Rachel Edward is Workplace Futures Lead at Lendlease, and if you're involved in workplace in London you'd be pushed to not be aware of her work. She's Rachel has been involved in a number of pioneering projects working on workplaces globally applying evidence-based design thinking.
Rachel is all about how people use the places that we build. She is passionate about building sustainable workplace communities, with a focus on how the design of places can make a difference — to society, to lifestyles, to businesses, and to the planet.
In our interview, we look at how we design for the future alongside what we need now, and how to integrate the workplace into larger schemes.
Rachel Edward is Workplace Futures Lead at Lendlease, and if you're involved in workplace in London you'd be pushed to not be aware of her work. She's Rachel has been involved in a number of pioneering projects working on workplaces globally applying evidence-based design thinking.
Rachel is all about how people use the places that we build. She is passionate about building sustainable workplace communities, with a focus on how the design of places can make a difference — to society, to lifestyles, to businesses, and to the planet.
In our interview, we look at how we design for the future alongside what we need now, and how to integrate the workplace into larger schemes.
You are listening to the Spacecraft podcast, conversations on how innovative design can transform the workplace environment. This podcast is brought to you by them with host Dan Moscraft.
Speaker 2:We're joined this morning by Rachel Edwards, who's the Workplace Futures lead at Lendlease . Good morning, Rachel. Good
Speaker 3:Morning.
Speaker 2:How are you doing?
Speaker 3:I'm very good. Thank The Sun is out finally. It's summer
Speaker 2:And you're back in your own , your own hos. Yeah,
Speaker 3:I used to live around Hor , which , uh, yeah. Nice. How long ago was that? Nice morning commute. Uh , probably about six years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah . It's , it's a bit cleaner now. Yeah , it is
Speaker 3:A lot cleaner. Now,
Speaker 2:I've met you a while back at a Workplace Friends event. Uh , you talked about Loneliness Labs, which I'd like to get into a little bit later. Yes. Because I think a lot of that's still pertinent. But , uh, for the listeners, I thought it'd be quite interesting to talk about how you got into what you do. You obviously started at University of New South Wales, and every now and then again, I can get a little lilt of Australian come through your accent. So watch for that. But you studied interior architecture? I
Speaker 3:Did. I am Australian. I'm interested to hear stuff like this back. 'cause I grew up in Scotland and moved to Oz when I was 12. So every now and again, my accent flips between them, which is a weird thing. <laugh> . So I started my, I guess, working life at U N S W interior architecture. It wasn't my first choice , um, until the night before. In Australia, you have to prioritize your university choices and you only get one offer. So they basically, basically go through until you get in and then , um, you get that offer.
Speaker 2:What else were you looking at at the time?
Speaker 3:My first tour psychology. Oh, wow. Okay. And the night before, I remember thinking, do you know what I , I think this looks good. And for some reason, whatever I was thinking when I was 17 at the time, I'm gonna make this my first choice. And I'm really glad that I did. Interior architecture is a fabulous degree. I had absolutely no idea that this career was an option. And I'm not sure anyone going through university today would know about it. 'cause it's not publicized widely. So left uni, and while I was at uni, I was doing some construction research, and for that we had to go to a bunch of different big construction sites to see what they were up to. And I remember going to Macquarie Bank in Sydney, and the team that spoke to me spoke a bit about construction and design, but they also spoke to me about the people, the cultures they were trying to drive through the business and how that was directing the decisions they were making. And I thought, wow, this is so interesting. I really wanna work for you. Um , and so I did. And since then I've never really practiced architecture and design. I went straight into a role, which was more about the, the people and the interaction between people and place. Right . And how workplace helps to shape real business outcomes from a strategic perspective.
Speaker 2:So who was that you worked with, first of all? Sorry?
Speaker 3:Uh , Macquarie Bank . Wow.
Speaker 2:Okay . Straight in. Yes . Yeah . <laugh> amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was really exciting. And , and I mean, lucky enough to get a role with them, it set me up , um, for what I wanted to do , uh, which was nice. I was there for about five years plus a year while I was at uni, so about six years. And then decided, you know what? I wanna move to London and I'm gonna pull beers in a bar and I'm gonna travel Europe for a year. Um , and when I landed, I was introduced to Richard Bial , the principal of Interior Design at TP Bennett . And over at Coffee, he talked more about the ice skating events that all the team had been on and the Whiskey tour. And , and somehow about a week later, I ended up working there, <laugh> <laugh> , um, and not called see . And now it's been almost 10 years in London <laugh>. Um , so yeah , that's , uh, sort of my, that's,
Speaker 2:It does look like a really cool close to work. Obviously p is still there . Your partner's there .
