Writing, Curating, Strategising: Lucy Bullivant’s Urbanist Toolkit

0236 - Lucy Bullivant
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[00:00:00]

Welcome to the Architecture Social Show
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Stephen Drew: Hello everyone and welcome to the Architecture Social Show. So round London I go to some cool events and occasionally, oh, quite a lot. I meet these really cool people in the architecture scene who host events, who add to the conversation, and I wanna download their brains and their experience, get them on the podcast so that we can learn from them.

Stephen Drew: And that is why my guest is here.

Meet Lucy: Curator, Mentor, and Strategist
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Stephen Drew: I met Lucy who hosts the Temple Bar Talks, but not just the host. You do a lot more than that. So Lucy, my awesome guest. First of all, how are you? And secondly, can you introduce yourself to the audience please?

Lucy Bullivant: Really well, I'm actually fizzing with interest and excitement and following the [00:01:00] Festival of the future at Reba on on Friday. I missed the one the day on Saturday, but Santa Deba Deum from scale was ecstatic about how it went, which is brilliant. I do a number of things and they're all interconnected and complimentary.

Lucy Bullivant: I'm a curator of exhibitions and conferences or otherwise known as symposia. Same difference really. Seminars, workshops. I also do place strategy for the public sector mainly, but also private sector business improvement districts. And I'll do mentoring. On occasion. I always have, since I was in my early twenties before I did my master's degree in cultural history at the Royal College.

Lucy's Background and Influences
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Lucy Bullivant: And one key thing about me is. Since I was really tiny 'cause my mom and dad are architects and landscape architects. I've always I've always enjoyed being around architects and urban designers and [00:02:00] planners and worked with them and my mom and dad basically, we were both they're AA together.

Lucy Bullivant: It's that kind of love story. And then they went on to take on really key roles. My dad, head of research for the first phase of the barkin for Chamberlain, PA, and Bonne. And my mom for pal Moya or as a very young architectural student, PA Paula Moer, working on Churchill Gardens, which is one of the first social housing hou housing estate in London with real, genuine mixed use.

Lucy Bullivant: So community facilities. She did all the landscape. Together with lots of other people, obviously. And they helped instill in me a real sense of collaboration the real advantages of collaborating with people from different backgrounds and walks of life and how you can pull your skills of these stronger together.

Global Projects and Collaborations
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Lucy Bullivant: So I work globally, sometimes. For many months at a stretch. I'm working only on projects in London, but I [00:03:00] honestly I'm not London centric. I have worked a lot in Yorkshire as a Renaissance advocate for Yorkshire Foot Forward until 2010 when the. Tory government actually closed down Yorkshire Ford and all the other regional development associations around the country.

Lucy Bullivant: But hey, yeah, so I've worked a lot with the Germans, the Italians, the Spanish, the Norwegians on a local authority engagement project. The Japanese, Chinese, the Americans, hey, I'll work with. All clients and particularly people who, with whom there are very strong shared values.

Stephen Drew: Fair enough. So geo geography holds no bounds, but you're passionate about a lot as well. And so you do quite a few things. So I'm interested in how that intersects with architects as well. And as there's a lot of architects or budding architects, you'll listen to this podcast, but maybe let's start with your passions.

Stephen Drew: How do we break that down? [00:04:00] Because it feel like you do everything, but to keep it simple for the audience. What are they?

Lucy Bullivant: Oh, okay.

Passion for Architecture and Urban Design
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Lucy Bullivant: So it is all, it's always obviously been architecture is that perfect melding of art and science, right? And my goodness have we come a long way since everyone was so rigidly thinking of, oh, let's just showcase 40, 40 under 40, which first of all is incredibly ageist. And secondly, it's inevitably.

Lucy Bullivant: Only a particular part of the community invariably got onto that exclusive shortlist.

Temple Bar Trust and Diverse Voices
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Lucy Bullivant: And one thing that's been so meaningful about the Temple Bar Trust curating that I've done over the last few years as in my capacity as trustee, is the ability to or rather just everyone has encouraged me and I have risen to the occasion bringing in all sorts of different people.

Lucy Bullivant: I. I mean everyone from Neil Au who was the first the second [00:05:00] incredible director of the London School of Architecture, Neil Pinda, the heroic guy who leads homegrown Plus. Senator Bassam previously mentioned Yemi Yemy Larin, the amazing housing expert working on me mortar. And people like that alongside Simon Sharp net zero expert policy wonk by his, in his. Victoria Thornton, OBE, the amazing illustrious founder of Open City. Incredible practices like Go Scott and and Kenny Ash from Ash Shula Russell Curtis R-K-C-E-A incredible. Mind working on intensification of urban sites using AI and GIS creatively and stuff. I've always been equally interested in the creative scope of urban design and urban planning.

