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Photography Competition

The BCO’s photography competition is back, with fantastic cash prizes for the lucky winners! If you are joining us in Manchester this June, you could be in with a chance of winning by entering your best photographs from the event.

As an inclusive competition, open to all conference attendees from all disciplines and skill levels, we’ve made it easier than ever to take part, with a choice of three entry options:

• Instagram with the hashtag #LeadingLightManchester
• The conference app (available soon)
• Or, by e-mailing mail@bco.org.uk

Take a look at some Instagram inspiration from around Manchester:

Amy Leech, tp bennett (Chair)
Francesca Harrison, Ryder Architecture (Vice Chair)

Tom Giddings, Rider Levett Bucknall
Joseph Lazell, Atelier Ten
Danielle Ford, Dalbergia Group
James Thorneycroft, Arup
Jamie Risner, Arup
Molly Macaulay, Overbury Plc
Charlotte Wild, Bruntwood
Richard Mitchell, Savills
Emma Bramley, Cartwright Pickard Architects (photo coming soon).

The BCO’s photography competition is back, with fantastic cash prizes for the lucky winners! If you’re attending the BCO’s annual conference in Manchester this June, you could stand a chance of winning up to £1000 by entering your best photographs from the event.

As an inclusive competition open to all BCO Conference attendees, from all disciplines and skill levels, this year we’ve made it easier than ever to enter, either via:

Meet the esteemed panel behind the competition, as they share what they’ll be looking out for in your submissions:

Patricia de Isidoro is a Spanish artist and architect based in London, where she has been residing since 2005, developing her art practice and producing a number of large art installations. She has also led the design of a number of complex, large-scale architectural schemes and has worked on international projects in Madrid, Milan and London.

Both an artist and architect, the perception of space is a fundamental aspect of Patricia’s practice. Perhaps the epitome of her work is 245 Hammersmith Road, a large commercial office building that she not only helped to design as an architect, but she also created a site-specific artwork installation – with the client commissioning her largest work to date ‘3000 threads 3000 hands’ which crowns the main reception space.

Patricia’s ethos towards creativity lies in her belief in the ‘synthesis of the Arts’. Her curiosity in the creative process and her playful approach to experimentation leads her to a multidisciplinary approach in her practice. To her, there are no boundaries between disciplines, only opportunities to expand the work without limits.

Through her art and the act of storytelling, she hopes to evoke powerful feelings in and inspire a deeper connection with the observer by communicating the poetic aspect of life.

Mark Kowal, RIBA, Partner, Sheppard Robson, BCO President, 2022 Manchester Conference Chair

Mark Kowal has over 25 years of experience designing offices. His expertise covers speculative and headquarters buildings, as well as both new-build and refurbishment solutions. He recently worked on 245 Hammersmith Road, which integrates a series of new public spaces, Building 2 at the Future Works development in Slough, and on the Siemens Middle East Headquarters in Abu Dhabi.

Having been recently appointed to the role of BCO president, Mark is well-placed to observe the great disruption and change that office life is going through. As such, he understands the need to re-think or re-set the office of the future – the focal point of this year’s conference.

For this year’s photography competition, Mark decided to put Manchester, a cosmopolitan modern powerhouse, in the spotlight with the ‘Leading Light Manchester’ theme. He hopes that participants will share their unique perspectives on the city’s architecture, vibrant arts and culture, and capture Manchester’s distinctive essence in their submissions.

“A pointer I would give to anyone thinking of taking part: Look for a unique angle in order to tell a story – go beyond the individual photograph in order to communicate Manchester’s relationship with space and time.”

Robin Brodie Cooper, Director, Gleeds, BCO, immediate past president

In his capacity as the BCO’s long-time Treasurer and previous president, Robin Brodie Cooper has built a deep understanding of the office industry. He has been with Gleeds for almost 35 years now and has risen to become an Equity Partner, holding numerous directorships within the company.

Focusing on the commercial aspects of the City of London, Robin has recently worked on delivering 52 Lime Street (also known as The Scalpel) and 10 Fen Court, celebrated for its rooftop public garden. Robin is the Honorary Treasurer of The City Architecture Forum.

While Covid disrupted the 2020 BCO Conference, Robin chaired a virtual – or partly virtual –conference later in the year which explored the future of the post-Covid workplace. A keen ‘Instaman’ himself, Robin has an appreciation for artistic still life photography and joins the panel this year eager to see which buildings entrants will select and how they take on the challenge of showcasing the structure’s most aesthetically pleasing parts.

