Vicky is an architect running her practice with her partner Nick. They both worked for larger companies, eventually setting up Holloway and Holloway in 2017 and have been working together ever since.
What is your background and experience in the property industry?
Holloway and Holloway Architects is run by Nick and Vicky Holloway. We are both Architects, and although we have followed a fairly similar journey, we have developed a very different skill set over the years.
We both started at AJ100 companies and worked our way from there down through smaller and smaller companies. We both found this a great process, as we were able to see how the range of practices work, and cherry pick the best approaches for our own firm. We set up in 2017 and have been working together ever since.
Nick has worked with heritage assets for most of his career. He has a background in Super Prime and Prime London residential projects, leading and coordinating highly skilled teams to deliver projects to the uppermost quality. He has worked with private and commercial clients. Currently he is working on the Bahamian High Commission in Mayfair to renovate their Commission and the High Commissioner’s Private Residence, and has over recent years been involved with the historic renovations at Shepherd’s Bush Market.
Vicky works with both developers and private clients, designing and delivering extensions, new builds, and multi-unit schemes. Her passion is sustainability and how this can be incorporated into new and historic buildings. She is also our planning expert, and works with developers to assess and appraise sites at early stages or review complex planning information within legal packs.
Can you tell us a bit about your business and what you do?
It is just the two of us, and that is by design. From the very beginning we wanted to stay small, it works for us. There is a certain buzz that we get from delivering every part of the process, and we can’t see that changing. And fortunately, our clients seem to agree that this creates a consistent level of service and quality.
We are actually very proud of our journey, in less than 10 years, we have grown from a rear extension to an Embassy in Mayfair. We didn’t set up with a whole bunch of great clients, we set up cold, and our first project was a small 3m by 3m rear extension in North London. Project by project, we have delivered consistently, and grown in scale and complexity back to the projects that we had been working on before we set up. Its been a really wonderful and in some ways humbling journey.
We love that we get to be hands on with our clients, and also deliver all aspects of the work. Through that journey we have had some amazing highlights, including working on Shepherd’s Bush Market, master planning the renovation of the UK’s oldest Folk Arts Centre in High Barnet and a hidden car free Forest Development in Lewisham, as well as the many beautiful family homes we have been able to work with.
If there was one key element that we would highlight that makes us different it would be that we listen. We have never been big ego architects, our aim has always been to work out what our clients want, not what we want, and try to make the project a success for them.
Those goals might be financial, or stylistic or it might be about balancing a range of different opinions that all clash. But this is what we like, this is what we see as success. It is not about blindly following someone’s instructions, but about understanding and guiding so that we can merge our experience with their needs.
Who are your typical clients and how do you market your service?
Broadly our clients are split into three categories, private clients, property developer clients and commercial clients.
We spent a lot of time over the first few years developing a network, however, when covid hit we also had our first child, and that combination reduced the amount of time that we spent out networking and we now do very little.
We found that our work flow stayed consistent, as it was largely from referrals from other professionals. We have always seen this as a great compliment, as we know that so many of these people work with many other incredible designers, and that they put their reputation on the line every time they put someone forward to a client, so those recommendations mean a great deal to us.
How did you first cross paths with Newmanor Law?
We met Karen in Mipim in 2019 and continued to get to know each other through networking events following on from this. Karen and James were the last people we had lunch with before lockdown hit, but luckily our relationship had developed enough that we could continue to stay connected digitally.
We have assisted Newmanor Law and their clients on projects since, advising on planning information.
What are the key challenges currently facing the real estate sector and how are you addressing them?
We talked a lot about this and we agree that there is a growing problem with over regulation in the industry that is making things very difficult for all types of client.
Each bit of new legislation often introduced with the best of intentions has created cost, liability and added time to projects and inevitably this is all passed on down the chain to the clients, in many instances making projects unviable.
Much of this is not productive in the true sense, money is spent on bat surveys rather than actually providing bat habitats. Endless numbers of planning and listed building conditions result in money spent on reports rather than the homes the council needs. Expansions to fire regulations, building regulations, CDM requirements, principal designer inspections. Every bit of it in essence beneficial, but in accumulation has had a huge impact to the level of professional involvement required on projects, couple that with wider economic impacts and this is significantly affecting the industry.
Addressing it takes work. AI is helpful and is something we have fully integrated into our working life but it is not a silver bullet. The way to address this for Architects is knowledge, to adapt and provide the best advice, we need to learn, we need to study the new requirements and balance what we can provide vs where a wider team is required. We need to be able to advise from the outset to make people aware of the additional requirements.
We also need to be adaptable, we can’t rely on working practices that have got us by in the past, when the regulations require that next level of management and approach, we need to be able to step up to deliver it.
What trends do you foresee shaping the real estate industry in the coming years?
Our gut feeling is that sustainability will continue to be the biggest influence the industry for the foreseeable future. With energy price shocks becoming more frequent, water conservation becoming a more prevalent issue and cooling a building stock that was designed to retain the heat there are growing challenges that are felt by every type of property owner.
Though new builds can often seem like a great solution, the most sustainable solution often is to retain rather than start from scratch. Given the historic building stock we have in this country, we believe that it is more important for Architect’s to understand how to make a period property perform more sustainably without harming the existing fabric.
What we have seen is that this is giving rise to a blending a scientific and historically sensitive approach to renovation projects. Professionals are blending historic building techniques with modern applications, understanding that the breathability that you get from lime plasters will actually make your walls more thermally efficient by keeping moisture levels low.
We hope that this more holistic approach to sustainability and restoration will grow within the industry, rather than just approaching sustainability as the process of slapping on a few solar panels.