Master Planning Futures: A Book Journey
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Lucy Bullivant: And I just got a call one day from an editor at Ledge, one of my earlier books. Lovely woman who's now retired, who called me up and she said, Lucy, we want to [00:06:00] do a book called Master Planning Futures, and you're the perfect person, come and have a cup of tea. And I thought at the time I thought, master planning that it sounds like that terribly.

Lucy Bullivant: Top-down practice certain planners seem to love and it often gets completely dominated by commercial considerations. And in the history, going back to 20th century called busier plan, Wassan abstracting the Greenfield just ideally having tabular. Sites. Not absolutely respecting the fact that cities and metropolis is, are complex spaces with an awful lot of beauty, but an awful lot of scars and existing buildings and spaces that have to be adapted.

Lucy Bullivant: But she was insistent I was the ideal woman. She wanted a woman as well to write it. So I beed away, and then four years later it came out and two years later it won Urban Design Book [00:07:00] of the year. And it had to be by agreement with her, had to be a global coverage. But obviously you can, you need to be highly selective what you were looking at.

Lucy Bullivant: And then they came back to me again with a proposition I couldn't refuse, which, a few years ago, just before the pandemic and said, can you turn it upside down and write a new edition? And I said, Hey, quite a lot of time has gone by since I wrote the first one and it came out, the world's turned upside down since then.

Lucy Bullivant: And, ecological concerns have become even more important and the need to create cohesive social, socially valuable neighborhoods. Whether you call it 50 minute cities or whatever, the just city that's the title of that book is, remains so ultimately important. So I'm in the final stages of that.

Lucy Bullivant: I. And some of the chapters, I just kept the same topic where I'd done beautiful research [00:08:00] trips like Brisbane the most wonderful sub topical climate ever, but some incredibly exciting sustainability. I. Policies brought in recent years, Copenhagen Hardy, perennial, all that work they're doing to make the city and the region nature positive.

Lucy Bullivant: Megagen and Columbia and then new ones this time round. Milan in incredible number of really, far reaching innovative master plans. A lot of them around the old stations. So using all the old railway lands Kings Cross, which obviously is our one here in London that is by and large, most people think it's pretty damn good.

Lucy Bullivant: And some other ones. Oh yeah, my Chinese chapter. I've turned it up complete upside down completely. The most amazing guy, Lou. Kin won the 2000 2025 Laureate Pritzker Prize this year. And I love his work. It's really the judges [00:09:00] said how did he make the grade get it? They said how architecture can truly embrace reality and idealism, elevating local solutions into universal visions and how to create a socially.

Lucy Bullivant: Environmentally just world. So basically folks, if you if you focus on those preoccupies preoccupations, you're gonna put yourself in a stronger position to get the Pritzker Prize. And then tomorrow I'm interviewing Doreen Lou from Node who works in Sheen. And as. Set up her own global urban lab in Sheen University with her colleagues.

Lucy Bullivant: And they're looking at all the spaces in Shenzhen City, which has grown from being a village, a fishing village really incredibly fast, but it doesn't, it has a shortage of land for public space. So she's actually adapting all the she's getting clients coming to her and encouraging them.

Lucy Bullivant: There are infrastructure [00:10:00] projects with a lot of land, and they don't know what they want to do with them. They might want to make them a visitor attraction but they basically would like the land to be put to good use. So she's actually in a amazing position of. Luxury, really a luxury problem, as the Dutch say, to have the opportunity to create something really civic with the land that's otherwise been off bounds.

Lucy Bullivant: And then turn the infrastructure projects, whether it's to support water, like the old, the canal system here in the uk into something truly like a heritage attraction, which all of which done in a very sustainable way. So yeah, endless stories really on creating urban green corridors in the States.

Lucy Bullivant: That's Miami, which is a fascinating place. The 11th Street Bridge project in Washington, DC connecting the Anacostia region, Anacostia River to Capitol Hill was the Navy yard area. [00:11:00] I really like opening up these stories from further afield that people are not necessarily going to have access to all in one book.

Lucy Bullivant: But equally exhibitions I think, are so fascinating 'cause basically, they're an experience. It's edutainment. You get exposed to them in real time in a physical space. So I can tell you a bit about an exhibition I'm working on at the moment.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, I would like to, I wanna unpack a few things 'cause you do so much and I think this comes, this is the, this is what we all do in our, especially if you study architecture as well, is that. You've gotta design the projects. You learn how to write about courses. So you write about a project in a dissertation and then you present the works, right?

Stephen Drew: So what's interesting, I wanna unpack first, 'cause Sue, you were, you casually mentioned that you were on the award winning offer, right? You, but basically.

Lucy Bullivant: Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Drew: so let's even go through that because that really [00:12:00] interests me.

Writing and Research Process
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Stephen Drew: So how do you even begin, Lucy, to write a book on a topic, because that took you a bulk of time and I think that would be cool if we could unpack it for a bit.

