Redefining Elderly Living Architecture: A Conversation with Dominic Hailey at ColladoCollins

0032 - Dominic Hailey, Collado Collins
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Stephen Drew: [00:00:00] Good

afternoon, everyone. I am Steven Drew from the Architecture Social, and I am joined here by a, by a fantastic guest, someone that I've had the pleasure of working with in a professional capacity, and I've learned from actually in the process. So Dominic Haley from Clutter Collins. It is a pleasure for you to be here with you.

With me. How are you? Are you all right? Morning,

Dominic Hailey: Steven, or afternoon or whatever time of day is everyone. I'm well, thank you. Still working from home in these rather interesting times. But yeah, thank you for the very kind introduction. I'm glad to have sowed the seeds of some ideas in your brain, Steven.

Stephen Drew: Absolutely. We can, we can frame it for everyone how we met actually. So I've actually, I've worked with Claudio Collins on recruitment over the years, and we had the pleasure of speaking because you were looking for someone to join your team at the time, which was [00:01:00] actually cause you've done some fantastic projects in terms of elderly living or retirement communities.

And we had a bit of a giggle before when you give me the brief and you were like. Look, Steve, I'm not looking for people who are going to be, you know, thinking that LDLiving is beige walls and chairs stacked in a room with several people absolutely bored out of their brains. There's much, much more to that.

It's an exciting opportunity for the person that understands it. And our conversation grew from there because. It is an interesting sector now for anyone that is not familiar with the work that you've, you've done, we briefly talk about what elderly living is, and maybe then we can talk about how you, you got into the sector and maybe a little bit about your background.

So, first of all, for anyone that's thinking that retirement communities are beige walls. Can you correct, can [00:02:00] you give the, the correct?

Dominic Hailey: Well, I think part of the problem, part of the issue perhaps Stephen is that there are many retirement communities still being completed that are beige walls. And I think, you know, one of the reasons we had that long conversation around finding.

The right person to work with whenever it was a year, 18 months ago now was that there is this, this broad understanding or this broad problem, certainly in the UK, of how we consider housing for older people. You take the idea of home, which is great. Everyone likes home and you can take the idea of care and everyone likes to feel cared for or to give care to people.

If you put care and hope together, getting care home, then your mental picture. obviously becomes, I would say, probably quite a negative one, given the state of, of care homes and care home design in the UK, you know, institutional handrails on walls, all that sort of thing. So when, when we talk about housing for older people, which has [00:03:00] overlaid on it an element of care, then it's very easy.

To fall back into the trope, if you like, the assumption that this is going to be another one of those slightly dull places, which has a big lounge somewhere with a view of some trees and all older people like to do is to sit down and stare out the window and, you know, reflect on their past. Now, we are all future old people.

And I cannot imagine anything worse for my future than spending my autumn years staring at leaves falling and reflecting on my past. And I think if you, if you look around now, you know, the generation that is becoming older people are the baby boomers. A generation accustomed to choice, to diversity, you know, the first real generation of consumers.

And so, what we bring forward now for older people has to take them into account and their future needs and their considerations. So, when choosing a person, to go back to the origin of your question, It was about finding someone [00:04:00] that was enthusiastic about the prospect of effectively coming up with new, almost experimental ways of arranging buildings, apartment buildings, to, to provide communities for a specific group of people.

Now age should be a second filter laid over the top of that. As you mentioned you did rather fit three questions into one. I did, that was really unfair.

Stephen Drew: So I'll peel them back. I know, sorry. I said, I said it would be an easy time and then, and I, and, and the script of what I said before about how we do it.

So we're thinking on our feet, but yes,

Dominic Hailey: it's fine. I was, I was good to then backtrack to yes, how I became involved in all of this right back from my history. You know, I trained as an architect. Starting in 1996, showing my age now, I've just had my 44th birthday. Age is an important thing to recognize, even if we don't sort of use it as the primary criteria.

So here I am at 44. And yes, in 96, I started training and to be honest, lost interest in architecture a little bit. And [00:05:00] so in the early sort of 2000, 2001 period, I went to the London School of Economics and did a master's degree there called City Design and Social Science. That was quite interesting coming into it as an architect where you're trained to very much focus on, you know, building a design solution, form, beauty, aesthetics, a bit of practicality.

And this, this LSE course was, was part of their. Sort of emerging cities program, which involved all disciplines, sociologists, lawyers, transport planners, architects, urban designers, multidisciplinary teams, looking at the issues of urbanism and changing urban forms from as many perspectives as possible.

Now, then I ended up working back in architecture because ultimately, you know, a year studying a master's at the LSE bankrupts you if you're not careful. So I had to get a job and through a series of. Jobs fell into actually realizing that the jobs that I'd completed that were quite successful tended to be [00:06:00] schemes for older people.

So I kind of fell into it a bit by chance. I never set out. So I never predicted I'm going to be a specialist in this sector. I still don't really consider myself a specialist. I just consider myself a thinker, if you like, and that then can carry through into design. So, by the time I joined Collado Collins in 2015, and I was just recruited to deliver a particular building, not particularly to, to focus on housing for older people, I had actually completed three buildings one in Shepherds Bush a nice big arms house in Sydenham Hill and then another one over in Newham.

which were age designated accommodation. And indeed the project I was brought on to deliver at Collider Collins was the Lansby in Stanmore, which we'll come on to, I'm sure a bit later on, which again was apartments for older people with amenities and the client. on that project was very much sort of keen on bringing this new model of later living as it was back in 2015.

