unexpected things that happen which trigger almost like medical sequences are much more likely that into your high people who come from the same culture all come the same background. Welcome to Archim I wanted to speak with a wusu about the issues of diversity and exclusion and practice generally and also at the institutional level of reba. We discussed the allegations but a wusu was quick to point out that these conversations need to have in regardless of any publicized incidents. I hope you enjoy my one to one with lc wusu.
Why don't you tell me how you first got into architecture? I first remember being interested in architecture as one of about nine and I started being interested in, I mean I've always drawn lots of lots but I started connecting that with buildings and designing buildings and looking at the environment. I mean I'm not sure I would have called it architecture at time. I would have called it I think being interested in buildings and the world around myself and plants and trees and that of the environment being interested in that sort of environment involves buildings as well but coming from Ghana where people are constantly talking about making buildings, making homes, making as an independent country that was very much part of a newly independent African country that was building a very much part of the conversation.
You know how to make a new country and how to make new structures in a new country. So I think my earliest memory of being interested in what I now would describe as architecture and the building of the environment was when I was about nine. And then what brought you to London and how did you begin practicing in London? Well when I was about, I was very moved to London when I was back in 2009 which is a change of environment from a sort of tropical country to a northern country would have sparked my interest I guess.
So when I was about 18 I fell in with a group of students who were the Royal College Imperial College, the Slade School of Art and the Architecture Association. And one of my friends, one of my friends, one of my then friends still was friends suggested that I should talk to Keith Critter who was a tutor at the AA and so just having finished my A levels I went to see Keith Critter and interviewed for the AA and the Architecture Association and the laughter place and started there just before my one to first birthday I think. Well so you are as soon as you finish through what might be in the American parallel like the high school education. You then immediately went into architecture and so what was your understanding of your abilities as an architect?
What did you want to accomplish? Was it something along the lines of the kind of nation building ideas that you might have picked up from your history in Ghana or was it something more present in London? Well I had been I had the back time. I didn't go straight from school.
I went from school. I had a I had my daughter and I was quite young and after I had my daughter I went back to my schooling and got my A levels and that's when I was in Brixton and became involved in community architecture and so it was all around that time. So when I went to the AA I was very much including community architecture and was part of a community street group. So it was campaigning architecture, campaigning for the preservation of listed what we now call listed buildings but buildings which at that time in the early 70s were scheduled for demolition and so part of the activist campaign was to preserve those buildings and it was that sort of mood I suppose that sort of campaign mood which in which I entered the AA and the AA was a radical school, well saw itself as a radical campaigning school but I don't but for it so it was the right place for me I thought very much at home.
Excellent. So how would you then characterize your period as an early architect and a young professional architect and your decision to then start your own firm and when exactly was that? Well from the AA I mean I'm in and out of the AA I had a very career you might say but there were a group of AA students who started having a association working in the poorer, some of the poorer parts of London now an extremely wealthy part of London but at that time Brixton was considered to be in an area which was predominantly settled by people from African and Caribbean countries, in the Clinton and African and Caribbean countries and what so long was about which is the organisation I worked for was improving conditions in that particular part of London and so it was African Caribbean and working class but white working class neighborhoods and what we were doing was renovating the houses, preserving the houses and building new stock. I think those urban dentistry was what we were about so it was a really interesting interesting kind and it was an architectural collective so it kind of sounds like the radical and campaigning and revolutionary in a sort of quaint English language and I went to a women's design service which focused on what it said on the tip you know looked at design for women and campaigns for better conditions in urban design architecture for women I had those concerns and then from there I started mining factories.
So when you started on practice was that at the same time that you began working with the Society for Black Architects in London? No I was in my practice for a few years I mean I think the first founding meeting of the South Society of Black Architects was in about 1990 and it was probably established in 1991 from memory I'm sure lots of people were correct to me but from memory it started in 1991 so it was really a continuum of being in practice having those concerns about conditions of women and Black and ethnic minorities living in the UK living in London because I was working in London and then meeting people from all over the world and we were called to talk to Black architects but actually it was a very diverse group of architects and absolutely wonderful meeting people from Asia, Africa, Caribbean people who were born abroad people were born here and hearing about people's experiences so it was a really fantastic opportunity to connect with people from all over the world. And so do you feel as an individual architect who does occupy these groups of minorities in architecture of being a Black woman and a woman? Do you feel that your perspective is inherently different than to say the member of the architecture community that occupies a majority party?
