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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