Careers in Conversation: Perkins + Will’s Jo Wright looks back on her 30-year career as an architect
Few firms can match Arup in scope or influence. Founded 75 years ago, the London-headquartered, multinational firm has established its presence through landmark projects ranging from the Sydney Opera House, the Shard and Silicon Valley’s Apple Park. If it is pivotal, course-directing work in the built environment, chances are Arup was involved.
With over 15,000 employees in 120 disciplines, the firm has an expansive field of influence – prizing, perhaps most fundamentally, collaboration. Whether it’s stage production for Björk, the finalisation of Antoni Gaudí’s La Sagrada Familia or an expansion of Copenhagen’s metro system, what guides Arup’s approach is its unique organisation.
Its ability to realise ambitious engineering and problem-solve for the globe’s most pressing issues, often with light-speed turnarounds, has been spun into legend in the realm of engineering and architecture. An example of this is the recent King Abdulaziz International Airport in Saudi Arabia where Arup produced the design and structural scheme in just 120 days.
It is this spirit of innovation and collaboration that drew architect Jo Wright to join Arup as Practice Leader for Architecture in the UKIMEA in 2015. Wright (whose many accolades include featuring in Architects’ Journal’s first Women in Architecture issue in 2012), came to Arup after 27 years at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCB Studios). During her tenure at FCB Studios, Wright led some of the firm’s most well-known projects including The Hive and the National Trust and Woodland Trust headquarters – with sustainability and a connecting ethos throughout her work.
‘I think I’d outgrown it,’ reflects Wright on her departure from FCB Studios. ‘So, I started looking around, asking myself what else I could do?’ Wright’s trust in herself started from a young age. ‘Instinct,’ she says, is what brought her to architecture in the first place. ‘I had this intuition that it was what I wanted to do when I was about 14 or 15. I was good at maths, good at art. No family involvement in the industry at all. It was completely instinctive.’
Forging her own path in the field led her to the University of Bath to read chemical engineering. A late-stage change of heart had her negotiating a transfer to architecture where she found her niche in the radical, cross-disciplinary studies there .Joining FCB Studios in 1987, Wright had found her place to flourish. After pulling through a recession, she had proven her innate ability to navigate difficult situations and lead with innovation. ‘I became a partner in about 1993,’ she says. ‘Which seems ridiculous now. We were very young.’
Holistic sustainability became intrinsic to Wright’s oeuvre over her years at FCB Studios, honing her skill for conserving resources in both construction and operations while delivering work that honours its purpose. Emblematic of this approach is one of Wright’s favourite projects during her time at the practice, the Dyson Centre for Neonatal Care at the Royal United Hospital in Bath. ‘We had no real healthcare experience, but the NHS said there was no money to improve neonatal intensive care,’ she says. ‘The hospital fundraisers got their teeth into this and they decided that sustainability was a hook that would help them raise money.’ Inspired by a close friend’s recent experience in a neonatal ward, Wright worked closely with the hospital on a sustainable, outcome-driven design.
‘We tracked nurses, we monitored which babies were settled, we measured the acoustics, and we also interviewed parents,’ Wright recalls.
Incorporating cross-laminated timber, exposed on the interior and an abundance of light, the ward eschewed dated associations of what a hospital should look like and how it should spatially function. ‘And the statistics that came back–there were positive changes from the old unit. Absolutely, tangibly in the data,’ says Wright. ‘There’s a whole load of stats that really verified the positive benefits of good design.’
At Arup, Wright is candid about how she is looking to implement change: informed by data and directed towards outcomes. In 2015, the year she came on board, an internal staff survey reported that just one-third of Arup staff believed there was trust and respect within the leadership.
‘There was a lack of a sense of common purpose,’ she says. ‘And the situation at the top of an organisation ripples down through and ends up with a very disjointed organisation.’ According to the RIBA Journal, Wright also faced internal resistance among Arup workers who feared leaning on their own architects could lead to favouritism. But Wright’s keen leadership has steered clear of these potential pitfalls. As Wright notes, ‘I now have a fantastic team.’
‘My job is to nurture the next generation of leaders to make sure that when I walk out the door and when Nick, Trish and Kim [fellow directors] walk out the door, that there is a team that keeps on doing what we’re doing.’
And what Arup is doing, and what Wright is doing is growing. ‘What we’re planning to do is push out into the regions,’ she says. ‘If you look at the model that we’ve implemented in Europe when I joined six years ago, we had a team in Milan and a team in Istanbul. We’ve now got teams in Copenhagen , Berlin, Frankfurt, Madrid and Amsterdam.’ Wright also mentions expansion plans in North America, with a team already in place in Toronto.
Integral to lasting organisations, as Wright understands, is diversity. Arup, like many firms in the wake of social justice movements of recent years, has taken steps towards a more equitable and diverse future. ‘Unfortunately, it is what’s wrong with the industry,’ she says. ‘In too many cases it’s a monoculture of pale males.’
Arup has underlined its commitment to championing diversity with policies such as its graduate recruiting that removes names and university details from portfolios. ‘As designers, we are designing for the whole of society,’ says Wright. ‘For most of what we do in creating the built environment, the ultimate users are everyone. Therefore, it’s completely inappropriate that the built environment should be dominated by any particular cohort.’
For Wright, Arup is a place where her work of challenging the status quo is sure to find new opportunities. In reflection of her over 30 years in the industry, what emerges is the thread linking and leading her successes. As for her advice to up-and-coming architects: ‘Don’t play safe. Go for it. Because generally, life is more fun if you take a few risks, and architecture is an amazing way to make a living.’
*This article was originally published prior to Jo Wright becoming the MD of Perkins + Will London
Written by Alison Sinkewicz and Scale Careers
This interview is the first in the series Careers in Conversation – an exploration of career journeys from notable designers around the world, commissioned and conducted by Scale Careers.
Scale Careers is a specialist recruitment company run by ex-industry professionals, which services the needs of global design houses and emerging studios within the architecture and design space in London and the USA.