Ben Pentreath does it all [Rebroadcast]

Summary

Business of Home Podcast – "Ben Pentreath Does It All" [Rebroadcast]

Host: Dennis Scully
Guest: Ben Pentreath
Date: December 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this engaging rebroadcast, Dennis Scully sits down with British designer Ben Pentreath, a celebrated generalist whose body of work spans urban planning, historic architecture, interior decoration, and retail. The discussion traces Ben’s unique journey from his formative experiences with the Prince of Wales’ architectural initiatives, through groundbreaking projects like Poundbury, to his highly personal approach to interiors. They touch on the differences between English and American design sensibilities, Ben’s perspective on succession and legacy, and his belief in the value of creative generalism.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. A Generalist in a World of Specialists

• Ben's practice covers: master planning, architecture, interior decoration, and a retail shop (Pentreath and Hall).
• His office is split: roughly one third each between town planning, architecture, and decoration.
• Ben's perspective:

  “We’ve become incredibly used to this degree of fragmentation and specialization. But actually, in the 16th, 17th, 18th, up until the 19th century, there were very, very few distinctions… They were just designing.” (20:00, Ben Pentreath)

2. The Poundbury Project & the Organic English Town

• Early involvement: Ben’s connection to Poundbury began as a student at the Prince of Wales’ Institute of Architecture.

• Philosophy: Designed to feel organic and foster walkability, Poundbury integrates shops, offices, homes, and services for sustainability and community.

• On comparisons:

  “It’s not a 300-year-old town, it’s a 30-year-old housing estate… and if you want to go and see what they look like, let’s go down the road… talk to me about which is the most successful way forward.” (04:24, Ben Pentreath)

• Integrating social housing:

  “Throughout each phase of the development, about 30-40% of the houses for residents who are on the affordable housing register... that visual stigmatization of council housing is something which is absolutely fascinating.” (06:32)

3. Challenging the Status Quo in Architecture

• Alternative education: Ben didn’t follow a traditional architectural training—his education at Edinburgh University and the Prince’s Institute prioritized history and a broader view of design.
• Influence of history:

  “History is absolutely vital. It is us… there’s that wonderful expression that history never repeats, but it rhymes, which I always love.” (08:46)

4. Beginnings of an Unconventional Career

• Path to independence:

  “The notion was pretty basic actually… suddenly thought, wow, I’ve got four months’ rent in the bank for the first time in my life… maybe this was a good time to strike out on my own.” (12:28)

• First big project: Winning a design competition for 250 houses in Northamptonshire as a “one-man band” (15:35).

5. Business Model & Resilience

• Multiple income streams: His firm’s diversity—in town planning, architecture, interiors, and retail—is a business advantage, especially in unstable economic times.

  “There’s something quite nice about not having all of your eggs in a single basket.” (21:33)

• Seriousness in client relationships:

  “Sometimes it’s the things which seem to be not necessarily very promising on first hint… that turn out to be some of the most wonderful projects.” (24:20)

6. English vs. American Design Sensibilities

• Why U.S. clients? Ben reflects on the curiosity of Americans' fascination with English style, and why it’s difficult for others to authentically achieve the “English look."

  “There is something… about an English interior that is fundamentally slightly undesigned… an American client giving an American architect a brief to design a quote-unquote English style house… it will not feel in any way... English.” (28:23)

• American over-design:

  “It probably works too well… there’s a degree to which... it might feel over-designed or… too comprehensively designed.” (29:35)

• Engagement with clients: Ben likens the design process to a tasting kitchen:

  “We have a distinct flavor, but I really want to know what ingredients you like and dislike before I start cooking your dinner." (31:24)

7. The Creative Process

• Open, collaborative schemes: Rather than imposing set palettes, Ben prefers to explore a wide “list of ingredients” with clients, drawing out their authentic preferences.

  “A lot of my role is actually teasing out from people ideas that they have had… about how they would like to live, but they lack the confidence.” (36:04)

• Decoration is not dogma:

  “Decoration is actually temporal, it should change… one or two American designers… probably feel that they have arrived from the mountain after a brief conversation with God about what someone’s living room should look like.” (35:00)

8. Signature Stories & Memorable Moments

• Bubble wrap photo anecdote:
  • An unstyled, informal photo in Ben’s book sparked discussion for its authenticity:

    “When I’m taking photographs… I didn’t touch anything… the bubble wrap on that ottoman is part of the informality of that house.” (46:15)

• Learning through photography: Ben explains how taking his own project photos made him value capturing atmosphere over perfection.