I think we've been talking about it for five years now. We're still calling it [00:07:00] a kind of a new model and more and more people are doing it, but they were interested in bringing that forward and just through the design process and working with them I just became more and more interested in the issues around the sector from there.

I mean, you know, I'm jumping ahead a little bit now, but you know, we attended. Myself and some colleagues, a number of conferences around the subject, there have been some very big ones, Property Week, LD Events, you know, Housing Lynn do one, ARCO do a big conference every year. There's a plethora, you know, four or five, maybe that's not a plethora, but a lot of conferences out there.

And every one that we went along to, there was something missing. And that was pretty much anybody over the age of 65. Everybody sat there talking about What a great real estate opportunity this was, you know, these are the last generations with property wealth and we can unlock that, we can help them downsize, we can call it rightsizing, you know, what, what a great demographic with an aging population to tap [00:08:00] into.

But the older person was always them, was always the other, was always somewhere else and never in the room. So we, ultimately decided to put together a thought piece on the sector, which was, which became, if you like the just living book and brought on board a very talented and very intelligent young lady called Carly Dixon, who was a fellow of the MIT age lab, a young architect herself, and very, very interested in all the subjects around.

housing for older people and indeed housing for anybody that didn't sort of suit the norms in terms of accessibility, impaired vision, cognitive impairment, any number of things. So we set out really to find the voice of the current generation of older people. And the future generations by talking to our peers and colleagues and then really kind of compare that to how the industry was approaching the sector and encapsulate that in a, in a moment in the book, which has really led on to [00:09:00] great things because the more we sort of put that message out there, talk to people, listen to people, understand people, provide choice for people.

The more we're coming across people becoming involved in the sector or who have been involved in the sector for a long time, who. Always had those things in their mind, but never had the opportunity or never had a medium to get it out there and to really discuss it. So we've really unlocked this conversation, I think, for a lot of people around what aging is, how we think about aging, you know, what ageism is and how prevalent it is actually in our media.

And how we address that and how we think about communities for the future. Always going back to that point, you know, what is an old person? It's us in the future. It's someone who's lived life and is unique and doesn't get to 65 and fall off an aging cliff and receive, you know, a sign outside their front gate that says elderly person, please be quiet and drive slowly.

You know, we're not, we're not like that when we age or we shouldn't be, but [00:10:00] we seem to be designing for it. I

Stephen Drew: think, I think you've, you've, you've done my my, my free questions, very good justice there. And I absolutely, what I'll do at the end of this, by the way, is I'm going to link for everyone that's listening the Lansby project, which you mentioned also to the Claddagh Collins publication of Just Living.

And also I'm going to link to your, the article you did in Gill Living. And what I quite liked about there is that you talked about your, your analogy of. The punk rock Jody in the future, which I thought was, it was amazing because I always say this to us with cause I actually, I've always loved computer games.

I've always loved building computers. And while, while I was studying architecture, I would play video games and it's always been that fun thing. And I remember saying to my friends, I was like, look, when I go to an old person's home, I'm going to plug me into World of Warcraft, plug me into the mainframe because I'm not going to sit in terms of the analogy before of in that room with the chairs.

And, and I love what you're talking about because [00:11:00] at first, I think if you're being, it's a bit like what's been drilled into our brains from before. And that's where, when we had the brief at first, I remember briefing my team about, look, we've got, we've got. Dominic's team at Carter Collins, we need to find someone who's enthusiastic about LD11 and, and and doing those retirement communities, doing these interesting projects.

And what's interesting is that, as you said, you've almost got to reprogram people's connotations. And at first it was like, Oh, this is going to be difficult because it's like. How are we going to get people interested in doing these old fashion, you know, all these, or maybe the buildings that we've been used to before.

But the point is of what you're saying is that there's a massive opportunity to change this year. It's not like, it's like these almost prison cells or this room where you go from one to the other, you're on about. These awesome opportunities. So in the future, it could be like, I don't know, the YouTube studio there, or it could be the, you know, the gaming area, or as you said, like the [00:12:00] studio area where people can record and play instruments and, and the, you have these fantastic spaces that.

Actually, you're solving a problem for me in the future. Cause I'm like, don't take me to that home. Don't take me, I don't want to go in the chair. And what you're on about is something which is like, oh, you know what? That is something I'm looking forward to. Nice views, nice, nice rooms, nice functions, maybe a little cinema.

Who knows? I mean, I'm kind of designing the brief for you here, but the point is, it's not, here's the sitting room. Oh no, just that size.

Dominic Hailey: No, you're, you're absolutely right. And you know, you're right to raise your own interests in this because they are as relevant as anybody else's interests. You know, your point about video games, I can imagine maybe you will be sitting in that room, but you won't be staring at the trees.

You'll have an Oculus VR headset on and something in each hand, and you will be battling away somewhere in a virtual realm. And what's going to be important to the retirement option that you move into [00:13:00] is going to be a high speed internet connection. And you almost won't care about anything else. And that's fine, you know, that's just something else to build into the brief.

I think, you know, you mentioned the Guild article and the analogy I used there was, what does Patti Smith want? I mean, Patti Smith does not want to move into a retirement community. That's day one, you know, fact one. However, there are people like her and maybe because I'm an architect and then, you know, the friends that I have tend to be, if you like, more left leaning.

