like, social and cultural histories that they've like, gathered and built over years that we then need to make sure our architecture doesn't obliterate. A lot of ways the kind of renovation space can be, um, can be quite, can say, like you know, get out of this building for two years and then when you come back it'll look completely different, it'll feel completely different. That's a good thing. It's now going to last for another hundred years, but also it doesn't feel like yours anymore. So the conversation is about trying to figure out what the bits are that will still make it feel like yours when I hand it back as the architect, so yours when I hand it back as the architect. So that's one type of conversation, is where my pen is kind of being guided by the conversation. And then the other type of conversation is where we're a consultant advising someone else so a bigger architect, an engineering firm, a contractor, a local authority, national government, someone in that sphere and we're talking about city scale projects, usually urban scale projects and in that sphere and we're talking about city scale projects, usually urban scale projects and in that place my I think my role is to sit as a translator between that technical team, the client team and design teams and people who generally don't speak the same languages.
Speaker 4:I thought it was really interesting you already brought that up this sense of like. We all have our own languages in our own professions, in our own worlds, in our own neighborhoods, in our own communities. We build language that works for how we need to use it daily and then we get kind of confronted by something that's completely outside of our normal, our day-to-day and for most people, people, most people don't have any understanding of how cities are built. They don't understand the all the different constraints that are coming together to build a city, and my job is to help them understand enough that they can make truly genuinely help us make decisions for their city. And so much that's about setting out what the boundaries are.
Speaker 4:I think this is really really important when it comes to co-design and engagement is being super honest about where the boundaries are that they can't touch, like this is going to go here, or this piece of road, this piece of infrastructure, this piece of civic square this is going to exist in roughly this space because it can't move, and here's the reasons it can't move. And we need to put in SUDs, active travel infrastructure, we need to reduce parking. All those need to happen because that is what is happening and how we make our city better. We're not going to have an argument here about whether we've got car parking or not. That's already been decided. What we are going to talk about is how are you going to move through this space? What do you need from this space? What other things can we get into this space, this place, that will help your life be better?
Speaker 4:That's the conversation, and then that comes into design conversations. So, in those spaces, what we're doing is gathering a breadth, a really broad range of opinions some people who love what's going to happen and some people who loathe it and the goal is to not bring them to consensus, because I think consensus is a lie. I don't think it's possible, particularly on an urban scale. On an urban scale, I don't think it's possible. I think we all have too many, um, we have too many needs individually that I don't think could be brought together. But if most people are mostly happy with what's going to happen on a city scale, I think we've done a really, really good job consensus is a lie.
Speaker 3:You should have that on a t-shirt, becca I don't think, I don't think I'm going to pass my clients I also also for um listeners who aren't aware of the technical vernacular suds are not fluffy bits of washing water full of bubbles, but are sustainable urban drainage schemes. Um. So you were dangerously close to um championing built environment democracy. There. I would say um and I I think it's a fascinating bit of a bit of the discourse to use a technical term um, because the um, when you look at how we are changing our places and spaces and cities and our homes and our buildings and and and I think an awful lot about um how we get to zero carbon and how we achieve a much safer future climate, and that's a huge transition.
Speaker 3:I think we're already learning that if you don't have a really healthy and honest dialogue with people on the journey there, they're going to kick off. They'll come back at you hard and go. Why are these planters at the end of my street telling me I can't drive my I mean, admittedly ridiculous 4x4 car, but why can't I drive my car through there? And I think the idea of a dialogue around all of that is absolutely vital on all scales, not just some of the schemes you're talking about, but literally how we create our sort of socio-technical and political future. So, while given that I've driven us down the environmental cul-de-sac low-traffic neighborhood route, you've done some great retrofit projects and I wanted to use that just to get a sense from you your environmental take on, your practice and how you have a sustainable and positive impact on places and the planet in the projects you do. What's your take on retrofit right now? You talked a minute ago about renovation and that process. Give us a bit more of a picture there. Retrofit's my favorite way of building.
Speaker 4:You're not a proper architect. I'm not a proper architect at all. I tend not to do new buildings. I also tend to build really, really slowly. So we, as a practice, we are on building. I think we've done three in 15 years Average about one every five years. I'm due for another one coming up very soon.
Speaker 4:But I think that for me is about being sustainable as an architect. So my practice because we do all these different things we do community engagement. You know we think about strategy and planning a lot. We work within a meanwhile space use and so that means that Our architecture is really considered and really careful and that means it's slow and that is sustainable. And then we add another layer onto that is that we focus on retrofit and reuse rather than new build. Actually, if I never have to design a facade in my whole life the outside I will be very happy. Facades never been my favorite bit, but figuring out how people use the bit in the middle and make that work and make it easy to do what you need to do in that building, love that bit could do that bit forever. Um, so how do you? Yeah, so that that means I'm an architect who does reuse and we think then carefully about buildings.
Speaker 4:I'm not a conservation architect but that doesn't mean we don't work with conservation buildings. We we don't take a heritage type approach and also we sit in. I think we sit quite luckily. We are obviously now part of Civic, but we've always practiced from Scotland, primarily Glasgow, and working into England and Wales, the kind of political and financial backdrop in Scotland for doing community-led reuse projects, particularly in the community buildings, leisure and kind of arts and creative practice-led space workspaces. That is easier in some ways in Scotland because there's political will behind communities buying buildings and owning buildings and managing buildings themselves, the Scottish government.