Speaker 3:Interview Shane. He's still there. Uh , working with Shane on some really cool projects.
Speaker 2:The dream team. The
Speaker 3:Dream team , a team .
Speaker 2:What was it like to work there at TP Bennett ? So while you were there, was it , is it good social, good culture,
Speaker 3:Fantastic culture? Oh , obviously moved from a man , massive corporate, tens of thousands of people globally, like really connected globally. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So you feel like you are part of a really big business to, at the time, TP Bennett were 150 people. Everyone was really interwoven in each other's lives and work. And it was a really lovely culture. Um , and I think it still is by the sounds of it, but they've grown now to about 400, which Wow is massive. Really nice to work on lots of different types of projects with different businesses. And
Speaker 2:Was that more of a strategy role? You were working down there
Speaker 3:Yes. Strategy in the strategy team,
Speaker 2:And then you went on to Space Labs,
Speaker 3:Space Lab , uh, very different. Again, 60 people at the time, really entrepreneurial thinking. Nathan Lonsdale, if he , you know ,
Speaker 2:I know of him. Yeah.
Speaker 3:He just wants to change the world, really. He'd be happy to do interior design, architecture, you know, anything else that would remotely come into it, he'd just go, yep . Let's bring that into our business model.
Speaker 2:And then obviously you've become chair and co-chair, you're co-chair of B c o chair at CoreNet , and then onto Lendlease while you're doing all this as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Um, I've been at Lendlease for nearly five years now, which is a really, I, I needed, I wanted to do something a little bit different still workplace strategy, workplace futures, but this is more embedded in what is very, very long term thinking. Yeah . So as a developer, you're not thinking the 10 to 15 years strategies that you might, whenever you are with a design firm or even within an organization, you are looking at how will people in 50 to a hundred years time be using these buildings that we're investing in and the places that we are creating. So the look ahead is so interesting. Mm-hmm .
Speaker 2:It's such a big responsibility as well, right? Yeah. The legacy of a city effectively, or certain areas of a city.
Speaker 3:Something quite interesting in it though, because you're, when you look that far ahead, you feel almost quite removed from it until you get into Yeah . And the reason, the reason I'm so interested in it is because we need to try and make people across our industry think more about the real impacts that we're having. Yeah . Which is coming to the surface more. Now, you've just made me think of this really interesting philosophy, which is Native American i choir principle called the seven Generations Principle. The principle is the , this Native American practice, the decisions we make now have to have good sustainable outcomes for seven generations to come. But when you actually count that on your fingers and think That's my kids's . Kids, kids, kids, kids, kids kids, yeah .
Speaker 2:It's about 500 years.
Speaker 3:It's , yeah, well it's probably about 200. I've said 200. But yeah, somewhere in between those. And part of that practice is keeping a seat vacant next to the chief so that you're reminded of the generations who aren't born yet, and you're giving them a voice. So I love thinking about that. Now, if we are making a decision here, someone who's not born yet, what would they be saying to us? What would they be challenging? What would they be trying to get us to think about more deeply before we make those decisions?
Speaker 2:I was listening to a book recently, actually. Uh , the title escapes me. It's actually quite dated. Um , but I think it's by Napoleon Hill. And he created a sort of a boardroom full of big names and people that he respected, sort of like Napoleon , uh, was one of them. And loads of others, you know, sort of like J F K and things like that. And he asks them advice and his dreams and it's quite bonkers. But I love the fact that you can just sort of channel different people. But I love the idea of being able to channel people of the future into that and asking me their advice.
Speaker 3:So it's basically the opposite of the question. If you were gonna have dinner with someone who's famous and dead, who would it be? If you were gonna have someone in a big decision who's famous for their world, changing views, but they're not born yet, what would they be trying to champion?
Speaker 2:Obviously lend least massive developer doing some really interesting work at the minute. How does your work influence decisions on the ground? You know, so you've got these huge big developments going on. What , where do you get your information from? What inspires you? I know there's lots of questions firing at you at once, but ,
Speaker 3:Um , <laugh> it's massive. <laugh> . Yeah .
