A colourful mural designed with teenagers from a local boxing gym; a programme introducing young East Londoners to architectural practice; a design workshop for high-schoolers expelled from mainstream schooling; and a pavilion created in collaboration with marginalised youth, proudly on display in central London. These projects describe the work of POoR Collective, for whom young people, as inheritors of the built environment, make up architecture’s most overlooked and undervalued stakeholders. 

POoR – the acronym stands forPower Out of Restriction – was founded in London in 2019 by Shawn Adams, Larry Botchway, Matt Harvey, and Ben Spry. Education and mentorship are at its core, and the practice has unfolded against the backdrop of social and racial inequities laid bare by the pandemic and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

In fact, POoR’s work aligns with a broader social turn — a term associated with the shifting agenda of contemporary art practice  but which applies equally to architecture, with roots in such activist collectives as Matrix Feminist Design Cooperative, Exyst and muf. Design often extends beyond ‘form’ for these kinds of practices, whose work addresses social structures as much as physical ones. Tellingly, in a lecture delivered last year as part of the Architectural Association’s online public programme, Shawn, Larry, and Ben explained their respective roles in terms of ‘public relations’, ‘communications’, and ‘community engagement’. Social dynamics could indeed be considered both the focus and medium of POoR’s design work. 

In lieu of a dedicated studio space, POoR work remotely and at the office of Zetteler, a PR agency in London. They also frequently meet and deliver workshops at the studio of RESOLVE, an interdisciplinary design collective who have been influential to POoR and highly supportive of their work. 

It was at RESOLVE’s studio that I met with POoR in early September 2022, in a repurposed shopfront on a backstreet of Croydon’s Centrale shopping centre. The space had the vibe of an art squat, teaming with potted plants and assemblages made from scavenged materials, as well as unfurled reams of African print fabrics (RESOLVE is a Black-led practice, as is POoR). The interview, which was recorded with Shawn, Larry and Ben, has been edited for length and clarity.



MB: What brought you all together?  

Larry Botchway: I met Matt in Mitcham, London, where we grew up. Matt and I met Shawn later at the University of Portsmouth, and then Shawn and I went to the Royal College of Art, where we met Ben.

Ben Spry: It was not so much the realisation that we had a shared style or aesthetic appreciation, because I think each of our styles is quite different. It was more about the cultural attitude we had, this feeling of being alienated from mainstream ‘high design’ culture, 

if you could call it that, and instead having a shared interest in urban youth culture and how this culture, which is typically marginalised, interacts with contemporary urban development.  

When we were at architecture school, the focus was more on grand ideas of how we, as designers, could engage with the urban fabric and how we could inflict a design scheme on a disadvantaged community. In response, we felt this need to engage with individuals on a more granular level; this was the shared attitude that brought us together. 

MB: I’m curious what designers you were looking at while you were studying at the RCA that may have shared this grassroots approach. Who were your influences, who were you trying to emulate? 

LB: That is a difficult question. There were the sort of designers that tutors would recommend — Shawn and I are Black, so there was always David Adjaye. The issue was that our interest was not necessarily in the ‘grand designers’. We were more interested in understanding a process. We were taking inspiration from the people we were speaking to — it’s like the process was the precedent rather than a specific, celebrated designer. 

MB: Were there any process-driven practices that caught your attention? Or did you feel like you were starting from a blank slate?

Shawn Adams: There were a few designers, but they weren’t necessarily architects. David Adjaye was a massive influence in deciding to study at the RCA, but the kind of work that he’s done spans across disciplines, including monuments, interiors, furniture, and industrial design. 

There were other designers I learned about who did similar things; in my first year, I studied with Cooking Sections, who were using architecture to unlock conversations addressing the climate crisis. And there was the designer Samuel Ross, whose work I admired and from which I took a lot. It was about looking at designers who spanned several different sectors and trying to understand how they worked instead of focusing exclusively on architecture.

BS: A lot of the people I’ve found most inspiring were just people I knew on a personal level, whom I admired as individuals based on how they chose to conduct their practice. Like my tutors in undergrad, Jaime Bishop and Richard Henson, whose work focuses on the health sector, which on the surface is a very technical job and quite discreet. They don’t get shout-outs in big magazines, but the way they were as individuals was inspiring — playful but also very respectful. 

They were acutely aware of how much harm architecture can do. I found that inspiring, how they were just very, very conscious. We want to add, but how do we add without inflicting damage? So much of the time when you add something, you take away without realising. 

We live in an age where personal responsibility is much more important; how you conduct yourself in your professional life. We're seeing all these big designers get revealed as not the best people to work with. I find it inspiring when someone can do good work and be very morally driven. 