Stephen Drew: So the publisher said, you are the right person, and he went, I'm okay. Maybe I am. I'm I'll give it my best. How does one begin to start unpacking the topic into a book and start publishing it?

Lucy Bullivant: Okay, if it's a nice little concisely, a con, a small paperback you can put in your back pocket, that is slightly easier. And I would recommend, since my next book is gonna be miniature 'cause it'll be a lot easier and faster to write with that, I would say in your spare time, including in the shower.

Lucy Bullivant: And when you've got a few moments on the tube and you've got your notes on your phone, just write down a few lateral thing, lateral thoughts come into your mind about how you'd like to shape [00:13:00] it. Just, you know what, because ultimately it's a distillation, like making fine wine. You leave out all the stuff that shouldn't be there.

Lucy Bullivant: You're focusing in a very, simple and beautiful way on a polemic. That's the best thing there. You notice there are more and more polemical books that don't take more than maybe two hours to read if, cover to cover. But are really, they're moving. They're based some, a few formulas.

Lucy Bullivant: They're personally moving because they're also based a little bit on your own autobiography, and then they've got the, you they've, the grit in the oyster. They're based on a really tough polemic and or you can have less polemic and more humor. So it could be humorous or it can reveal your process in a way that is very illuminating for people to to know about so they could perhaps consider using part of that themselves in their own work.

Lucy Bullivant: But as far as something that's really big [00:14:00] and mul, packed full of maybe 15, 20 chapters, no one, it's nonfiction. No one's going to sit down and read that cover to cover, are they? It's more a beautiful experience to dip into. They might think, oh yes, that woman had a chapter all about what. Is going on in Milan right now, and I haven't got the time to go.

Lucy Bullivant: And I know my colleagues need a little bit of some briefing on on what we're gonna do, or maybe we're gonna get a Milan project or whatever. Or maybe I'm gonna go to Milan next month and I haven't got a clue and. I go on the web and it takes forever to find articles and half of them are in Italian and you translate them.

Lucy Bullivant: It's all, so I'm doing your public service by bringing it all together. So the chapter on Miami, I loved it because Miami is a place that is both beautiful and quite wacky, but also has significant urban scars. And so it's a typical, it's [00:15:00] got a whole. Set of indicative characteristics, and therefore I'm fascinating to know how the architects and urban designers and the community body that have set up the underlying project like the highline, but for Miami how they pursued their goals.

Lucy Bullivant: Together despite all the obstacles. So yeah, I think a larger book you are doing a lot. It's like design, it's very iterative. You're going back and forward and constantly revising your initial I. Feeling about how you, your gut, you've got gut feeling about how you want it to go, but you shouldn't be so high and mighty that it doesn't pre that you are prevented.

Lucy Bullivant: Your vision is so impervious to being adapted. Sometimes I just get fed up of doing endless writing word documents and I will actually put all the computer equipment away and just. Sit down with a clear desk [00:16:00] and start writing notes. And I find sometimes I get very creative writing on a laptop, on a train journey.

Lucy Bullivant: But you've got, the thing is the, you've gotta check your facts every step of the way. That's the absolute I. Foundation, it's got to be imp empirically researched. You could, you can quote all the various key sources because that helps the reader make sure the visuals actually relate to the text.

Lucy Bullivant: Take a lot of care with that. I've noticed quite a few books on sustainable urbanism these days. Dreadfully produced actually with going back to the old school, black and white images. I had to, I asked Routledge to actually up the percentage of color images in the first place last time round, and they agreed.

Lucy Bullivant: 'cause designing spaces that work for people is very much, it's a visual process, but also you've got all the different types of visuals the drawings, the [00:17:00] diagrams, the visualizations and so on. And you want to, with a book like this, I want to show a cross section of all of that to make it, of maximum educational value.

Lucy Bullivant: But yeah, don't be scared to rewrite the beginning and the end like a advice to anyone who's an aspiring essayist. Don't write the beginning on, and don't write the end until the very end. But when you do it, do prep, prepare, be prepared to go away, come back and radically rethink your whole view on how you open it up.

Lucy Bullivant: You're opening up the story. And, yeah, don't be scared to chuck out paragraphs that are a bit worthy. Just try and splice it together in a way that actually is vivid as well as has depth and profundity. 'cause you want to have that nice contrast of the depth to show that you're an intelligent person, that you're on top of this topic, but you've also you've got the confidence [00:18:00] to actually shape it in a way that is. An easy read, which I know is a bit of a contradiction in terms for a,

Stephen Drew: Yeah.

Lucy Bullivant: For a subject as complex as the systems' thinking, around sustainable urbanism. But give it your best shot and be modest. Sometimes don't be too modest because sometimes people look at their. Half written texts with a sense of loathing, don't they?