Guardian reading type, so I know a number of people in their 70s and early 80s that are still, you know, very militant, strong, with strongly held beliefs, you know, they're very strong individuals that express what they want, what they're interested in. And what they're not interested in very, very clearly we know that for the current retirement opportunity, it's only of interest to about 10 percent of the demographic that is available to move into it because of what it is.

And [00:14:00] absolutely, it's going to change. We need to think about what the future is. You mentioned, you know, the nice amenities, the bar, the restaurant, you know, the library that we put in. But if we do them. too nicely, then a lot of people might not want to use them because they feel they have to dress up to use them.

Stephen Drew: Oh,

Dominic Hailey: okay. If we've got a really nice restaurant, and this is something I mentioned in the Guild article, when I'm older, I might want to wander around in a t shirt from a punk rock band. I'm not a punk rocker particularly, but as an example, you know, with something rude on the front, or something at least a little bit controversial, and I want to feel comfortable in my home or wandering around, whatever I'm paying a service charge for in, in whatever I'm wearing and not feel like I need to iron my shirts make sure I'm wearing a sports blazer, you know, with polished buttons and all that sort of thing.

Going back, I think, to why this sector is so stimulating for architects, if I may revert to the start of your long winded question yet again, Stephen.

Stephen Drew: I know I'm never going to live that. [00:15:00]

Dominic Hailey: Listen, I'm just going to get used to the way that you formulate questions with several layers. It's like a tiramisu of questions, but the great thing about this sector for architects is that when clients come to you with a site, their intention is not to raise land value.

Their intention is not to flip it. with planning usually but their intention is as developer operators to gain consent for a building build it out and then operate it for 50 plus years now obviously 50 plus years you have to think about you know as i said i'm 44 i'll be 94 perhaps when the lands be in stanmore becomes comes to the end of its useful life will it be suitable for me in 30 years time?

Probably not. But will something else come along? Possibly. But as an architect, I got to design that building, build that building. And now I get to watch it in operation and continue to work with that client doing more buildings. I think that was one of the things when, when you helped us find the right person, you know, the real carrot [00:16:00] dangling to dangle in front of people was not that it wasn't beige care homes.

It was that. you get to design and build a building that is thoughtful about making a place for people to live. Not just stack flats up as densely as possible, although there's an element of that, but, but to actually put something together that when someone walks through the front door, they look around and they breathe in and they feel a sense of, of, if not belonging, then at least satisfaction that here is a good building.

It's a great way to do good buildings. Which you don't get if you work in the standard residential sector. I mean, even, you know, built to rent when it first came along as PRS or whatever we were calling it. Well, that's a subcategory, I suppose. But, you know, we had huge super lobbies and amenities everywhere.

It turned out they weren't viable. They couldn't make them stack up. So that got reduced, but in retirement living, because of the way they operate the financials they can support more amenities and better quality amenities. And yes, why not a recording studio? Why not a video games room or several video games rooms?

You know, why not a weekly [00:17:00] LAN party? Although that probably is even before our time when everyone was connecting their computers together with ethernet cables and sitting in someone's basement, but. All of those things will be relevant and needed and enjoyable to our generation. And, you know, the generation that comes after us, maybe not my children, but the children of friends who are in their teens and twenties, that have no consideration of aging at the moment, have a whole different set of requirements, again, that we need to

Stephen Drew: future proof for.

It's I think, look, you've done, that's been a fantastic, I think, overview of what you do. And put it this way. I want to make sure I'm in the same retirement community as you, especially after that one, I'm going to be following you around. And I'll be like, Dominic, remember we go way back and you need to put in a good word for me so I can get a little discount, but I loved your analogy off because it's true, you almost like, but the Ritz is that balance between.

You want it to be homely and approachable, but special and that's the, and that's the [00:18:00] kind of vibe I get and having read and especially, I mean, the Gill Living article was very good and I've, I've, I've, I haven't read at all, 150 pages of your amazing, amazing, one of

Dominic Hailey: many, one of many who have picked it up and it's not supposed to be read.

Cover to cover, particularly.

Stephen Drew: No, but it's, it's, it's like a really fantastic guide. And then what I did look through and what I did enjoy was actually the latter bits where we talked about designing for the mind. And obviously there's also an art form because what you're on about is the rooms, the functions to stimulate conversation, to stimulate people together.

to do all this stuff, but then there is that behind the scenes art of, and all the kinds of things that you've learned over architecture as well, that you can almost do like these these, these lessons, these things you picked up, which are almost subliminal, that it just makes the experience flow. And it's kind of, you, and then we're almost bleeding into like mental health and stimulating people just to kind of keep the, keep the mind jogging.

Dominic Hailey: Absolutely. And, you know, the amount that I've learned in the past [00:19:00] three years about the subject, you know, particularly around, as you say, mental health cognitive decline, you know, what it is to live with dementia and how you need to design for that. The importance of nature. And a connection with the outdoors.

All of these things are so critical and there are a larger number of operators now coming forward, really putting wellbeing at the heart of their agenda for new developments, you know, almost tier one, the first thing that on there. brief is well being, right? How do we encapsulate that in a building and deliver it?

I'm just going to rewind to correct you and you did very briefly mention the book as a guide and we're very clear that it's not a guide simply because there are so many different recommendations on good practice out there that we would never sort of sanction one as, you know, the right answer.

It's very difficult and it's very difficult to navigate quite often what the right things are to do. Ultimately you have to fight for the simple [00:20:00] things that, that are just basics of good design. We should be designing every building for regardless of age in the same way. You know, we, we have long conversations about how to combat loneliness for, you know, people living on their own in a one bed apartment in our buildings.