MB: There is a strong moral drive in your own work. What is POoR Collective’s agenda, and how would you describe what you do? 

SA: Our work centres on empowering young people, so they can represent themselves and make an impact in their local community. Architecture can take decades, and it’s young people who will be the inheritors of these future architectural proposals. 

SA: So, for us, we wanted to really be able to give back to young people, let them get involved, let them have a say, and show them the value of their voices. We also want people in power to recognise the difference they could make in giving youth a platform.

BS: There’s this assumption that young people can’t engage with complicated design ideas, for example the socioeconomics of an area. One of the things we always say is that everyone is an expert in their own experience. If we are truly interested in how every person interacts with a space, we have to engage young people too. They can contribute to that conversation by just sharing their own experience.

LB: That links to the lack of diversity in architectural practice, where most architects are middle-class white men. They may have an interest in a social agenda, which stems from a well-intentioned Modernist agenda, but if you don’t understand what it’s genuinely like to live in social housing, you’re not going to be able to tailor your work to the people who will be living there. What we are focused on is thinking about how the voices that aren’t typically involved in the design process are fundamentally tied into it and can actually inform those spaces.

MB: It seems like you are describing a translation, conveying experience in a way that could profoundly inform how we think of the built environment and how it is shaped. Let’s talk about a specific project to understand how this intention plays out. The People’s Pavilion, one of your first projects, which you collaborated on with Beyond the Box consultants, and the RIBA, created a community space designed entirely by young people.


BS: The first thing we have to do is give a shout-out to Neil Onions, the guy who runs Beyond the Box Consultants. We really should have mentioned him when you asked us about our influences.

SA: Remember the question was about designers. 

BS: That’s true. 

LB: But that’s the point.

MB: ‘Design’ has become an increasingly elastic term today.  

BS: That’s so true. I think Neil is a real designer, although he would absolutely disagree with that. But to answer your question, Neil was our first mentor, and he’d had this idea for a ‘People’s Pavilion’ for a long time, where he wanted to get a big raft of practices and social enterprises to all work on a youth-led project. Neil involved us generously in the process from day one. He wanted it to be a non-hierarchical, co-designed process from the beginning. So, from the very start, it was quite a privilege to be brought in by someone who was very much a mentor to us. 

LB: That’s what made it even more interesting, right? The makeup of the team was like nothing I’d ever seen before, a truly collaborative project from day one. 
Neil had this idea, and he brought us all into the room. Then in the room, we have Maddie Kessler, who had just won the UK pavilion commission with Manijeh Verghese for the Venice Biennale. 

BS: And David Patterson from Make, he was generous as well. 

LB: He was brilliant. We had Victoria Firth from Grey Lemon, who was more of a business consultant. It was a diverse team.

MB: And amongst these contributors, where would you say that POoR fit?  

BS: We had to figure that out. We ran workshops that introduced young people to the basics of architectural representation and then ended up curating an exhibition together with them of their designs. We found a happy medium where we could celebrate all of the young people involved, their achievements, and their hard work by creating this exhibition and building it. So that was our main contribution to the whole thing.

MB: In some ways, that sounds like a form of altruistic journalism, where you are documenting and recording what a group of people are doing and then exposing and celebrating it. 

SA: I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s like journalism. I would say that the work we do facilitates opportunities for young people. So, within the People’s Pavilion for example, it allowed us to provide opportunities for young people to create something and showcase their work. A lot of what we do isn’t necessarily tied to our architectural skills. It’s about how we can give young people a platform. 

BS: We are trying to think critically about the most appropriate ways of uplifting and upskilling young people. Is it always a designed outcome? No. Sometimes it’s a programme. 

SA: We still see ourselves as designers, but the output of our work could be a poem. It doesn’t necessarily mean that everything must have a built form, but at the same time it often has a spatial component to it. 

MB: What you have said could be described through terms like outreach, mentorship, and community engagement. These terms are commonplace in the design and construction industry, and even more so in the wake of George Floyd; racial inequity is now more openly addressed, albeit not always in depth. 

Of course, many local authorities have in their procurement framework metrics for equity, diversity, and inclusion — EDI. I can imagine that your work is highly sought after by architects, developers, and other client bodies for this reason. How do you navigate that attention? 

LB: By saying no. Lots of organisations are reaching out, often inviting us to fulfil some engagement requirement, and often it’s just so tokenistic — it’s unbearable. It would not be fair to give specific examples, but there have been scenarios where a project has received planning permission with the design confirmed, yet they reach out to us, “Oh yeah. Can you come in and help us with engagement with this local community and tell them about the project?”

