Moustachioed Maestros

Stride Treglown looks to build facilities in the Middle East that everyone can access

In a profession where practicality can easily give way to pomposity and pretentiousness, Stride Treglown—Abu Dhabi’s newest kid on the block—seems a breath of fresh air. Take, for example, the fact that the entire firm, whether in Abu Dhabi or London, participated in the well-known tradition of ‘Movember’, the month-long moustache-growing charity event created to raise money and awareness for men’s health (specifically prostate cancer and depression).

Observing the tradition, and in honour of an afflicted colleague, the 280-strong firm set up shop in the UAE capital less than six months ago and is hoping to bring a building typology of which the region is in drastically short supply: well-designed schools and hospitals.

Despite feeling slightly sheepish about their new facial hair, London-based director of operations, Richard Philipson, and general manager of the UAE office, Nathan Hones, agreed to give Middle East Architect an hour of their time. And, much to their chagrin, we took pictures.

Richard, what can you tell me about the Stride Treglown story?

RP: Stride Treglown has been around since 1953. It was founded in Bristol. In the early 1950s, it was mostly post war, public work and fairly traditional, commercial architecture. It did a bit in the health and education sectors. It was a relatively small provincial practice. For the next 20-30 years it stayed that way, until the 1980s. Toward the end of the 80s, Stride Treglown began to grow and develop further.

To date, what is the firm’s core competency or primary skill set?

RP: We’re able to provide architectural services in pretty much every sector. The business is mostly definitely a commercial practice with its founding in well-designed, well-considered, buildings that are delivered on time, buildings that don’t leak and buildings that give clients what they want.

That is changing a bit now though. I think Stride Treglown is being recognised for good, innovative, cutting-edge architecture. In fact, in the UK, we’re about to start on site with our new office in Cardiff which will be the first BREEAM ‘Outstanding’ office building in the UK. It achieved 89%, which is the highest Outstanding score in the UK as well.

Nathan, as the man on the ground, what is your remit?

NH: Well, I joined Stride Treglown in July 2009 after being in the Middle East for more than five years. My main responsibility is to oversee the day-to-day operations of the firm in Abu Dhabi. That includes: Responding to queries, attending meetings, turning around presentations, submissions, eventually authority approvals and documentation guidelines. And, very importantly, working with Richard to integrate my contacts with those of the firm to create a solid network of clients, consultants and contractors.

What is the most valuable thing you bring to Stride Treglown?

NH: I came to the UAE six years ago and I was based on site at Dubai Festival City. As the project architect, I oversaw a team of architects, engineers, interior designers and landscape architects. Working on site you learn very quickly about documentation and the approvals process. That sort of thing you can only really learn being based in the place.

After that, I moved out to another site at IMPZ. The first time I went out there, I was with the engineer from Halcrow, who were doing the roads at the time, and I asked him to take me to the site.

So we got into his 4X4, and after driving over several sand dunes quite quickly, he stopped on one of the taller ones and he pointed off in the distance to a camel that was walking between two dunes.

He asked me, ‘Do you see that camel down there?’ and I nodded my head and then he said, ‘Well that camel is walking along the southern boundary of your site’. So that was my introduction that project. I helped to establish an architectural site office for about 40 staff—that was everything from designing and fitting out the office interiors to establishing logistics for the staff to liaising between the established office and the mobile one.

To answer your question, I bring five years of on site experience where I designed and delivered pre- and post-contract. Stride Treglown was looking for someone who had been involved in setting up and organisation from the grass roots level. From a hardware and logistics perspective, Stride’s was starting here from scratch and what I bring is experience and contacts in terms of consultants and government authorities.

RP: We do quite a bit of strategic planning in Stride Treglown. We have a strategy for growth—not something that is particularly aggressive—but we recognise that we provide a national service in the UK and I think we started to consider opportunities for an international office approximately three or four years ago.

We’re a Top 20 architect in terms of turnover and staff numbers, and it seems all of our competitors are getting a reasonable portion of their income from work abroad while we are not. It makes you think, what could we be doing differently? From there we began to look at places where we thought the environment was right for expansion. Around the time of Cityscape Dubai 2008, our chairman and marketing director had a look around and thought that the UAE might be one of those places.

