From Setbacks to Success: Ste Taylor's Inspiring Journey to Head of Design at Turley

In this Architecture Social CPD lesson, Stephen Drew talks to Ste Taylor, Director and Head of Design at Turley, about moving from architecture into urban design, surviving three redundancies in the 2008 downturn, and why design codes matter to the next generation of UK housing. The conversation runs to approximately 52 minutes and can be watched or listened to in full below.

Who this is for

Students and Part 1 and Part 2 Architectural Assistants weighing up routes beyond the traditional qualification path, architects curious about urban design, masterplanning or client side roles, and practitioners who want a working understanding of design coding and the current UK policy context.

Learning outcomes

1. You will be able to describe the difference between prescriptive and loose design codes and what each seeks to control.
2. You will be able to explain the role of the Office for Place and how the first 25 government funded design codes in England were appraised.
3. You will be able to outline a realistic route from architecture practice into client side and consultancy design roles.
4. You will be able to recognise how redundancy and market downturns can be navigated using professional networks and used to reassess career direction.
5. You will be able to identify where AI tools can realistically support design practice today, and where they currently fall short.
6. You will be able to place current UK design policy in context, from CABE and the Urban Renaissance to the National Model Design Code.

Stumbling into architecture (01:54)

Ste liked drawing at school and a careers adviser pointed him towards architecture. He studied at the University of Sheffield, where he describes arriving with imposter syndrome among better travelled peers. His advice to students who feel the same is that the sense of belonging comes later, with experience.

The reality of practice and the move to urban design (06:21)

Early roles in Liverpool and Manchester practices were a hard landing: detailed drawings and day to day buildings rather than competitions and poetry. Working on a masterplanning project for Bovis Homes led to a client side job offer, and Ste took it rather than continuing to Part 2. He cites the Steve Jobs idea that the dots only join up looking backwards.

Riding out the 2008 crash (13:31)

Ste was made redundant three times in three years: at Countryside Properties as the market collapsed, at EDAW (later AECOM) as the recession continued, and again when DPP Shape wound up in 2010. Each next role came through industry contacts. He argues the period forced creativity, flexibility and a clear eyed look at his own CV, and that redundancy, painful as it is, can be a valuable moment of reflection.

Thirteen years and counting at Turley (19:15)

Ste joined Turley in 2010 as a Senior Urban Designer, became an Associate Director responsible for a masterplanning team across three regional offices, and was made a Director in 2015. He now leads the design team across the country.

Projects that teach (21:19)

The conversation tours Turley's portfolio: high density residential at Central Retail Park in Manchester, a multi site regeneration competition on the Wirral, a 4,000 home allocation in Bury under the Greater Manchester strategic framework, a mixed innovation and residential scheme at West Cheltenham adjacent to GCHQ, garden village work including Knowsley, and ports and harbours including Milford Haven, where landowners are rethinking their estates around the future of oil and gas. Ste's point: diverse projects mean every day is a school day.

What a design code actually is (26:47)

A design code distils the urban, architectural and landscape rules for a place. Codes range from highly prescriptive, fixing plot by plot setbacks and heights, to loose frameworks of density, streets and green space. The underlying rules of proportion and scale are ancient: a Roman square still works for reasons that can be codified today.

The Office for Place and the first 25 codes (28:44)

Ste and his Turley colleague Neil Harvie completed a secondment with the Office for Place, appraising the first 25 government funded design codes prepared by local authorities including Trafford and the Lake District, and identifying what makes a code stringent rather than slipping into guidance. A further 11 coding exercises have since been funded.

Policy, politics and 1.5 million homes (31:58)

Ste draws a parallel between the current moment and 1997, when CABE, the Urban Renaissance agenda, Manual for Streets and the Urban Design Compendium raised the status of placemaking. With a government targeting 1.5 million homes and redrafting the NPPF to ease approvals, he argues codes are the mechanism to avoid repeating the cul de sac, standard house type development of the 1980s and 1990s.

AI as the office assistant (36:36)

Ste's working view is that AI will land between the hype and the doom: like having a few students in the office. It is strong at cross referencing thousands of pages of public inquiry documents and weak at generating coherent architectural imagery. Turley is running small pilot projects, accepting that genuine innovation means some pilots will fail.

Career advice: humility and resilience (44:40)

Closing reflections cover managing ego when switching from practice to client side, accepting that a move may mean learning before earning, and the transferable skills architecture teaches, from crits as pitching practice to presenting under pressure.

Key terms

Design code; National Model Design Code; Office for Place; masterplanning; urban design; placemaking; NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework); CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment); Manual for Streets; expert witness.

Reflective prompts for your CPD record

1. Where in your current role could a design code, whether prescriptive or loose, improve outcomes on the places you work on?
2. If you were made redundant tomorrow, which contacts and skills would carry you to your next role, and what would you strengthen now?
3. Which repetitive task in your workflow would you trial an AI assistant on first, and how would you judge whether the pilot succeeded?

About the guest

Ste Taylor is a Director and Head of Placemaking at Turley, leading the consultancy's design team across the UK. He studied architecture at the University of Sheffield, worked in practice and client side at Bovis Homes and Countryside Properties, and joined Turley in 2010 following consultancy roles at EDAW and DPP Shape. A design code specialist and expert design witness, he completed a secondment with the Office for Place and is a visiting tutor at Manchester Metropolitan University. Visit his Architecture Social profile or LinkedIn, and see more from Turley.