Lucy Bullivant: They say, oh no, it's no good. It's no good. You should be gen generous to yourself. But then not generous that you just say, okay, that's done. It doesn't need any more checking. I. It's gotta be 1,000,001 drafts, which obviously, yeah, it's like a good architecture. It requires a lot of repeat repeat effort, doesn't it really to just carry on Chis and shaping it and getting it.

Lucy Bullivant: But whether it's perfect, don't, it doesn't need to be perfect. It's got to be you authentically you and what your own [00:19:00] personal take on that topic.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Fair enough. We are gonna talk about, in a little bit, about your curation, 'cause I think that's important and then the consultant and the projects. But I've got one more poignant topic on on, on this point of offering.

The Role of AI in Writing
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Stephen Drew: If you may if I may, because technology's coming in. Ai. I use it a lot in the business.

Stephen Drew: And there's, I can see there's a debate one way or another for if artificial intelligence is being used for social media posts online, how people write essays to research subjects. Do you think this then creates potentially an opportunity for more people? To write these things or do you see it as the opposite in insofar as AI will actually take away from it?

Stephen Drew: Do you think people are less likely to do all those hours of research and editing and all that stuff to refine themselves?

Lucy Bullivant: I think we've got to be very careful in how we marshal the [00:20:00] advantages and mitigate the disadvantages. My neighbor is a, he's a professor of bio design, right? And I remember him coming and having a coffee and sighing. With sign with exasperation because student after student had delivered their essay.

Lucy Bullivant: And they come from different disciplines, right? 'cause BioD divine designers is a mixed discipline. And then in oral examinations or just in a tutorial, they appeared not to be able to defend what they'd written because had been obviously authored by AI and agent embedded by the by them.

Lucy Bullivant: But I think that we. Really good writing is a vocation and it's, but it's not such an exclusive club that anyone who's got sufficient motivation can't, get into. I. Obviously a lot of, or, and a lot of people across the whole of the creative industries are truly [00:21:00] quite concerned about the whole issue of copyright and so on.

Lucy Bullivant: So that's gonna produce quite a lot of work for intellectual property solicitors in the future. I. I think when it comes to something very bespoke, I love the word bespoke, right? We can't have cut and paste urbanism. There's too much of it already. We need bespoke urbanism because it's what the solution's gotta be very pertinent to that particular context.

Lucy Bullivant: And I would say really fine writing. You can write a you can write a, using ai, you can, obviously you can. Polish off a fantastic essay on, on almost anything very quickly. Now it, it's like using a, I dunno, it's it's not quite akin to hiring a cook to cook your meals.

Lucy Bullivant: Exactly. But the thing is, if you really genuinely care about something that's your authentic voice coming through, then you're gonna. Do your best. Keep your [00:22:00] confidence and keep your own hand in the process. So I dunno if that fully answers your question, but I'm not so keen myself to obviously use AI for particular, for authoring books anytime soon.

Lucy Bullivant: Although I wouldn't necessarily rule it out. If so, I wanted to create a downloadable handbook or guide. For some particular purpose, then it may be that it would be really quite useful.

Stephen Drew: Yeah, it, I, it's, I think the temptation before I. Is that it would do it for you where, and I think you, as you said, you rule out the actual exercise of doing it, which is the point of writing this, the journey, not the end result. I think the temptations for the end result, but the interesting bit is actually using it as amusing point.

Stephen Drew: I find that it can be quite interesting that if you do a post, for example, I'm not writing the book, but say I use it for social media, of course I think I'm gonna publish this, and then it learns you and then it will [00:23:00] go. Actually, Steve, have you thought about doing this and that? And so therefore you went to this whole crazy artificial conversation as if you were with a writing colleague.

Stephen Drew: I think that's where it gets quite interesting, and actually now it's starting to sound more and more human, so who knows where we're gonna go? Lucy, you have these writing part business partners, which are completely artificial, but if they help you serve the goal of writing a book quicker, then is that okay?

Lucy Bullivant: Yeah.

Collaborative Writing and Curation
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Lucy Bullivant: I've also written books and smaller leaflets and pamphlets for exhibitions and other act and engagement activities as well with other people. And, and that is really fascinating. There's a level of exciting uncertainty because you've got to meld your, as with any architectural team, you've got to somehow meld your methods and your genuine, your approaches, your preferences with theirs.

Lucy Bullivant: And there's a lot of cut and thrust often because people have got their own methods. Since you have. Bit [00:24:00] of 50 cuffs on that, but that's all part of the fun of creating a product that you can be put your hands up and say, Hey, we worked on this together in every meaning meaningful way. Yeah.

Lucy Bullivant: And I think as you are totally right, what you learn from the process, albeit that it's not a walk in the park to go from A to Z. You learn an awful lot of really amazing things about the topic through your research, reaching out interviews, online interviews traveling to interview people, doing site visits.