Speaker 2:Huge, isn't it ? How do you start to, to sort of navigate that and , and feed into things? Lendlease
Speaker 3:Are huge. So starting from the start, it's big urban regeneration we're talking about. Yeah . The important thing about that is whenever we're talking workplace, we're not just talking buildings or the design of spaces that businesses will go into. Yeah . We're talking about the whole ecosystem. That that's part of. And when we're looking at those places, we're not just talking about the red line that we have. We're talking about how we plug into the community beyond the , the councils we are working with. Mm-hmm . The other developers may be on our sort of perimeter to make sure that we're doing something much better than we could if we're just doing it by ourselves. So that's really important. But then coming back to my role in it, it's very much advocating for the way that, that we understand people will be working in the future. How is technology and, you know , all the things we're hearing, ai, blockchain chat, G B t, robots gonna change the way that we interact with work. What industries will be disrupted? What new industries will pop up? How will people play a role in what that work looks like? Yeah . I've heard all sorts of horror stories about <laugh>. You know , it's all robots and we do nothing. I think there's a nice balance where we'll probably end up just working alongside all of this. I think I was talking to you about this before. I've been introduced by someone I work with to Lex Friedman podcaster. He does these like three to four hour podcasts, if anyone's interesting in just sort of mulling over the nature of all the relationships between these sort of big future questions. That's a really interesting one to have on in the background. It does go for a very long time, though . That's a sort of the bigger side of it. And then working alongside, I , I sit in quite a central team in development where we're called Place and growth, where anyone who plays a strategic role in place. So there's , uh, head of place retail, street life. So meanwhile you send a thing that activates the , the culture of the streets . Yeah . Master planning and me from a workplace perspective. So we are working together to make sure that all the stuff they're thinking about, you know, how are streets changing with, you know, technology and cars and new retail methods through to residential and workplace, and how that all can interconnect. So there's the long-term view on it, but then there's also the, the today stuff, the stuff that's just constantly at the tip of everyone in design and workplaces, tongues, health and wellbeing, sustainability. How do we drive diversity and inclusion? All of these really important topics, which we are , we're still making sure we are removing hurdles to people be being able to do really good stuff. It's really just making sure, plugged into the industry. There's loads of reports coming out just now from World Economic Forum, have just released their future of jobs report. There's like all the like, great stuff that Deloitte constantly releasing. Gensler have just released their future of work report. You've been working more with Leesman , right ? Leesman , I mean, Leesman have data coming out their ears. Yeah . <laugh> . So , so we are , um, yeah, really happy to be working with them on, it's a small report, but it , it's looking at the future of work and how it into place with place and what leadership need to be thinking about. Um ,
Speaker 2:I think what was interesting me with Leesman is that although you said small report, the amount of data they use to get
Speaker 3:That information, I say small , it's not small, but compared to the stuff that they're publishing, it's quite small <laugh> . Um , but it's, it's an opportunity for us to engage with leaders and look at, well, here's what all the data says. What do , what does this mean for the way that you need to work in future? Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , there's stats on the, like, commute for example, and how to earn it mm-hmm . <affirmative> , um, on sustainable health and wellbeing practices and the sentiment that that's driving through business cultures. So ,
Speaker 2:Sorry, on the, on the commute, how to earn it. Mm-hmm . Sorry, I don't quite understand that one .
Speaker 3:Between , so like , oh , so that's been sort of thrown around the past few years as people have been given this flexibility to work from anywhere. Yes . Yeah . If you want them to come into your building, you're gonna have to earn it. You're gonna have have to earn people. Right . Yeah . Yeah , yeah . People's commutes in. Yeah .
Speaker 2:Yeah . We're constantly surprised. There's so many people who think they can just say, office is open, come on back, everybody.
Speaker 3:Or the mandate's coming out just this week. Yeah .
Speaker 2:Yeah . It's crazy. We try to encourage us to , to help gentle nudging and, you know, doing things like talks and stuff like that to try and get people wanting to come back and enjoy the
Speaker 3:Space. Are you getting involved in the sort of return to
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, although what we do is more about branding space, we find that that is playing a part in getting people back to the office. 'cause a lot of it's, you know, I said branding place , but it's a much bigger delivery of what you do in an environment that connects people to the culture basically. So layers and layers and layers of different things. But a lot of that is involving, you know, how do you connect with staff? How do you talk to people? What can you do to encourage people back in? So people are always looking for advice and , and trying to get people back. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's really interesting. And I think that definitely comes under the earn the commute. Yeah . As opposed to mandate. That's
Speaker 2:It. 'cause we were given so much time back. We , we were speaking, I speaking to Ivana Stanek a couple of weeks ago. She was just telling me how much she got done having a young baby and literally just being able to throw a wash load on and then know you can be there to dry it. It just changes your life, you know? Yeah . Yeah . So what , what else, what else came outta the Leadman report? Sorry,
Speaker 3:We are launching in a few months, so we're still in progress. Sort of digging through the data and pulling together what we wanna get out of it.