9. Reflecting on Career & Succession

• Personal turning point: The sudden death of both parents in quick succession prompted him to seriously consider his firm’s succession and legacy.

  “Suddenly, at a minute’s notice, my mum died on a Sunday night at 9 o’clock… on the Monday morning… I wasn’t there. And… absolutely nothing missed a beat.” (56:07)

• Implementing succession:

  • Pentreath established an Employee Ownership Trust to ensure continuity and shared stewardship.

  “I will actually no longer have any financial interest… I’m just a normal employee now, just like everyone else.” (59:04)

• Changing gears:

  “I do not feel that I want to carry on at the same sort of pace… I think looking back at things teaches you what’s important, what’s less important.” (52:41)

• Transition of firm identity:

  “One of the first updates… is that the name of the studio is just ever so slightly going to shift and it’ll be goodbye to Ben and hello to Pentreath Studio.” (63:15)

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Notable Quotes

• On Generalism:

  “I’m not worried about spreading myself too thin... they were just designing.” (20:00, Ben Pentreath)

• On English vs. American Design:

  “There is something… about an English interior… fundamentally slightly undesigned.” (28:23, Ben Pentreath)

• On Client Collaboration:

  “It’s a little bit like entering the tasting kitchen in a restaurant… I really want to know what ingredients you like and dislike before I start cooking your dinner.” (31:24, Ben Pentreath)

• On Legacy:

  “I think… the best gifts that I can give to the longevity of the practice… is all about letting the next generation… have the time and the space… to prosper.” (62:15, Ben Pentreath)

• On Career Evolution:

  “I’m increasingly less worried about things being designed, if that makes sense, particularly when it comes to interiors.” (54:16, Ben Pentreath)

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Important Timestamps

• Poundbury and early education: 02:56 – 09:18
• Becoming independent: 12:28 – 16:25
• Business structure and specialization: 17:06 – 24:20
• English vs. American design: 26:22 – 31:47
• Creative process and taste: 31:47 – 39:30
• On imperfection in interiors (“bubble wrap photo”): 44:28 – 52:00
• Career reflection and succession planning: 52:41 – 64:24

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Tone and Style

Throughout the conversation, Ben is candid, reflective, and witty, often highlighting the joy of creative serendipity and the value of history, collaboration, and authenticity over rigid perfection. Dennis and the co-hosts engage him with curiosity and respect, creating a rich and conversational exploration of what design can mean today.

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This summary captures the heart, insights, and memorable ideas from Ben Pentreath’s revealing conversation, making it an essential listen – or read – for anyone interested in the intersection of business, history, and creative life in design.

Transcript

[Dennis Scully]

This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is Ben Pentreath. In an era when most designers pick a niche, Ben is a proud generalist. His work spans everything from housing developments to private homes to a quirky retail operation. Pentreath and Hall. One of his most well known projects is not a house but an entire village, Poundbury, a planned community in England championed by King Charles. However, Ben's work for private clients is also highly celebrated and he's a regular on industry Best of Lists. I spoke with Ben about the personal tragedy that prompted him to develop a succession plan, why he takes every email inquiry seriously, and why American designers can never qu nail English style. This podcast is proudly sponsored by John Rosselli and Associates, celebrating 75 years of design excellence and artisanal inspiration. For decades, John Roselli has been a trusted name in the design world, representing premier brands known for their craftsmanship and timeless style. With a commitment to bespoke customization and exceptional service, John Rosselli helps designers bring their creative of visions to Life. Visit John Rosselli.com or step into one of their showrooms in the D and D Building, the Dakota, the Washington Design center or the Mart to experience their legacy firsthand. This podcast is sponsored by Leloy, maker of rugs, pillows and wall art. Leloy revealed their latest designer collaboration with Leanne Ford at High Point Market this fall. See those beautifully handcrafted rugs and pillows at their site, along with New seasons from Amber Lewis, Chris Loves, Julia and Bridget Romanick. Learn [e-mail] that's L-O L O I rugs.com and don't forget to follow Laloyloi Rugs on Instagram and TikTok. And now on with the show. Ben, we're going to get into your thoughts on English decoration and some other interesting topics that you and I have been discussing recently. But I wanted to start by talking about Poundbury, a model town of sorts that has been the longtime vision of King Charles and began when he was still the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cornwall and talk about your long term connection to the project that first began back in your school days. You went to the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture.