Well the thing about being an architect is that you are an incredibly privileged I mean one of the minorities you belong to is that of being an incredibly privileged elite minority if you like. So that sort of cuts across lots of the other identities and I suppose the thing about being English and I say English rather than British because I did an English and I spent as my time at English so the thing about being Black and English is that if you have these layered identities so you have I have an identity obviously as a woman and as a Black woman but also as an African as an English person the British person as a European as an architect as a mother as you know a number of things so these these these identities are all sort of layered you know and you move smoothly or with more or less smoothly in and out of them according to what you're doing who you're talking to where you are and I suppose a lot of it also is how you're seen because I mean obviously the physical characteristics are technically what people identify by and the predominant physical characteristics are that would be a woman and that would be Black and that tends to condition my relationship with the world at large. So do you feel a certain responsibility to perhaps for as a kind of role model for other parties do you feel that you have to kind of represent your identity in a specific way that perhaps again the majority party might not necessarily feel that same obligation? I don't feel it was an obligation I feel it as a privilege really to have that perspective and to be able to inform and to allow that perspective to be able to inform my other identities because you know you could go anywhere in the world and meet other Black people and there is a sort of communality or experience that allows you to get to places you know get a place of common thinking very very fast which for me as an architect is just so useful I mean that being an architect you have that common reality of thinking of through your training but being a Black and a female you also have that commonality of thinking just by being to who of the way you're born and to me that is a great privilege I mean I don't see it as a responsibility or a duty at all I see it as a privilege to be able to communicate that perspective and to be able to share that perspective so I think I see it as a and your perspective is informed and enriched by all these different experiences as you say you're moved from Ghana to England and in your various community engagement projects I'm also just wondering because at least in the US there's a lot of conversations around diversity in the workplace obviously just a general kind of ongoing topic but more recently there have been more studies regarding us because of a few highly publicized workforces most specifically in Silicon Valley so you have groups of people who are at least in like a census breakdown would be seen to be very homogenous mostly white male and this is not necessarily something that has provoked these conversations but it is something that kind of gives a focus to where people are doing sociological and statistical studies of workplaces that adopt certain diversity practices and the actual economic gains that might be available by someone or by a workplace that adopts certain diversity standards not based on necessarily ethnicity or race or anything that something again like a census might understand but simply on background so to say like if your background is different you approach a problem differently and that could be a gain for the company I mean I just think that I mean I just agree so much with that because quite often people think about when they say diversity when people say diversity often they often mean it as a use reason for what they call the woman or even taking up all the race problems and it's actually a diversity but actually it's a euphemism for something else and I just see diversity of a huge opportunity and there's nothing more boring than working in a homogenous mass with people all thinking the same all moving in the same direction like some sort of you know tray and to me the idea of hybrid vigor you know that sort of sense of if you have a diverse environment then the likelihood of interesting sparks and things that happen but you know unexpected things that happen which trigger almost like medical sequences are much more likely but if you have people who come from the same culture all kinds of things background but you know I can't think of anything worse than being with a group of people who you went to school with who come from the same neighborhood with you know who parents know your parents I mean that's to me the recipe for accident greenback you know and the great thing about London the thing I love about living in London is that people are here from all over the world you know you don't you don't have to get on the plane and go somewhere to meet people or China or Afghanistan or Albania or Nigeria you know people all here and it's just a fantastic thing to me and I don't understand why anybody you know what's not to like and I find it extraordinary that people see it as a problem when I just see it as an absolute opportunity and a gift so for an architect in particular what do you feel having an encouragement of diversity would benefit the profession as in one very specific moments of architectural practice you feel could benefit from a higher degree of diversity I mean part of architecture that wouldn't benefit I mean the practice of architecture any creative art which I think architecture is made may disagree but I think architecture is must benefit from diversity it must benefit from diversity culture from diversity race ethnicity gender and I mean I probably just probably because I was trying to be a this is kind of part of what I see as the potential for architecture and to me being in London the potential for working out of London into other parts of the world because of the English in this sort of cultural creative language because strangely because of the time though if you know it's a great dream time because of the empire basically of the empire and now the connection with the common world just gives the opportunity for people in London people train this architect in London to work through the world like web creating projects which is what I'm doing now I mean at the moment I'm working in Nigeria I'm working in Albania I'm working in London I'm working in Ghana and I can do that because I have access within seconds to all my projects across the world and it's absolutely fantastic and I think that UK architects could just benefit from that so greatly and I think that to me that's the future of architecture in the church actually is working across the world like web across the internet and making buildings with people I mean I can tell you that if I could be doing a building in the north of Ghana I could send drawings there faster than I could deliver drawings a mile away in London you know and the potential for transformation through that training and through those systems is properly employed I think it's absolutely magical so you know I don't see that that's what I see the rest of it the racism and the sexism and discrimination I see as a hindrance to that opportunity that's why I get so angry about it that's why it's across the back because it's actually a blockage to something which could be so transformation and so magical and it seems like a obvious solution to any type of criticism that would say globalized architecture is inherently problematic because it doesn't represent the potential regionalism or cultural sensitivities of wherever's being built there because it's some type of franchised version of a star-contextual icon or something and I asked specifically about if there was an area you felt needed to have particular attention for diversity centers because there's I feel like there's two means of addressing this question of diversity and architecture there's diversity of representation in the practice in who is actually practicing architecture was able to practice architecture who's building in the world and then there's this other more structural presence of diversity in an organization like the Royal Institute of British Architects or the American Institute of Architects these kind of national governing bodies of the licensure programs and the policies dictating how the profession operates and I think most of our architects audience became familiar with your name last December when you made allegations against the Royal Institute of British Architects in response to an election for the vice presidency of practice and profession where you were up against AI and architect.
