There was so much good: we finished a cluster of listed buildings at Princess Building, Halifax for offices for Calderdale; we are completing work on a glorious Grade 1 Listed Hull Minster refurbishment; and we are finalising a complex options appraisal for EUREKA! Children’s Museum.
We also had some bad times. Our first (and we have made it our last) experience of working with an unscrupulous developer who exploits the supply chain – we lost fantastic people – Brexit, UK being dropped in the European Capital of Culture Contest in the 11th hour, losing some tenders which we should have got – these are some of the lows.
But we also had some fantastic times: we have worked with the Silk Mill Museum of Making in Derby to secure planning permission and all the funding. We will be delivering this £16M project through a new partnering contract in which ‘conflict’ and ‘risk avoidance’ are replaced by ‘co-production’ and ‘risk and opportunities’. We have taken steps to diversify the practice by forming a new company, MassBespoke, to develop and fabricate our own timber cassette construction system and we have built our second MassBespoke prototype with Innovate UK funding. We have secured a 2 year long fellowship from Royal Commission 1851 to develop models for neighbourhood based factories for affordable housing. But the most fantastic experience has been working with residential clients, the visionary motivated community land trusts, with the team at Derby Museum Trust, and with all of the long term collaborators who add so much value to our everyday work. And of course our own BLA team.
We thank you all and wish you only The Good and The Fantastic for 2018.