[Ben Pentreath]

Institute of Architecture, exactly. So his architectural school was his attempt in those days to challenge in a way the status quo of how things were normally taught. And it was an incredible education. It was also completely chaotic and sort of mad in a wonderful way. I suspect that in its way, I mean, who knows, but I wonder if it had some of the sort of febrile atmosphere that must have existed in places like the Bauhaus school. But one of our first live projects was working on the very first phase of Poundbury. It was very carefully designed as a series of streets and spaces, squares and buildings which had the strong characteristic that they had developed organically over time. In other words, it was a careful rendition of an old English settlement, not quite a village, not quite a town, somewhere in between the two that had developed incrementally and organically over a long period of. What's amazing about visiting that part of Poundbury now is that it feels incredibly settled and like a place that has been there for actually far longer than it has. One of the things which I'm often struck by is how people start comparing it to a 300 or 400 year old town historic place and they sort of in comparison, they say, well, it feels a bit, you know, not quite, not quite, not quite so real or whatever the words might be. And I'm like, okay, but actually the only legitimate comparison that you can make, this is actually not a 300 year old town, it's actually a 30 year old housing estate. It's a 1980s housing estate. And if you want to go and see what they look like, let's go down the road and we can have a look. And then talk to me about which is the most successful way forward philosophy of development. Because obviously what we're trying to do in Poundbury, we're trying to bring in a huge mix of different uses. So there's commercial spaces, there's offices, there's shops, businesses, cafes, restaurants, all of the kind of effectively the daily needs of daily life. Doctor surgeries, dentists, vets, et cetera, et cetera, are all contained within the boundary of the settlement itself. And what that means is that people can walk, they don't have to get into their car. Whereas most of the rest of post war British development, and very much so in America, most of the world, has been entirely constructed around the car as the only means to get from your house to work, to shops, to schools, to leisure centers or whatever it might be. And if one is looking at the inherent sustainability of placemaking and the robustness of placemaking in the long term, that is an incredibly powerful, complicated mix to achieve. Another underlying factor in Poundbury, which has really been incredibly successful and has been very widely adopted now as government policy within the uk, is to seamlessly mix social and affordable housing through the development. Throughout each phase of the development, about 30 to 40% of the houses for residents who are on the affordable housing register. So that's a sort of a list held by the local authority, set by the local authority, but people who need assistance with housing, and they're generically called council housing, in common parlance social housing or council housing. And a young Prince of Wales, over many decades, was visiting many of these quite broken places in cities and towns across the uk. And the visual stigmatization of council housing is something which is absolutely fascinating. As soon as you enter the council estate, it's got its own slightly gloomy kind of fonts and signage everywhere. And the signage is quite bullying. Very often. It's like loads of signs saying, no ball games here. Or, you know, do not do this.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Do not do that, do not experience pleasure on these grounds. Right.

[Ben Pentreath]

That's kind of quite extraordinary. I mean, you have that very much in America as well.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Absolutely. We often refer to it as NIMBYISM here in America. Right, the not in my backyard notion.

[Ben Pentreath]

Yes. I think nimbyism is something slightly different. I mean, that is like no new development in my backyard. In England, my good friend, who runs the King's foundation, as it is now known, formerly the Prince's foundation for the Built Environment, set up a brilliant campaign which they ran and still continue to run a few years ago, which is called bimby, which is demanding beauty in my backyard.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Yes, I like that.

[Ben Pentreath]

You're not saying no, but you're saying if development is to happen, we want it to be good.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

So interesting what you were saying earlier. I've spoken to so many architects who talk about this, let's use the word brainwashing, for lack of a better term, where they either want you to only focus on modernism and forget about anything you ever heard about traditional architecture.

[Dennis Scully]

Right.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Because we're going to tell you what's what. And here you go. And you had this incredible opportunity to.

[Dennis Scully]

Hear a whole different sensibility, Right?