Lucy Bullivant: You could be interviewing them while you're walking around, and then it's up to you what you take from all that interview script that you note down and so on. Yeah, it seems like a very endless and messy process. And yes, so there is the temptation to think why not? Isn't there a magic way of speeding it all up?

Lucy Bullivant: But yeah, I think, boy, do you feel good at the [00:25:00] end finally, although. Quite a lot of my fellow authors invariably say I probably won't write anymore books for at least three years now. I finished this one because it was such an ous task. But then a few months later, what are they doing? They're preparing their next one.

Lucy Bullivant: It's addictive actually.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Onto the next,

Lucy Bullivant: see myself carrying on for for the rest of my life, like as in with all true architects, they go on till they the very end.

Stephen Drew: Yeah practicing architecture is never done, isn't it? Which is that you are you are always learning, and I guess that's no difference whether you are an offer in the built environment or practice in the building. But I, let's talk a bit about your curations and exhibitions.

Exploring the World of Edutainment and Exhibitions
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Stephen Drew: 'cause as you mentioned.

Stephen Drew: Edutainment, which is quite a cool aspect to it. However, whereas a book is physical sorry, is digital physical, it has that bit. When you're doing these cool exhibitions now, it's [00:26:00] getting much more kinetic, isn't it? It's imagining a person walking around, experiencing a story, catching their attention.

Stephen Drew: There's so much cool stuff involved there, very architectural as well. So how, first of all, how did you. Fall into that. And what was that learning curve compared to? So you learn all the craft of being an author, but now you've had to curate an exhibition. Think about the flow, think about all that stuff.

Stephen Drew: What was it like, Lucy?

Curating Exhibitions: From Concept to Execution
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Lucy Bullivant: Okay I had the huge. Huge benefit of at the Royal College, my tutor Penny Spark in doing my masters in cultural history as part of not formally part of my masters. It was let's say a side hustle of the most delightful kind. She actually said, came to me one day and she said, I want to do an exhibition about the remaking of.

Lucy Bullivant: British industry after the end of the Second World War [00:27:00] and how all the companies move their production from wartime production into peacetime production and creating consumer products for the homes above all. And I said. Okay my goodness. And when this is amazing and when do you want to, when do you envisage this opening?

Lucy Bullivant: And she said, oh in about nine months time, how are we gonna then you are the person, you are my trusted student that I'm tutoring. I see you as an ideal person to work with because I'd already. Curated small exhibitions when I was an undergrad, when I was at Leeds. And and also in my spare time as a teenager actually, 'cause I was always making things give me materials and an attic space as not too cluttered with storage.

Lucy Bullivant: And I was always making stuff like models of buildings and islands and so on. Yeah we. We didn't have any money, so we had to reach [00:28:00] out to about 50 companies and ask them for a small, all the companies who were still, who were around at that time and were still in existence, a most amazing number.

Lucy Bullivant: And so they all tipped in money and we got somebody, an architectural student to actually design it and lay it out. And it was in Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, which are. If you know that space, it's quite flowing. It has lots of different areas. So we, we didn't have limited space at all.

Lucy Bullivant: It was really capacious.

Innovative Exhibition Projects and Collaborations
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Lucy Bullivant: And then that just led on to doing a lot of exhibitions for the art world, fundraising exhibitions. An auction for Errand Space studios where once everyone had donated all their items, they had to be ele elegantly laid out for all the people who are coming along to do the auctions.

Lucy Bullivant: Then the British Council asked me to cur curate an exhibition called Space Invaders on emerging UK [00:29:00] practices. They didn't know it was gonna be called Space Invaders, but myself and Pedro Eu, the the Portuguese who was a, went on to become the director of the port the Lisbon Architecture Center.

Lucy Bullivant: We mapped out a plan of action for 15 practices, but the brief was to make it a show that could be easily assembled and disassembled in, in infinite number of venues around the world because. We wanna tour it for three years. So it had to be suitable for a, to be suitable for academic environment in Los Angeles.

Lucy Bullivant: Beautiful architecture gallery in amo, Sando in Tokyo Estonian Gallery in tall and so on. Berlin. Spain, et cetera, et cetera. So we used young practices who were in the, one of the practices in the show to lay it out and and tried to make it fairly minimal, but also quite. Without imposing too much of our [00:30:00] own aesthetics on it because just let the exhibit speak themselves that their character come forward.

Lucy Bullivant: So also it's very imp important that people are not impeded when they go round shows 'cause it's uni. It was unidirectional. We didn't want to have, a starting point and an end point. The graphics were commissioned by a young practice, a lot of fun. We commissioned a film director. I. To do interviews with all the architects, but also to splice those video interviews with a lot, with footage of their own choice and then show short videos.

