EG meets… Saghir Hussain

Saghir Hussain, founder and chief executive of Create It Studio Architects, to discuss his thoughts on heritage assets, artificial intelligence… and competitive weightlifting You set up your own practice, Create It Studios, in 2015 after experience working for larger firms – how has it evolved during the years since? We’ve done well. We started small eight years ago, in my own spare bedroom, and I was pretty much busy from day one. I had a couple of apartment buildings with planning approved and ready to go. It was a big jump to make, with a very young family, but I took the plunge. The first two to three years was really just proving to myself that I could generate more work, and we developed as we grew, taking on more clients and looking at other sectors. Now there are five of us, three based in the office in Manchester, and two work remotely. What areas have you specialised in during that time? Within the first year we got appointed to do the £3m refurbishment of the British Muslim Heritage Centre in Whalley Range, Manchester, which is a large Grade II listed building. We converted the building into 22 offices and 54 bedrooms. That was my first listed building, so it was a huge learning curve, in terms of the sensitivities of listed buildings and how you navigate that maze of conservation. That was actually a big spark for us and on the back of that we won a number of other historical buildings. The other sector we did well in is sustainability and eco-friendly buildings. I’ve always been very keen on sustainability. My dissertation was about sustainable design. We got introduced to a client who does single-storey eco pods. They started off doing garden rooms for houses but we developed that further and it became more commercial. We started doing yoga centres and got into eco classrooms for schools. And we have recently completed a number of city centre apartment blocks and smaller housing developments for SME developers. Issues of conservation and heritage assets are a major talking point right now. Where do you stand on the relative merits of preserving versus rebuilding? I think it’s a delicate balance. To what extent do you enforce conservation? There’s no doubt there are some buildings, certain architectural detailing, that needs to be preserved. We work with a number of different councils that have amazing buildings, and many of the conservation officers are very relaxed. And then you have other councils, like Manchester for example, where the conservation team is extremely rigid in its approach. They have a certain way of doing things, regardless of the actual architectural merit of a building. Some of these buildings may be listed because they have a particular detail on the façade, but the approach the council takes is that everything is listed, including elements you can’t see, like floorboards and joists. So documenting all of these elements becomes a tedious task, and a real challenge for building regulations, especially when converting a building into residential use. So I think there should be a bit more flexibility in terms of what can be done. Because the challenge is, how do you retrofit a listed building when the conservation officer is not letting you do anything to it? The cost implications put off a lot of people who are keen to invest and develop. So you end up with lovely buildings, in terms of architectural value, vacant, because nobody can afford to do anything with them. Or less experienced clients, who don’t understand what they’ve just bought, are left having to pick up the pieces. We had a pharmacist who had bought a building and told us the plan was to rip everything out, and put this two-tonne dispensing machine on the first floor. And I said, ‘Do you realise you just bought a Grade II listed building?’ We had to sit them down and go through the whole process with them. How do you feel about the role that artificial intelligence has to play in the architectural field? I have a very positive approach to it. I see it just like when computer-aided design and building information modelling came into our sector, when everyone was very upset that there were going to be job losses. I think whenever there’s a new element of technology that comes into a workplace, the important thing is taking the best out of it and seeing how you can utilise it to make your workflow more efficient and more effective. I don’t think AI is going to replace architects. I think there will always be elements of professional design required. At the moment, AI is really good for generating inspirational ideas and concepts, which can then feed back into our designs. One example of how it creates efficiency is with CGIs. It is possible now to plug in architectural models that we’ve generated and, with a push of a button, create CGIs based on your description – a bit like ChatGPT. You can describe the environment, say a summer’s day or an evening sunset, and the image is created instantly. That is remarkable, because when I was at university, to render one image we used to leave our computers running overnight. Lastly, Saghir, it sounds like your professional life keeps you very busy. What do you like to do to unwind? Not much, to be honest. Because of the business, I am a 24/7 workaholic. I have a family, so my kids keep me busy. But when I was in school and university I used to be a competitive weightlifter. I became British under-16 weightlifting champion when I was 15. I clean-and-jerked 125kg and snatched 95kg. And then I was British under-21 powerlifting champion. When I was 21, I had the bench press record for that age group of 182kg. I still train but I don’t compete – I’m much older now, so my body can’t cope with it! To send feedback, e-mail jess.harrold@eg.co.uk or tweet @EGPropertyNews