Gary Stanesby has seen a lot of change in his seven years based at New Covent Garden Market’s Food Exchange. As one of the building’s pioneering first tenants, his Stanesby Architecture business joined the community just after it opened. Here, Gary talks about his background, the food-related projects he’s currently working on, and the advantages that working in a shared-office space can bring.

From cartoons to architecture

As someone who loved drawing and art, Gary’s childhood ambition was actually to become a cartoonist and – at first – architecture wasn’t something that interested him. “It was the only YTS with drawing in the title I could get on after leaving school,” says Gary, who admits he soon fell in love with the subject. “I became an architectural technician, took a building degree at Trent Poly and then a further architectural degree followed by a post-grad, finishing off at the Architectural Association School of Architecture [known as the AA] and have lived and worked in London since 1995. A long time!”

Joining the Food Exchange community
Stanesby Architecture joined the Food Exchange in 2018 with the expectation of staying for between one and two years. “Seven years later, we’re still here,” says Gary, who reveals the decision to join the Food Exchange was pure chance. “I was all set up to take a building in Southwark when the landlord, at the 11th hour, reneged on the deal. I needed somewhere pretty quickly so I got on my phone and found the Food Exchange. One of the reasons for the move was that I was expanding but you always get fallout when you move offices - we lost two staff, recruited four more, and we’ve been here ever since. The best part of working at the Market is it only takes me 20 minutes to cycle home.”

Now overseeing a team of nine (eight in the office and one working from home), Gary’s business has grown alongside the entire regeneration of Nine Elms. “Obviously the whole skyline has drastically changed and it's amazing how the value of the land has increased over time,” he says. “The tenant mix in the Food Exchange has also changed, alongside a couple of us original tenants.”

Covid the ‘game-changer’
Currently on his third unit in the Food Exchange, Gary first expanded to a bigger office, followed by a second move to a smaller space after the Covid-19 pandemic. “Covid affected everything, but I was really grateful that the building was left open,” says Gary. “A lot of people didn't realise that the construction industry - and architects as result - was one of a handful of industries that continued trading, and we couldn’t furlough anybody. It gave some routine to my family that I still had to go out to work and I was using the Market as my base. I'd set up everybody else from home and I rode to Nine Elms most days on my bike. If I wasn't here, I was on site with clients, and it was a really busy time. It put additional stress on the business because of the extra finance of setting up the team with their home offices.”

What’s more, Covid has changed the mode of work for many people lucky enough to be able to operate from anywhere there’s an internet connection. “Covid accelerated working from home,” says Gary, “and we have to now consider every new application on that basis. We're still facing the consequences as the pandemic changed the entire work-life balance as well as people’s attitude to work.”

A firm of architects working among food businesses
Although it may seem like a strange combination to be based among predominately food-based businesses, Gary says it’s proved to be a good fit. “Architects are very friendly people. In fact, there’s another group of architects [DGA Architects, interviewed for Market Times back in 2020] based within the Food Exchange on the same floor as us, and we collaborate brilliantly. Being an architect linked to the food and drink sectors has been an instrumental part of our growth as Stanesby Architecture is now involved in some very exciting large-scale projects. We’ve also been involved with helping start-up businesses in their first ventures.”

Michelin-stars?
The team has several food-related projects in the pipeline, acquired through hard work and building a strong reputation within the architecture industry. “Two of our main projects at the moment are for very large restaurant clients as we’re used to working with flagship, five-star restaurant businesses,” says Gary, “We're working very closely with [landlords] Shaftesbury, and we’re also working on transforming a unique listed-building on Charles Street for a French restaurateur called Loulou, who want us to create their flagship in London. And they're currently launching their global membership for the select few who can afford it.”

London-based projects
Most of Stanesby Architecture’s current projects are London-based, but with international clients. “We've been very fortunate in the past in that we’ve worked with some high-end hoteliers,” says Gary. “We always like to keep a connection to the food industry and service, either through hotels, working for restaurants direct or high-end residential projects with in-house professional kitchens. And for some of the high-end residential houses we've created, we’ve included specialist kitchens from the likes of Salix, ViaQuip, Lanserring and Soda Kitchens: professional kitchens for when they're entertaining.”

The power of recommendations
Gary’s business model is to only accept new clients based on recommendations, removing the costs involved with bidding for contracts. “I’m very lucky as all our contracts come through recommendations from previous clients, so we don't typically tender for work,” says Gary. “Some of my competitors spend between £10,000 to £30,000 per bid on some of the projects they wish to acquire, to try and shine above the rest. We don't currently tender and that is quite unusual within the industry. It keeps our overheads down, but, more importantly, means the people we partner with really want and like to work with us.”

Secret to success? Always back yourself
Far from sounding arrogant, Gary comes across as a confident individual who knows the value of what his team can bring to a client. “You have to be confident, but honesty is the best thing. That's how I win most of the work,” he says, adding that honesty is the core value running throughout the entire business. “Honesty in what we can achieve, timelines, and how much things will cost – all these things. You know, I was brought up on a saying of having ‘champagne taste and beer money’. And if people can't afford it, it's better to tell them at the beginning. Then you can often hit a compromise halfway. For instance, one of my clients wants to make some drastic alterations to a listed building, so we have to go through a process that adds on time to the project. They can afford it, but we still don't know if we can get consent for it.”

Planning for the future
As anyone who visits Nine Elms will know, the Market and the entire area is experiencing huge change with building projects everywhere. But, as Gary explains, it’s also important to offer protection for existing buildings. “I recently flew to China to see a client in Suzhou, and then on to Hangzhou and Ningbo where they had restaurants,” says Gary. “There's a real movement now in China about looking after the heritage, refurbishing existing buildings and not pulling everything down. They're looking at how they can actually conserve, and we did a few cultural exchanges with some very well-informed and very well-educated architectural businesses. So, yeah, I think there's a movement for that, and I think there's room for everything.”

A lot of creativity
With technology constantly improving, there’s no limit to how imaginative this generation can be. “There's definitely a lot of creativity,” says Gary, “and I'm really excited about some of the work I've seen recently coming out of the end-of-year shows. But we’re also seeing a shift in risk in relation to architecture and what is built. If you build over a threshold of 18 metres in height its classed as a HRB (High risk building) , you open the door to so much additional regulation. There are plenty of existing schemes with permission to build but the actual cost of building is so high that the clients are now instructing their architects to go back and redesign their plans.”

Giving people a foothold
Stanesby Architecture run an active work experience programme, most recently working with a student from Tooting’s Graveney Secondary School. “She’d just turned 16 and wasn't too sure about architecture when she came, but she left absolutely hooked,” says Gary. “The work experience project is something we’ve done every year. We take GCSE leavers and offer it to people between their architectural degree and their post-grad. There’s also a paid year-out work-experience placement. Never in my history have I wanted to take advantage of free labour.”

With architecture skills able to be pivoted to other areas, Gary can list several former employees who have gone sideways as either working for contractors or client side as design managers. “You've got to give back to help your people get a foothold and create the new generation,” says Gary. “I think it's incumbent on every architect who owns a business. You do have to give back because you have to plug the gaps where the education fails. We’ve had work-experience people come back as employees, so we know it works.”