Profile: Linzi Cassels
Now design principal at Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will, Glasgow-born art student Linzi Cassels did wonder whether architecture was for her...
Linzi Cassels qualified as an architect in the Eighties and is a design principal at the architecture practice Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will, based in London, but while studying architecture, at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow, she had doubts over her choice of profession, and for some time afterwards.
Born and raised in Glasgow, Cassels comes from a family that had studied at the famous Glasgow School of Art and felt it was a natural choice for her. 'Both my aunt and uncle studied fine art there, my brother did print making. So having family that had been to the Glasgow School of Art really influenced my decision to go there myself,' she says. 'I really enjoyed art and it was something I was good at, but I was also quite academic and that is why architecture became a potential choice for me.'
Starting university at the age of 17, Cassels says she immediately felt out of her depth. 'I was thrown in to an environment where I had absolutely no reference point whatsoever! I was literally looking at the drawings on the walls from the other students and thinking "I don't even know how to produce a drawing. How do you do that?" I remember on the first day being sent to the art school shop and given a bag of stuff. It included a drawing board; T square; set square; scale rule and rotary pens, and it was all stuff I had never seen before - I had absolutely no idea what any of it was for.'
Reacquainting herself to a time when 'boys did technical drawing at school and girls learned how to cook,' Cassels's university class was an even split of male and female students, with half of the class (the women) not being able to compose a technical drawing. 'There was a lot to master technically, but there was also a lot to take on in terms of what architecture is,' she explains.
'At the beginning I also found that tough going, but I went through the whole process of architecture well. I struggled with myself and kept thinking, "Do I really like this? Is this right for me? Do I want to be doing this?"'
For Astellas Pharma Europe at 2000 Hillswood Drive, Chertsey, Surrey
But it was during her architecture diploma when things started to sit more comfortably, which she puts down to having a free choice of projects and being taught by the then school's professor, Andy McMillian, whom she terms a 'strong guidance'. After completing her studies in Glasgow, Cassels relocated to London to take up a position with Hunters and Partners, which, at the time, was largely doing refurbishment projects in listed buildings.
She recalls it being a time where work was plentiful, and she was assigned a project straight away, which enabled her to complete her Riba Part 3 quickly. 'People did struggle with my accent at first - and I don't have a strong Glaswegian accent! But it was a fantastic learning experience and I was enjoying the job,' she says. Yet doubts of her choice of profession soon returned to haunt her. 'I was still wrestling with "Do I like architecture? I don't like doing this speculative office developments,"' she explains. 'I didn't like it. I was detailing lots of toilet packages and, whenever I went home, my family would ask, "Have you been designing more toilets?" Which they all thought was quite funny.'
After five years working at Hunters and Partners, and now at associate level, Cassels took the decision to 'start again', feeling the time was right for her to leave the architecture profession. She left the practice to take a degree in fine art at Central Saint Martins. 'It was a huge thing,' Cassels says. 'I remember my boss at the time saying, "Interesting that you want to do that". He had no idea why I was doing it.'
Completing her degree over a five-year period, Cassels worked part time at London based architecture practice Pringle Brandon, as it was then, but maintained the intention to leave the architecture profession, for good, after completing her fine art degree.
Unexpectedly to her, Cassels realised that her fine art degree was doing the opposite and leading her back to architecture. 'I was doing a lot of stuff with projection and photography and I was finding that a lot of my work was coming back to spaces and architecture. I had gravitated [back] to architecture, which was interesting,' she says.
Coupled with her design work at Pringle Brandon, in which she was exploring workplace design, Cassels discovered an interesting 'niche' that captured her enthusiasm as well as her imagination. 'Doing workplace projects meant I had an end-user to talk to, which was a huge difference,' she says. 'I did lots of work for Customs and Excise, and I liked the people side of it. Getting to meet people, talk to them, understanding their needs and seeing what impact the workplace can have was what I liked.'
Deloitte Digital: the Buckley Building, Clerkenwell, London
With the practice joining forces with Perkins+Will in 2012, to become as Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will, Cassels has worked for the practice for more than 20 years. She has worked on several big-brand projects, including pharmaceutical company Astellas, technology consultancy Deloitte Digital and drinks company Diageo.
'Diageo [late Nineties] is a significant project because it was one of the first clients that I had worked with to understand the impact of brand in the workplace. It was a really interesting process and it was the turning point for interesting workplace design,' she says.
'Until that point it was a once-size-fits-all approach; Diageo was one of the early adopters of a fun and exciting workplace.' Describing Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will as being in a growth period, Cassells say it's an exciting time for the practice, which is expanding into new markets including hospitality and interiors for health and education. 'I'm really excited to know that there are new things to do,' she says. 'These past few years have been particularly fantastic. We survived the recession, when it was difficult to get work, by implementing other strategies, such as working in Europe.
Historically we have done a lot of banking work and now we are working more in the technology sectors, with clients such as Google, and that brought a whole host of fresh thinking into the workplace, which has had a ripple effect.'