[Ben Pentreath]

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, partly, I think I'm quite lucky that I'm not actually. I'm not an architect. I'm not a qualified architect. I never went to architecture school other than my year and a half at the Prince's Institute of Architecture. I read History of Art and History of Architecture at Edinburgh University, which gives you a completely different perspective on life, because actually, you suddenly realize that history is absolutely vital. It is us. We are just in a little place in history. There's that wonderful expression that history never repeats, but it rhymes, which I always love.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

If I remember correctly, early on in your education, you had a faculty advisor of sorts who discouraged you, if I recall saying, oh, you're not really good at math, you're not really good at physics. Maybe architecture is not for you.

[Ben Pentreath]

That's absolutely true. Yeah. I put that in the introduction to my book because that was a very key person in my life. He was my careers advisor at school when I was probably 16, 17, and was very interested in going to architecture school and was firmly sat down and said, this is a terrible idea. You need to have, you know, you need to have a much more physics based and kind of maths based kind of background if that's going to be successful. And I'm like, well, in the benefit of hindsight, you know, that's why God created engineering, so someone else could make the building stand up. But yeah, no, I was very much steered away from architecture school, so it was a sideways route in. And there was no doubt that when the Prince of Wales began to get interested in our architecture and design in the 1980s, which is his first involvement, I was really quite young. And actually I will say that even then his book, which is fascinating to read now, it's 30 years old, but it's still actually incredibly prescient. It's called A Vision of Britain Laying out his basic philosophy, which hasn't really changed that dramatically in the period of time it's obviously matured and become much richer and deeper. But it's a profoundly interesting book and that was very, very interesting to me at the time as a kind of young person beginning to get interested in design. I'm absolutely sure that even that was part of my journey. But definitely having the architectural school as a route in really made a massive, massive difference. And then I went to work in the States for five years and then when I came back from the US from New York, I spent another year working at the Prince's foundation, which the architectural school had sort of morphed into a teaching charity and sort of activist charity involved in many, many different aspects of the Prince's interest in the built environment. So I worked there for a year as an urban designer and master planner and architectural designer. And on the back of that experience then, that's when I set up on my own 20 years ago. And I've spent a lot of time since on several of the big urban design projects obviously are for the Duchy of Cornwall, which was the Prince's landowning organization, now obviously operated and managed by the new Prince of Wales, Prince William.

[Dennis Scully]

Well, and tell me about.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

As you were just describing. So you went through all of that and then finally deciding to. To go out on your own and set up your own shop with a notion of what was this?

[Ben Pentreath]

The notion was pretty basic, actually, I think, which I do talk about in the book as well. And it was fortuitous. I had designed a little crescent of houses in Poundbury. I'd actually designed the houses when I was working with Fairfax and Salmons, with Anne and Richard, I'm sure you'll know, in New York. And so Richard and I collaborated on the buildings, but it was sort of a commission which I had brought into the office and which I was very heavily involved with, if we can put it like that. And then one half of that crescent in Poundbury Woodlands Crescent, was built and the development slowly chugged on, and then about five years later, and I'd been back in the UK for quite a few years at that point and was already beginning to get involved in Poundbury through the Prince's foundation and sort of engagement with the Duchy of Cornwall in those days. The next half of the crescent came forward and they were using identical house types. And Phil Fry, who's one of the house builders, said, well, we've got a small royalty fee that we need to pay for the reuse of the repeated house types and we need to write a cheque for a very small number of thousands of pounds. But, I mean, it was literally three or five thousand pounds, something like that. I can't remember what it was, not a lot of money, but enough that I said, suddenly thought, wow, I've got four months rent in the bank for the first time in my life. And it suddenly kind of gave me a light bulb moment that actually maybe this was quite a good time, which I had been thinking about in my head to strike out on my own. People had been beginning to, friends or what have you, who'd been beginning to ask me to kind of look at little projects and things like that. But the real tipping point was that in my architectural role at the Prince's Foundation, I was involved in the oversight and the supervision of a new development, a new town development in Northamptonshire called Upton, which the foundation was involved in the master planning and the architectural delivery. And my role was to sit with the very nice house builders who were bringing forward the first phases of that development and effectively to kind of nanny them and look after them and make sure that what they were designing had sort of a degree of architectural coherence and Integrity and they were very nice people. But I will say that it was still a slightly frustrating task. And I realized then, I mean, this is slightly bullish. And I guess at this stage I was in my early to mid-30s, bouncing around like a box of frogs. I realized I wasn't the best teacher, if I can put it like that. Wasn't the most patient, not the most patient person. And as the next phase of the development was being prepared and released for the market, I was thinking, do I really want to go through the next three years of my life kind of having to collaborate with another developer and tell them what to do and what it should try and persuade them what it should look like and control and kind of thing. And I was like, oh, do I try and find a developer and actually submit our own entry? The land was being released on a design competition basis and we entered the competition ourselves. And so that's what I opted to do, which was a very crazy move. So that was good. And so there I was, I guess I was in my early 30s, I was probably at about 33 years old and I was a one man band and I just won the design competition to design and submit planning application for 250 houses in a major new development in Northamptonshire. Yeah, that was my first ever project, which was quite a crazy one.