Balcony so they can overlook each other so that if someone is on their balcony and they see their neighbor, they can give them away. How do you build sociability into an efficient building that effectively is a lot of outward looking flats? How do you configure the building? Now there is another generation also that suffers from extreme loneliness and it's a generation between about the ages of 20

Stephen Drew: and 30.

Dominic Hailey: There's a very interesting. Models coming forward, maybe not delivered in the UK yet, but there are some abroad in mainland Europe and Scandinavia and in the Far East, particularly in Singapore for, for intergenerational living and actually looking more broadly than just age designated housing as, as almost sort of not even life stage and not mental health, but you know, housing for.

A person at a [00:21:00] particular life stage might not be housing for a person at a particular age. What happens if we mix up lonely 20 and 20 to 30 year olds and and lonely octogenarians, you know, is there a way you can do a building and there's a an operator called the Cohab with a K, Justin Shih, who's been trying to put this model together for a very long time.

And it's difficult because it's planning use classes and all sorts of restrictions. But the idea of, of mixing generations goes back to the multi generational family, which we've moved away from in the UK over the last. 70 years, you know, granny doesn't live in a flat in the basement anymore. If you're lucky, you know, she might live around the corner, but we are geographically dispersed now just within the generations of our own family.

So we need to get a bit more of that intergenerational action going to start addressing, I think, more of the fundamental problems of of modern society than just aging. Aging happens to highlight it because you stopped working and you realize how much of our life is built around [00:22:00] work, our career, our professional identity.

When that disappears, there's obviously a sense of loss which has to be dealt with equally, people in their twenties to thirties are developing that career and beginning to understand what it means. I would have really appreciated some sage advice. Between the age of 20 and 30 to say, you know, what are you good at?

What do you like doing? Is this really the right path for you? You know, I've tried to get out of architecture. Here I am an architect, 20 years later it happens. I think my point, I think more broadly being that. A wider look at how we do housing and taking the age designation out of it would be great, but it's our hands are tied by the planning system, by use classes, by investors and their understanding of their inputs and outputs and who they're investing in.

So in the meantime, we have to make sure that any fully age designated. proposition doesn't become a ghetto, an age ghetto full of only older people. Even, even people in their [00:23:00] 70s and 80s talk about older people as someone else. Yeah. Then then, you know, people aren't really old. There's, there's 85 year olds who talk about their neighbor who's 95 as the old person next door.

It's someone else. It's always someone else. And why not? Let's, let's live in a world where we don't define ourselves as old, young, middle aged. Let's just live in a world where we do what we do and try and get the best life possible out of it. Easy to say, I suppose, when we're, you know, wealthy middle class white men sitting doing a podcast.

Not so easy for many others, but, you know, there are, there are almshouses out there. There are organizations, charitable organizations that are now revisiting their offer for older people. And reviewing 20, 30, 40 year old building stock and realizing that what we thought in the late seventies, early eighties, it's just not appropriate anymore.

Stephen Drew: And well, don't, well, don't worry, Dominic, my, my, my grand and my auntie, Wendy listened to this. So we're hitting all, we're hitting all the demographics. That's great. How, how

Dominic Hailey: may I dare I ask [00:24:00] how old they are and what their living situation is?

Stephen Drew: Do you know what? If I say auntie Wendy's age on this podcast, she's not going to listen to it again, Dom.

So I don't know. Auntie Wendy, we'll

Dominic Hailey: keep you.

Stephen Drew: Well, my gran, my gran's close to so I think she's like 87, 88. Yeah. Still a young, still a young un, but you know, for growing up for life, all this stuff you're talking about now it definitely strikes a chord. And what I love is for anyone that's listening, we will.

We will, I will put in the podcast link, I will put the link to the publication, the articles we talked about. Let's touch upon, because I've done this interview in the reverse over there, but actually I think it's better because what I've enjoyed is your passion and it's clear because as you said, maybe what you've done is a publication, not a guide.

However, I think that it's it's fantastic. And that's why I almost. Call it a gap. That's why I did call it a gap, because I just think it's great. But of course it is a publication, but what I love is that you've clearly, it's, it's something that you've got your teeth [00:25:00] into. It's something that you, you're, you're passionate about.

And you touched briefly upon the, the time period when you kind of fell. Out of love of architecture. And I'm sure that a lot of people have been in that position as well. And as, cause this podcast, I mean, there are people in industry now, but there's a lot of people studying architecture as well, and what would be great on there?

Cause the kind of. Share your journey a little bit there, because it's great you've got through something that you're interested in now, but there was that point in time, right, where you were just like, I'm not feeling it. I'm not interested. So maybe we can wind the clock back then. And if you're, if you're kind enough to share a bit of light on that, I think it could be quite inspirational for any students listening.

Wow. Okay.

Dominic Hailey: It's not dead air people I'm thinking. Wow. All right. So. Of course I have a thought on this. Architectural education, I think is, is an interesting one. You know, it comes in three [00:26:00] parts in the UK and I think probably rightly so. It's almost like the development of language and, you know, architects will go on about architecture as a language and be highfalutin about it.

I think I have my feet probably more firmly on the ground than my head in the clouds about that. But effectively your, your first degree, your part one. The bachelors is, it's almost like learning to make the sounds and the basic words in that language, the principles of design. Your part two is then sort of forming those, those sounds and words into coherent sentences and, and having a more rounded design.

