Join us for our last talk before the summer break with Tom Howard and Charlie de Bono of Livedin as they share their journey from architects to custom-build developers.

With a focus on ‘flooding the market with small, de-risked sites’, the duo will explain how they find and review sites using AI and the securing Permission in Principle (PIP) to de-risk the crucial early planning stages and make the application process less costly.

Livedin’s most recent development is Ingoldisthorpe Green in Norfolk with Project Orange as the architect.

More recently the developer has started to experiment with a tender mechanism to incentivise architects on a shared-risk basis.

This creates the entry point for architects to become “hybrid architects” or promoters, a model that is particularly suited for architects who lack cash to purchase a site outright.

They argue that this approach is a viable alternative to the profession’s notoriously poor business model whereby architects are only paid for their time, even as they create immense value for others

Charlie de Bono says: “We’re giving architects the opportunity to go into the development without being the developer themselves, so the risk is shared out more”.

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