Advice for the next generation of architects from Michael and Damien Blower of Liphook firm Stedman Blower

Tindle News

Liphook’s former post office now houses architectural firm Stedman Blower, which will host its 130th birthday party there on September 18. Friends and clients will gather to admire sketches from the archive and stroll through the beautifully restored 450-year-old building in The Square. Stedman Blower was founded in 1895 by Arthur Stedman and is still a family-run business, now led by Damien Blower. Its new offices have been in the family since 1910. The Blower Foundation, established by Damien 25 years ago, has an archive of thousands of projects dating back to 1895. Among its most notable associations is with Sir Edwin Lutyens, with whom Leonard Stedman trained before taking over his father’s practice.

Transcript

00:00What advice do you have for the next generation of architects and designers?

00:07Keep at it. Keep at it. I think to have standards, to have a sort of, you know,

00:20I hope to hell that we don't go on pulling buildings down, if that's what I want. I would

00:28like to see us always looking for an alternative and saying, well, we can do something with that

00:33building. We don't have to pull it down. And there's too much of that going on, I think,

00:38over the generations. And it does hurt me, it does strike me that it's so short-sighted,

00:46you know, when you think what could be done with a lot of buildings. And I can say this,

00:54and I think we've demonstrated it here. I was, you were 40 when I was born. And I'd like to think

01:02that in 40 years, I'll be sitting there with perhaps doing another interview, reflecting on

01:10the last, yeah, it might even be William, reflecting on the last 40 years. In other words, you know,

01:15I know I will never retire. I love what I do. And I've certainly built, I've certainly tried to build

01:23a legacy and cement that, you know, in Lipuk, in a building, in my team. And I've got, you know,

01:34young team, you know, I've got really enthusiastic young people. You know, one of them is 18, 19,

01:44you know, I mean, there's no, there's no, there's no question that there's every opportunity for them

01:52to stay, for my young team to stay for the next 40 years, no question. And so the idea of, I see

01:59Lipuk, I see Stephen Blair and 40 years still potentially probably in Lipuk and doing more

02:06work, continuing to do historic building work, specializing in that and embodying those values.

02:15I mean, you know, I've built, the funny thing is, is I don't use the computer to draw. I've never

02:22learned. But that's partly because I'm incredibly quick. I know I'm so fast on a pencil and a piece

02:31of paper, I can communicate and design far faster than I could ever do on a computer. But, you know,

02:38artificial intelligence and those technologies, I know how to embrace those, but then purely as tools,

02:45tools to just build great buildings, they are no more than that. So I think I think it's an

02:53incredibly exciting future. And we will one thing one definitely going to do it finished in 40 years

03:00is finally digitize the entire and scan the whole Stedman Argo. So really good. By the way, we've got

03:06to 1,000, about 1,200 now, and we should have the up to 2,000, maybe even 3,000 by the end of the year.

03:15Yeah, you've got all my sketchbooks too. I haven't looked at those.

03:20Amazing legacy, really.

03:23I would just, just as sort of a little ordinariness, is say Stedman, Arthur, lived at number 45 Hale Road.

03:35It's a building with crisscross pattern on it. That was the family home. He walked down to

03:43Goddard's, the builders in East Street, which were the best Farnham builders of the age. He worked

03:52absolutely like a slave trying to get qualified. He never qualified as such, but he passed all his

04:01of exams up at the London certificates. But he never qualified except that there was a system,

04:09the RIBA worked, that after competent life, he could call himself an ARIBA, whatever.

04:19But he never did go to college. He did it all from home.

04:23Leonard had the benefit of going to Cranley School, and then went to the Bartlett School

04:33of Architecture, and was trained and got his ARIBA that way. We then moved from Stedman's office

04:46up to the Fairfield. We moved from there to an office here in the Hayloft, and then up to the

04:56top in the White Barn, and then to the studio here, and then finally to, not finally, sorry,

05:07then we went to Bridge Farm, and you worked there. I was no longer involved. And now the Lipook one. And I do

05:16think from what I'm hearing, and what I've learned, and what I see, that that is a really, a real achievement

05:24to have, to convert a post office right smack in the middle of a lovely little village,

05:31I think is, is, so I think you've done pretty well, I think. Um, and, um, so, well done.

05:40That's my, my congratulations. I've leveraged good people. And I, and I would also say, without,

05:46without, um, you know, not forgetting Robert's contribution, because of course Bob did, Bob did bridge

05:52bridge between you and I, because he did come in, in, uh, in 1990. He, he, he graduated five years

06:01before, he graduated five years before me, in terms of his Reba part two, but rather, you know, because

06:08I, you know, because of other, uh, uh, sort of, um, learning, learning sort of styles, he, he didn't qualify

06:18till I think 12 or 13 years after me. So I actually practically, I was the architect and

06:26Robert didn't qualify till a lot later, but nonetheless, you know, when I look back through

06:32his contribution and although he was formidable, although he didn't do lots of buildings, I've

06:39probably done a lot more building and a lot more projects and I'm very fast. Robert's very different

06:47to me. He actually, you know, he did contribute, you know, at least, you know, half a dozen,