So that's how I had up against another architect there was a post which was open and what happened was that an unelected architect who is a great person I have no quarrel at all with Caroline at all I mean I think she's a great person she's a role model of I am but what happened was that the the people in power at the IBA and they've done this a long time they do this a lot how she's been curating to a post unelected over the head of somebody i.e.v who is now I have an objection in principle to unelected people being appointed without reference to council in the first place I have an objection to that but the effect of that was that the cabinet the ruling body of council remained an all-white body so if I had gone on to that body I would have been only black person on that body on the ruling council of on the ruling board of IBA so that that to me would not have been very good being a token of potentially a token black person on the board of the IBA wouldn't have been very good and the first thing I would have done would be to say why am I the only black person okay and are there no other black people in the 40 000 odd architects in the UK capable or good enough to fit beside the president didn't fit so that would have been my point but I wasn't even allowed to do that because that post that empty post was immediately curled by an unelected person and that was my complaint now I spoke to the president in a you know in a frankly sort of way and I expected us to somehow what we agreed with that we would have a job share that Caroline and I should have a dog share we were told by the chief executive and the unrespected that it was not possible to have a job share because the bylaws dated you know the bylaws dated the job share is uncomfortable so I said well let me see the bible no you can't see the bylaws and that's six months ago and I haven't seen the bylaws they haven't seen the bylaws but what they did do was to send me an intimidating letter from a queen's council who's a very top level of just a law in the in the country queen's council interested in that immediately supply all the information which I was supporting which I'm going to get and I took but I'm having a conversation with my friends doing Duncan why have this come into a legal matter and before I knew I was it could become a very serious legal matter and and I funded accordingly you know I don't like being bullied and I have to find out that the way that order is kept in the idea is anybody who questions how things work at the idea which is a legal letter and then and then there's an attempt to enforce a diving cause to prevent them for instance doing this interview you know had I informed the idea I was doing I was usually referred to the press office and if I didn't do what I was told I would probably get a letter from the lawyers saying you may not proceed now you know so for an organization which is all about creativity which is all about you know chains which is all about making the world a new if you like helping people to be acting in that way I think it's unacceptable and I'm going to you know never mind the discrimination I mean I think the structures tend towards institutionalized discrimination in a very in the sense that the Sweden Lawrence inquiry and you know I was very clear about this the Sweden Lawrence inquiry which was a young man who wanted to be an architect who was tragically killed and his mother who was very brave woman just contained through architecture for change and that's the definition that I knew that organizations unsinkingly build structures corporate structures which tend to discriminate against black and minority people and that was a definition and what I expected to do they are a way to do is to use its own mechanisms it had a great panel called architects to change to look at this and see how together we could transform the culture I did not expect a heavy handed response with a queen's council sending me intimidating letters now I come from a family of barristers and I you know lawyers don't intimidate me and I'm certainly not going to be intimidated by a queen's council and so I just told the guy to go away and well I mean I use more colourful languages than I tell them to go away so and since then I've had people writing to me saying black people and minority ethnic people and men writing to me saying thank you for rating this about the RBA you know this is how about the culture has become and it's alienated people people aren't joining young people aren't joining people and to me again you know as I said it's seeing seeing the world through the prison of being a black woman allows you partly through people's response to see things and say things that other people might not say you know so that I can also see the privilege so this whole thing about institutionalised racism which could have really been resolved you know or reached some kind of resolution by me and Caroline and James sitting together over a cup of tea has turned into a wall and I can you know and I'm saying I was talking to somebody today and say it doesn't need to be a wall you know let's cool things down and let's try and find a resolution but if they want it to be a wall you know then I'm I'm not afraid I'm not afraid of standing up but I mean you know lots of other people not a black people that stood up to wear situations than this is actually you know chicken feet you know I mean architect that's stolen an architectural concup you know it's not the Marxist Alabama you know to me it's important but it's not you know so also you are a member of Riva's national council so I'm wondering because you still operate as a role within Riva correct oh yeah I'm still on council I've been elected I mean the first thing is this is my first three months of a three year term yeah and so you don't know what's going to happen for the rest of it and so in March that is when the Queen's Councilor so will deliver some type of report on whatever they