1966 - The Beatles released Revolver, the best-selling car was an Austin Morris 1100 and England won the men's football World Cup

From the outset, the practice was based on two enduring principles: excellent and groundbreaking work on challenging projects carried out in a spirit of true collaboration, and treating people as decent human beings, both within and outside the practice. People were hired from varying academic backgrounds, ranging from mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering and even biology, all sharing a common desire to make the world a better place. Anyone who was good enough to be an employee was good enough to become a partner. The partnership was conceived as a responsibility-sharing scheme rather than a money-sharing scheme. 

Building services engineering was a relatively new discipline and there was a lot of scope to challenge prevailing working practices to improve the integration of building services design with the building fabric and to drive improved energy performance. 

Some things have changed significantly over the last 60 years, and others have not.  Camden Town is no longer sooty and cheap. Building services design has gone from a fledgling to a mature profession, along with increasing regulation and complexity. All drawings, calculations and correspondence were done by hand in the 1960s and now almost everything is computerised. The physical post used to arrive at 9.30am and take less than an hour to process and respond to – the rest of the day was then in your control. We are now all accessible 24/7 and expected to respond almost immediately. Fee levels have dropped, and the scope of work has increased, leading to the tendency to specialise and use technology to reduce labour. What used to be thought of as energy efficiency has evolved into the broad spectrum of sustainability. What has not changed is the human experience of using buildings and the need to have a holistic view of the design in order to come up with the best solutions for any particular project.

A lot has already been written about Max's work and influence, but the practice has achieved so much more by giving creative, talented people the space and authority to develop their own ideas on their projects. The long-standing members of the practice have all contributed to its success through design innovation from concept to detail and through construction, spending the time that is needed to make sure that the ideas are properly implemented in the built forms. 

The practice has always had an eye for the future, which underpins its commitment to address climate change. People are drawn to the practice mostly by a desire to be part of the fight against it and want to work on projects that are morally sound. There are large-scale trends that are shaping the future of our practice, industry and civilisation. 

The move from paper to digital information has and continues to have a profound influence. It is now possible to work almost anywhere and at any time, and the shift from documents to data enables much greater insight into complexity. AI is no longer on the horizon; it is already being used to automate work previously done by people. These systems are paid for by reducing human labour, which is starting to have a significant impact on employment prospects. As more work is automated, the value of it will drop, and we will need to focus on aspects that are much harder to automate, generally at the early and late stages of a project. 

The global desire to address climate change is currently faltering, caused by a growth-driven view of economic success and increasing competition for resources as a result of population growth and, ironically, by climate change. We need to understand how to translate a dynamic equilibrium into perceived success and understand the realities of the global limits, underpinned by a robust evidence base. 

The level of knowledge in the general public about science and technology is low, allowing misinformation to steer public opinion through social media with algorithms that present ever-narrowing views of the world. There is a real need to restore public confidence in expert views and the ability to sort fact from fiction. 

In addition to a climate emergency, there is also a biodiversity emergency, the cognisance of which is growing. Species are currently becoming extinct at a rate estimated to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times the normal rate, leading to fears of ecological collapse. Nature provides us with water, clean air, food and materials, as well as great beauty and well-being. Habitat loss and pollution are the principal issues and are entirely in our control, if we are willing. 

The values of human interaction and thought

We live in interesting times – perhaps we always have and always will. What is really heartening is that the enduring principles of the practice have remained relevant over the last 60 years and still hold the practice together. The values of human interaction and thought are still a vital part of the way we work. Human involvement in the development of concepts and in getting buildings to work properly at the end of construction is likely to be valued for the foreseeable future, even as the majority of the system design becomes automated. We need to adapt our business model to remain successful enough to have influence to keep driving the sustainability agenda, but we mustn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater in the process. We are a collection of passionate people doing excellent work and the emotional engagement with that work is the secret sauce underpinning our success.