SIR TERENCE CONRAN | TIM BOWDER-RIDGER
BELOW: Cadence for Argent
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RIGHT: The Conran Shop Seoul for The Conran Shop and Lotte
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Planning in London
by their nature require a long distance commuting culture, surely can only be a good thing? During the pandemic, I have seen in my own neighbourhood of Peckham Rye that our local high street has been thriving during the week as never before. Of course, if we assume full-time home working is not going to be model for the majority, this may reduce to an extent, but it does suggest a potential levelling out of activity between local neighbourhoods in London and its centre. There is no doubt that since Terence started Habitat over 50 years ago, retail has fundamentally changed from the functional to being a leisure activity. The function of buying is ever more dominated by online, and for some time now we have seen the big traditional formats really struggling. The exceptions are the bespoke and independent venues who, by their nature, are fundamentally experiential. So as with workplace, the definition of retail needs to be reviewed and a looser approach is needed. The future must lie, even in the most retail dominated districts, in diversifying to recognise that audiences require more choices. For instance, if those traditionally defined as ‘office workers’ widely work from home two days a week, as we are planning for our team, the footfall in the location of office might drop by 40 per cent. Perhaps retail-heavy areas such as the West End can only counter this effect by creating smaller, retail venues and building more homes, perhaps at the cost of office and large retail formats, and for those homes to be designed with home-working front and centre - thereby creating more self sustaining neighbourhoods with the diversity that characterises London at its best. In the meantime, the pandemic is one of the great, albeit tragic, watershed moments in our history. These moments force
us to stand back and look at how we have been doing things. As architects and designers, we must remain the world’s greatest optimists and attempt to positively anticipate people’s needs and aspirations. The key difference at this point in time is the speed of that change, enabled by technology and the urgency of adjusting our behaviours to become less damaging to our environment. If Terence was still with us, he would be very excited by the new opportunities to create “good designs that improve peoples’ lives”. But in his absence, we at Conran and Partners will stay loyal to his ethos and hope that he is looking down at us through the clouds (of cigar smoke) with some approval. n