And then your part three, it's really kind of taking those sentences out into the world and seeing if they stand up to scrutiny, particularly on the legal and contractual matters, maybe I'm sort of extending the analogy too far, but but in all of that, effectively, we are taught poetry. Beauty of architecture, you know, form, function commodity firmness, delight, you know, my favorite three Vitruvian, the only three Vitruvian principles, someone will probably correct me in [00:27:00] the comments to this.

I'm sure there's more to it, but we are educated. To do fantastic projects, we do art galleries, we do private houses for, you know, with a very loose brief for clients, we, we get to explore and enjoy architecture as students, which is great. But then when we come out, certainly of part one, and quite often out of part two as well.

We are pretty useless to the architecture industry, no offence, I was, and the only way then you can become more useful is through experiences, through working, but, you know, you come in effectively, you know, we don't like to do free internships, we, we never did in my generation, I wish we didn't now, but you come in with a low level of experience, you know, strong thoughts and dreams quite often from your education, and you will have to spend Years, a number of years, it might only be a couple or it might be four or five or 10 doing boring stuff, you know, what's this really boring task?

Oh, I've got to put together an InDesign document. I've got to [00:28:00] do an Excel spreadsheet. Give it to the part one, give it to the part two, you know, you're, you're a tool. And in doing all that boring stuff, it's very easy to become disenfranchised, to say, this is what I was taught, this is what I was going to be thinking, or what I thought I was going to be thinking, this is what I'm doing.

You know, guys, sort of looking around, is this right? It's, it took me, you know, 15 years to actually get in the driving seat on a project. And, you know, I value all of those 15 years, even if I didn't enjoy all of them. I mean, my, my journey to qualification was long, as I said, the part one, the great thing about, I did my part one at the University of Bath, which at the time I would recommend, I don't know if the course is still as good, but it balances technical with design.

You know, you work in conjunction with engineers that the architecture building itself was a bespoke design by Alison and Peter Smithson, you know, brutalist, famous for brutalism, but actually designed in a way so that every element. Internally [00:29:00] and how it was fitted together was expressed. It was a teaching tool.

You could see lintels over doors, you know, you could see how screws and door frames were fixed together, how stairs worked inside buildings, and it, you know, was a great place to learn. And I finished that four year course having done a sort of sandwich of six months here or there of working. And I did do really, you know, I was lucky even to do, you know, work on a project.

I got to go and visit where it happened, but I did do very small scale and dull stuff. I think I spent a lot of time because it was early days with CAD, you know, scratching away at drawings with a razor blade back in those days of drawing boards showing my age again. And when I finished my part one, I went to work for a fairly large company for a year based in Bristol.

And again, being a useless part one, I was put on fairly dull tasks in that after that year, I was just like,

Stephen Drew: you know,

Dominic Hailey: screw this. I suppose that's about as colorful as my language is allowed to podcast. But yeah, screw this. I'm interested in bigger things, which [00:30:00] is when I went to the LSC. After that, I didn't do my part two until 2010.

So I spent 10 years working as an architect, again, lucky enough to be working on projects that got delivered. And you know, that's, that's what everyone wants, isn't it? To deliver a project. But from that, I thought. I'm actually reasonably good at this and I should probably finish the qualification. So I did the part two as the office base exam with Oxford Brookes University.

So you continue to work and you do your design projects over two years. In the meantime, one, it's significantly cheaper than going to university full time. And two, you can carry on working. So in my case, you know, I think I just moved into a little house with my wife. You know, we had our first mortgage. I wasn't about to take two years as a student and not bring anything into the household.

So it was a really great way of doing it. And then part three I did at London Metropolitan University with the great Gordon Murray, who's such a character. And I really enjoyed that. And, you know, by the time I did that, I'd been working for 13 years [00:31:00] and it was as easy as natural as breathing. I would recommend to students out there, if you can, if it's possible, as your first couple of jobs, find somewhere in a small practice, you will hear more, you will do more, you'll be involved in more, and it's tempting to go and say, I'd really like to work for Zaha, Allies and Morrison, you know, one of the big names that you've probably used as precedents in your, in your studies.

The danger is you become a bit of a cubicle drone. You will end up doing 10 years of door schedules if you're not careful. Small practice, obviously it gives you a chance to be more hands on throughout. And it was through that really, but then I started working on housing for older people, both with look ahead housing and with Hammersmith United Charities for a very small practice of two old gentlemen probably they were in their mid fifties, early sixties at the time, myself, and then an office manager.

So, you know, delivering 8, 10, 15 million pounds. So not [00:32:00] huge, but big enough projects that obviously it made them reasonably wealthy and it gave me a huge amount of experience. So yes, working small practices, ideally with some old hands who, who are philosophical about things and who never panic. We tend to get in a bit of a panic quite a lot in architecture.

Whenever we get an angry email from someone and, you know, we're warned about litigation and the dangers of specifying anything all the time. So keeping a calm head on those shoulders, I think it's really important in navigating complex projects or even simple projects, but start with the simple stuff.

It's easier.

Stephen Drew: I think, I think that's a sound advice. And I kind of echo the same, the sentiment I've said, especially because it's difficult looking for a job right now, especially if you're in this. Current pandemic that actually the more likely you are to find opportunities, especially if you're a graduate or anyone entering the industry is to look off the beaten path, look at maybe local architectural practices, maybe practices, which do not have, have, as you said, as high a [00:33:00] profile as a Morrison, but they can offer you a lot of.