Lucy Bullivant: The four D side of exhibitions is critical because that helps, that sort of visual liveliness helps to really encourage people who haven't got a lot of time to, to. Dip in and dip out and so on. Countless other shows did a whole show for Vitra Design Museum and Kid, kid Sized the Material World of Childhood [00:31:00] about design for children across cultures, industrialized societies and non.

Stephen Drew: Yeah.

The Importance of Retrofitting and Sustainable Design
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Lucy Bullivant: And then currently I'm building on the success of an exhibition about retrofitting homes that I curated and was very successful for the building Center in Bloomsbury. And we are now moving forward with an exhibition called Retrofit Works, creating healthy Buildings for Quality of Life at the Museum of the Home, which is.

Lucy Bullivant: My right and right in the last few years was what, 92% retrofitted? Including 19th century arms houses. Its his state was retrofitted. Anyway I. With that. My first thought was with our spaces that we have, we've gotta make it truly sustainable. And rather than commissioning exhibition designers from scratch, why don't we creatively deploy a really cool [00:32:00] system that already exists?

Lucy Bullivant: So you build the circular partition system designed by Studio Bark, the architects who live based down the road. Which has been used in by the v and a. And the Reba struck me as a really great idea because it's component based. So they have very generously committed to become our partner and provide design time so we can lay it out in a way, first of all.

Lucy Bullivant: Get it all laid out as online or in a diagram, diagrams, and lay it out in a way that's totally geared and tailored towards our to, to our needs. And then we can decide what we do with it afterwards. So it has a life. And all the components are stored at blocks the makers, big maker space in Meridian water.

Lucy Bullivant: I think it's gonna be very atmospheric. It's gonna be very insightful about retrofitting [00:33:00] homes and community buildings, which are of, after a lot of people's second homes in these day days of sky high energy bills. And it will be it will encourage people to learn, but also enjoy looking at how.

Lucy Bullivant: The challenges of retrofit have been overcome including, whether it's DIY, retrofitting your own property, social housing retrofitting, carps, and so on. We can do it in a, using the skills of edutainment in a way that's actually complimentary to the way that the building center operates.

Lucy Bullivant: 'cause I. With Retrofit 23, I help them on their jour or retrofit journey. So we now have regular, regular at retrofitting shows there every year. They're just about to open Retrofit 25. We have a very close relationship with our community audience as well as obviously visitors from further afield and international visitors.

Lucy Bullivant: So [00:34:00] it is absolutely critical 'cause this audience, so many of them that go there are, they come from beyond the professional field, so don't wanna dumb it down. 'cause the professionals need to be brought on board, but also we want to make it engaging to a wider audience. So if possible commission cartoons, which is after all what the best retrofitting firms, octopus energy, they'll see very engaging animations and cartoons to just get the messages across.

Lucy Bullivant: Yeah, needs must really, you've got to keep it accessible, but just make it very relevant to people's lives as well. Some people might only have 10 minutes or five minutes before they're going off for a coffee can it work in that sense? Can they, can you make it entertaining and engaging for them in that short period of time before they rush off?

Stephen Drew: There's so much that you do. I think we're gonna struggle [00:35:00] to, to to,

Lucy Bullivant: I've hope I've given you a taste.

Stephen Drew: I think those are two really practical things. You also do consultancy work, which we might even, that could be a whole separate.

Consultancy Work and Urban Design
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Stephen Drew: Scenario, but so did that consultancy work? 'cause now you're doing all these amazing consultancies on real life, urban design, all this stuff as well. Did that originally come from the book, Lucy, that you wrote?

Lucy Bullivant: It's all under the, apart from Temple Bar Trust, where I'm, that's my pro bono voluntary work. 'cause as a trust trustee that you, you do it pro bono. Really. And I love doing that doing that jo job there. But everything else is under the banner of consultancy, Lucy Bullivant Associates. And and on the seat the.

Lucy Bullivant: Strategy side, that does include being chair of Lambeth Council's Design Review panel. These are very, for formal meetings. You have a lot of the candidate architects, the applicant architects, the [00:36:00] developer who's paid the bill for the meeting, and you've got your fellow design panel members. And within that very limited period of time, you've got to enable them to give the best presentation and then allow your fellow members, including yourself, to feedback their, thoughtful comments and constructive criticism, and then write up a report at the end and allow time for questions. Sounds very, a democratic process. Place. Strategy is, can be something is gonna be something that a client really needs. So with the business improvement district, central District Alliance.

Lucy Bullivant: Covering that, straddling that area from Bloomsbury all the way to Farringdon and everything in between. There's a wealth of cultural history there. There's a huge quantity of creative industry businesses, but they'd never ever had a cultural prospectus. They, you associate prospectus as a word with academic [00:37:00] environments.