The community, of course, has no way to inform the project, and there’s no benefit from the conversation other than just letting them know it’s changing. It’s a waste of these people’s time. You know? It doesn’t make sense.

MB: You become an accessory to a scheme that's already decided. 

BS: Exactly. If we wanted to be engagement coordinators for a local authority, we would do that and probably make a lot more money. 

LB: [laughs]

BS: So yeah, I agree with Larry. It's something we're still figuring out.

MB: Where are you seeking to have more influence? I can imagine there’s a struggle with any grassroots initiative where your work is entertained and incorporated to a certain level, but beyond that, the status quo remains. To what degree do you want to elbow your way up there? How do you influence the shape of the city? 

LB: There are occasions where we partner with larger teams in the context of a competition proposal. For example, with BIG and HTA, where we helped develop a brief. In these cases the projects are at an early stage, and we can meaningfully inform the brief and secure a substantial position within the team.

Another approach we’ve taken is through self-initiation — we identify sites ourselves, recognising spaces that we think require change — spaces that we can bring value to, and then reach out to some of these larger organisations to begin to implement change. Rather than waiting for them to come to us, we can develop a design strategy.

I think the main thing is finding ways of informing the brief from the beginning. But then there is a conversation we probably have not quite reached yet, about what you’re describing, which is about entering midway through and understanding how we can shake up the place. Like you say, elbowing your way in. You’re always going to be limited when you have to do that. 

MB: I want to go back and talk more about your work in the context of ethics and aesthetics. Architecture and design can have an uneasy relationship between these two things. On one hand aesthetic judgement can get superseded by ethical criteria, while on the other hand aesthetic decisions might be merely performative representing an ethic that is only skin deep. Could you talk more about the extent to which POoR Collective has an aesthetic agenda?

SA: We have a graphic design that speaks to the playfulness of POoR, but I think with each project, because it is co-designed, often with specific groups of young people, the aesthetic that emerges is based on their experiences, and our communication with them. 

Each project has a particular style that will speak to the people involved. That is super, super important because we are trying to empower people. So, we can’t just have a project that’s just a POoR project. We want people to have ownership. You might look at our project and be like, well, they look different, but the underlying principles are the same. 

BS: If we have an aesthetic, it’s a cultural one. If you see how we conduct ourselves, create workshops and events, that is our aesthetic more than anything else. 

LB: There have been many times when we’ve entered projects thinking this is how this project must be from the beginning, then what we find by the end is that’s just not how it should be. For example, we did the project with Mayesbrook Park School, which is a Pupil Referral Unit meaning all the students have been kicked out of the mainstream schooling system. As a result, they are marginalised, and most of them are from ethnic minorities as well. Then on top of that, they’re all from working class backgrounds. 

SA: Yeah. It is pretty much like the last chance. After that they really don’t have many more options available to them. 

LB: Statistically, the relationship between imprisonment and expulsion from school is very clear. Initially the brief was to develop a pavilion, which we imagined to be in their local area, but by the end of the process, we found that the young people didn’t want it to be in their area. They wanted it to be in central London because they viewed London as an inaccessible space that they wanted to occupy and have some ownership over. 

There were aesthetic decisions that we were constantly discussing and debating with the young people. We found that their approach was the right approach, and that the impact of their decisions was visible. Sometimes you find that a really important skill as a designer is to recognise when it’s time to open up to the team and let go a bit, let go of some ownership and see what happens. 

MB: Where did that project end up? 

LB: In Regents Park. 

BS: It was a collaboration with the RIBA; called Bringing Home to the Unknown. I remember one of the students talking about the location of their school; Barking is on the central line going straight into Central London, but it’s positioned in such a way that you can also see Canary Wharf. That really affected their view and interactions with the idea of London, that it’s this mythical place, in sight but somehow out of reach.

That just completely changed the project. Our name is Power Out of Restriction, right? And they were all about finding power in these limitations that’s what completely unlocked the project. That limitation of it can't be there; we don’t belong there. So, of course, it had to be there!

LB: And the timing of it was good as well. It was next to the Freize Art Fair, which had just started! It just made more sense that these marginalised young people were literally able to create work in the centre of London; and people were able to appreciate that. The impact this had on them was amazing to see. At the beginning of the sessions they were shy and not really responding, but by the end they were all enthusiastic. Some of them were telling us about how they wanted to start taking up design and so on. Then, when they actually saw the installation in person, we said, remember when you drew that? That’s literally your drawing! The impact it had on them was amazing.