I was already familiar with the Seacombe Ferry Terminal – the proposed host building for Eureka! Mersey, the new sister attraction to the original Eureka! Children’s Museum. Not far from home, Seacombe was the starting point for regular family walks and cycles up and down the Egremont promenade alongside the River Mersey to New Brighton and back, enjoying views across the water to Liverpool. I looked forward to working on a project close to home that my kids would enjoy when it was finished.
The base build works were completed in the Spring of 2022 and handed over to the fit-out contractors. Eureka! Science and Discovery finally opened its doors to the public in November 2022, a year later than originally programmed due to the disruption to the design, legal, sign-off, procurement and construction processes caused by the pandemic.
Our multi-disciplinary design team launch meeting for Eureka! Mersey was held in early March 2020. Our role was to develop an inherited ‘base build’ scheme, addressing targeted value engineering identified by the client team, all in close coordination with the fit-out designer, with the client wanting to achieve fixed costs by September.
On 16th March, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned the country ‘now is the time for everyone to stop non-essential contact and travel’ given the looming threat of Coronavirus. Our first visit to site was Thursday 19th March. The week after, the order to ‘stay at home’ was given, marking the beginning of the first lockdown.
The irony that the Eureka! site was within 3 miles of my new office/ home yet was out of reach was not lost on me. Knowing that our opportunities to return to site would be limited, and despite taking copious photographs on our sole site visit to try to mitigate this, some questions that arise can only be answered by going again to look. We couldn’t return until restrictions were relaxed and a (socially distanced) site visit was permitted in July.
Pre-pandemic, remote working was not a concept that was widely embraced in the delivery of K2’s architectural projects, but as across many industries it became commonplace by necessity during lockdown. I had spent the best part of twenty years working in offices, alongside colleagues working as a team in a studio environment. I was comfortable, knew what I was doing and who to turn to if I didn’t. Overnight (alongside millions across the country), I was in the spare room, attempting to juggle childcare and their education alongside the regular workday, trying to use the recently downloaded Microsoft Teams over an unreliable internet connection.
Early Teams calls with similarly distracted attendees, simultaneously, but in isolation learning how to use the technology, share their screens, and how to mute/unmute themselves were a sorry substitute for the familiarity of sitting around a table with a team, a pile of drawings, pens and paper. The hastily set up K2 WhatsApp group offered some further connection to colleagues but was no substitute for the office environment.
Six years on from lockdown first being imposed, the genie is out of the bottle in relation to home, or remote working. What was forced on so many to contain the spread of Coronavirus, the physical separation from colleagues is now an accepted and valued part of a working week, giving choice and flexibility, and more control over the working environment to allow focus and concentration. Of course, familiarity with the technology allows better connectivity to the studio, the design team, or the site office. Time and resources previously spent travelling can be spent more productively doing other tasks.
But often there is no substitute for sharing an office with people to get the best creative environment. The team bond that can be built by a shared moment that doesn’t translate over a screen, the serendipity of an overheard conversation, or a fresh pair of eyes next to you that unlock a design solution that has eluded you all day.
Eureka! Mersey was in some ways a quite straightforward project but was made far more difficult in its early stages by the learning to work remotely, and the enforced absence of opportunities to visit site.
