100
Intelligence | Practice
REAL LIVES
Elfed Roberts explains how despite never having worked in a traditional practice, his experience and qualifications enable him to promote good design from the client side
ANOTHER PLACE
AN UNUSUAL career path as a qualified architect has given me the rare pleasure of being able to promote the importance of good design from within the client organisation. Qualifying in 1995 at Leicester’s De Montfort University, I spent over a decade in local authority planning and regeneration departments in England and Wales. But any regrets I had over not working in a traditional practice dissolved after I moved to become a developer at one of Wales’ largest housing associations. Grwp Gwalia (based in Swansea) has
property assets in excess of £220 million including 5,000 social and affordable houses and flats. It is a major provider of care and supported accommodation (130 projects) and develops student accommodation (with 4,500 units on campuses throughout Wales). Since 1973, Grwp Gwalia has built a reputation as a company at the forefront of innovative and sustainable design, with many award winning housing developments spanning four decades. It certainly fits my interest in design. Since
2005 I have played an active role on the Design Commission for Wales and have advised on good design and historic buildings in Swansea, Gloucester, the Cotswolds and Gwynedd. I joined Gwalia in 2007 as head of design
and special projects, delivering with the team a continuous development programme of social and affordable housing. I have been directly responsible for driving the design quality of projects from the initial assessment of sites and opportunities; through the design development stage to completion and handover. Helping draw up project briefs with Gwalia’s housing management and maintenance departments and assembling teams of designers and other consultants, I
take a very proactive role in the design process. I continuously monitor the performance, cost and delivery of design and construction projects on site.
Track record My major projects with Gwalia include ‘Cwm Aur’, Llanybydder (£6.5 million), an integrated extra care home for older people including those with dementia. The scheme achieved a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating and incorporates a biomass energy centre, solar thermal panels, and a green roof. In Swansea’s cultural district we converted the Central Police HQ (an Edwardian grade II listed building) in a £6.5 million project to create a mixed-use ‘arts district’ development. I drew on my experience of historic building conservation while working for Cotswold District Council for this. Gwalia is focusing at present on better
and more innovative accommodation and support services for people with dementia, mental health needs and learning disabilities. I am fortunate enough to be working with leading figures, organisations and academic institutions involved in these sectors to research best practice in the UK and Europe in order to develop this at home in Wales. At Gwalia, my local authority experience and
architectural training enable me to cross the divide between the client’s motivations and aspirations and those of our designers. I have been able to apply my architectural training to more places by working on strategy and design within both local councils and such a major housing association. n
Elfed Roberts is head of design and special projects (Grwˆ p Gwalia Housing Association)
DAVID SAXBY’S DIARY TIMES THEY ARE A’CHANGIN’
00:/ IS ON the move in more ways than one – we are hunting for new office space, but more interestingly the projects we are attracting continue to take us in new directions. Our multi-disciplinary nature and atypical organisational structure helps us to respond to the increasingly diverse activities we are being asked to turn our attention to. However, the mundane necessity of signing up to a new lease is forcing us to consider where we think we, and the world around us, will be in five years’ time. At the same time, conversations in the office about the fortunes of Greece (one of the team has family in Athens) bring home the further potentially seismic events that could yet radically re-shape the context within which we work. This is not simply an issue of the faltering economies within Europe but more fundamentally of how society will emerge from these challenges; might the Arab Spring be followed by a European Fall? With the recent disturbances in London and other English cities this looks increasingly likely. We seem to be at a moment of great uncertainty that could paralyse not only whole nations but also every individual decision maker – including those who invest in the built environment and those who make decisions related to this. But I see they exist. Celebrating the opportunities that such flux might unlock and rounding off this piece with a call to arms, an upbeat, positive message extolling hope, bravery, leaps of faith, etc, seems indulgent. But clearly, at some point, we all have to make definitive choices in such circumstances (or, in our case, find ourselves homeless in three months’ time). Not having the dependable certainty of a linearly extrapolated future in front of us makes choosing which path to take difficult. However (courtesy of Twitter, for followers), I was given hope by the Tweet that ‘While strategists try to plot the whole route, entrepreneurs simply focus on the next step’. At moments like these, perhaps the right thing to do is to decisively act in a short-term manner for a while, seeking deliberately makeshift solutions, and understand that this might also be the best course of action for those on whose behalf we act too. This in itself might throw up new ways of looking at how we operate and suggest the very next steps required to build an emergent future.
David Saxby is with Architecture 00:/
WWW.RIBAJOURNAL.COM : SEPTEMBER 2011
ILLUSTRATION | QUINTON WINTER
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117