Roger Madelin of British Land joins the line-up for the Help the Client seminar, delivered in partnership with HDR on the morning of Tuesday 27th October at the Building Centre in central London as part of Regenerative Design 2026.
Roger Madelin, Joint Head of the 53-acre Canada Water Development at British Land developer and one of the most influential clients in British architecture, will talk about the ways architects can help developers deliver more regenerative projects at a Regenerative Design 2026 seminar at the Building Centre in central London on the morning of Tuesday 27th October.
Madelin joined British Land in 2016 having spent 29 years at Argent. As the Development Director at Argent from 1988 he was responsible for the delivering all of Argent’s projects including Brindleyplace in Birmingham, Thames Valley Park in Reading and major office projects in central London and the City. The company was a FTSE 250 emerging major from 1993 until it left the stock market in 1997. Roger then became CEO of the once again private development business which was funded by British Telecom Pension Fund and the senior management team. Over the next decade he expanded Argent’s development activities with major projects in Manchester and further projects in Reading, Birmingham and the City of London. In 2000 he led the company to be selected and then to take forward the development of the 56 acres of ‘railway lands’ between and to the north of King’s Cross and St Pancras Stations. He formally left Argent at the end of 2015 but retained an advisory role on the remaining King’s Cross projects for the Aga Khan Development Network until the end of 2018.
Coal Drops Yard at Kings Cross. Photograph by John Sturrock.
Madelin will be joined by Julia Barfield of Marks Barfield who will draw on case studies from the London Eye through to Cambridge Mosque to the West Somerset Tidal lagoon to illustrate the way her practice has worked with clients to get ambitious – and often unconventional – projects off the ground. Other speakers include neuro-scientist Beau Lotto, who is at the start of a project to build a new kind of learning environment to house his pioneering Hummingbird Learning Lab, and Daniel Bianchi of Cullinan Studio, who will share the practice’s experience of using Integrated Project Insurance (IPI), a form of contract in which all the key parties involved in a building project (client, architect, engineers, contractors and consultants) sign up to a single alliance contract, with conditions that incentivise shared responsibility, eliminating conflicting insurance concerns and leading to better collaboration between all parties.
the last 12 months the Hummingbird Learning Lab has been working with Architecture Today to work up a brief for a learning space that reflects its neuroscience-grounded approach to education and community engagement, and to run a competition to select a design team from the Regenerative Architecture Index. Having selected two practices, its founder – neuroscientist, educator and client Beau Lotto – now faces the very real challenge of facilitating and funding collaborative work.
Launched by Architecture Today, Regenerative Design 2026 is a month-long programme of exhibitions and events that takes place at the Building Centre throughout October 2026.
Help the client: beyond business as usual will be delivered in partnership with HDR.
