BE News editor-in-chief Liz Hamson recently interviewed Squire & Partners founder Michael Squire, who passed away earlier this month, as part of a series of interviews with built environment industry legends. Speaking over Teams from the Squire & Partners office at The Department Store in Brixton, London, Squire gave his read of the current market, looked back at some of his career highlights and shared his hopes and aspirations for the firm’s future.
Here are some of the highlights from the interview:
On the start to 2023
We’ve probably had more new inquiries than we have for a very long time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they will convert into reality and fee-paying work, but I’m optimistic.
Current focus
[Residential] is something that has led to quite a lot of our work over the past few years, but it is very much less than it was. We do a lot of less valuable work now, but lovely and interesting work I enjoy, on workspace. We built our own little building at the rear: it’s built of CLT, it’s very sustainable, it’s very likeable. We run it ourselves and it’s a very successful little building and we’re doing quite a lot of those for people at the moment.
Proudest achievement
A building that I am very proud and I love, which I think has had a radical impact on where it is, is The Broadway, which is just completing. It is highly mixed development, with retail at the ground floor, three or four storeys of offices and then residential in towers that have amazing outlooks. It’s a lovely building. It’s got a sort of personality.
The Squire & Partners ethos
What I always say, and I hang on to it as hard as I can, is that the projects we’re interested in, we can’t always choose, we’ve got a business to run, but what we want to do is projects where the client has a real commitment to delivering a quality product and a quality design.
We don’t say every building we build must be a prima donna. We actually quite often feel the appropriate building for where we are should be quite sophisticated, quiet rather than noisy, but The Broadway is just a little bit noisy and I love it for that.
Refurbishment vs demolition
You just can’t have rules that say, I only want to refurbish every building, because some buildings have ceiling heights you can hardly stand up in. They’re awful buildings, they don’t work, they don’t fit where they are and we should be bold enough to replace them. Equally, wherever I’ve had a situation where I’ve had to or wanted to keep something – like the building I’m in now [The Department Store in Brixton] – it has in the end resulted in something more special and unique. You wouldn’t have designed something like this yourself if you were starting from new.
Architectural style
Well, I love the use of interesting and original and quite striking materials. I don’t like the word style, because it slightly implies that it’s going to be short skirts this year and long skirts next year. Buildings have to be there for a very long time and my feeling is that they’re all about how they’re made, how they’re detailed, what their materials are and how they are relevant to where they are. Kenneth Frampton talked about critical regionalism. It was the next step on from modernism. I believe a building has to have ingrained in it something of the history of the culture and the sense of the place. It’s not really a style, and it’s much harder work.
The Department Store
We had a very disciplined approach to dealing with the building. We just said, we just peel away everything we can, and wherever we can, we just get back to what underlies it all. Then we had a rule that if we put anything new in it had to be black, copper or bronze. So when you look at the building, it’s very calm, because there are not a lot of ideas. It’s one approach. Everyone who comes here loves it.
Why Brixton?
It is a residential location [rather than an office one], but it is a very well-connected residential location. I had a client who said to me when we first came here: ‘What are you doing in Brixton? That’s not an office location at all.’ I said to him: ‘Go out of your office, turn right across Piccadilly, and you’ll see this big round blue thing with a red stripe across it and that’s called the underground. I know, you’ve never been on it before, but give it a try. Go down, get on the Victoria line and you’ll be here in 20 minutes.’ Anyway, he arrives and says to me: ‘You lied to me, Michael.’ I said: ‘Well, OK, maybe it took you 25 minutes.’ He responded: ‘No, it didn’t. It took me 12 and a half.’ It’s very accessible, but I don’t know how many people have really come to appreciate that. And it’s quite lively.
Early favourites
Did we have a really special early project? One of our quite early ones, which still exists was the ticket office on Tower Bridge. It’s quite a cool little building. We put a lot of love and effort into that. It was about 1979/80. Another was Vogans Mill, a group of warehouse buildings east of Tower Bridge. It was a very small footprint and quite tall. We had to rebuild it, but we rebuilt it exactly the same size. It’s still a scheme I really love.
Your darkest hour
My darkest time was 1989 to 90, when property just stopped. We had grown very quickly and triggered a lot of work. We’d become a practice of about 50 people, having gone from two of us. We thought we were flying, and this crash came along and it stopped. I think I went a year without getting a single new project. I personally had to sit there and make 25 people redundant on a single day, and they were friends. It was personal, it wasn’t pleasant and it was a deep challenge, but we did it and we survived. I think an awful lot of people take those decisions too late.
Growth aspirations
We’re about 150. We had in our partners’ agreement that we never wanted to be more than 120. We never wanted to become a factory. We are still kind of a family.
Take on the planning system
It’s an enormous subject. The fundamental issue is the democratic process, and I believe deeply in democracy. Anyone can see that it may be a seriously flawed system, but it’s about the best one anybody’s got. But when you get politicians who are, quite naturally and obviously, driven only to consider what the public might think of a particular proposal, that isn’t necessarily going to be the right answer.
Market outlook
I thought when we got out of Covid we would see a serious amount of development. Putin’s war has slightly upset all of that. Long term, though, I’m optimistic, because I do believe there’s an awful lot of money that wants to do stuff. Fundamentally, there are a lot of people who want to develop.
Future of the business
I’m in every day. I work pretty serious hours. I love what I do. But, on the other hand, I appreciate the firm needs to move on. My son Henry, and fellow partners Tim and Murray have taken over most of the management of the architectural practice. Step by step, I will leave more for the others.
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