[Dennis Scully]

We're taking a quick break to remind you about Leloy.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

It's been quite a year for the design industry.

[Dennis Scully]

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[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Well, and what a wild start to your firm and a firm that has since grown by leaps and bounds. And I think you told me recently it's around 40 some odd people.

[Ben Pentreath]

Yeah, we're about 40 people now.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. And help me understand the division of all of that because here as we've been talking about this whole time, building out these model towns and all of that, but also you're very involved in interiors projects and have a shop and all these other elements. I mean it's quite an elaborate business.

[Ben Pentreath]

As it turns out, about one third of the Office is engaged on the master planning and the town planning side. One third on architecture, one third on decoration. It's roughly that sort of split a little more in the architectural department. So a lot of the work that we're doing is either designing new houses or restoring old houses or kind of major extensions and alterations to buildings. And if we're working on very old buildings, we love also doing the interior design because in some ways that's the really creative part of the process. And if we're working on new houses, we might be collaborating with another interior designer. And if we're. We also do quite a few interior design projects where we're working with a different architect. So it's a. It's. It's quite a strange and unusual blend in a way. And I do have some quite strange days, I will be honest. I have some strange days in my life where in the morning I will be doing a client meeting on a private house interior decoration project. And we will be sitting reviewing fabrics and wallpapers and cushion detailing and piping and, you know, what, what fabric trims we're going to wrap around, what fringe is going around a sofa. And I will leave that meeting and I will literally have to kind of EMP head of everything we've just been talking about because in the afternoon I'm going to an infrastructure meeting on a major housing development. And we're looking at flood risk assessments and sort of like beneath the road, drainage implications for kind of like what's happening above the development. And this is a kind of a weird degree of fragmentation. Obviously. It's a weird degree of fragmentation in the 20th century, late 20th, early 21st century. We no longer. We used to generalists. Everybody in a way now is in some sort of specialized business. You have architects who, I mean, I've been working recently with an architect who runs a very successful practice. All he does, all he has ever done his entire life is deliver sound recording studios. That's all they do. You're kidding. Make practice. Yeah.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Okay.

[Ben Pentreath]

