Architect of her own success: Angela Brady

To describe Dublin-born, London-based architect Angela Brady as a doer is something of an understatement. Apart from the day job of running an award-winning practice with her husband Robin Mallalieu, Brady is in the second of a two-year term as president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

She’s an active campaigner on a range of issues – for example, diversity in her profession, quality sustainable design and procurement reform within the sector – and has a media career, which has included presenting the Channel 4 programme The Home Show and the 65-part ITV series Building the Dream.

As well as doing stints as an outside examiner at Mackintosh, Brighton and Dublin schools of architecture, she is a visiting critic at many universities, including London Metropolitan University. She has also worked on a variety of architectural educational projects over the last 15 years with organisations like Open City, MoMA, Artsinform, Crafts Council and the Irish Architecture Foundation. She’s an ambassador to the Cabinet Government Equality Office and a StemNet ambassador. As an artist, she creates glass art pieces to commission and also exhibits publicly.

After graduating from what is now the DIT School of Architecture in 1981, Brady won a post-graduate scholarship in Denmark, where she spent 18 months studying sustainable co-housing. “The word sustainable   wasn’t invented then but the Danes are so far ahead of us, they were doing it in the early Eighties when I was there. I was always interested in very sustainable ways of life, as well as the house itself. It was a holistic thing. And I’m still true to that in my passion for the environment.”

She followed up with a year working for Arthur Erickson in Toronto, before stopping off in London to visit friends on her way back to Dublin. “There was no work in Ireland at the time so I thought I’d see if there were any jobs in London. I said I’d give it 10 days. I got three job offers in my first week. So I’m still here after that long weekend!”

She worked for four firms in London before setting up her own private practice in 1987. During this time, she says, she got something of a reputation for being involved in and organising extra-curricular activities. “I was a populist. I was always keen on setting up things. I ran an inter-office tournament for 10 years for softball, volleyball and squash. I’ve always been a big networker, and not just with architects, but with quantity surveyors, the engineers, landscapers, whoever it was.

“I think it was part of my philosophy of work hard, play hard, very like my dad’s one. It’s very much the Irish spirit.”

Setting up Brady Mallalieu

It was through playing softball that she met her future husband Robin Mallalieu in Regent’s Park. They married in 1986 and started Brady Mallalieu a year later, while still working as a consultant for another firm. The firm’s focus from the start was on contemporary sustainable design. Over the years, it has worked for the public and private sectors in the UK and Ireland, designing everything from one-off private homes to housing developments, urban masterplans to schools.

Irish clients have included the Doyle Hotel Group, Murphy Group and Ballymore Homes.  The firm has also done a lot of work for housing associations. “Our first break came from an Irish one around 25 years ago [Inishfree Housing Association, which specialises in addressing the housing and related needs of the Irish community in Britain].

“People say we’re architects with a social conscience and I think that’s quite a nice thing in a way. It’s a bit more like what I learned in Denmark, having places that encourage community and neighbourliness, as opposed to my home is my castle.”

Work in Ireland has included St Catherine’s Foyer, a housing, training and community sports centre for Dublin City Council. Built in 2004, the building introduced to Ireland the ‘Foyer’ concept, which is based on the objective of providing on-site accommodation and training facilities to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The firm is also looking to international markets and is currently involved in what Brady describes as a “huge job” just outside Beijing. “It’s very much trying to promote the sustainable city, the walking city,” she says.

The firm’s social conscience is reflected in Brady’s extra-curricular activities. Over the last 12 or 13 years she’s been particularly focused on promoting greater diversity in archicture, particularly in terms of bringing women into the profession. She was involved in setting up RIBA’s Architects for Change equality forum in 2000 and chaired that group’s Women in Architecture group for five years. “When I started women made up only 8pc of architects. Now we’re 22pc, which is still very low.

“My mantra is, women and men together make better architecture and environment. All women wouldn’t produce the best building and nor would all men. I think it’s that combination of many thoughts and ideas going into the way we use spaces. My take has been, let’s not moan about it or we’ll be marginalised.

Let’s shout about what we’re good at. And that’s always been my philosophy.”

