Leverage: Diversity as a disruptor in construction
Danna Walker, the founder of UK notfor-profit Built By Us, and Andy Fergus, Melbourne-based urban designer and design advocate, are passionate about increasing diversity in the architecture and construction sector and finding leverage in roles outside of traditional practice. Emma Williamson asked Walker and Fergus about the role that architecture has played in each of their lives and how it can prompt the sector to think in a different way to achieve greater social impact.
Emma Williamson: How did you start out in architecture and where has it taken you?
Andy Fergus: I came to architecture as an outsider, from a background studying planning. However, after working for a few years as a graduate, I found myself much more engaged with the spatial implications of policy.
It was only after volunteering with the Robin Boyd Foundation that the public advocacy aspect of design drew me back to study architecture. But my studies were mostly a source of personal frustration. I spent most of my classes debating with tutors and resisting the pressure to disregard my planning DNA in favour of form-making.
I was lucky to be taught by Rory Hyde around the time that his book Future Practice1 was published. Rory demonstrated an expanded conception of practice where hybridity was an asset. On reflection, this gave me the confidence to pursue an alternate pathway.
Danna Walker: In the UK, construction is still quite male-dominated – we’re talking about 12–13 percent women. In architecture, you’re looking at around 29 percent
(who are on the register). I’d started as an electrician, so it was something I’d seen through my entire career, and I could see it also had an impact on decision-making around the table. Who holds the pen?
Who makes decisions? Does architecture truly impact people who aren’t part of that discussion about what an inclusive built environment can be?
When I completed my undergraduate, back in ’97, we were coming into a recession in the UK that was affecting Europe. For someone with my background – who didn’t have the connections, didn’t have the network, didn’t come from a professional kind of family – it was terrifying. I spent all this time and money to be able to do this course. I was the first one in my family to go to university. I was thinking: Goodness, what am I going to do?
I was very excited when I got my first job working on big housing and education projects. I noticed there were already people in there who were saying, “We can do this differently.” For me, that’s what I feel we’re engaged to do – always questioning, always being curious, always pushing for something to be reframed.
I officially registered Built By Us (BBU) as an organization in 2015 and then started in 2016. Public Practice [a not-for-profit and social enterprise working to improve the equity and quality of public spaces by increasing and supporting the diversity of expertise in the public sector] started ever so slightly later, and I was asked to join the board soon after.
With BBU, I was looking at this in terms of an inclusive built environment – not only the mix of people who work in the built environment, but also builtenvironment outcomes. For me, it was really about how to make the best use of resources and engage diverse talent. We have an issue around representation in the construction sector. London is one
of the most diverse cities in the world; however, when you look at our built-environment professionals and practitioners, they tend to come from quite a narrow demographic.
EW: How has architecture influenced the work that you do?
DW: I found being an architect really informed my approach to building anything, [including] a business. I didn’t realize at the time how good a training it is, in problem-solving and critical thinking. In practice, I was moving at speed, working to deadlines on large projects, juggling a series of different stakeholders and actors. It wasn’t until I left practice that I realized, “Oh, actually, these skills are transferable …”
Everything that I’ve learned – like the ability to take something from a blank piece of paper to an output, a product and an outcome – has really served me well. It informs the approach that I take with a lot of decisions through BBU.
I am a doer, so it’s important to me that it’s much more than a debate. For me, that’s what architectural education really gave me – that questioning of why is something like that and what can we do to address it? I’m constantly asking: How do we re-engineer past processes and past styles? We’re dealing with a mixture of problems that, in terms of social inequity, have been with us for quite some time.
AF: Architecture has influenced me mostly as a process of enquiry and exploration. Learning how to research, synthesize, speculate, test, refine, communicate – that’s the value of architecture. Spending time with user experience (UX) designers has influenced me greatly – learning how to communicate precisely the value of design processes and explaining the value of spending time articulating a problem and getting a brief right. I wish that was taught at uni. Since leaving the public sector, I have found myself often designing processes to get the best out of architects. Design can be at its most powerful when explained as a knowable, step-by-step process that can, in the most cynical sense, ensure that you get the least-worst (or best) outcome.
EW: How would you describe yourself?
AF: I can’t use the term “architect” because I’m not registered, so I guess I would call myself a “design advocate.” But that can also be limiting because “design,” for me, is broader than the way the typical person might conceive of it.
In addition to my own practice and teaching, I have recently shifted speed from my previous public sector role at the City of Melbourne into working for Assemble Communities as the
Head of Urban Design. Assemble is an ethical developer with a strong focus on communities and is currently going through a major growth phase. They asked the question: “What does philanthropic affordable housing look like without reliance on subsidy in the Australian context?” Through engaging with some really clever financial thinkers, they have designed a system to deliver moderateand low-income rental housing, backed by superannuation funds.
Coming from the public sector, where the “public interest” is at the forefront, it is this ethical investment that I find exciting, as it drives a strong agenda. An aspiration for sustainable design and socially vibrant precincts is driven by the financial imperatives.