Speaker 2:What research have you discovered or what's really surprised you, you know, when you're looking at sort of the future proofing of space, not just the workplace, but like areas and things like that. Is there anything that's you , you pulled out and thought, oh wow, that's a really, that's got a really interesting angle to it that you were surprised at
Speaker 3:Early on in the pandemic, talking about Leesman , they've been correlating data with what they've flagged as the really high performing workplaces that they've got their leesman index, if you know. Yeah , yeah . The workplaces that have pre pandemic resulted as really high performing. And the people who worked in them did a bit of not explaining this very well, did a bit of research that shows the people who worked in the high performing workplaces had said they were more likely or interested to go into work more days a week post pandemic than the ones that had low sentiment. Absolute no brainer. Yeah . Is , you probably don't need a , a report to say that, but it's really, really interesting to see it laid out in front of you, of like, wow, this is like a , a really clear line that shows the , the , the better the experience is . Whenever people show up into a place together. I always get a bit awkward about saying like, workplace, because we work from lots of different places Yeah . To show up to this place that they're gonna spend the day versus No, actually it's rubbish and we're not gonna
Speaker 2:Come. There's , there's a lot , there's a lot of good research in that one. I remember reading , it was quite a while that came out. I think it was at a workplace trends . It was presented actually. Mm . But there's loads of great data on the quality of people's workplace at homes to work in and, you know, the quality of that sort of general workplace, how likely they're going to come in. There's a lot of stuff you can compare against each other that gets some really nice,
Speaker 3:Interesting outputs. Yeah . Gensler's recent researcher said something similar. They gave, I think it was eight different options of the types of workplace styles or amenities that people might come in for. So it's sort of a,
Speaker 2:They were looking quite a lot at the , the wider space around it as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were. And I think the average result of that was that people just want diversity, but they're more likely to come out of their homes and be together and, you know, be in a place if it's got other amenities. So we work with Equi on our digital experience platform in Stratford. They release an annual report as well. And there was a stat in the last one that said something like, people are 2000%, this is from the year before. More interested in the retail and experiences around the office than they were last year. Wow. Which is really, really huge. I need to check that number 'cause it sounds massive. That's huge . But I'm pretty sure it's right. 2000% more interested. And we are , we are seeing that as well with a lot of the occupiers around Stratford. The stat was global. It wasn't for Stratford. But whenever I'm speaking to some of the businesses there now, they're constantly talking about, we didn't realize that there was this new restaurant or bar opening. Or you can cycle through the park on lunch and things like that. That , you know, the more people are together and having these different experiences, the more opportunity there is to explore. And then you wanna explore more there . There's just, you know, a a , it
Speaker 2:Becomes part of your culture as
Speaker 3:It workplace , isn't it ? It's like psychology and kind of mindset around the , the way that you work. You're not commuting to sit at a desk all day and just be in the building. You are , you're coming together to have different experiences that hopefully nudge opportunities to connect with people within your business that you might not usually speak to outside your business.