find to the national council is that the next step well what what actually what actually was decided this is the Queen's council that there was a tense to force a vote through council either council to force council to vote to allow this Queen's council person to conduct an inquiry I mean my basic point is that this guy charges if he's a good Queen council I think he is it's going to charge something like thousand pounds an hour but my annual subscriptions the RBA 397 pound so if you multiply that by three it gets around about a thousand pound so for round about three times the annual subscription this guy's going to be paid an hourly rate and if you spend you know I mean you know you can eat through a quarter million pounds on something like this very easily and we have as designers we have the capacity to design a system for free you know I'm giving my time to three and 60 of us on council are giving our time for three we all trained for at least seven years to be architect and we're perfectly capable of doing it or you know finding something to do it for on our own or from at least much much cheaper and better than that because this guy isn't qualified to do it anyway I mean you know he's not he has no expertise in discrimination and diversity you know so so I just said no I'm not doing that and council agreed and they said go away find a term to reference and come back in March and next this night what to do now other people the town of the institution is trying to railroad it through and insisting on using on on paying a thousand pounds and I can't do the life of me thinking by anybody would be worth a thousand pounds an hour and he you know I come from I come from a country where people are living on two dollars a day you know and a whole family can live you know I've got an adopted family I've adopted a Ghanaian family and they live on you know five hundred dollars a month you know and they think that's pretty fabulous that they're they're living on their their standard of this thing is pretty good so you know to me the comparison just doesn't hold water that the RIDA should pay somebody a thousand pounds an hour and I'm not and I mean the council defines that's what they obviously they're perfectly entitled to do that but they haven't decided that and if that money is made without council's permission I think it's wrong I'm going to say so and I must say I'm not the only person who feels like this I have to say that there's a group of council who I've discovered who called themselves a son or two day who are trying to change the RBA so I'm not you know I'm not giving you impression that I'm the only person who's doing this but I mean I think as I say that prison was perspective as a black female just gives you but just makes things a little bit sharper perhaps so clearly you didn't intend and you didn't think that it was the most effective way to make change to it kind of this whole legal rigourical around the issue and instead you thought you could resolve the issue at hand by simply personal conversation and personal interfacing well no no not to fact but there is as I said there's architecture change which is which Jane Duncan the president set up so you know there are mechanisms within the RBA there are good well set up mechanisms and I don't think that they should be circumvented I think if those mechanisms and committees exist within the RBA those are the mechanisms we should use not invent a new one which is completely untested you know what I mean I'm not I'm not saying that I absolutely agree that this will actually be done but I think in terms of reference just as if you were building a building the brief must be right otherwise the building is not going to be very good I only ask about the kind of inflation of this that you referred to earlier because I want to know at this point moving forward from your perspective what would you feel would be a satisfying and a constructive resolution to this whole thing well I think that now that I understand from the information that I've had from people writing to me now that issue has been in the press I mean I'm pretty shocked actually from what I've been told you know because it started off as a sort of a journal almost a sort of technocratic discussion about you know how elections happen within the RBA and whether the process is transparent and those kinds of discussions and it's actually turned into people telling their stories about how discrimination within the RBA and the profession works so I think that there does mean to be because you know the society black architects is now defined as a does need to be a lot of thinking and a lot of listening to women to black and minority I think people about their experience within architecture and the loss that it's causing the potential loss of talent that it's causing the profession because what I'm hearing is that they're black people who are training in architecture and are ending up flipping burgers now I mean there's nothing wrong with flipping burgers that's what you want to do but to train for seven years to be an architect and end up you know in a chicken hut somewhere in London flipping burgers or selling fried chicken you know to me is a huge huge waste of talent it's huge loss not just to architecture but you know to the society as a whole well I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts and your personal perspective in this what is not a very frustrating and complex situation so Kelsey I really appreciate you coming on and talking to me about this I just have to say that but it's not just frustrating but it's also enlightening and potentially hugely creative so thank you very much for your time I really enjoyed talking to you oh likewise thanks so much thanks for listening to our Connect sessions one-to-one with Elsie Busu Donilo Voinoff edits the podcast and Matt Skilling's composed the music myself and Paul Petunia are 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