It’s rare that a developer would engage someone like me in-house.
Through my role at the City of Melbourne, I was given the opportunity to engage in public talks and advocacy, which allowed me to have a really clear and outspoken agenda around the public interest in cities. Rather than seeing this as a liability, Assemble has seen this as aligned with their agenda. For me, working in the development sector perversely feels like a natural extension of practising
in the public sector – but there are also opportunities to explore ideas that aren’t possible within government.
DW: I tend to talk more about what BBU’s mission is rather than about myself.
Our mission is to make a more inclusive built environment. The way that we do that is to take a holistic approach. We look at the ecosystem of people [within the industry], in terms of their careers – whether you’re in the early stages, whether you’re progressing, whether you are starting your own business. Then, we look at how the industry works currently. We work with existing businesses that are also thinking about how they want to make changes and become more inclusive and diverse.
For me, it’s never enough just to look at it as a diversity issue. Without inclusion, it makes no sense and it doesn’t work. A holistic approach leads us to several types of intervention that run in parallel – they feed each other. It’s interesting how sometimes people describe it back to me and say, “Ah, you’re building connections and bridges between all these different kinds of actors, so that they can foster change.” Yeah. That’s what I do.
EW: Why is diversity important to you?
DW: One of the first things I wrote for a BBU blog was a piece about diversity being the disruption that construction needed. I think there’s something really interesting about having a sector that, for the most part, has drawn skills from a very particular place and never really questioned it. Every now and then someone says, “Why aren’t there many women?”
And the response is, “Well, you know, they’re not really interested, so we’ll just carry on.” On and on and on it goes.
I think diversity really is an opportunity for the sector to reflect on what it does and to make some serious changes, in terms of how it operates – which can be everything from processes to business models, to the way you look after people, and how you think about the people that you work with, and who you collaborate with. That’s just as important as architecture with a capital A.
Wanting to make a social impact is something that we see growing.
A lot of people who take part in Public Practice do so because they see it as an opportunity to think in a completely different way; a way that’s not just about commercial outcomes. It’s also about how you foster change and create spaces for everyone.
AF: Diversity is critical to ensure that we understand the communities we are working within. More than 67 percent of the City of Melbourne’s population were born overseas2 – however, there is limited diversity in public design roles. You run the risk of having a narrow band of professionals designing spaces for diverse communities that they may not understand. How can we know what they need? You can’t design for diversity without embedding diversity in the design team. That’s obvious.
I think models like Public Practice are crucial to increasing the diversity of the next generation of public sector designers. The emphasis on ensuring that new “associates” reflect the demographic diversity of a local council area is spot-on. And in a city with small-town syndrome like Melbourne, where it’s all about who you know, disrupting that conveyor belt to inject diversity quotas will enable the next generation – and shake up organizations that typically haven’t been marked by diversity.
EW: Where do you find the levers to influence outcomes?
AF: In the context of limited local research and development in the design industry, it is often our role to be cross-cultural translators for ideas generated outside of our borders in a way that’s appropriate to place. At the same time, we have so much to learn from our own culture, communities and their experiences. We need institutions like Public Practice to bring those two things together – connecting local communities with global best practice.
I feel we have a public sector design culture that is fragmented and at risk of stagnating. It’s time we looked at what an alternative system of enabling public-interest design outcomes might look like. Public Practice is alluring because of the measurable evidence of its impact. But we need to understand what translates to our local situation. In my view, this is independence from politics; financial self-sufficiency; and networking platforms to coordinate work produced by designers across the City [of Melbourne] to build a kind of collective intelligence. The possibilities of this could be really fabulous.
EW: How do you measure impact?
DW: What we measure at the moment is the impact on the individual. So, we can certainly see, when we’re working with individuals, whether they come back and say, “I’ve made a change. I’ve got a job. I’ve got training. I’ve started a new business. I’ve grown in confidence.” And for the organizations, it’s about wanting to see a change in the way that they’re approaching and thinking about things. In the workshops and training that we run, we’re getting immediate evaluation back. Our role is to create connections between individuals and organizations and see what comes out of it, and it’s incredibly exciting. There’s a ripple effect beyond our expectations of what the projects do – and that’s part of the reason that we do them, because they have an impact. They transform.
— Danna Walker is the founder of Built By Us, a not-for-profit that pairs workplaces within the construction sector with diverse talent. She is also a board member of Public Practice.
— Andy Fergus is based in Melbourne and splits his time between Assemble Communities, his own practice and teaching. He is currently running a studio at Monash that is preparing several white papers on the applicability of the Public Practice model to Melbourne.
— Emma Williamson is a founding principal of The Fulcrum Agency, a creative consultancy that leverages community and social outcomes through evidence-based design thinking, advocacy and research.
Footnotes
1. Rory Hyde, Future Practice: Conversations from the Edge of Architecture (Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2012).
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016 Census Quickstats (Melbourne City), quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au (accessed 24 February 2021).