"We look back to go forwards.”
Simon Henley, Henley Halebrown
Hi everyone,
Welcome back to Grow Places Insights.
Some of the most useful conversations on the podcast are the ones where two guests, working in very different corners of the industry, turn out to be describing the same instinct. Simon Henley of Henley Halebrown is an architect Tom has known for some sixteen years, and whose practice designs schools, health centres, housing and offices. Rose Wangen-Jones of London & Partners leads marketing, destination and commercial work for the capital’s growth agency, promoting London to visitors, investors and businesses. One thinks in buildings and spaces, the other in brands and perceptions, yet both arrived at the same idea, that the strongest places are built in layers, with what came before holding up what comes next, and that this continuity is an opportunity rather than a constraint.
Layers Around a Courtyard
“We brought quite eclectic uses together around a courtyard and they were purposefully different, not homogenous.”
Simon was talking about the Truman Brewery, a project he has worked on with Grow Places. The courtyard is a recurring idea in his practice’s work, he explained, because if everybody faces it, they can all see each other, and so have “a really strong visual image of themselves as a group”.
Simon recalled that the Truman Brewery project meetings were held in his own office, in a room that is “not a very big room”, and he spoke of the way Grow Places conducted them. Twenty or thirty years ago, he said, a small design team around a table was “like a kind of supper round a table”, with “freedom to be wrong”. Today, he said, there are “multiple channels of expertise”, and the usual response is to “keep saying the same thing in every meeting”. On the Truman Brewery, he said, “there is a confidence in that group of people to pose questions and promote scenarios”, and he described creating a culture that works within that situation as a great asset. He also recalled wondering, when he first started working with Tom some sixteen years ago, whether he dared to reference a seventeenth-century church, and the reaction was not “oh, what is he talking about?” He described conversations that can slide between “cultural ambition and a commercial reality”.
That habit of building on what exists runs right through the practice. Henley Halebrown moved into adaptive reuse, now more commonly called retrofit, some twenty-nine years ago, and clients began asking not whether they had designed a housing scheme or a school, but whether they had ever adapted an old building. A recent office on the South Bank, replacing late 1980s and early 1990s buildings, is “built on the original foundations” and carries ideas about outdoor space in workplaces first explored in 1999, “ideas that we’ve been carrying around for twenty seven years”.
Simon is quick to say that he is “not obsessed with history”. Culture is cyclical while technology looks forward, and a building combines the two, so it is “by its very nature cyclical and forward looking”. When he helped rewrite the RIBA awards criteria, reducing around twenty-one points to ten questions, he noticed that the old list kept using the word innovation, with no mention of tradition or history. He also noted that Vanbrugh died three hundred years ago and faced most of the same challenges, and that “it was ever thus”. The practice has just published a book, Building for Society, which Simon says describes how they think, that even though every project has a client, every project is for society.
The Iconic and the New
“It’s never about standing still.”
Rose Wangen-Jones used that line when describing London’s future. London & Partners is the growth agency for London, working to create economic growth that is resilient, sustainable and inclusive. Her short answer to why London is a draw is that it combines “the iconic and the new and innovative”, and she explained that this reads differently for each audience. For visitors, it means history and culture alongside new food and experiences. For investors, it means the security and stability of an established city alongside talent and what comes next. In a recent meeting the team talked about layering, the way the old supports the new, and she was firm that the future is “never more of the same”.
The practical expression of that is the London Growth Plan, published by the Mayor and London Councils, which sets out five growth sectors for the next decade. Rose is particularly keen to champion the experience economy, which she describes as a baseline for the other growth sectors, since the aim is to attract people “not just to visit, but to live”, and talent then attracts the businesses.
Rose also talks about London’s footprint. The West End is “the jewel in the crown”, but she wants to expand it, because other areas offer their own authentic experiences for businesses and visitors, and “each area will have its own personality”. Clusters, in life sciences close to labs and universities for example, are about driving investment to the right places for the right things, working with boroughs and communities so that it is right for that community. Team London brings together the many organisations that pitch London, so that they share consistent messaging, while Opportunity London gathers investable sites into a single London story for investors. Rose, who was born in Puerto Rico and has lived in London for nearly thirty years, says that anyone who comes to London has the opportunity to be a Londoner and to contribute.
Three Reflections We’re Carrying Forward
The first is that continuity gives new development its credibility. Simon’s practice has been building on existing buildings, and even on original foundations, for nearly three decades, while Rose’s pitch to visitors and investors works because the established city makes the new one believable. In both cases, what already exists is treated as an asset to build on rather than something to clear.
The second is that layering is something to be practised, not assumed. Simon’s practice carried ideas about outdoor space in offices for twenty-seven years before completing a new office that expressed them, and he helped rewrite award criteria that had kept using the word innovation with no mention of tradition or history. Rose is equally clear that London’s future is never more of the same. The old holds up the new, but only when someone keeps adding to it.
The third is that every layer has its own character, and the skill lies in the join. The courtyard at the Truman Brewery gathers uses that are purposefully different around a shared space, and Rose’s areas each have their own personality, which is why she wants to expand London’s footprint beyond the West End. The same is true of the people in the room, where Simon values a group confident enough to pose questions and promote scenarios. Neither guest is describing a single template applied everywhere. Both are describing fit, and the care needed to hold difference together.
Looking Ahead
Grow Places exists to align vision, partners and direction so that land and buildings can reach their full potential, for people, for place and for investors. These two conversations are a reminder that every project is a layer added to a place that was there before and will be there afterwards. Growing a place well is a matter of long-term stewardship, adding to what exists with enough care that those who follow can add to it in turn.
Our thanks to Simon and Rose for their time and candour.
The Grow Places Team
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