At that time, the observation they made was based on the confidence and vision coming out of Abu Dhabi and the 2030 plan. They saw a clear opportunity for anyone involve in the construction industry to get involved. But more than that, they came back with a feeling that Abu Dhabi was place with a bit of heart and soul and they really liked that.

Now that it’s here, how will Stride’s distinguish itself?

RP: From the beginning, we recognised the vision of the 2030 plan but we also knew that Stride Treglown isn’t exactly an iconic architecture firm. We’re not going to be designing skyscrapers for people. It’s not our core competence. At the moment, our expertise is in educational buildings—right through primary school, secondary school and on to universities.

And, the same goes for healthcare facilities. From GP surgeries to community clinics to specialist units to hospitals. One thing we recognised when we got here was that all of that expansion that is happening throughout the country requires community-based infrastructure to support it and provide a level of accommodation and facility that will provide the support the public and providers need.
That’s one of our strengths. We know a number of our competitors that are here providing those types of buildings right now and we feel we can compete with them on a level playing field. We do in the UK and we feel that it’s possible here too.

So, for the time being, our business plan for the future identifies those two particular areas of the market place that we’ll focus on: Education and healthcare facilities. Linked into public and community facilities is the real opportunity to demonstrate a capability in inclusive design. That’s a real advantage for us. We bring the whole of our services together in one package that responds to client needs. That’s where we think we can compete most effectively.

NH: In addition to that, there was obviously a need. In the UAE, there’s less of a need for high-rise residential; there’s less of a need for commercial space. There is real need for well-designed, well-considered education and healthcare projects. The UAE government has announced AED 17 billion over the next year for social infrastructure. It’s not only something Stride Treglown has a strength in, it’s something that has been identified at the federal level as a necessity in the UAE. That federal intiative and Stride’s focus in the UAE meld together perfectly.

RP: There’s a need for those facilities throughout the MENA as well. A lot of place in the MENA are growing and expanding and those infrastructure projects need to be there to support that growth. For us, we need a foothold and we need to establish ourselves in one place in order to test our systems and procedures. Once we’ve done that, we can analyse them and determine whether or not changes need to be made and whether our initial assumptions were correct. After that, we can look at offering our services elsewhere in the region.

If we find we need to expand our services and competencies, we are prepared to do that as well.

We’ve got a very strong master planning team in London. If you get a chance to design a master plan for a university campus, you’re in right at the very beginning and there’s also the opportunity to look at the building blocks that go along with those types of project as well.

RP: Focusing on the positives, I think there is a recognition that inclusive design is important. I think there is either lip service to it, or, and this is probably more likely, the level of understanding of what it actually means isn’t very sophisticated. From our point of view, inclusive design actually includes everyone throughout their lives. Most people immediately start talking about people with physical disabilities because those are the most easily observed and the solutions are the most obvious. They’re very straightforward solutions—despite having been largely ignored in the West for a long time.

But inclusive design is also about designing for the partially-sighted, the hard-of-hearing, and its also about mothers with children in prams or elderly people using a cane to assist them. It’s also about people who are colour blind or dyslexic or have memory issues. It has to include our society as a whole. We find that as soon as you begin to recognise architecture can be improved by inclusive design you produce better buildings.

That’s where our architecture is going in the UK, we’re still educating clients to some extent and a similar thing is needed here. We’ve talked to people at Estidama and Abu Dhabi Municipality and we’ve found that as soon as you mention inclusive design, there’s a real keen desire for more knowledge. The authorities are beginning to recognise a need for inclusive design, which is very encouraging.

NH: Generally what happens here is that architecture competitions or proposals to key clients that are prepared by very talented, very skilled CGI concept architects, fail to include some key elements of inclusive design.

Because the pace of development—as in most emerging markets—is quite rapid, people have started piling and started enabling works and have only realised after approaching authorities that they needed to allow for certain aspects and so they’ve just been added on.

Regarding sight or hearing impaired people, no one would normally do audit tests in reception areas or large foyers to determine reverberation time or provide a PA system to explain ways to move through a building. Because that means additional service and it means another person who has to have input in the design, in the past there hasn’t been enough time for that design, it has unfortunately been overlooked.

