How can we make the world a better place

As with the rest of the world this week, we have been watching and listening as current events unfold. We also joined our community by sharing a post on Black Out Tuesday. Whilst we know this isn’t enough, it has restarted our thinking about equality in our business and in architecture.

We’re aware that we are very much a part of the institutional problem, and that is something we need to confront as a team. We are a white, middle-class group of very privileged people and this is representative of a large portion of our profession. We need to make time to listen and learn about the complexities surrounding race in our industry.

As a starting point, we wanted to share this article that Paul read from The Architects’ Journal on diversity in practice written by HOK’s Femi Oresanya, and this quote in particular.

“If we only surround ourselves with what we know, the familiar, how can we grow and develop our mindset to produce great architecture that truly benefits people, locally and globally?”.

We don’t have the answers, but opening ourselves up to the unknown and the unfamiliar and taking some risks seems a good place to start.