Setting Up an Architecture Practice: 10 Lessons with Oliver Lowrie

In this episode of the Architecture Social Podcast, Stephen Drew sits down with Oliver Lowrie, co-founder and director of the East London practice Ackroyd Lowrie, for a candid run through the top ten lessons he and co-founder Jonathan Ackroyd learned while setting up and growing their studio. Recorded as a live stream, the conversation runs to approximately 58 minutes and is unusually honest about the commercial realities of running an architecture practice: sales, fees, cashflow, hiring and team building.

Listen to the full conversation here:

Who this is for

Architects, Part 2 architectural assistants and architectural technologists who are thinking about starting their own practice, anyone in the first few years of running a small studio, and employees who want to understand how the business side of an architecture practice actually works. It will also be useful for associates and practice managers moving into leadership.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

1. Plan a lower-risk transition from employment into running your own practice.
2. Reframe your sales conversations around the client's desired outcome rather than your design process.
3. Build a marketing ecosystem of free and paid touchpoints that brings clients towards you.
4. Set realistic programmes and fee structures that account for planning delays and protect cashflow.
5. Make better hiring and team decisions as a studio grows from a handful of people to twenty-five or more.
6. Identify practical changes the profession could make to improve payment terms for small practices.

Jump, but make sure you are tied on

If you want to start a business, at some point you have to jump, but you can put security around that leap. Ackroyd Lowrie began with one real client and one real project already lined up, and Oliver made the transition gradually rather than leaving full-time employment all at once. One paying project is not a business on its own, but it covers the rent and lets you forecast enough to buy the first laptop and printer while you build momentum.

It is not about you, it is about them

Architects often pitch their process: how they design, the tools they use, why their way is better. Clients care about the outcome they want, not the method. Oliver argues that listening is the key skill in selling. Understand the result the client is after and articulate it back to them, rather than talking about yourself.

Do not wait to be discovered: build an ecosystem

Good design is not enough on its own; people will not simply find out that you are good. Ackroyd Lowrie built a set of free products around the practice, including the Urban Forecast podcast and a Breakfast Club Briefings event series, so that prospective clients learn the founders' values without being sold to directly. Oliver describes this funnel using the monkey's fist analogy: you throw out something small and free, such as a podcast, then gradually reel clients in along a chain of touchpoints towards the paid core services.

Be realistic about programmes and fees

Saying yes to design programmes you know are unachievable creates problems later, particularly when pre-application and planning timescales are outside your control. As a programme drags out, fees get stretched thinner. It is better to have the difficult conversation about realistic timescales, and a fee structure that reflects them, at the start than eight months in when the fee has run out.

Cashflow is the thing that can kill you

Revenue is not cash. Staff costs leave the account on the same day every month, while client payments arrive unpredictably and often late, and architects sit a long way down the construction payment chain. Ackroyd Lowrie builds a 20 per cent deposit into its fees so it can invoice ahead of work. Oliver also argues that the profession, through the RIBA, could do more to protect small practices, for example a deposit-style safety scheme and clearer educational material telling clients what they should expect to pay.

Why Ackroyd Lowrie pays overtime

Paying staff for every hour worked gives a truer reflection of the real cost of a project to the client, and it produces an accurate timesheet data set, which in turn lets the practice forecast fees and run the business more reliably. Oliver frames unpaid overtime as effectively giving free work to the client at the employee's expense, and prefers to capture the true picture instead.

Grow slow, hire slow, hire like you are selling

Having grown quickly more than once, Oliver's reflection is that growing a little slower, and turning down some of the more challenging work, can be the better choice once you already have revenue. Hire for shared values rather than shared backgrounds, avoid recruiting copies of yourself, and bring in senior people with different experience to stop the studio becoming an echo chamber. Attracting the best talent means going out and pitching to them, just as you would to a client.

Developing talent: the AL Academy

Ackroyd Lowrie runs the AL Academy, a youth engagement programme that partners with East London schools and New City College to introduce teenagers to architecture as a career. The pathway can take a student from a BTEC through Part 1 and Part 2 apprenticeships towards qualification, with the practice paying above the London Living Wage. Oliver sees this as a way to widen the range of backgrounds entering the profession and to build talent through the ranks.

The market, AI and the profession

The conversation closes on the wider picture: how interest rates and the economic cycle shape property and design work, the likelihood that AI tools will become embedded in mainstream software such as ArchiCAD and Revit rather than built by architects themselves, and concern that raising the skilled worker visa salary threshold could cut off the international talent that UK design services rely on.

Key terms

• Monkey's fist: an analogy for a marketing funnel, where a small free offer such as a podcast is used to draw a client gradually towards paid services.
• Pre-application: an early stage of engagement with a local planning authority before a formal planning application is submitted.
• 20 per cent deposit: an upfront portion of the fee invoiced before work begins, used to protect cashflow.
• Non-executive adviser: an external adviser brought in to guide the founders on strategy and growth.
• London Living Wage: a voluntary hourly pay benchmark for London, set independently of the statutory minimum wage.
• PassivHaus: a rigorous low-energy building standard, part of the sustainable design background the founders carried from their time at Architype.

Reflective prompts for your CPD record

1. If you were to start your own practice, which single client or project could you secure first to make the leap lower risk?
2. In your current sales conversations, how often do you talk about your process versus the client's desired outcome, and what would you change?
3. How accurately does your practice track time and cashflow today, and what one change would give you better data for forecasting fees?

About the guest

Oliver Lowrie is co-founder and a director of Ackroyd Lowrie, the East London architecture practice he runs with co-founder Jonathan Ackroyd. Before founding the studio, he spent around ten years at the sustainability-focused practice Architype, where the founders met. Ackroyd Lowrie applies that sustainable design knowledge at a city scale, and Oliver hosts the practice's Urban Forecast podcast. You can find out more on the Ackroyd Lowrie website or connect with Oliver on LinkedIn.

Explore the Ackroyd Lowrie company profile and Oliver Lowrie's profile in the Architecture Social directory.