Speaker 4:There's a couple of pieces of legislation that are different in Scotland the Community Empowerment Act, which for one puts community democracy, shared decision making, front and centre of most decision making practices in Scotland and also allows communities to buy buildings that are held by the public purse that are not being used well.
Speaker 4:So in that space you can then start to really think quite cleverly and carefully about how you work as an architect, what buildings you get involved with and how they all kind of go towards a single goal. So yeah, I think sustainability for me is making, is genuinely making good decisions about how we practice, not just at a building scale. Then when you get to the building scale, then you have to think about how I make energy, how do I use energy, what am I doing? What are my material choices? Can I make this better? How will I inevitably make something worse, and I have to work against that? But the the primary function there is to make sure that I'm practicing in a way that feels sustainable, and then I can make all the best choices as I go along.
Speaker 2:Wow. Well, my next question was beginning with now. Imagine you have a magic wand, but the minute you said that you have never made a facade in your life, oh my God, that's an architect with a magic wand. Where did you find it? But I'm going to ask anyway. So imagine you had the biggest magic wand in the world. What would be?
Speaker 4:your dream built environment that you'd love to be engaged to deliver hand-in-hand with the local people. I think for me that I walk past a lot of empty spaces, empty shop units, empty sites. In the city centre of Glasgow there are still a lot of brownfield sites that haven't been developed. So for me I would take on some of those enormous challenges and try and make sure we have, like I think we should potentially have a city centre. We should be building densely, we should be making places that people want to end up, but for me, thinking really carefully about what the ground floor of the city looks like and how it gets activated, that's the bit where I would want that to be.
Speaker 4:You know, I don't want these new developments to have, you know, a Starbucks and a Tesco on the bottom.
Speaker 4:I want that to be.
Speaker 4:You know, in all the visualizations we show a lovely little green grocers and we show a really lovely magazine shop and we've got I don't know an independent coffee shop.
Speaker 4:And then, when it comes to it, the actual like, the financing and the risk management side of it comes in and someone's like well, it has to be a 25-year lease, so only Caffe Nero can sign it. So for me, the magic wand, I think, would be financial. Not only would it clear up some of the funding routes so we'd get lots of investment into the site and it's going to be beautiful, but also at the end we wouldn't be stuck with this kind of risk estates, risk-led approach to how we actually make the city and how we actually live in that city. So I would allow for super risky, super weird stuff to happen in the ground floor, because I think that's where you get a really bold, bright city that's full of stuff people want to engage with Weird little art spaces, lovely cafes, small businesses that can come up through it, and the architecture is just a way to hold all of that beautiful.
Speaker 3:I love that. So there you go. Just a reminder for those if you're if any finance, people are listening when you're signing off. If there's a visualization of a tesco express or sainsbury's local as the ground floor animation of the scheme, then shame on you, shame, shame on you. Anyway, so it's been great talking to you. We've got one last question for you. So our network is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we know that we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place or person always makes you smile that's a really good one.
Speaker 4:I mean I would be remiss as a parent to not say my three-year-old, but like she only makes me smile some other time, um, I think the sort of places that make me smile are ones where I can sit and enjoy the place that really genuinely makes me smile. This is, I'm very conceited, is a building we completed a couple of years ago, the space on the top floor. Whenever I go up there it just is amazing. So the building is Kinning Park Complex, which is a community group, a community organisation in the south side of Glasgow, and we did the renovation of their school building, one of those lovely projects where I'd been a building user and then we knew they were getting an architect. So I'd been like I'm not actually technically an architect yet, I haven't passed my part three, but I could probably be your architect, would that be all right?
Speaker 4:And then we worked through with that community to get to three million pounds of funding and do a proper kind of reuse project. And do a proper kind of reuse project. And we've been able to do some things there that I thought about doing for a long time, about using colour and wayfinding. So you don't have to listen, you have to read English to move through the building, which is really important for the building users, and the top floor is bright yellow, which I love, and it's got this amazing roof light and it's just a lovely space to be in, and also I got to paint the ceiling dark blue and it just feels really cozy for being this like big civic type space, circulation space, um, and that that is a building that genuinely makes me really happy well, I think, damla, I know you're in ist, not in the UK, but maybe a little day trip.
Speaker 1:Please.
Speaker 2:Pretty please.
Speaker 3:I love it. Well, I think, a nice little brand placement of Civic in your final response there can I just say Goodness me, anyway. So, becca, honestly, that was a wonderful conversation. I think I sneakily expected you to be a different kind of architect and you are. So that's amazing. I think a facade is okay. If you want to have a crack at one, I could probably manage it. I think you know. I mean, we could talk about which kind of facade you're going to lean towards. I'm hoping wood.
Speaker 4:Probably timber. I'd love to see properly done green facades in the UK, but I think technology isn't quite working for a UK climate.
Speaker 3:I've seen a design for an oak-clad car park in Carlisle. That looked quite lovely. That could be sweet, but it is a car park. I know exactly, and I don't like cars, so that's not good. Anyway, there you go. Oh, I said the I don't like cars thing out. Loud.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I bring that out in people.
Speaker 3:Right, listen, that's been amazing. We are well over time. Damna, do you want to wrap us up?
Speaker 2:Well, thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people just like Becca, about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, becca, damla, see you soon.
Speaker 2:Bye, bye.
Speaker 1:Good Geist A Bye Bye. Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability Hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
