AT chats to…Despina Katsikakis and Richard Kauntze about the way the UK is leading the field in workplace design – but keeping it under its hat.

BCO members arrive at the Dublin Convention Centre having cycled from Kenmare to Dublin.

What do you hope to achieve at this year’s BCO Conference?

Despina Katsikakis  We need to grapple on the changing nature of the office; how it can be relevant in social and economic terms. So much is about breaking down silos. There is so much fragmentation. Funding; development; design; operation – everything’s fragmented. People have different timelines and different objectives. So we need to partner in different ways. We need to challenge conventional ways of doing things in order to disrupt the industry ourselves before it gets disrupted from the outside. Because we are primed for disruption. It’s a really exciting moment because there’s a lot of energy in the sector. BCO’s NextGen (for members under 35 years old) is a community of over 1000 members and 140 of them are here. They will play a pivotal role in our future.

Richard Kauntze I was one of the people who started BCO’s Next Gen, for members under 35 years old. It started 13 or 14 years ago from nothing. And now over a quarter of the entire BCO membership is NextGen. They’re integrated in everything we do: the conference; all of our expert committees. It’s a club within a club. They have their own complementary programme but they’re not excluded from anything we do.

Despina Katsikakis They’re very vocal and that’s great. They hold our generation responsible for destroying the planet. I think actually one of the reasons we’ve had an uplift in membership among the under 35s is that they feel they can have a voice. They talk about their frustrations with the industry. Why are we not embracing wood construction? What do we do to bring engineering in line with ESG expectations? Why are we still doing Cat A? What’s stopping us from saying “No, actually, we really think there’s a much more sustainable way of approaching this”? Perennial questions that are all critical. And what’s stopping us? Legislation is driving change but we need to be proactive about the way we design, deliver and operate buildings.

Richard Kauntze There’s been a generational shift. Environmental issues used to be considered quite trendy and marginal. Now we all understand that we have a moral responsibility. It’s no longer acceptable to demolish buildings and all that embedded energy. More imaginative and sustainable solutions have to be found.

Despina Katsikakis Occupiers are driving this too. So for example when L&G look to move to a new building they look to move to a repurposed building. They are under pressure to demonstrate that they are taking the environmental agenda seriously and not just talking the talk. They have commitments to their shareholders, but they are also concerned about what their building says about their brand and the impact it will have on their ability to attract talent.

Richard Kauntze For me, a great example is Bracken House in London. It was built in 1958 by Albert Richardson as office for the Financial Times. Hopkins Architects redeveloped the building after the FT vacated in the 1980s. Now John Robertson Architects has refurbished it for the Financial Times, which moved back in again after three decades. The quality of the work we produce just gets better and better. But one thing the UK is bad at is blowing its own trumpet. We produce amazing buildings but we just don’t shout about it. It’s not all about money and deep pockets. It’s not about Bloomberg and a putting a billion pound building in the city. It’s about what you can do with the right team and imagination and it’s very unusual that I see anything better than the work that’s produced here in the UK.

Despina Katsikakis is incoming BCO President & 2023 Conference Chair and Global Lead for Total Workplace at Cushman & Wakefield. Richard Kauntze is Chief Executive of BCO.