Shouting about it resulted in the DiverseCity exhibition celebrating the best of women and black and ethnic minorities in the architectural and build-environment professions. Launched in London in 2003, the exhibition went on to tour to 34 cities around the world, with Brady bringing it to 16 of them. “We helped to give encouragement to other women’s groups in architecture, construction and engineering.”

She is also passionate about promoting architecture and good design to the public, both through her media work, and through education. For the last 15 years, she’s been adopting a school each year, going in and giving talks, and providing guidance and work experience/mentoring to pupils.

“The biggest ‘bring architecture into the classroom’ I did was 10 or 12 years ago, when I had the wonderful Thomas Heatherwick [designer of the Olympic cauldron] and we ran a six-week project in Hammersmith Girls School. The work these kids did designing a house, a sculpture garden and a gallery for Tom – he was acting as client. I brought in a team of all the people I knew. I’ve always dragged my contacts in, but not kicking and screaming, they’re always delighted. It’s the persuasive power of the Irish.”

Brady’s most recent campaign, which challenged the ban on architects, engineers and construction firms being allowed to talk about their work on venues for London 2012 Games, reached a successful conclusion at the end of January. In the end, the British government paid the British Olympic Association (BOA) £2m to get around the promotion ban.

“The majority of the architects and designers we were standing up for in the campaign were young small businesses who just wanted to be able to promote their work,” said Brady just after the ban was lifted. “It’s great that they are now able to speak freely about their contribution to the success of the 2012 Games and get the recognition they deserve.”

She attributes her election as president of RIBA to the fact that she’s a campaigner. “Rather than being a moaner, I do try to do something about it myself,” she says. “Very often, the way I get roped into putting on these various hats is because I feel nobody is doing anything about it. Something has to be done. As soon I stand up, people say, ‘Angela you speak very passionately about it, maybe you should be the one’. Next thing is, you’re up for election.”

Female role models

It’s important, she says, for girls to have more female role models and to see more women in the public eye. “Many women don’t push themselves out enough and they’re not asked because people don’t know about them in the first place. It’s a spiral that goes around and around – the ‘we’ll get him because we know him’. All my panels for awards judging etc have been 50pc women. It’s much better. You get much better discussions.”

At the moment, she’s busy working on her three main objectives as RIBA president. These are procurement reform in architecture, particularly for local authority projects; internationalising the skills of RIBA members so they can get more work overseas; and bringing architecture to the public, “so we all understand the benefits that good architecture can bring to our daily lives in everything we do”.

Brady believes good leadership is making the right judgement call at the right time. “When you’re campaigning, it’s about having a bit of political nous at the same time and knowing who is persuaded,” she says. “It’s not speaking to the converted – it’s persuading the non-converted. I think too often people talk to the converted and they’re all in agreement. You have to get the argument out, you’ve got to defend it and be prepared to change your mind. Don’t feel you’re right all the time.

“Good leadership is about surrounding yourself with good people, and having a plan – a now, a one-year and a five-year plan. I think everything has to have a five-year plan, well worked out, that’s a little bit flexible in terms of budget.”
It’s also vital, she says, to surround yourself with good people. “I think that is so important in business today. If you want to succeed in business, you’ve got to have a good team and you’ve got to credit that team where credit is due. And you’ve got to encourage them.”

Her leadership and achievements have been recognised with a number of accolades, including an An Post/AIB Bank Award in 1993 presented by Mary Robinson, highlighting personal achievement in architecture; an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Dublin School of Architecture in 2011 (“a real honour”); fellowship of the RIAI and FRSA; and a lifetime achievement in the Women in Construction Awards 2012.

Last November, she was named the 2012 winner of the Women of Outstanding Achievement Award for Leadership and Inspiration. The award was presented to Brady by Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal at the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Part of the WISE Awards, it recognises women who are leading Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) businesses, research teams, academic organisations or professional bodies – creating change and transforming culture and ways of working. “It was really an honour to get recognised for all the stuff I do that I don’t get paid for. It’s really nice when you put so much effort into something to get the recognition from a group outside architecture.”

This article first appeared in the springissue of Irish Director magazine.