Speaker 2:Just picking out some of the projects you've worked on. Then one of the big ones is obviously , uh, the International quarter in Stratford, which is the , on the Queen Elizabeth Park , uh, the Olympic Park. There's obviously a lot going on up there. You've got sort of here east, you've got the, the Westfield Center , but you are working on this international court , which is a , a series of different buildings, which is workplace, all sorts of different things going on. And it's sort of, it's got a real nice character to it. There's lots of things starting to emerge there, I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's changed so much in the past few years since I joined Lendlease . Even the park is really interesting. I don't think too many people really know about it. Whenever I bring people out there, it's like, wow, where did this come from? 560 acre green space. But there's six universities directly on it. And he reached over in the old media center Pleo there, there's like 800 businesses in that. And we are all working together at the moment. So all the universities are talking to each other. We're talking to them and to Plex and to he re and there's also the culture strip who are B B C music, Sadlers Wells and the v n a cultural
Speaker 2:Sort of thread running through too. And
Speaker 3:They're all sort of experimenting with like future of media and consumption and , and that type of thing. So there , there's this sort of really interesting mix of stuff going on. We are sort of in between the Westfield and that cultural strip. Right . Sort of a minute walk from each <laugh> at the moment. A million square foot of office space. Another million and half, just a million . Yeah . Just, just a small million <laugh> . Another million and a half to come. So one building should be topping out in a few months. And there's quite a bit of residential going on in there as well. So there's two new resi towers, which will come as well. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> plus some more next to the v and a . There's some really, really exciting staff . There's still cranes up , but also lots and lots of really interesting architecture to see. For some reason the greenery stands out a lot more now with all of that as the , the backdrop. I
Speaker 2:Think one thing that struck me is , although there's lots of different architectural styles going on, it all works well together in contrast to say what's going in in some of the buildings in Voxel . Mm . Uh , and there's a big lack of green space there as well. But, you know, there's lots of nice things to pick out there, but it does feel really well considered as a master plan.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. It's really cool actually to, to be there now. And when we are talking about like walking meetings and that kind of thing mm-hmm . Getting outside the box of the , the building that you work in mm-hmm . When I go there, 'cause we, we work there. I'm , I'm there maybe once or twice a week when I'm not in Elephant Park or Birmingham , um, or our head office. The experience isn't really about going in and like being in the office. You spend more time sort of walking through the streets or should we just go for a walk over to the park? Should we just go and see sort of
Speaker 2:Cottages outside meetings
Speaker 3:And things like that? The ucl l developments come ,
Speaker 2:You sort of mentioned inclusive innovation there and that seems to be a really interesting thing that's happening , happening now with the different universities. You've got Plex and they're all sort of connecting with each other and, and it seems to be creating a , a something that's some of the parts that's more significant individual universities. Is that something that you deliberately curated or is it sort of naturally started to happen?
Speaker 3:So the universities are naturally working together. There's lots of different partnerships between the , the businesses and the unis. And for example, T F L who are based there are working down in Plex cell then with Ford Mobility and Road Labs . And there's , there's lots of , um, kind of connections that have already been made across the park. But London Legacy Development Corporation have been for the past few years spearheading , um, basically a , an innovation district. But it , it feels like more than that. It's a , it's inclusive. So an inclusive innovation district because it's not just about the universities and the businesses. Yeah . It's bringing in the , the whole community. And it's a demonstration district because we've, the way it's set up, we've got an opportunity to use the park as an area to demonstrate future sustainable living for communities. So the way that this demonstration district's been set up is around three themes. Health and wellbeing. Yeah . Sustainability and mobility. And they're all based on , uh, a lot of the work that the businesses who are currently based on the park are doing. So the TLS road labs , freight labs, testing, we had , uh, bird scooters a few years back and testing electric scooters. And we've had , um, driverless cars and all that kind of thing across the park. But as part of the innovation ecosystem thinking, what we're trying to set up is a space where you've got networking and events. 'cause the social capital across the park is what is the mm-hmm . <affirmative> the most valuable. How do you connect the dots between a lot of the people who are doing this, but also the data. How can we start to share more data between the different people who are doing things to unlock opportunities to do it faster, to come out with different ideas and opportunities to innovate. U C L for example, have the campus is set up with all new faculties mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Oh . But what's interesting is that it's not designed around faculties. It's really designed around challenges speaking . Right . Okay . Speaking to the operations director there, she was explaining that the way it will operate is you'll have these challenges and then sort of multidisciplinary groups working together on them. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , which is a model for the way that we hope future industries will operate to tackle some of these things like climate change, for example. So that's quite interesting. But the facilities, there are then there's sort of labs, wet labs, dry labs, robot labs. There's a lot of , um, digital integration into all of the other industries that will come out of there. So built environment plus digital finance plus digital and , and , and just connecting the dots between things that haven't previously worked together mm-hmm . At a university level. So that's really, really interesting. And, and whenever you look at something like that, or U C L U A L , college of Fashion and opportunities then to go, okay, there's like, there's , there's fashion and there's the future of sustainable fashion mm-hmm . <affirmative> and there's the future of like sustainability and health and like green technology and that type of thing where we start to see crossovers where there's these sort of new sweet spots. It's just really interesting. Yeah. It
Speaker 2:Sort of feeds into the sort of sharing economy like the , the the knowledge and data
Speaker 3:Talking about sharing economy 'cause the , the sharing economy knowledge, data, technology, but also physical space. Yeah . And the , that sort of physical opportunity to permeate between businesses or projects. Yeah . Um , so a lot of the talking we are doing is about what assets can we share mm-hmm . <affirmative> , like physical assets, how can we design so that places are more permeable. So spaces to work outdoors has been a big theme for us. And the international quarter for the past few years, we've been designing sort of structures that you can like plug into power and sit and work for the day with other groups of people and things like lobbies, entrances, you know, more accessible, welcoming so that you don't feel there's a boundary there whenever you're walking in. Things like that all come together to create, you know, these physical places that people feel they can permeate and they're welcome and there's access to be part of something much bigger.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting and it sort of, it reminds me a little bit of the chat we had the other day about this sort of trend towards science parks. I've been speaking to Nick Gaskill, who's we've recently recorded a podcast with, I know speak to a couple of guys there , shepherd Robinson . They're all seeming to be working on these big sort of science buildings that are a combination of labs , office space. So they're really sort of hybrid. And a lot of the stuff you were saying about that fits in really nicely about this sort of permeable space .