Benefits. Yeah. Great. Alice Morrison, great company, but the analogy that you've quite rightly said is that smaller practice, you're, you're a key part of the team. You're going to, you're going to be involved in stuff and there's nowhere to hide there. You can't, you're not doing door schedules on a massive airport and, you know, you're doing something different, but I think, look, that's a great overview and, and what is, is tie in quite nicely is that the next part on, cause.

When, what we joked about a little bit before is you never predicted you would, and now you're engrossed in the subject and clearly you're making a difference, which is great, but you never thought you were going to be doing elderly living or, or, you know, I imagine you never thought you would publish just living about it exactly.

So what would be great to know how, because you, what's the first project that you ever did in this sector? Was that the Lansby?

Dominic Hailey: So, well, the first, yeah, the first private [00:34:00] C2 use class apartment building with amenities, yes, was the Lansby. So in this sector, if we're looking at, yes, sort of for profit developer operator.

Retirement living? Yes, absolutely. I mean, as I said, previous projects, but for arms health charities or, or other nonprofit organizations. Yeah. And it was, it was a giant learning process for a number of reasons, but had a lot of similar drivers to a standard residential project. You know, one still has to be efficient, you know, one can have larger apartments and sort of be a little bit more fast and loose with net to gross, but not very much because there are still investors behind these projects.

But in terms of. Yeah, I mean, I think of myself as a, as a free thinker, as not maybe not quite a renaissance man. I almost feel like, you know, I, I've got, this sounds a [00:35:00] bit funny, doesn't it? I've got 10 years of this, I think. And unless then we really do refresh how we are approaching housing for older people.

I'll be thinking about my next book. You know, what will be the next topic? I mean. And even just living, you know, the fundamental argument of the book is that age designated housing can be great, sure, and may be needed. But what we should really be doing is good quality, accessible, general needs housing, irrespective of age.

The problem, I think, is that, you know, UK development is private sector driven. Mostly for profit, understandably, I think, and, you know, as a result, only certain things get built and they get built to a price and they get built for a reason and, you know, house builders can be, have a very different approach to retirement living operators quite often.

And I'm just pulling out my notes. I was at a webinar this morning arranged by Hawley. I call it Design [00:36:00] Unleashed. We work a lot with Hawley, you know, standard plug. There you go. Anyway, they had Guy Flintoff, the planning director from Retirement Villages Group, doing a little piece about, you know, where they are, where they sit.

They were bought by AXA in 2017. You know, when all the big funds stepped in, legal and general, set up Guild Living with Markezi and partners. AXA took on RVG, there's a couple of others out there, you know, Goldman Sachs took on Riverstone living, completely different tier, but they're all saying, you know, we've got billions of pounds to spend in this sector over the next 10 years.

We want to deliver 250 plus homes a year. Great. But what they can do, which is different to where effectively a house builder. would work is that they are not design, construct, and walk away. They're design, construct, and operate, as I said before. What that gives them is, is the opportunity to look at things like particularly energy performance and sustainability in a completely different way to a house builder.

So their long term investment [00:37:00] in low carbon will pay back over 20 years. Whereas a house builder would not go for a, you know, a very low carbon development because he'd either have to then sell it at a premium, you know, or he wouldn't be the one reaping the benefits of it in 20 years time through reduced energy costs or reduced carbon offset payments or whatever.

But if you're owning 200 homes and sort of getting, selling them on leaseholds or rental tenures, then you, you and your customers can reap the benefits of being carbon neutral. And it. It does take 20 years to, to cut the costs from, you know, 1. 5 million pounds to 600, 000 pounds, which may not seem like a lot, well, it seems like a lot to you and I, I'm sure, but, you know, to an investor, but it's backed up by then an extremely sustainable building with low embodied energy, high performance, and their running costs and their maintenance costs are going to be lower over that time as well.

So. That's another thing that's, that's great about at least [00:38:00] this sector. Now it's got the money behind it. Is it, it's a longer term investment prospect and I'm interested to see how that plays out and whether that is genuine or whether that's another one of these things we say to make profiting from older people.

More more acceptable. There is a slight sort of distasteful air to the way sometimes that the retirement living operators profit, and I don't think there should be, you know, I think, you know, I don't know if you've heard about event fees or exit fees and if you know what they are, Stephen, but they rely rather cynically on something called churn.

So effectively, you know, money, money is made an operator can, when, when somebody leaves, sorry to sound so confused about this, I want to set, set each step up in the right order. So that doesn't sound completely unreasonable. Somebody buys a department in, in a retirement offer. And at the [00:39:00] time they agree when they're buying it, but when they move out under whatever circumstances and we'll come to the circumstances and the apartment is resold, a proportion of the resale value of that apartment goes back to the owner, operator, developer, developer.

So that, that's the event fee or the exit fee. When you leave the building, the proportion of the resale value. So it's not out of your pocket so much of out of the inheritance pocket, if you like the capital pocket of your future generation. So of course, when you leave, you are either dead. Frankly, or have got to the point where if you're living with dementia, it is, has got to the extent that you can no longer live in an apartment independently, you need higher care environments, you know, or, or you have another reason you're sick of it.

And you want to move on from age designated accommodation. But churn is obviously the rate at which people move out. So a higher rate of churn will generate a higher set of exit fees. But that means, you know, a lot of churn is about [00:40:00] people dying. So we're building buildings for older people, but in order to make them stack up viably, we have to make sure that a lot of them die.

