Why we’re providing a platform where young voices can be heard

There are moments each year when the month-long London Festival of Architecture (from 1 June) quietly resets the conversation about our industry. It happens not in the keynotes, nor in the panel sessions filled with familiar names, but in the spaces in between – where new voices test the edges of what architecture might become. This year we are making that moment explicit.

We are trying out an idea that could turn into something exciting – the beginnings of a new festival strand: Young Voices.

It is a simple idea, but an important one. If the festival is a platform for architecture to present itself to the world, then it must also be a platform for those who will inherit it. Young Voices is designed to do exactly that – to give space, visibility and legitimacy to emerging practitioners, not as a sidebar to the main programme, but as a parallel narrative running alongside it.

The built environment is too often siloed, too often hierarchical, and too slow to recognise the value of those at the beginning of their careers

Over the coming years, I am hoping to build Young Voices to mirror the festival’s key events – its lectures, debates and exhibitions – with equivalents led entirely by younger voices. Not as a token gesture, but as a deliberate act of rebalancing. It is a recognition that the future of our industry is not something to be discussed in abstract terms, but something already present in our studios, our practices and our project teams.

We are developing the strand in partnership with Young Architects and Developers Alliance (YADA), which I founded with Jane Duncan OBE PPRIBA in 2016. YADA was created with a similar instinct: that the built environment is too often siloed, too often hierarchical, and too slow to recognise the value of those at the beginning of their careers.

The first expression of Young Voices will be a deliberate echo of what is becoming one of the festival’s most established moments. The Murray Lecture, which opens the festival, is traditionally delivered by a senior figure from the architecture world – someone whose authority is built on experience. This year, we will close the festival with its counterpart: the LFA/YADA Young Voices Lecture.

The first speaker will be Sam Elbahja, a part 1 architectural assistant at HTA Design, who also describes herself – importantly – as an artist and a poet. Her argument is a powerful one.

She suggests that the language we use every day in our practices – the way we describe place, value, community, even beauty – belongs to another century. And that, if we are serious about engaging the next generation, both within our profession and in the communities we serve, then that language must change.

It is, in many ways, an uncomfortable proposition. Because it challenges something fundamental: not just what we do, but how we think and talk about what we do in language that feels to so many of us familiar and comforting.

And here lies the tension at the heart of Young Voices.

There is, undeniably, a difference in experience between generations. Those at the beginning of their careers simply do not have the depth of knowledge that comes from years of practice. They have not yet navigated the complexities of planning, delivery, procurement or politics. That matters. Experience matters.

But – and it is a significant but – experience is not the only form of knowledge that counts. Younger practitioners bring something else: a different fluency from a different culture; a sensitivity to social change; an instinctive understanding of how people live now, rather than how they lived before.

They carry, often without realising it, a proximity to the very communities we are trying to design for. Their ideas are not always fully formed, their arguments not always polished. But they are important.

Evolution will not happen if we only listen to those who have been here the longest

If we accept that cities are constantly evolving – socially, technologically and environmentally – then it must follow that the profession responsible for shaping them must evolve too. And that evolution will not happen if we only listen to those who have been here the longest.

Yet our industry remains, in many ways, resistant to that idea. Traditional hierarchies are deeply ingrained. Authority flows upwards and decisions are made at the top.

Younger team members contribute, certainly, but often within tightly defined boundaries. The unspoken rule, particularly in some of the larger, more traditional practices, is clear: learn first, speak later.

There is risk here. If we ask young people to wait too long before they speak, they may simply stop trying.

We have read a lot in the past five years about Gen Z and the very different attitude they have to work. I see plenty of memes on my Insta feed poking fun at the idea that younger colleagues are less committed to the workplace. That they are unwilling to work long hours. That they prioritise balance over ambition. That they expect too much, too soon. It’s an easy narrative and, in some quarters, a convenient one. But I think it’s a misreading.

What if this is not about laziness, but about clarity? Not about a lack of commitment, but about a different understanding of what commitment should look like? A refusal, perhaps, to accept that exhaustion is a prerequisite for success.

This younger generation has grown up in a different world. One shaped by climate anxiety, economic instability and the global pandemic that fundamentally altered the relationship between work and life. Their expectations are not lower. If anything, they are higher – particularly when it comes to purpose, culture and impact.

They want to know that the work they do matters. That the places they help to create are genuinely inclusive. That the organisations they work for reflect the values they claim to hold. And they want to be heard.

The challenge, then, is not simply to provide platforms like Young Voices – important though they may be – but to ask how we embed that listening into the everyday life of our practices.

It is easy to say we want to hear from younger voices, but it is harder to listen when what they say challenges our long-held assumptions

Part of the answer is structural – creating opportunities for younger team members to contribute meaningfully to projects, inviting challenge and making space in meetings for different perspectives, even when they disrupt the flow.

But it is also cultural. We need to be explicit that young people’s voices are valued. That confidence is not a prerequisite for meaningful contribution and that uncertainty is not a weakness, but often the jumping-off point for different (and better?) thinking.

And we need to be honest about our own responsibilities as business leaders. It is easy to say we want to hear from younger voices, but it is harder to listen when what they say challenges our long-held assumptions, our language, even our authority.

Young Voices is, in that sense then, not just a platform for emerging practitioners. It is a test for the rest of us. A test of whether we are willing to understand and evolve.

Because the future of the built environment will not be shaped by experience alone. Nor by youth alone. It will be shaped in the space between – in the conversation, sometimes uncomfortable, between what we know and what we have yet to understand. If we can create that conversation – genuinely, consistently, openly – then not only will we support the next generation, we will make our industry better and more relevant to the world we are trying to serve.