You know, yeah. And that might include buildings, actually designing buildings, but only sound recording buildings. Or you'll have firms who are specialists in the delivery of healthcare, or you will have firms who are specifically involved in the delivery of leisure or entertainment facilities or hotels or whatever it might be. So we've become incredibly used to this degree of sort of fragmentation and specialization. But actually, in the 16th, 17th, 18th, up until the 19th century, there were very, very few distinctions between, if you take an architect, some of the great names of architecture and design in the 18th and the 19th century, William Kent, Robert Adam, Thomas Hope, whoever it might be. They were involved in the full gamut of design, from designing pieces of furniture to designing buildings to designing cities. And they didn't make any distinction between what they were doing. They were just designing and they were designing some of the most beautiful pieces of furniture ever made. They were designing some of the most beautiful cities ever made, some of the most beautiful buildings ever made. And so I take inspiration from that. Like, I'm not worried about spreading myself too thin. In a way, from a business perspective, it's maybe not the most intelligent choice these days. It can be quite confusing to people. Some people come to me with a certain idea that they think I'm an interior designer, have absolutely no idea that I've designed a building in my life. They just don't. They haven't. They've read about me through an interiors book or magazine or whatever it might be. That's their approach in other people in the world of the sort of Poundbury or the developments or stuff. When they find out, they come from meeting in our office and as you said, we've got a little shop next door to us in London which is a fun sideline, if I can put it like that. They're like, like, ah, what's that? You have a shop selling candlesticks, like, what's going on? But I enjoy it and actually it's really interesting because it also means that from the business perspective, which I know is obviously kind of really a part of your whole engagement here, there's something quite nice about not having all of your eggs in a single basket. I mean, as we've been chatting about before, ENG UK is going through a particular sort of economic cycle, economic political cycle, quite different from probably the economic political cycle that America is currently about to enter, where there's a general sense, I would say at the moment in the uk there's just a little bit of nervousness about the confidence that very well off people would need in order to hover over and then press the button to kind of press ahead with construction for kind of major new private house projects. There's just a degree of nervousness in the UK at the moment about increasing taxation and kind of concepts of kind of wealth tax, which would be very new, very unprecedented for us. But it's being talked about politically a lot at the moment. I have no idea if it'll happen or lot where I would say. And also frankly, with bank interest rates at the levels at which they seem to be settling at the Moment. Availability of mortgage is much more expensive and people are moving house less. It's just that simple. And so that has definitely impacted, not in a negative way. I mean, we're not struggling, but it's definitely impacted on the number of inquiries that RStudio has received over the last 18 months or two years compared to a period which felt incredibly busy before that. We're definitely in a state of life where we're giving any new inquiry into the office these days. We treat very seriously.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

We give it a lot more attention than we were.

[Ben Pentreath]

I've always treated every inquiry into the office with seriousness and sort of respect because you never quite know how a first little kind of nascent email into the studio is going to lead. And it's something which I learned really early on is that actually sometimes it's the things which seem to be not necessarily very promising on First Hint or First Arrival that actually turn out to be some of the most wonderful projects that you've ever worked on. You just don't know. But I will say that I can measure the quantity of inquiries. And so it's actually rather useful at the moment because to have different strands of the practice. I detect that we are entering a period. There is a massive movement in England now, politically, to push new housing schemes through the planning process in a way that if the government achieves what it's talking about, will really be quite unprecedented in my lifetime. And. And there's something quite intriguing for me at a business perspective at being in that space as well as in the space of kind of private housing right now, if that makes sense.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

It does.

[Dennis Scully]

And there are a couple of different.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Things I want to explore within that. And you and I were talking recently about the shop playing this wonderful marketing role in a way.

[Ben Pentreath]

Right.

[Dennis Scully]

And.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

And gives you this exposure that you might not otherwise get through all the other projects that you think it would be how people would learn of you. But as you say, you never know how people are coming to you, what they think you are when they come to you.

[Ben Pentreath]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

But I was also struck. And this is the opportunity that's gonna come out of you being on this show. You're welcome in advance, Ben, is that you are not. You are not working a lot in America.

[Dennis Scully]

Right.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

And I mean.

[Ben Pentreath]

And that is absolutely true.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

That is going to change. I am going to open those doors for you in a huge way.

[Ben Pentreath]

And that is. We'll be very grateful.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Yes.

[Dennis Scully]

But I'm fascinated by that in part because.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

And you and I were having this whole discussion recently about how the British people have often viewed hiring a designer to come and help them with their home and how not everyone feels comfortable with that. But also I'm curious why the big American projects haven't been a part of.

[Dennis Scully]

Your scope with all the great many.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Things that you've been doing.

[Ben Pentreath]

I mean, partly, I think, just a case. Well, partly, I would say actually there are many, many great American architects and interior designers. And I've always been slightly intrigued by why a client would actually engage an English architect. Architect. To design a building in America. You know, definitely open to be intrigued and understand that more. I mean, we are doing some projects at the moment in Australia and in New Zealand and there. I'm less intrigued down there because actually, if you want to commission a traditional building in New Zealand, your opportunities to engage an architect who can speak that language in a coherent, authentic way are very, very limited indeed. And I think in America, obviously it's a very different. It's a very different field. And there's a wonderful tradition in America which has been an unbroken tradition of designers, the sort of buildings and interiors that we do. So, you know, time will tell.

[Dennis Scully]

America's crying out for English interiors they love.

