PRESS | The rise and rise of the Interior Architect

Speaking to Architecture Today, partner Tim Bowder-Ridger shared his thoughts on what the Building Safety Act means for the industry and how it is contributing to the rise of the “Interior Architect” role.

“Beyond technical matters, our founder Sir Terence Conran emphasised the importance of the human experience before all else. As a result, we have always viewed the professional divide between Architects and Interior Designers beside the point. Our primary focus has been on creating spaces and environments for people, whether inside or out, with equal rigour and consideration.

This approach had led to us routinely resourcing projects with a mix of Architects and Interior designers. While smaller practices have traditionally done this out of necessity, we also apply it to larger projects to grasp the additional value of varied viewpoints and skills that enable us to complete the design from the macro to the micro, and to take projects to the further level of detail that completes the user experience.

Recently, we are witnessing a shift with clients increasingly putting value on singular conceptual approaches to remove the potential gaps or duplications between different scopes, which can also lead to professional cost efficiencies. However, perhaps the recent acceleration in UK of the shift towards placing ownership of the design of buildings and spaces into fewer hands comes from an increasing understanding of the spirit of Building Safety Act (BSA). A change that clearly encourages architects to return to the central role with as few layers of responsibility as possible, with whomever is undertaking and coordinating the design work also taking on the BRPD role.

This does, nevertheless, require a broader skill set within practices and a shift from the culture of practices focusing, or being seen to focus, only on parts of the process of delivering buildings and spaces. This will take time, as even for practices that do already cover a broad range of typologies and skills, there is a propensity for clients and collaborators to want to place them in a box.

Of course, we will enthusiastically continue to collaborate with our professional colleagues in either role, not least as this is another way to add a layered perspective on larger projects, and whilst the industry continues to default towards splitting up scopes on a ‘horses for courses’ basis. However, increasingly we are being approached to design the insides of buildings as ‘Interior Architects’ as opposed to ‘Interior Designers’, on the same terms as when we are employed as the “Architects” more generally. These architectural appointments are simply extended to include the tasks we would have traditionally undertaken as Interior Designers, but to an enhanced level of responsibility for the technical coordination within the wider works.

This allows us to consider and the develop the design from very first principles to the finest details, built-in or otherwise, to create the all-embracing experience, whilst being less exposed to the vagrancies of passing packages over. Something that Architects would have traditionally done, before we allowed the reach of our profession to be eroded.

For us, this has not been a standing start, as we have undertaken this full scope on selected projects for years, particularly in the UK on adaptive reuse briefs, so central to our portfolio and design ethos. Centre Point Tower, for instance, was a project where we were engaged as Architects, with a scope that extended to the Interior Design and styling, through all stages of work. This was all with a view to ensure that the apartments and amenity spaces seamlessly related to spirit of the architecture, which we worked hard to restore and authentically update.

Notwithstanding this perennial challenge, our industry in the UK is clearly at a watershed in part due to the BSA, but also as AI starts to ask questions about how we work. This surely must be a good thing and an opportunity for architects to regain the ground we have lost over recent decades. It’s about time we not only embrace, but drive the change by showing our true capabilities at a point when our clients are having to step back and reconsider.”