Speaker 3:The thing I find really interesting about that is there's lots of research just now on the, like the power of proximity and the fact that sharing a lot of these environments, like the life science parks of , you know, there's so much investment from the government in them . They're seen as, I think most areas are calling themselves a life science district because they wanna attract this big opportunity into the areas. But the , this power of proximity piece, and similar to what we were talking about before, like how do you connect things to innovate just by having a lot of these functions. So that sort of labs and amenities and the administration around it and like different people testing different things. You start to innovate within the small areas of like working processes as well. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> . Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Which is why that's all. Yeah. It's really, really, it's really cool.
Speaker 2:Obviously we talked about the international quarter, you've got Smithfield's going on in Birmingham, which
Speaker 3:Smithfield Yeah , Smithfield, sorry. Smithfield is, it's the site of the Commonwealth Games from last year. So we've partnered with the Birmingham city Council to deliver, what is it really amazing development that sits within in Birmingham just south of New Street Station and the bull ring . Mm-hmm . <affirmative> . Mm-hmm . <affirmative> on the right hand side is Digby, on the left hand side is south side. So gay village, Chinese quarter , like really sort of cultural, both really cultural parts of Birmingham. Very young, very vibrant. And to the south of the site is Rio Valley residential neighborhoods. So all of those areas are very unique and we've got a really good opportunity to create something that compliments all of them because it has to , we're we're sort of on the edges of all of these very different parts of Birmingham, but has its own unique culture as well. It's a mix of brand new market building. It's on the original site of the markets in Birmingham. So this like rich industrial history , um, where , so where industry basically started and office landscape along with culture and residential and new Green Park all plugged in together into this really amazing place.
Speaker 2:Obviously the Olympic Park and you've got the Commonwealth Park. Is there similarities or you had to approach it completely differently? Or do , do you pick up stuff you've learned from the Olympic Park and carry on the good stuff? Or what's the difference between the two?
Speaker 3:I think very different. The Olympic Park is a , a lot of bigger government, quite a modern
Speaker 2:Space as
Speaker 3:Well, isn't it? Yeah. It , it is. There's a well
Speaker 2:Than jumping into , uh, an existing
Speaker 3:Sort of, and it's a lot of different developments working together across , uh, what was the Olympic Park, but a lot of infrastructure already there because of the Olympics. This is a bit different in that it's, it's sort of starting with scratch from scratch from an in infrastructure perspective. But still lots of partners working on the, the roads that will go through the streetscapes. How we, how we plug into different partnerships in Birmingham. You know, they're , they're very, very different and they feel different. They're different cities.
Speaker 2:I find it so interesting. 'cause I mean what we do is effectively graphic design and build things, but you know, you're talking about something with such a permanence to it. You know, you've got what, 5,000 years worth of legacy . Yeah . So you're spending a bit of time up there at the minute. I am watching it come to life.
Speaker 3:I am one, it fluctuates between zero days one day or two days a week. <laugh>, there's an awful lot going on. And we're, we're in planning at the moment, stage two, planning for the master plan and starting to look at how we sort of seed an element of the culture that we wanted to have early mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So meanwhile use , um, across the site while we start to build
Speaker 2:Obviously big challenges on the retail front, you know , retail sectors struggling a little. Obviously all those considerations have come back into it. And you've got the market that you're placing there and what , what sort of things are you trying to do differently on a retail front? Just to put you on the spot on trying to solve the whole retail industry there.
