Happold Lecture Take 2

Friday saw Robin Nicholson reprise his CIC Ted Happold Medal Lecture for Cullinan Studio and guests during a wine and cheese evening at Cullinans' canal-side office. Speeding through the last 25 years of the construction industry, Robin's lecture hinged on his experience of various landmark construction industry reports, taskforces and forums.
 

Throughout the talk, a common theme picked out by Robin was an increasing change of bias evident in each report, shifting towards a focus on the client and end user. This goes hand-in-hand with the more socially-driven agenda that has emerged at the forefront of sustainable practice.

 

 

For Robin, the 1994 Latham Report ('Constructing the Team') signalled the first time members of the construction industry created a "public interest manifesto", rather than a self-serving industry report. Four years later, the "industry-shaking" Egan Report ('Rethinking Construction') championed the concept of demonstration projects in order to better assimilate lessons learnt throughout the construction process - another move in favour of client and user. As well as this, Robin described the Egan Report as a significant "early stumbling" into sustainability. How much these projects realistically impacted upon future good practice is up for debate, however they made clear the complexity of true change in the industry.

But Robin maintains the future should be bright. From the optimistic Paul Morrell notion that "design is free if there is a 10% building performance improvement", to the presence of think tanks such as EDGE which continue to debate industry progress and direction , to the smartening of practice through BIM, its clear that attitudes are evolving. Success and sustainability will lie in properly seeing concepts through in practice - in Robin's words "now we just need to do it!"



Further reading:

- The Carbon Tracker Initiative's report "Unburnable Carbon 2013" which few audience members had come across.

- Zero Carbon Britain 2013 report: Robin noted that the Zero Carbon Britain launch had a very poor representation from the construction industry.

- EDGE 2013 report

 

 

Launch of Cullinan Studio

Since Ted Cullinan set up the practice as a cooperative in 1965, we were 'Edward Cullinan Architects'. Today we changed our name to 'Cullinan Studio': we are the same people, Ted still works with us and we continue to operate as an employee-owned architects' practice.

Our move to new studios in October this year seemed like a good time to change our name to reflect the wider scope of services we provide than the term 'Architects' suggests. Ted's philosophy and design approach has infused the practice's work, methodology and cooperative structure - the name 'Cullinan' has come to represent a way of doing things - a culture. 'Cullinan Studio' reflects this.

Yesterday evening we had a party to launch our new offices and new name, where we also launched an anthology we have created about what inspires us, who we are and where we are.

A big thank you to: Global Generation who provided the food, which was all sourced locally to London; artist Bobby Lloyd, who created the art installation 'Choreographies', which was a response to the internal re-workings of the space from artists' studios and gallery into our work space; Calverts who printed the anthology; and Jonathan Marfleet and friends for providing the hospitality.

Thank you also to everyone who came along and made it a very enjoyable evening.

Here are a few photos from the night:

After giving a speech about the new office and our new name, Roddy Langmuir invites the guests to join in a game to celebrate collaboration

 Global Generation preparing the delicious food