And this is not a critique of it, you know, the, the message behind a good retirement living offer is that it keeps you healthier and alive for longer and reduces, you know, your poor quality later life and, and reduces medical bills, if you like. So there are now operators out there that are looking to kind of reduce their reliance on churn and find other ways to sort of.

Make their, their investors who, who certainly with the big investors have more patient capital, make them realize that there's a good way of doing this and a not so good way of doing this, but it's another one of the sort of facets of this sector that's really interesting and almost sort of dissonant with the message.

Which is something we again try to tackle or begin to understand in the book, but present as neutrally as possible. You know, my personal opinion on how event visas work and are structured is very different [00:41:00] perhaps to what I would express as a professional, shall we say.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, it's very, it's very insightful and I've kind of learnt a lot through.

Talking with you and working with you in the process as well. And I think that it what you, what you do do and, and in there, when you, especially talking to opportunities and developers, I mean, this is actually a sector which has been around for a while, but I think now we're all starting to take it seriously.

And when you're talking about that, it actually offers. A solution to a improves better lives, but actually there's a commercial opportunity there, which is, which is definitely of interest. And I mean, that's why in one, at a sense and it's a testament to yourself and to Colorado Collins, especially right now during the pandemic, it's a tricky time for everyone.

I think it's a testament that you are busy, you are doing well, and you have spread the word of. This emerging sector or let me rephrase that the sector has always been there, but maybe pulling everything up, bringing attention to it and through doing good [00:42:00] design quality and do doing these projects and shining a light onto it, then.

We're addressing it, but as, as you kind of highlighted there, actually identifying the commerciality of it is good because the sad fact of life sometimes is that, you know, for businesses to work and to operate, there needs to be a return on the investment and the point that you're highlighting there that it is, but look, I think that's really helpful.

What I'd like to say though, while we're here is. Collins, because maybe some people don't are not as familiar with it, but you're part of the senior team at Collado Collins, a lot of different sectors that you guys do. And I mean, I, I I'm biased. I've known you for years. I think it's a great company to work for and that you touched upon briefly.

It's good to you learn in a smaller architectural practice. I wouldn't say you're that. Small, but you kind of, you have that halfway house between it's used a successful [00:43:00] commercial practice. I mean, you're talking now you're trying to use it. You're going to see wholly you're talking about the commercial viability of this sector and you're improving the design, but you kind of almost like you're like the best of both worlds is in you're still small enough that people can.

stuck into a project, but you're not huge where there's the red tape and the kind of the, you can't do stuff. So, I mean, is it worth setting the scene for one or two minutes about collateral Collins at the moment, the sectors that you do and the size? Absolutely. I'd be

Dominic Hailey: delighted to obviously. Yes, I mean, the practice has been around.

For 18, 19 years now, I think founded by Roy Collado and John Collins, as they came out of Hamilton's back in the day it's always been, as you say, a sort of fairly commercially sharp practice And also, you know, there's always been a focus on efficient buildings and good quality design wherever possible.

I think for a long time, you know, [00:44:00] we had a reputation for securing good planning consents. And then more recently, we've developed that reputation into securing good planning consents and being able to construct them, you know, into the final article. Yeah, we, we are. Not big. We fluctuated, I think, since I've been there, between about 25 people at the lowest and about 40 people at the highest.

And as you say, that is a good size. You know, people are in little teams of two, three, four people on a project, and they get to be hands on on that. But then, those things, those little teams intercommunicate because we share one open plan office, or we did at least until March. So that everyone's aware of what everyone else is doing.

And the, you know. There is always a degree of commerciality to any project that we have in the office. Just by the nature, someone is paying us money to give them something that will make them money. So it's great to have this balance of, you know, the very experienced hands at doing super efficient buildings.

And you know, [00:45:00] you need a really tight core layout. Then I know who to ask for a really good lift and stair core with all the risers where they need to be that fits into a super efficient block, you know, but also if you need someone to have a really kind of slightly off the wall or philosophical design idea, we've got someone in there.

for that as well. And we're able to put out things like just living, which are intellectual pieces, thought pieces, and don't necessarily have to consider wholly the strictures of commerciality, but our design projects obviously do. Otherwise there's no point in a client coming to us. All designed the most beautiful building in the world.

If we're not a Zaha Hadid type, who can then sell that building on the pure aesthetics and cost doesn't matter. It's a Zaha building, how fantastic. You know, we're not in that position, so it has to stack up. And that's something we're keenly aware of, you know, as a business. And, and we run our business internally so that every project has to stack up for, for ourselves and how we manage it.

But we consistently deliver. I'm not [00:46:00] quite sure what we're doing differently to any other. firm out there. I don't know if we are doing anything particularly differently but we continue to secure good consents on, you know, quite punchy consents often on, on tricky sites. And it's been a pleasure to work with Florida Collins.

When I joined them in 2015, I sort of said, look, I'm looking for a home for the next 10 to 15 years. And I didn't join as part, you mentioned, you know, I've, I'm on the senior team, the sort of associate director level. We have weird titles in the company, but you know, I joined as an architect and just through the five years of, of working hard and not particularly wanting to grind the greasy pole, I've somehow ended up where I am.

And yes, you know, running this sector in the practice with, you know, Nuria, who you kindly helped me find. Last summer, who is fantastic. And, you know, we brought in a couple of people internally now. So there's four or five people under my direct control working on at the moment, three live projects and four feasibilities in the [00:47:00] sector for different clients.