Speaker 3:I'm not an expert in retail, but I work closely with the retail team who are , um, and I always loved listening to their conversations. 'cause they're not just talking about, and neither should workplace be the sort of daytime economy, but they're talking about a a 360, a 24 hour lifestyle Yeah . For retailers because all the stuff that happens overnight to make sure that everything's operating during the day, the very early retail hours, the the sort of midday early evening, the , your sort of peak time evening and then late evening lifestyles that are all quite different to one another. What's really interesting about future of retail, just coming back to the sharing economy , is I think I've seen a few examples recently of retail spaces who are sharing throughout the day mm-hmm. <affirmative> . So in the morning it might be got , yeah . There's , there's one in particular a pie in mash place in the evening. It turns into a cocktail bar and the place on, and I , I haven't spoken to these guys, I dunno how they do it if they're the same operator or not on Broadway market who are a butcher during the day in the evening, they're a restaurant. Yeah . And if you hadn't seen it during the day, you wouldn't know that the marble tabletop you're eating on had, you know, raw meat lying on it earlier. But I think that's really interesting because you , you can start to look at one opportunities to sort of support retailers better by having that sharing economy, but also by activating places across the , the full 24 hours because you've got different people doing different things. And that's quite interesting.
Speaker 2:And when is Smithfield going live? When's that starting to open? Up
Speaker 3:Between 2027 and 2028. Um , oh, okay. Okay. So a lot sooner. We should , we should be having a , a lot of the first phase brought to life.
Speaker 2:The other big one you're working on is Silvertown the Royal docks in London. Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's really exciting. That's , um, the Millennium Mills building, if you know of that. And the area around it, the royal docks is I think the only enterprise zone in London.
Speaker 2:So what sort of things are happening in Silvertown? What are the tenants that are moving into that kind of space? Or what sort of people are , are you looking for for that sort of thing ?
Speaker 3:Uh , silver Town's one of those places like Bat Sea Power Station that's had a million developers Right . Go through it. Yeah . We are just getting spades in the ground now to start building. So at the moment there's, there's quite a lot of residential communities surrounding it. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> and it's on the Thames. So Thames, it's directly across from the Royal Docks. D l r station and Customs House. Yeah . The new Queen Elizabeth Lion Station. So that's about a five minute walk. We're dropping in a new footpath to walk across the water. And then you're sort of met by this at the moment, quite eerie presence of this massive factory, which makes this huge statement on the water. So part of it's rejuvenating the Millennium Mills building mm-hmm . <affirmative> , which is 1930s build flower mill that's been empty since the eighties. And since then, it's really just been a place for raves, <laugh> for filming music movies. Coldplay have a , is it called Teardrops? But yeah, things like , uh, like Spider-Man Luther, anywhere that people are taken to be killed, really <laugh> . Um, it's one of those places it's got such a character, like a really, it's the big
Speaker 2:Open space. Just Yeah .
Speaker 3:Big , massive , massive red brick building. This big , big factory. The big derelict space. So it's a massive area around that, which will have 6,000 new homes, about a million square foot of office space. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> , including the rejuvenation of the Millennium Mills building. Uh , it's
Speaker 2:Your favorite number for office space.
Speaker 3:A million. A million. A million. Just round it . A million. <laugh> a new school. There's , there's a mix of sort of grade a office space, millennium Mills, like amazing cultural hub and this sort of light industrial space , uh, called Silver Works , which will be a bit more of a mix of that making, doing probably more akin to the here East Yeah . Model. Yeah . Lots of small makers, that type of thing. But yeah, there's, there's a real big drive there to try and give. So from a culture perspective, try and give the community access to the water on the, like the Thames, there's really minimal points that you can actually just kind of step down and directly sort of touch water. Yeah . Yeah . So there's, we're looking at how we pull some of that river into the, like, there's some current docks there. There's the , the two heritage buildings are the Millennium Mills and an old silo like grain silo building, keeping them sort of restoring them as part of the neighborhood. But then yeah, bringing, bringing a lot of the like, water in through like canal systems and putting leisure on them. So swimming , uh, I'm thinking like paddle boarding, kayaking, that kind of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The Thames isn't somewhere I'm desperate to jump into, although I'm doing the London triathlon this year. So I'm not <laugh> massively excited about boots swimming the Thames, but , but I , I think yeah . Bring it to life like that. It's such a nice idea. Mm-hmm . And such an amazing building as a sort of central piece as well, if you all
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think it will have a really different character to anything that we know right now in London. Yeah . Yeah .
Speaker 2:Nice
Speaker 3:Big bold industrial access to the terms . Yeah . Like sort of green swimming lifestyle, like the mix of the two is something that really excites me.