Alex Lawlor, an Associate Director at Faithful+Gould, works within the corporate real estate sector delivering office fit-out and refurbishment projects for clients and occupiers across London. With an array of nominations and accolades under her belt, she received the Atkins’ President’s Award in 2018, was a finalist for BCO NextGen Rising Star L&SE in 2019, and was awarded the Faithful+Gould’s Employee of the Year in 2019. Her diverse qualifications in project management, structural engineering and architecture, coupled with a personal interest in photography, make her the perfect panelist for this competition. She has a keen appreciation for creative design and an eye for detail.

Vasiliki Bowler is a Senior Project Manager at Faithful+Gould. She represents their Corporate Real Estate Forum and digital services and specialises in client and stakeholder management, building prosperous relationships around her. Having recently been awarded the CIOB Rising Star Award, she now acts as a mentor and supports professional development within Faithful+Gould as an APC supervisor and guest assessor. Vasiliki has always had a passion for the arts including visualisations, graphics, and photography, appreciating its power to generate emotion and dialogue.

Giles Martin joined WilkinsonEyre in 2004 and has since led a number of the practice’s high-profile commercial projects. He is inspired by precise construction detailing and material technology and is intrigued by the possibilities of developing these themes on large, complex urban developments.

At the heart of Giles’s design approach is the use of contemporary systems and new materials to add an important dimension to the design repertoire – one that results in enhancing the experience of architecture in people’s lives.

Giles took home the 1st place prize at the last BCO Conference photography competition with his winning entry of Maersk Tower whilst exploring the architectural views at the conference in Copenhagen. The 2019 panel praised his photograph’s composition, calling his entry ‘visually delicious.’

As our Annual Conference in Manchester nears, the NextGen are excited to invite you to an evening of drinks and dancing at Manchester’s Freight Island on Tuesday 14 June from 8pm onwards.

Whilst the conference is now fully booked, all NextGen members – delegates or not – are invited to attend the NextGen ‘After party’, which will be a fantastic opportunity to meet and mingle with friends and colleagues.

We will provide a few drinks, food, and entertainment, just bring yourself and enjoy a taste of Manchester’s vibrant night life!

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to connect with your NextGen community, get your tickets here and come celebrate this past year’s achievements with us.

One of the most-quoted statistics on the impact of embodied carbon in the built environment is that 80 percent of the buildings we’ll need by 2050 already exist. This provides a clear rationale for the reuse and retrofit of existing buildings; however, as the redevelopment of city office buildings continues at a rapid pace, there are many examples where keeping existing buildings isn’t seen as a viable option – whether that’s for financial, structural or various other reasons. This conflict leads to fierce debate and friction between carbon and commercial aspirations and priorities.

The principles of circularity may provide a resolution to this debate. When viewed from a circular mindset, existing buildings have much to offer, and by designing adaptable, demountable structures, we have an opportunity to sustainably extend the lifespan of buildings and their materials.

To further understand and explore these opportunities, BCO Nextgen brought together a panel of industry experts working at the forefront of circularity. These included Rachel Hoolahan (Sustainability Coordinator at Orms), Steve Gilchrist (Project Director at Grosvenor), Andrea Charlson (Commercial Manager and Built Environment Lead at ReLondon), and Laura Batty (Structural Engineer and Associate at Heyne Tillett Steel).

Rachel Hoolahan set the challenge at Orms to aim for at least one deep sustainability assignment on each project. This design-research mentality is leading to innovation that unlocks circular economy opportunities. During the panel discussions, she raised the challenges and questions brought to light during the redevelopment of 160 Old Street, a former Royal Mail sorting office.

The project achieved a 70 percent uplift in net internal area through a reconfiguration and extension, while retaining 76 percent of the existing structure, saving nearly 3,000 tons of CO₂emissions. The key challenge, however, was ensuring the additional floorplates were flexible and of a high-quality, as expected in a new building. Although the retention and extension of the existing structure had the biggest carbon savings, it was in the selection, specification and design of new elements that needed the most challenging. Hoolahan gave the example of the ceramic sinks in the washrooms, which could be “easily uninstalled, disassembled and reused in the future, [while opening] up the opportunity to source reused sinks as the initial specification.”

