Katy Marks, Founder, Citizens Design Bureau, shares the joy of collborative design, driven by community and the love of architectural craft.
Katy Marks is the Founder of socially driven architectural firm Citizens Design Bureau. She has extensive experience working with complex Listed Buildings and on projects with diverse, creative communities at their core.
Founded nearly a decade ago, Citizens Design Bureau were named Public Building Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards 2022, and are gaining momentum with their recent portfolio of arts and cultural projects that are turning heads and receiving attention for all the right reasons.
From their sensitive renovation of the Manchester Jewish Museum to their reinvention of Jacksons Lane Theatre in London, the studio have built a solid reputation for their commitment to celebrating communities and context to the fullest. Sharply-focused on taking a socially driven and climate-conscious approach, this aesthetically adventurous studio is needed now more than ever.
Here, Katy discusses how she is committed to community, who inspires her forward-thinking inclusive approach, and how simply listening to clients often equates to original design.
What is your earliest memory of design and architecture?
Lego. I was always very frustrated with my older brother who was constantly building space ships etc whilst I scrambled to build houses quickly enough for that growing community of space men! Eventually I translated that into drawing made up towns.
In parallel to that, I have always been fascinated by archaeology – Medieval castles, Scottish Brochs. Many childhood holidays playing hide and seek in ruins – not stately homes, I’m talking proper ruins: Harlech, Kidwelly, Chepstow, Raglan, Caerphilly, St Donat’s, Stokesay.
Further afield, I was always drawn to architecture that somehow embodied the cultural mix of my family roots – trading cities of intertwined cultures: Liverpool, Glasgow, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Kathmandu, Tripoli, Marrakech and Moorish Spain.
Where did you study?
Glasgow School of Art, Madrid ETSAM, Cambridge University, CEPT Ahmedabad, India. Each school was very very different in terms of ethos and the skills I learned. I am so so glad that I didn’t stay in one place.
What kind of architect did you aspire to be?
I’m interested in architecture that has soul, buildings that last because they are loved. Not only buildings, but spaces, landscapes, ideas that bring communities together and amplify relationships between people and the natural world.
We’re so used to having to justify our design decisions in the format of hundreds of metrics – from hitting strict sqm area targets to budget constraints, planning and safety restrictions and energy performance to name a few. It is very very hard to get to the end of an architectural process, having done all of that and still have a building that makes your heart sing, but I feel very strongly that all these considerations can make our architecture richer. Our design process is driven by conversations, experiments, collaboration and a genuine joy of craft. We feel strongly that commercial viability, environmental sustainability and social benefit are not mutually exclusive – they are mutually dependent.
I want to show that if the quality of our process is humane, inclusive and empathetic, difficult decisions and challenging constraints can yield incredible architecture; architecture that is situated at the confluence of collaborative ingenuity and roll-up-your-sleeves practicality, spaces that you want to reach out and touch, that make people feel beautiful, uplifted and empowered; architecture that embodies a symbiotic relationship with surrounding landscape with a loose-fit, robust flexibility that can transform and shape-shift for years to come.
Who are your design/architecture inspirations?
Balkrishna Doshi, Neelkanth Chaya, Anupama Kundoo, Laurie Baker, John Spence, Anna Heringer, Peter Aldington, Bill and Jill Howell, Kazuyo Sejima, Flores y Prats, Selgas Cano, Peter Zumthor.
Honestly I am always inspired by the people I have worked with and my family and all the ideas they bring and the motivation and energy I feel from them. Previous colleagues at Haworth Tompkins, co-years at uni, old school friends etc Inspirations for architecture tend to come mostly from life, music, nature, people rather than other buildings.
What does Citizens Design Bureau represent as an architecture firm?
As our name suggests, we think architecture has the power to enrich lives, strengthen communities and contribute to the healing of our planet. It’s an architecture of humanity and empathy, woven with a combination of rigorous practicality and joyful, crafted innovation. We always start by asking the questions: Do you really need us? Do you really need to build? What can we do with what is already there?
How do you continue to carve your own path in the industry as a studio and an individual?
We have to be financially sustainable, but I refuse to do that by having the high contrast strategy of high profile – loss making projects, bolstered by bread and butter commercial stuff. Instead we try to articulate the specific value that we bring, carving out a reputation for very particular skills around conservation, community enterprise strategy, collaborative design processes, design for wellbeing and the arts, low carbon design (particularly in a conservation sensitive environment) etc. I’m interested in making sure that our work is sustainable by being diverse, having a few strings to our bow that are built around tangible skill and experience.
We want to do work that excites us and other people. I’ve been confronted by my own mortality and it is no cliche to say that life is too short to waste spending time on stuff that doesn’t make a difference – even in small ways, like making someone smile. Architects can be very vain and driven by endlessly comparing themselves to each other. We all have egos and I’m no exception, but I’ve really tried to shake off a lot of that kind of motivation. It’s just a really pointless burden. Our profession is often so obsessed with trying to be ‘original’ that it becomes easy to forget that our role is to listen, to translate, to stitch together with clarity, which often yields the most originality anyway.
There is joy in making beautiful things that bring delight, that shift perceptions, that make the world sit up, try something new, and then you go home with enough energy to be with your family, go on adventures, make music, sew weird outfits, be a good friend, care for the important people.
What does the face of architecture look like to you in 10 years time?
I hope that we as a profession will have managed to articulate the impact that good design can make. In order to do that I imagine a lot more of our work will be self-initiated and will be more data driven – the way our buildings perform, will be much better understood without all the eco-waffle/green-washing. There will be nowhere to hide so we need to be self-motivated right now to face the climate crisis in imaginative ways.
If you hadn’t become an architect what would you be doing?
An archaeologist and/or a musician.