And it's great. But as I said before, whether in 10 years time, I want to be doing that or what, something else is on the horizon. I don't know, but yeah, I mean, Collada Collins. Also published prior to the, the yellow book, just living, we also published a residential design guide for London. Now that was a guide and that actually was an internal document where we realized that, you know, we were doing a lot of work in the GLA's remit and reproducing a lot of the same things on different sites.

and needed to capture all the various pieces of legislation into one place just for our internal purposes so that we had our own guide. You're doing a resi building in London. What do you need? And we got advice and subsections of the book are written by DP9 as planning consultants and Twin and Earth as energy consultants.

And a couple of others and apologies to them for not remembering it. I proofread the book, but I didn't write it. That we actually published as a [00:48:00] book and that is now sitting on the desks of planning officers, GLA officers, and they use it as a handy guide. That's, I think, another example of what we try and do, which is balance our kind of commercial and design roles with thought leadership and with demonstration of a real understanding of the constraints of development and the opportunities as well.

So it's that balance of thinking and doing that. It really seems to work for us as a practice and we've got a good balance of people in that frame. It means, you know, it makes your job harder, Stephen. And then when we need to slot people into that, that milieu we have to be very specific. I do a lot of the recruitment and I have to admit, going back to our earlier conversation, when I look at a CV, the two main things I look at are how long someone has been in the same place and what sort of size of place they've been in.

And between those two things, you can tell a lot about what experience they might have and, you know, how they might approach commitment. I might not be put off by someone who's done a year here, a year [00:49:00] there. I might be less inclined to talk to someone who's done four months here and six months there and whatever.

Cause we're all, I think, as architects trying to find the right place to balance our skillset and our desire to express ourselves in the form of architecture.

Stephen Drew: No, it's a, it makes complete sense. And it, I do enjoy the brief. Oh, I think whenever, for instance, working with Carter Collins, I, you do have to be conscious of the right kind of person because I almost feel that.

It almost bleeds into that family feel you all kind of work together. You all look out for each other, but it's important to get the right person and the right tempo so that everything goes ahead. And it's fantastic that Nuria is doing so well, but I think that's testament to you and her as well. So look, there's so many, I think this has been a really great introduction.

We covered so much. You've dealt with my, my myriad of questions that have got so well, well done. I'll work on that. Sorry. I'm new at the podcasting thing, but but what I think we cover so much grounds and what I'd like to say here is that [00:50:00] for anyone who wants to reach out to you, there's a few things as well, isn't it?

So I'm going to post links to everything. You can find you on LinkedIn. You're on Colada Collins website. I can put contact details there. You can be contacted. If anyone's interested in learning more about the sector or any collaboration, they can reach out on your email. They can call up there as well.

If anyone's interested in working in this sector as well, while maybe there's not a role right now, anything you always interested in people who are interested in the sector, yeah. And as well as that, as well, we can highlight the projects you've done. And for instance, out there in the wider architecture spectrum, and I know we're connected with a lot of developers and so forth, you're always interested in talking about opportunities there.

And we have the publisher guides that people can look at. So for instance. You can get in touch. So what's your email? Dominic and I'll put a link as well. So my

Dominic Hailey: email is my first initial surname. So D dot Haley. That's [00:51:00] H A I L E Y at collardacollins. com. And then obviously the website's collardacollins.

com. I am on there in terms of projects that are on there. You know, we have a couple probably. for this sector. And just, you know, hot news, breaking news, Stephen, just on the 5th of November. So just over a week ago, we secured consent for another later living project in Berkhamsteads in the borough, beautiful six pavilion green and black brick scheme.

And you know, that's what the client who intends to start detailed design in January. So there's every possibility that. Coming start of next year, I will be on the lookout for someone that has an interest in the sector that has a bit of delivery experience, maybe doesn't have to have countless years of delivery experience, but wants to get involved and learn and work with a very hands on client who's very interested in delivering out quality design detailing, which is what we built into the planning [00:52:00] application in terms of the maze.

Just Living book. There's a slightly strange arrangement for downloading it. So rather than a direct link on our website, if you email justliving, J U S T L I V I N G at collardocollins. com, that comes through to me by another channel, and then I can circulate a link to download the book separately from a file sharing website.

It's complicated. There are reasons why it's complicated. We might uncomplicate it soon, but at the moment, that's the best way to do it.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant. That's amazing. And fantastic. Who knows? Should I be working on the role? And for the right person, we'll be sending them this podcast and we can test them, can't we?

I'll look at the metrics and see if they listen to it. And then we know, Dom, if we invite them for an interview. Check their CVs for small practice, you know. Absolutely. I think look, this has been wonderful and maybe what we can do down the line is we can do a little show and tell on an upcoming project.

Be glad to. And

Dominic Hailey: hopefully I've given coherent answers to some of [00:53:00] your incoherent questions.

Stephen Drew: You know what I'm like, I gotta keep, we keep everyone on their toes, right? You

Dominic Hailey: kept the conversation going, Stephen, and hopefully for the listeners that's been interesting enough.

Stephen Drew: Hopefully. I'll soon tell you what the metrics are.

We need to go again, it's a disaster. I'm sure, I'm sure it won't be. Thank you so much, Dominic. And for anyone listening, all the links will be there. I've really enjoyed this and everyone who's listening, have a good morning. Have a good evening.

Dominic Hailey: Thank you so much. Thank you, Steven. And the same to everybody.

Enjoy yourselves and live while you can.

Stephen Drew: Brilliant.

Dominic Hailey: John.

Stephen Drew: Bye.