[Ben Pentreath]

Right? I mean, it's true. It is true. And I think that there is something that. Yeah, I mean, we are obviously very well known now in the field of English interior decoration, you know, whatever that means. I actually wrote an article when the book was published, I wrote an article article for Country Life magazine on Englishness in design. And it's a strange thing to kind of put your finger on, but there is something fundamentally, I suppose, about an English interior, a real authentic English interior that is fundamentally slightly undesigned. And so there is something, I can't quite put my finger on it, but when, if you can think about an American client giving an American architect and an American decorator a brief to design a quote, unquote, English style house. We sort of all inherently know at a fundamental level that when that project is delivered, it will not feel in any way, shape or form English.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

And how so? I mean, untapped.

[Ben Pentreath]

Well, that's the mystery of probably does. It doesn't smell right. You know, it probably works too well. It's probably, ultimately it's probably there's a degree to which particularly I think with regard to the interior decoration where it might feel over designed or too. Too comprehensively designed.

[Dennis Scully]

Yes, that's it.

[Ben Pentreath]

And we were chatting, you know, a few days ago about that and that sense that in America a client who is hiring an interior Designer might be, to a certain extent, nervous about asking to include things that they already own. There's a sense somehow, when I look at beautiful, very coherent American decoration in publications such as Architectural Digest or glossy coffee table books, that there's a sort of sense of total little design that I think that isn't completely how the English kind of design mentality would operate. I would certainly struggle myself with buying or specifying every last object in someone's house. And a lot of our work, we're working in some of the houses in the book. You know, we're working with people who have got fantastic collections, wonderful furniture, wonderful books, paintings, whatever it might be, which maybe they've inherited or maybe they've assembled. And I'm very used to working with clients who've got quite strong ideas about what they like and what they don't like. And I actually love that sort of engagement and bouncing back across with one another. I sometimes say to people coming into our office, it's a little bit like entering the tasting kitchen in a restaurant. I mean, we have a distinct flavor. But I really want to know what ingredients you like and dislike before I start cooking your dinner, if that makes sense.

[Dennis Scully]

It does. And I was so fascinated by the exercise that you described for me recently.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

I mean, tell me about that.

[Ben Pentreath]

