tp bennett designs a fresh new spot for Aviva at EightyFen
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Making data human: in conversation with i/o atelier’s Steven Charlton
i/o atelier’s Steven Charlton on starting from scratch and why using data can create a more meaningful human experience.
30/01/2023
6 min read
i/o atelier group portrait
This article first appeared in Mix Interiors #223
Words: Chloe Petersen Snell
Images courtesy of i/o atelier
Steven Charlton is restless. “I can’t lie on the beach for an hour without getting bored,” he says, speaking through a less than perfect internet connection from Riyadh. As co-founder and CEO of i/o atelier, a fledgling practice with an already impressive client list, Charlton splits his time between London and the Middle East, overseeing a nimble team of designers, architects and data scientists. i/o atelier was founded by four creatives and thinkers, brought together by a shared conviction that architecture and design – when done well – can bring out the best in people. Especially when incorporating cold, hard data to back it up.
After living in Dubai and starting Pringle Brandon’s Middle East studio, Charlton eventually moved back to the UK after overseeing a 135-strong team at Perkins&Will Dubai. “It’s a great way to learn about how big business works,” Charlton comments on his time as principal managing director. “It opens your eyes to international business, and it opens your eyes to see what scale and volume can do. But ultimately, I’d always wanted to do my own thing.”
Charlton was joined by creative director Jeremy Brown as a co-founder, coming to i/o from Virgin Galactic’s inhouse design team: developing its Future Astronaut experience and previously working on the interiors for airports to aircrafts at Virgin Atlantic. Creating a new frontier of human design experience has now translated to the data- meets-design experiences created by i/o (albeit a little more down to earth). Fellow Perkins&Will architect (and Mix 30 Under 30 alumni) Medi Jelokhani is also a co-founder.
i/o atelier workplace project
The team are fascinated by the future telling possibilities of hard data, blending it together with design to create spaces that focus on wellness, sustainability and smart tech – aiming to become part of the solution for a carbon negative future. And, as a young company, they have the freedom to do things their way, unpressured by the weight of being a big firm. i/o work with a team of advisors from all backgrounds to get a full picture of human behaviour and technology. The biggest collaboration is with data scientists, who Charlton believes will one day make up 25% of the practice’s staff. “It’s about forcing two different worlds to collide and then questioning from both sides why and how we do what we do,” he comments. “Just because we have always done things one way doesn’t mean there aren’t smarter and better ways to do it, right?”
Moving back to London, Charlton became fascinated by the growing world of Proptech which is really taking off in London – and how it could be used to transform the commercial design industry. “I’m always looking for new markets, new sectors, some new ideas and new technologies, and about eight years ago I started to really think about how technology be used in our industry, and what that might look like. It wasn’t about BIM or virtual reality, but the automation process of the design. I thought, what would the disruption in our industry really look like?”
For an industry previously slow to adopt new technologies, Proptech has been a hot topic in 2022, part of a wider digital transformation of the property industry and wider built environment – driven by a range of new tech, AI and big data, which has already disrupted areas such as finance. And as Proptech expands, data analytics have become an increasing focus.
Quoting mathematician and data scientist Clive Humby, Charlton describes data as the new oil. Unrefined, it’s not valuable, but its value is found when refined and connected to other data. Of course, it’s also useless on its own. “We’re weighting the data we collect, giving it relevance and meaning, and using what is important for the type of projects that we’re doing. Linking that data to other data, aggregating it, is essential and where you need the two worlds to collide. Using data makes designing more accurate, but you still have to do an amazing design,” Charlton emphasises. “This is not some magic bullet to give you good design – it exists to refine the design process.”
He offers an example: “A media company commissioned a study based on the data analytics it captures on its platform and external data sources. They wanted to understand what the trends are right now, so they could be used as a brief for programmes. They figured out it was 80s nostalgia, slasher movies and teen TV programmes, and used that data and commissioned a TV show called Stranger Things. Of course, it’s about using the data, but you still have to make a fantastic show, with a director, actors and production. The two things have to go hand in hand: strong data and a way to understand it, plus a strong design team to create something amazing.” Although currently still in the build process, i/o has a series of global clients keen to understand how refined, intelligent data can transform the way they work. Right now, the team are busy working up a new workplace strategy for a global law firm focusing on their data and i/o’s data – presenting back a post-COVID world which Charlton and his team think will be a benchmark document in the industry.
“We started collating all that data from all their offices around the world – looking at what’s happening in terms of occupational rates, their booking systems, building systems and even people connecting to WiFi on their phones. We’re aggregating it in a way that we can show them what’s really happening. Then we can look at the profiles of the people. Who are they, what do they do?
…you need to know what the challenges are, even go so far to look at the crime data and see if there’s something you can do to help. That’s where the data comes in.
All this information will then justify a business decision they may have. They’re thinking about reducing their footprint by 30, 40, 50 percent, based on opinions – which seems like what they should be doing. But does the data validate that decision? Or does it tell you to do something different? How does the nuance of each region play into the decision-making process? People are behaving differently in London compared to Manchester, Newcastle to Edinburgh, but without data it’s really just an opinion, and the key for data analytics is the more data you have, the more insightful it is.”
Not restricted to the workplace sector, Charlton enthuses about ongoing projects from aviation and banking to hospitality and residential. “We don’t want to be focused on one sector exclusively, as we believe variety in typologies also makes us better designers.” In London, i/o is working with a branded hospitality operator to better understand the profile of their guests: what generation they belong to, what consumer tribe, what they like, dislike and what they think is luxury, where they want to live, but also the location of the property and its context. Gone are the days when a building was a fortress. Now buildings are permeable to community and we need to understand as designers how you can give back into that community from a social perspective. But to do that, you need to know what’s around them, you need to know what the challenges are, even go so far to look at the crime data and see if there’s something you can do to help. That’s where the data comes in.”
i/o atelier hospitality project
With the advancement of data science, machine learning and AI comes a social and ethical responsibility that Charlton is all too aware of. Data collection regulations aside, human bias is a challenge to overcome – with many of the features and structures of data analytics potentially influenced by their designer’s and data scientist’s preconception and bias. “We’re going to have to have regulations around ethics and bias, that are going to come into how we work with data,” he comments. “It’s happening already, but it’s early doors.” “There is, of course, a dystopian view of this, which I completely get,” he adds. “But on the flip side is a way of thinking – that actually we can make better decisions and improve the world.”
Summarising his thoughts on the importance of breaking with convention and trying to deliver something disruptive and innovative, Charlton concludes. “If you don’t move with the inevitable technology, you get left behind. We have to try not to fear the future and embrace it. We have to make positive use of that data and try and create better designs that make people healthier, happier, more productive, and that helps them balance their lives.”