Lucy Bullivant: So you know, that's the brochure. You get that. Gives you the highlights of what you're going to, you might study if you sign up for that course. But they wanted to expose the various facets of what they're doing, which is helping the Camden and Islington council financially, but also in terms of responsible partnership, improve the quality of their public spaces.

Lucy Bullivant: So Camden Pedestrian the top of. Shaftsbury Avenue and greening it, which has happened. Also the ban livable neighborhoods that's. Taking that one stage further forward with more greening more cycle paths and so on. Working with Islington going over into the east working with Islington on some various green spaces around the borough.

Lucy Bullivant: And so all of that needed, what they were doing and what they were aiming to do needed to be encapsulated in a empirically researched. Beautifully [00:38:00] illustrated brochure with really good text. It's not pure marketing text. It is absolutely meaty and full of a lot of solid information and enlightenment for people.

Lucy Bullivant: And it's been a hugely beneficial tool. You can download it from their website. And then I suppose the other side of place, vision, place strategy I created a place strategy for. Vision for Meridian Water for Enfield council that the GLA endorsed that was published in 2018, but for all internal members of staff and officers and members of cabinet and then the consultants.

Lucy Bullivant: It wasn't in the public domain, but it was a tool for them. So that one central reference point, what is this project about? So I had to interview. The architects and that's, everyone involved. The master planners, the people working on the vision [00:39:00] for the workspaces there blocks the makerspace because they're a key member of the key stakeholder in the team.

Lucy Bullivant: They got the MA mayor's mayoral funding for. To adapt the makerspace into a brand new space. That fifth studio converted. And then the other side is really work that is very much focused on community engagement. And then I did a project for this local authority in the. The northeast of Oslo, which is the poorer side of the city, a neighborhood that was built in the fifties.

Lucy Bullivant: Purely social housing, no social infrastructure on an old army base. And there was one structure that was a disused kindergarten. And this very very. Very inspiring member of the local authorities said, I'm gonna get this retrofitted. But first of all, before we do, we wanna turn it into community center.

Lucy Bullivant: 'cause these [00:40:00] people are living in very small dwellings and they, I. Scarcely have anywhere to meet or they have to go out the bar outta the neighborhood to actually meet up. I'm gonna make sure it's a really super duper community engagement procedure. So together with my Norwegian collaborator, I've got about three collaborators, some here in the uk.

Lucy Bullivant: We we devised a very creative process of working with the residents so that if they wanted to actually help. Do involved to get involved with the retrofitting? They could. We had mums and sons doing DIY along with the trained workers for the first time ever in their lives had they ever done such thing.

Lucy Bullivant: But initially, before we devised all these creative workshops where they could discuss and come up with their vision of how they would personally use the center. Who wanted a music recording studio which family members. With small children Wanted a [00:41:00] dedicated space for children to use for different reasons.

Lucy Bullivant: What spec do they want for the kitchen so that they could have a cooking club? What spec do they want for a big living room where they could have film club, they could have the running club. The hiking club 'cause it's in beautiful sort of rolling Green hills and and. Learning about preferences.

Lucy Bullivant: The architects. So the architects were all really good engagement specialists, facilitators I did some facilitation. I was mainly responsible for coming up with incredible I say it myself, incredible. How to guides, inspiring essays about what we did, the story of what we did, but also serving as a downloadable PDF in how to do really good community engagement and all the pitfalls to avoid.

Lucy Bullivant: So we [00:42:00] we are still working on that 'cause there is now another building that is just getting its insulation that seemed, we've the client has got really excited and the more he learned about working with architects, the more enthusiastic he got about continuing to serve the community.

Lucy Bullivant: So that, that has been a really moving project to be involved with.

Stephen Drew: Yeah. Wow. There's so much to cover. Now. I have hijacked you midday and you have got important meetings. However, I have you for five more minutes. What I would was gonna think, Lucy, 'cause if people want to continue the conversations, you mentioned something that you do where I met you, that's where I met you as PA is the temper bar.

Stephen Drew: Trust and all the cool stuff that's happening there. Do you wanna just fill people in a little bit about what your role is there, what cool stuff are on, and maybe where people can meet you for a glass of wine to chat more in person about maybe some of the stuff that we've talked about as well.[00:43:00]

Temple Bar Trust: Promoting Architecture and Education
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Lucy Bullivant: Okay temple Bar is the Temple bar, which is on the. South side of Patasa Square, just a minute or two from St. Paul's tube station. So it's in the shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral and we've been in occupation as a charitable trust devoted to architecture and built environment education since 2020.

Lucy Bullivant: And we're on the first floor, and when you get up. Get up the stairs, you'll find you're you're in a 1980s building essentially. So you've got the Ren room named after Christopher Ren, which serves as the meeting space talk space. It's fully geared for. All sorts of different screening activities.

