Torchbearer for change: architect Clare Richards has ambitious plans to make London better.
After a successful 15-year career running an award-winning TV production company, Clare Richards chucked it in to become an architect, at 45, with three adult children.
That was in 2003, and the training took seven years. After working since then as a qualified architect, she’s got a much bigger goal — changing the way we design communities to make them better, more sustainable, more ecological and more inclusive.
Her non-profit company ft’work (Footwork Architects) has been consulting with and lobbying London Mayor Sadiq Khan for the adoption of six simple “social design” principles to improve the way communities are designed, which Richards is hell-bent on getting included in the Mayor’s New London Plan.
Due out next year, this massive 20-year overarching blueprint, running to hundreds of pages, will influence everything designed in the capital.
Her six brief principles include involving local people from the very start of any community-led design project running right through to their moving in.
Another is retaining the best features in the existing communities, for example, a cherished local pub or much-used shops. Another urges re-using parts of the built environment instead of tearing them down, to conserve resources.
“We’re very good at displacing people and destroying buildings and calling it gentrification,” she says.
What unites all her principles is genuine, far-reaching inclusivity. And she fights for what she wants.
https://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property-news/buying/new-homes/londons-new-homes-architect-clare-richards-bold-plan-to-change-the-way-we-design-buildings-and-a133696.html