06:55a dozen really, really good projects, you know, and, and I look at high cogner, which he did entirely

07:02on his own, uh, uh, luckily to have a really good builder and a really good client that didn't require

07:08me to, to have to do much. Um, I mean, that's probably the one project he did without, with the

07:16least sort of support and, and sort of structure from me. He got on very well with people. Um,

07:24they liked him and, um, because he, he was, you know, he would listen and yeah. Well, he got on with

07:30very, he got on very well with people that would, that were happy to indulge his, his sort of, keep

07:37redesigning things. He would constantly go over things. But funnily enough, some of those projects,

07:45because he would constantly go over them, if those clients were prepared to support that,

07:50those buildings ended up becoming very, very good. And I think high cogner is, you know, is no question.

07:58He's maybe one of the, I mean, I, I, I actually did have a, an estate agent who said to me,

08:06who came to say, and he said, this is the, and he, he's a private buyer. Um, he was quite young at the

08:12time, but he'd been doing it probably a five, seven or eight years. And he said in the seven or eight

08:17years I've been doing this job, which is only looking at building houses, lovely big houses.

08:24This is the best building I've ever seen. Really? So, um, I think, you know, Robert's contribution

08:31was significant and, uh, you know, and one day he'll have to account for that. But, uh, send your bill.

08:43That's going to really go down well. But, uh, no, I mean, he did some very good buildings. He did,

08:49um, you know, he did, um, he did the concept scheme for some, for St. Martha's. He did, he did a lot of

08:56work at Coombe Court with me. Yeah. Although he was very much more detailed than that. Um, and he did

09:04some, and I, I get off the top of my head. I can't remember all of them. No. He did that nice scheme,

09:09uh, which didn't get built, but partially built in South Street for Brian Taylor, like Downing Street. Oh,

09:15yeah. You did that. We had a lot of that, unfortunately, that, um, schemes that we would do.

09:23Oh, that's still, but that still happens. And that happens in Stedman. It still happens.

09:27I look through... You do a scheme, get planning permission, and then you...

09:30Oh, I look through Stedman's archive, and there are loads, I mean, we've been, we're mapping them to

09:35see if they exist. And they've either been demolished, or more likely, they were never built. So,

09:40that's, I think, always happened. But, um... Or, or another architect came in and changed it,

09:47you know. Yeah. Well, the scheme I did at Heart's Yard is a little bit different. Yeah. But I think

09:52both the Bob's Downing, Robert's Downing Street scheme, and my Heart's Yard scheme, the, the... And

09:58the Bishop's Table, the Bishop's Table. But the sentiment and the design concept is still there. Yeah.

10:06Yeah. Even in the Downing Street, the street one. Yeah. In other words, his idea of the courtyard,

10:11and, you know, and, um, it's, uh, but, uh, yeah, I mean, we've, we've, uh, there's some beautiful

10:19moments in some of the projects we've done over the last, certainly over the last 30 years. Mm-hmm.

10:24Um, and I think it has been a golden era, but I don't take own, I don't take credit for that,

10:30because I've just had a... I've... Bob's done some beautiful work. Leith and Steve have done

10:35some great work. And I've got a really, really good team. Um, and, and I think it's an era when

10:42people were investing, you know, building really good buildings the last 30 years. You know,

10:48people were prepared to spend money on craftsmanship. And I'm not sure when I look back at

10:54anything that Stedman, the Stedmans did after about 1914, after the First World War,

11:02till maybe the 80s, they just, no one had the money or the labour. I mean, buildings were just

11:10more basic, weren't they? Well, I think that where they did, um, do a lot of good work actually was in,

11:16um, working for the County Council, the Surrey County Council. We used to do schools. Yeah. And, um,

11:23and we were always getting work from, um, the County Council. I mean, that was, that was how it was.

11:29Bread and butter sort of work. Bread and butter work. Um, we did the Magistrates Court in Guildford,

11:35and, you know. And I think that's one thing that has changed, I think, in the practice,

11:40because I would say you very much ran, the Stedmans and you ran a general practice. Yeah. A classic,

11:49just like the local GP or the local solicitor doing kind of everything that came through the door

11:55for a community. Yeah. Which would have been a bit of everything. A cemetery, uh, you know, a

12:01toilet block, uh, a house extension, a small housing scheme, a school, a little medical center. Yeah. Now,

12:08because of the nature of architecture, it's so specialized, you, you know, you, you really kind

12:15of have to specialize. And I think certainly the 30 years I've been running it, we have narrowed our

12:22focus and, but probably therefore being able to do some really good work by being narrow, but deep

12:33versus broad and shallower. And I think that's, but that's the nature of, I think, practice today. In

12:40fact, I look at a lot of other practices that, who are still, I would say, broad and shallow,

12:46and they're all small, but one or two or three people. And I think if you are narrow and deep,

12:53I think you can, there's more opportunity. And so we've been focusing on historic buildings,

13:01and that's what we specialize in, but also big country houses. And that's really what we're doing.

13:08Yeah. And that's a change. That's a, that's, I think, a big change.

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