Speaker 2:One thing we haven't covered, and one of the reasons I , one of the things I first met you over was the Ness Labs you were doing with , uh, Nigel Osland for Workplace Trends. Was it with , with Nigel Labs ?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. So we, so Lenley back in 2018, take it further than that. 2017, the British Red Cross New Economics Foundation co-op did this big bit of research on loneliness in the uk and , uh, found that 9 million people were lonely. Over a million of that was office workers. The stats surgeon general in the us Vivek Murphy , um, announced an epidemic. He had a , a stat that said it's the , with the patients he's seeing it has the same mortality rate. So like death rate as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Wow. So that's massive costing businesses 2.5 billion pounds a year in absenteeism, like wellbeing, presenteeism being there, but just not productive and like low tenure burnout, all that kind of thing. Like really awful. So within Lendlease, we just, around the time I joined, someone had the idea, why don't we look at the sort of the interplay between place design, like how people spend time in places and the impact of that on loneliness. Can we design places that nudge meaningful relationships or give a higher sense of belonging? So we went on this journey of what was supposed to be 18 months and ended up being about three years of really deep diving into understanding, you know, how place plays a role in that. But we couldn't do it by ourselves. So because it's , it's such a really huge topic to tackle and no one should look at that by themselves. Really. You get lonely for start . Yeah. Because you get lonely. You get lonely and you don't really get anywhere, do you? And so we partnered with a , a grassroots business called collectively who were brilliant. Um, and between us brought in about 800 business like businesses across government and councils and universities and, you know, technology businesses and architects just to look at, well, you know, what are we doing here? How can we create something better? And as we were sort of going through that, we realized, well, it's not really place , is it? 'cause programming plays such an important role in it. And back to the conversation we were having on like the value in social capital and networks and that kind of thing. It's not just about designing places, but how you activate it. So yeah. So that , that's really important. And then the policies that you put in place, we had the opportunity to present to the A P P G all party parliamentary group, <laugh> , um, with Tracy Crouch, who was the previous minister for loneliness, just on some of the findings that we had across workplaces, homes and public spaces, community spaces , um, universities, that type of thing. So covering all areas of life. But yeah , some really interesting research came out of it. We, from a workplace perspective, we brought Nigel Osland in mm-hmm . <affirmative> . Um , so that was the connection to workplace trends. Uh , he worked with us to set up some of the kind of early workplace desktop research to see what was out there and it's wasn't much. Mm-hmm . There was a lot on the policies and behaviors and structural things, but nothing on the physical side. So that, that was nothing really to start with, but also like , good 'cause we, you know , we could really deep dive into it. We ran some workshops, we did a survey, which interestingly 'cause we did this piece on where do people feel lonely whenever they're working and people in offices, which is like a bit of a no brainer. You're , you're by yourself, you're isolated. Also the roles of people in offices tend to be conducive to a bit more loneliness. But remote work and then homes were the most lonely, but mobile working was the least lonely. So the only thing I can take out of that is, well, mobile workers can choose where they wanna work. But yeah, that was, yeah , really, really interesting. And I think
Speaker 2:The surprise for me was the scale of it. How big a problem it was. 'cause and I think , um, Nigel and yourself mentioned it when you did the initial talk. How, how big the problem was. Yeah . You know , and I think we're quite shocked at what you'd done Earthed initially.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. It's really scary and really sad. And we were working through this , um, project where we'd always stop and have check-ins and encourage a culture that we've sort of walk the talk, encourage the culture that we're trying to encourage through this research. And then we'd sort of remind ourself , oh, like we we're so happy and excited about this. But actually, you know, it's really sad I've made so many friends through just doing that as well. 'cause it's such a, it's such a human topic. It's, I mean , belonging is a basic human need, but the like, being part of it kind of strips you back to think about times in life that I've felt lonely and your experience will be different. And sometimes, you know, I feel lonely 'cause I'm just in back to back meetings all day and I'm talking to people the whole day. But I don't
Speaker 2:Actually Yeah , no , that's not connect
Speaker 3:With anyone sort of connection. Yeah. Yeah. I've obviously met you through it. I met someone through it who we spent an hour every maybe two or three weeks talking through lockdown about the loneliness lab. And then a year in, we realized she lives just around the corner from me. <laugh> <laugh> . And now we catch up all the time. But just a coffee or a wine locally. Yeah . But , um, it's so interesting 'cause we could have just been having a coffee or go for a walk as opposed to sitting online talking to one another. Yeah .
Speaker 2:Uh , Rachel, that was all fascinating. Thank you so much for your time. It was really interesting. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you. That was a good chat. You've
Speaker 1:Been listening to the Spacecraft podcast , conversations on how innovative design can transform the workplace environment . This podcast , Dan .