While this is just one example of a ‘deep assignment’, by implementing this circular mindset both at a large and small scale, the materials and the building are ensured for long-term, flexible and sustainable use.

Grosvenor has been exploring circularity innovations across several projects, both in terms of practical applications and the long-term implications of them. They see materials reuse as an opportunity to balance their materials across a range of sites. But as project director Steve Gilchrist explained, circularity can be a wide-ranging topic, so you need to be focused to create any meaningful change.

He explained that during a recent project, in collaboration with Orms, Grosvenor paused the design to slow down and focus on the long-term impact of the building. Steve said,“We want [the design team] to learn about the building now, [and] think about how things could be done in the future,” before rushing into the design.This thinking, combined with Grosvenor’s ambition to explore the full process of implementing circularity, meant the design team could engage with detailed building surveys and thoroughly understand the materials within the building, and whether they could be reused. The team also worked with lawyers on warranties, to ensure these ideas could be implemented in a commercially sustainable way.

In demonstrating to supply chains that reusing materials from existing building stock can be viable, Grosvenor are paving the way for more detailed circular material models in future.

While the private sector is making tremendous progress, the public sector is critical to the successful adoption of circular economy strategies across the industry. ReLondon, a partnership between the Mayor of London and the London boroughs, is on a mission to revolutionise London’s relationship with products and waste. As Andrea Charlson put it, ReLondon are “helping London waste less, reuse, recycle, repair and share more.”

One of ReLondon’s focus areas is the inclusion of circularity in The London Plan. The policy around reducing waste and supporting a circular economy has four key elements; a requirement to collaborate, promote a more circular economy, produce innovation, and adhere to targets around waste diversion from landfill and reuse. However, the most significant element for most large developments is the requirement for referrable schemes to submit a circular economy statement as part of the planning process. Two of the most interesting components of embedding circularity in the planning process is the need for a pre-demolition audit – if the site’s being demolished or redevelopment – and the post-construction requirements that show how a building can be adapted and reused in future. Where this is implemented, it is expected that we’ll see a real-world reduction in the use of virgin materials across the whole life of a project, leading to a reduced carbon budget.

ReLondon is part of a consortium of 31 organisations across 4 cities (London, Copenhagen, Hamburg and the Helsinki region) who are working together on the Horizon 2020-funded ‘Circular Construction in Regenerative Cities’ (CIRCuIT) project. Through the project, they are aiming to reduce the yearly consumption of virgin raw materials by 20% in new construction, and show cost savings of 15% – something that can only be achieved through collaboration. ReLondon are also trying to improve the quantity of data available, and the accessibility of existing data, while providing tools to access it – all of which will help ReLondon, and fellow organisations, achieve this collective goal of reducing waste and carbon.

By pushing for policy change in the public sector, ReLondon are steering the local industry, and indeed a global city, in the direction of circularity.

While the opportunity and scalability of circularity offers the potential to revolutionise the construction industry and reduce our impact on finite resources, there are also easy wins that all projects can, and must, start actioning. Not every project will have a reusable structure, and not every project team has access to a materials bank, but through early design decisions, we can make new buildings easier to adapt, reuse and disassemble in the future.

Laura Batty runs the internal research and development department at Heyne Tillett Steel, where they’ve been exploring the principles of circular design and disassembly on various projects, including their new offices at 16 Chart Street. She says the opportunity to extend the lifespan of the things we use is important, and by creating structures that are “designed to be disassembled and reused at a higher possible value, [we are] eliminating waste and pollution, avoiding things being designed to be thrown away, and designing instead to facilitate reappropriation and recycling.” Designing structures that can be disassembled using bolted connections and exposed steelwork, for example, makes the process of disassembly more achievable when the building’s functional life is over.

By factoring the end of a building’s life into its design, we can redefine the life cycles of buildings and establish a framework for a circular industry.

It’s clear from the panellists that circularity cannot be achieved in isolation – it needs to be a collaborative process, between internal teams, developers and designers, and the public and private sectors. Circularity looks set to revolutionise the workplace life cycle and reduce the sector’s impact on the environment, but only if everyone involved is willing to move beyond the standard models of design, procurement and occupation, and shift towards closing the loop instead.

We wish to thank our panellists for their unique, expert perspectives on the challenges and opportunities of circularity in practice. To listen to the full discussion, click the link here.