Lucy Bullivant: And then you come out of the door and you go up spar up, up staircase, not sparrow, and over the ramp into the ch the 17th century [00:44:00] chamber. I. Which was designed over the arch designed by Christopher Ren, and that is an ideal space for di dining and as well as drinks reception. And both these spaces are available for hire.

Lucy Bullivant: This is quite a roaring trade for us and we do genuinely need the revenue to support our ongoing educational activities. Our education outreach officer, grant Smith, he is engaged full-time with. Advancing education for children and young people through different schemes. He works with Arch Make, which is the Activity initiative for children in young people led by Cheryl Piller Bonds.

Lucy Bullivant: The architect who's one of our trustees. And simultaneously we have twice or sometimes three times a month, a talks program.

Upcoming Talks and Events at Temple Bar Trust
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Lucy Bullivant: So there've been a huge, as I mentioned, some of the names that have, we've enjoyed hearing there. I. What [00:45:00] is coming up and when you can, where you can visit us, buy a ticket, consider it.

Lucy Bullivant: We've got next month we've got Drup Chande, the founder of narrative practice, the architect who's they specialize in mentoring. Young architect, architectural students and young architects from. Wider kind of ethnic backgrounds. And they're doing a brilliant job. We host their, some of their sessions we've got Dr.

Lucy Bullivant: Tan, we've got Dr. To Toran. Ari, who's a professor at London Met, and the aa who's talking about, ooh. Community partnerships with local authorities, looking at a case study in Archway. Now she's an, she's the founder of Public Works, which is an amazing practice. So I would say that one is a little bit more in the sort of academic field.

Lucy Bullivant: But the great thing about that is it's based on a real life project. And then we've got [00:46:00] Martin. Prince Parrot, the architect turned property developer turned tech entrepreneur, who actually has a book out for Reba publications called. In April called Urban Health, omics, how to increase the health of Siters through in various ways which sounds fascinating.

Lucy Bullivant: And then we've got Tonkin Lou, who you might know very well. I. Again, they've got a Reba Publications book out in at the beginning of June which is all about their own particular practice with loads of advice for people who want to really use the power of narrative storytelling through their work.

Lucy Bullivant: And then. Where does that take us? Is there anyone I've left out? Yeah, we are hoping to get Rowan Moore, the architecture critic for The Observer in early September. And talking about his recent book property, he tells it how it is, as he's a brilliant [00:47:00] writer and it's very good speaker.

Lucy Bullivant: And then some of our conversations are in tandem with. Was some of the talks are couched as conversations in tandem with Arthur K, the Urban Designer, award-winning entrepreneur. Also an author who's based in a number of places, but including Ucls Institute for Global Prosperity. So it's nice to mix it up and have some talks coming to you from the speaker and others in conversation and not forgetting the fantastic and full house I.

Lucy Bullivant: Event that you and San

Stephen Drew: I knew you were gonna bring that up. I knew you were gonna bring it up.

Lucy Bullivant: You talked about you, both of you came talked to us about your all the ingredients and your best practice insights into architecture, marketing, and we videotape all our sessions as far as

Stephen Drew: Yeah.

Lucy Bullivant: And that one, very fortunately, we were able to videotape it and you can watch [00:48:00] it.

Lucy Bullivant: If you go to the bottom of Temple Bar Trust's talks page, it's our YouTube page, basically

Stephen Drew: Yeah I'm gonna re, I'm gonna reshare that very shortly, Lucy. I was running out of good ideas to then I was thinking if someone's done all the hard work for me, then we should. Reshare it and point people to that. So I think I'm gonna get you in trouble 'cause you got one minute. Be before you're supposed to go to the meeting.

Final Thoughts and How to Connect with Lucy
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Stephen Drew: But last thing, where can people reach out to you, Lucy, online if they want to learn more about yourself.

Lucy Bullivant: Get in touch with me on LinkedIn. You can check my website, which is you just Google, Lucy Bulant and Associates. You'll be able to check out the websites. Send me a message that way. I've got a Instagram account, which I keep quite up to date. I think that's enough to be going on with

Stephen Drew: I think that's enough. But I really appreciate you sharing your time, Lucy. And I knew this was gonna be impossible. Yeah, no. [00:49:00] Pleasure was mine. However, I knew it would be impossible to do this podcast episode because you have this wealth of knowledge, this wealth of experience. And it's a good example.

Stephen Drew: There you go. That's your meeting that you need to go through in a second, isn't it? But a good example of someone that's involved in architecture adds so much to architecture and actually is proof that we need people like yourself. Lucy, that doesn't matter if you haven't got your part one, part two, part three, I haven't.

Stephen Drew: Done my part free. I think you can add so much to the industry without it. And thank you to the to the listeners and the watchers, wherever you are for joining us. I'm gonna end the podcast now. Thanks again, Lucy. I really appreciate your time. Take care everyone.

Lucy Bullivant: Thanks very much, Steven. Thank you.