The benefit of an economic slowdown—if there is a ‘benefit’—is that people have been able to look back at the ways things have been done and improve on areas that have been neglected. I think this is a unique selling point of Stride Treglown.

It’s been really well-received with the authorities because they realise it is a necessity and now we have the time to include these elements in a more holistic design. The neglect of inclusive design really is a product of an emerging market but, hopefully, that will change now.

Abu Dhabi is Stride Treglown’s first international office, where do you see it in 12-18 months?

RP: Well, we’ve got a plan in place. While everything doesn’t always go according to plan, if you’ve got a roadmap, at least you know the direction in which you’re headed. Stride Treglown, in 12-18 months time, will be a business of five or six people on the ground in Abu Dhabi. That team will be able to respond decisively, work quickly, make decisions with authority and also come with the experience of working in the region already.

Our tripartite model is simple: light-touch responsive team here; talent and expertise in the UK; talented, fast, accurate production information guys in Vietnam. In 18 months time, hopefully that’s in place and hopefully we’ve got some big schools and master planning projects on the ground working for us and we’re starting to look at Oman, Qatar and elsewhere in the region. It’s a steady but focused effort to build on the plan. After six months, I think we’re on track.

NH: Well, I’ve worked for a few architecture firms and none of them have had a strategic, goal-oriented plan in place like Stride Treglown. From a micro-level, I’ve learned all about the strategy and growth and organisational development. From a day-to-day perspective, my aims and aspirations tie in with Stride Treglown’s, so when Richard talks about growing the company to five or six people, I need to be bringing to the table the opportunities that enable that growth to occur. That means speaking to clients and government agencies and letting people know we’re here.

I’ve got my own KPIs so that’s refreshing. It’s measurable; it’s justifiable. Personally, I know I need to do certain things for the company to succeed.

RP: We’ve got a budget of just over £1 million to set up our office here. That’s what we can afford to spend; we’ve had a good few years. We’ve got the strength to enable us to invest that. We knew we could come here and risk that £1 million on the opportunity, which is potentially beyond our dreams.

As an architecture student, who or what inspired you?

RP: On the way here today, I thought to myself, he’s going to ask me that question and now I’m glad I thought about it. For me, it’s easy, it’s a guy called Aldo Rossi. He was a rationalist architect.

I studied at Liverpool University and for our BArch, 19 of us hired a red double-decker bus and drove around Europe. During that time, I saw my first Rossi building, it was the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena [Italy]. It was a pivotal moment in my architectural career. It was very evocative, very emotional and that marked the first time that a building affected me that way. At that moment, Aldo Rossi became my guru.

NH: My inspiration came from a not dissimilar source. I went to Sydney University and we also took a tour around Europe on two buses and we visited a lot of modernist architecture. We started in Paris and worked our way down to the south of France. We stayed in some of the most amazing examples of architecture; things that had been designed by Le Corbusier, for example. We went to [Notre Dame du Haut] Ronchamp, which is one of my favourite buildings. I heard a service sung by a priest in Ronchamp with the light coming through the windows and it was amazing. If that can’t lift your spirits then nothing can. Most of the stuff we saw on that trip was mind-blowing.

My favourite building is...

RP: Rossi’s Cemetery at Modena.

NH: One that responds to the place. One of my favourite Australian architects is a guy called Glen Murcutt, who often talks about the genius loci of a building or ‘sense of place’. I honestly think a building needs to be of the place.

What three words describe you as a person or as an architect?

RP: Friendly. Accessible. Mentor.

NH: Organised. Approachable. Innovative.

As an architect or as a person, what is something you love?

RP: Open space.

NH: My family. The sense of family.

What is something you hate?

RP: Lack of order. And, I have to say, moustaches. I’ve just seen myself in the mirror and I look ridiculous.

NH: I don’t think I really hate anything. I have some immense dislikes of some things but I’m not sure what I hate. I guess I really dislike when someone is unhappy about something but then they don’t do anything about it. If you’re at a point in your life where something is bugging you to that extent, change it, do something about it. Increase your knowledge base; expand your network; change your environment; do something.