We are delighted to announce that the 2022 BCO Manchester Conference is now fully booked, with over 750 delegates set to attend. To add your name to the waiting list, please email registration@sasevents.co.uk; if we receive any cancellations, we will get in touch to offer you a place.

Booked a ticket? Make sure to choose your sessions or conference activities in advance by editing your booking here.

We look forward to seeing many of you in June, for what will be a truly unforgettable event.

Laura Beddis, Galliford Try
Rachel Holmes, MDA Consulting
Luke Martin, JLL
Monika Nowak, Hoare Lea
Matt Perring, Method Consulting LLP
Toni Riddiford, Stride Treglown

There could be no better setting for the launch of the 2022 BCO NextGen Ideas Competition than the HYLO, a self-proclaimed ‘basecamp for brilliance.’

The evening of Thursday 31st March saw members of the BCO NextGen Committee gather for a long-awaited in-person networking event in one of London’s most exciting new buildings. Kicking off proceedings was Multiplex’s Andy Campbell, chair of the London and South East NextGen committee, who provided an overview of the evening, and directed attention to our fundraiser for Ukraine. Our thoughts are with all those impacted by the ongoing devastation in Ukraine, and it felt pertinent to use our event to contribute positively in some way. Donations can still be made here.

Stephen Cherry, Managing Director at HCL Architects, Steve Riddell, Partner at CIT Group, and Michael Hynd, Associate Director AKTII, provided an in-depth run through of building spec and hosted a brief Q&A on the HYLO development. A guided tour of the building followed, with NextGen members split into groups and led through the development with a related party on hand to answer any queries. Experiencing this excellent example of a future-focused workspace served as an ideal forerunner to the main event — the launch of the Ideas Project.

The tour was rounded off by drinks and nibbles on the top floor, readying the next generation of talent to foster their best ideas over an evening of networking. Emily Pallot, Director at Ayre Chamberlain Gaunt, led a galvanising launch, pitching the central concept of the BCO Ideas Competition and calling on members to submit their entries for the future workspace. The 2022 competition looks for individual submissions, widening the gateposts and encouraging more creative freedom than ever before —

Anyone can enter, provided that you are a member of the BCO NextGen. Consider how you could shape the modern workplace for the better, by incorporating one of the four focus categories in your design:

The HYLO proved to be a hotbed of inspiration. Sunlight streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows in the early evening, casting light on animated conversations. There was much discussion of ‘best ideas’ and their origins, some more offbeat than others, as we found…

Where do you come up with your best ideas? — “At a rave! It makes you disconnect in a way, but there’s also such a big part of your brain that is occupied by the music. I always feel inspired afterwards”

What do you do if you’re stuck for an idea? — “Yoga. Or on a bigger scale, travel by myself. Both stimulate me”

Where do you come up with your best ideas? — “Before I go to sleep. There are no distractions, it’s just me and the ebb and flow of my thoughts. ”

What do you do if you’re stuck for an idea? — “When I’m stuck for ideas I reach out and speak to people, that never fails to inspire me. Through the BCO I have met people who encourage you to think bigger, but in a neutral environment. It’s not competitive, but it encourages you to better yourself. At BCO events you interact as people, not just as professionals.”

If being an instrumental factor in the future of workspace wasn’t enough incentive, the BCO is also offering six finalists “a world-class opportunity to learn to articulate, refine and amplify your ideas” through incredible Ted-talk style public speaking training with Ginger Leadership Communications. You will then have the opportunity to flex your newfound skills, pitching your ideas publicly at the final Ideas Project Event, attended by key leaders across the industry and fellow BCO members later this year. Sarah, head of Ginger Communications, and her team will lead you through a series of workshops that

Grab the chance to boost your profile in the industry and learn to sell yourself in a way that will stick.

We would like to extend our thanks to everyone who helped in bringing this event to life, with special thanks to HYLO for hosting us, and of course to our sponsor of the evening, LA Construction.

The limits are what you make them, so you can dream big. Take it from James Pellatt, Director of Workplace and Innovation at Great Portland Estates and one of our 2022 judges: “Very few people get creative ideas in an office,” so what is your solution?

The future of the workplace is yours to design. Enter now for your chance to be the change you want to see.

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Latest news

Want staff back in the office? Think ‘Customer first’ and prioritise experiences

BRITISH COUNCIL FOR OFFICES CROWNS THE UK’S BEST WORKPLACES

British Council for Offices Chief Executive Richard Kauntze to step down in summer 2025