CONTEXT 188 : JUNE 2026 49 Vox pop 46 CONTEXT 186 : DECEMBER 2025 John Pendlebury Who has been your greatest inspiration? My friend from school, John Sanders, for many years a partner in Simpson and Brown, conservation architects in Edinburgh. In our 20s we spent many weekends and holidays driving around the country, and occasionally further afield, looking at interesting buildings. He got me into this heritage stuff. What has been your best idea? I feel privileged to have spent nearly 30 years teaching and researching – thinking – about conservation. It has taken me over all the world and introduced me to many amazing places and people. My best idea was probably believing I could do this and do it reasonably well, getting past my imposter syndrome. I have also had some ideas about heritage theory. Oh, and asking the woman who was to become my wife whether she wanted to go ballroom dancing with me. What would you like to have been if you had not become a conservationist? A rock and roll star, of course. More prosaically, I am also a planner and spent a little while in mainstream planning practice before landing in conservation. If the cards had fallen a little differently, I might now have been struggling with, say, meeting housing land allocation targets. How do you reply when at a party someone asks what you do? I don’t get invited to many parties these days, but usually a stumbling explanation about teaching and researching conservation, planning and heritage. What is the biggest frustration in your job? In my former job, something common to many people and work contexts, the incessant creep of bureaucratic processes, mostly well-intentioned, that cumulatively erode the time to do what is really important – in my case teaching and research. More generally, universities are much more professional than they were when I started, fee-paying students rightly demanding more than they often got back then. At the same time, something has been lost, Tanya Szendeffy My grandfather, who lived life with gusto and kindness, stood up for equality for all, and enriched so many people’s lives with his love of music, art, nature and cooking. Most recently I have been inspired by Nicholas Boys Smith and his Create Streets. I share his conviction that we should be building ‘gentle density’ (mid-rise) streets and squares to create green, walkable places. An architect who is designing places that embody these principles is Peter Barber, who has created a new architectural idiom that appears to take its inspiration from both our historic terraced streets and from warmer climes, which due to climate change we are beginning to see here. What has been your best idea? Deciding to turn my hobby – analysing buildings and places – into a source of income. What would you like to have been if you had not become a conservationist? As a child I wanted to be a journalist and open an art gallery, so I studied history of art and Italian. Life took me in a different direction, and the gallery and journalism did not happen, but who knows what the future holds? I do hope to be an architectural columnist for my local paper in my spare time. How do you reply when at a party someone asks what you do? I look after historic buildings and places, and help create beautiful new ones. What is the biggest frustration in your job? The lack of heritage expertise, especially in the skilled trades such as carpentry and stonemasonry, of the trades that were once part of craft guilds or livery companies. The number of walls we see crumbling due to having been pointed with cement and not lime is a crime. What would you like to be doing in five years’ time? Helping councils, landowners and developers to build walkable, beautiful new developments that I will help design: hence the MA in urban design that I am taking. For all the buildings we look after, not enough loveable new ones are being built for future generations to love and care for. Time is ticking. What is your favourite building? I had the great good fortune of being a conservation and design officer at the London Borough of Islington for two years, and its buildings, streets and squares are now part of my DNA. As a basic building component, I can think of nothing more beautiful or practical than the dual-aspect, gentle-density terrace. Numbers 42–47 Canonbury Square, one of which was rebuilt after bomb damage, are a good example. I love
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