Interview with POor Collective

Power Out of Restriction (POoR) is a socially minded design practice that focuses on the development of communities through the elevation of young people.

This conversation with three of their four founders, Larry Botchway, Ben Spry and Shawn Adams captures their origin story; why representation is at the heart of their practice; and what they’re learning about their industry and themselves as they continue to build POor.

Malorie Blackman: The Power of Stories Image Credit: Andy Stagg

k|k: What’s the story behind POor Collective ? How did you all find each other? 

Larry Botchway: I have known Matt since knee height. Matt, Shawn, and I all studied at the University of Portsmouth and connected almost instantly having had a very similar experience with the architecture industry. We’ve been on the same page from the start, then Shawn and I met Ben during our master’s in architecture degree at the Royal College of Art.

Ben Spry: The defining moment for me was on a programme called Radical Practice at the RCA that pushed students to imagine running their own practice. Larry and I ended up in the same group and started kicking around this idea to use guerrilla tactics in council estates to keep the maintenance level high enough that councils couldn’t justify knocking them down. It was an exercise that revealed a common approach and worldview. A little while after this Larry asked me if I wanted to actually do some of the things, we had discussed, and I of course said yes. At this point we weren’t too sure how, but we knew we wanted to help young people!

k|k: As you mentioned there was almost an inevitability to PoOr. But how did you go from that initial spark to actually launching and building a business?

Shawn Adams: We wanted to do something youth-related. Youth facilities and youth clubs have been stripped back if not completely removed across the UK. We’d done loads of workshops and some teaching for others but we wanted to work under our own organisation.

Fortunately, we were on the first iteration of The People’s Pavilion, where our mentor Neil Onion, played a crucial role in us formalising our idea. Neil had created a business incubator and as part of that we had to flesh out our mission and vision. We identified who we wanted to target, what our business would stand for, and what we would like to achieve. This exercise really helped ground us and crystallise what we were trying to do as a company. Once we nailed this we could start pitching and taking on projects.

Architects’ Journal Takeover Image credit: Architects’ Journal

You’ve already mentioned some areas of interests and also issues you recognised within the industry. How did you arrive at a set of priorities that you wanted to address to begin with?

SA: Larry and I went to university without knowing anything about architecture or even any architects but an inherent understanding that it’s such an important thing for anyone to be able to contribute to, especially in your own environment. Otherwise, you end up with outsiders imposing their own ideas often without an understanding of the context. So, taking this and in addition youth facilities disappearing, it just felt that young people had no power at all.

Youth facilities have played an important role in our lives, they upskilled and empowered us. We want young people to have skills and get their voices heard.

BS: It’s been proven repeatedly that representation matters. The more people you have representing certain sections of society, certain demographics, the ground floor rises for everyone else.

LB: If you’re making decisions about a context that you don’t understand you’re going to be designing with some inherent form of prejudice or ignorance. We’re interested in thinking about who is a designer, how can we change the ideas around who gets to inform the built environment.

k|k: You often gain a different perspective transitioning from working in an industry to running a business in one. Have your views on the industry changed since you started POoR?

BS: I feel like architecture is getting pushed and pulled in really weird ways at the moment. Pushed out of the construction industry for various legislative reasons, and I would argue that we’ve morphed into a ‘design class’ - just have a look at the Real Housewives of Clapton - that’s been simultaneously culturally alienating itself. There could be something to gain through embracing the idea of more collaboration, especially interdisciplinary ones.

SA: During the height of Covid, there were so many conversations relating to spatial requirements but we saw no architects. It’s generally rare to see architects speak about the built environment to the wider public. This might be because architecture has existed as somewhat of an ivory tower, but the whole point of architecture is that it is for the people, for the users, so they really need to be engaged with society. When societal issues are rearing up, we really should have architects at the forefront of the conversation because most of the conversations being had are spatial.

k|k: As an early stage business it can be tricky getting working together right. What does PoOr’s structure and decision-making process look like?

BS: We used to try really hard and work non-hierarchically but as we’ve got busier and more legit we simply had to introduce roles. Matt is our Operations Manager and life-saver who makes realistic and functional programme. This way he’s also across all of our projects. Me and Larry run projects and Shawn, for now, is doing a lot of outreach and marketing. Hopefully we can shift that around as he’s way too talented an architect for us to be letting that go to waste.

LB: What we’ve quickly come to recognise is the agendas that come when working with partners, or clients, especially large organisations. Now, whenever we are invited to do a project, we return to our vision and mission: Does it upskill young people? Is it empowering communities? Is it even a good thing? If the answer is yes, then we try to inform the brief itself. We need to maintain our focus on what our intentions are and how we can achieve them. Occasionally we identify a site and self-initiate: What value can we bring to it? What context is it? Then we’ll create a small feasibility study, pass it to the client with a list of recommendations. Along the way we’ve had to acknowledge that we have our own agenda and that may be the driver for our projects. But ultimately, the main decision-making process is anchored by POoR’s fundamental values.

Bring Home to the Unknown Image credit: POor

k| k: Looking back on 2023. What have been your proudest moments?

SA: 2023 was good for us, lots of things to be proud of! London Design Festival’s Emerging Design Medal - even though we’re architects we like operating across the wider design industry so being recognised for that with this award was amazing. Being the first group to receive this accolade as well was massive. The Architects’ Journal takeover - all of us have spent many years reading the publication and now for every architect across the country to see our work, the impact this creates and for us to be able to platform others has been such a massive achievement.

LB: The type of work we do relies on relationships, we always build really quite deep relationships with the people we’re working with. Participants are dropped into the situation and suddenly they find that their idea becomes a physical thing. It’s always just incredible to see. Our projects often brings segregated groups together to develop proposals. Part of our design process is being able to facilitate new connections. You find that the real solutions aren’t just design solutions. It goes far beyond what we learned in architecture school and it’s just amazing to be honest. It’s nice to see that the approach and belief that we all have and share actually has a real-world benefit.

Malorie Blackman: The Power of Stories an exhibition, designed by POor, celebrating one of the UK’s most popular writers for children and young people is free to visit at the British Library until February 25.