With some of our projects in the early days, instead of presenting individual schemes or group schemes. And I know that these days, it used to be sort of 20 years ago, it used to be that everyone spent a long time wrapping bits of fabric around foam core and cardboard and sort of kind of collating them in a sort of collage, a sort of mosaic collage, and pinning them to boards which would be presented. These days, the fashion in England, and I think probably in America, is you have trays. You know, it's the same sort of thing. It's kind of slightly less work for an intern, but nonetheless less. It's sort of. You're presenting on your tray. So there's something about that grid, the rectangle, that, you know, I know that this is how most designers like to operate, where they sort of. Yeah, you know, they might. They might say that they're taking a visual or a written brief from the client, but then they're sort of basically fundamentally giving a lot of thought, a lot of focus, thoughts as to kind of, this color goes with this color goes with this one. And, you know, this is going to be the lead fabric, obviously, in the. I'm sorry to say it, but in the age of Instagram or social media, nothing stays New or original for more than a second these days, like images hurtle around. I see an image on Instagram one week, and then kind of three weeks later, I'm seeing it 50 times or whatever. It's so weird, this deep saturation of ideas. So even if you think you found something that is not overused and a bit tired and a little bit shabby, it's kind of like, guess what? By the time you finish that piece of upholstery, you'll have seen it a thousand times. But there's that sort of sense that people will build three palettes for a client to choose from. Scheme A, scheme B, scheme D, scheme C. And sort of take your pick. Do you want this one, this one, or this one? I've never actually felt very comfortable by that degree of didactic control, if that makes sense. I'm sort of not that type of person. I mean, to a certain extent, you could say if I was being very cynical, it's actually not true. But to a certain extent, I actually genuinely don't care very much. I mean, it's sort of decoration. It is actually temporal. It should change. Interior design is not something that was carved on tablets and brought down from the mountain by Moses. Okay? But there are one or two probably particularly American interior designers, I think we could both think of who you probably feel that they have arrived. Arrived from the mountain after a brief conversation with God about what someone's living room should look like. So, in contrast, what I love to do is to actually try to understand, really early days of conversations about what people like and dislike. And then I'm really thinking about what the building might like or dislike as well. Absolutely crucial in the whole mix. And I quite like to start with a massive pile of ideas that I think might be ideas that might be intriguing. And I have absolutely no idea where they might end up, you know, so I'm not being at all specific. When I have a huge pile of fabrics or wallpaper. Well, obviously a wallpaper, you know it's going to end up on a wall, but I couldn't tell you if it's going to end up in the wall of the drawing room or the bedroom or whatever. I'm not thinking that specifically at this stage. This is me laying out a list of ingredients that we might potentially use to cook with. And it's like, do you like this type of vegetable or that type of vegetable kind of thing? And what I often find is that we're then putting ideas and concepts in front of people's eyes, which they would never have dreamt of having on their own, but some of which they'll really react to positively, and some of which they'll react to negatively. And I find that an awful lot of my role as an interior designer is actually teasing out from people ideas that they have had had in their heads about how they would like to live. But they lack the confidence of knowing whether something is going to work or not work. And that lack of confidence, left to their own devices would lead to decisions that are actually bland and anonymous and impersonal, because they're worried about failure, and they'd rather risk nothing than risk failure, if you see what I mean. And so a lot of my role in that process is to actually draw out, intentionally draw out sort of contrast and different energy, and then from there we can sort of build a scheme. It's a funny thing because it's an art, it's not a science. One of the houses which I put in my book, which is one of the projects I loved the most and had the most wonderful time working on, it's a big country house in Dorset called Chattel. When I first went there, it had been up for sale for the first time in about 400 years or 300 years. And they won the bidding process. And I was engaged, and we got going and we were beginning to kind of start all of our ideas and all of our thinking for the architectural restoration and the interiors, all the rest of it. And as that process developed, they suddenly realized, or no, not suddenly, gradually realized, that they were in for something far too deep financially than they had factored in. And learning that you have made a mistake or that you're taking a project down the wrong route and having the guts to say so, but. But he did that and he sold the house. And by a very, very curious twist of fate, I then got engaged about six months later to become the interior designer to the new couple who had then bought the house. But they had very different taste, and they were totally at the opposite ends of their kind of lives. They were in their late 50s and. And the first couple were in their 20s. And if the first couple had bought the house, it would have had Tracey Emin Neons, and it would have had shabby chic, and it would have. You know, it would have had a completely different atmosphere. And I often tell that story to people when I'm working with them, and I'm trying to tell them that they are the most important people in the most important ingredients in the mix. It's not actually the house like in both instances, the house has been perfectly respected. Like the first couple would have done an impeccable job of restoring the house. No doubt about would have been the same house, the same me. I was going to be steering through their aesthetic in both situations and both projects you would have then been able to identify as a Ben Pentreath project. But they would have been completely different projects. And that's because the owners, the clients or patrons or whatever you want to call them are different. They're individuals and they've got their and their taste and sense of taste is the most important thing.

[Dennis Scully]

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[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

You said that in each case you'd be able to see your hand in it. And I wonder because some designers, the work is the same and you have.

[Dennis Scully]

No sense of the client and that's be.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Let's be honest, right? Yes, you have no idea. But what you were just describing is that you would very clearly see the two different clients in this projects, but you would also see your hand in some way. And how do you think your. As you were just describing, your guidance or the role that you. How does it show up, do you think, in your work? Because there's one specific project I want to ask you about in that company context.

[Ben Pentreath]

I suppose that the more projects I've worked on over the years, they begin to add up to a broad narrative where you can unpick kind of themes that run across a lot of those projects, which in a way in the book is what I was trying actually trying to understand. What is it that connects the decoration of a drawing room with the design of a town square? Because that's also part of my kind of late mega maze of how do I make sense of all of these things? And so these ideas of. I can't remember what any of my little mini chapter headings were at the beginning of the book, but a sense of history, a sense of character, a Sense of color, authenticity, these sorts of words. I mean, I always like to work with the history of a building or a place. There's a powerful narrative there that can take it in a million different ways. Having said that, I don't really feel very comfortable working in historicist styles of decoration. I work very comfortably in historicist styles of architecture, but in interior decoration, for me, actually it is something which is more, or I'm happy to paint a room any colour. I don't actually care what colour it could have been painted in 1780, if you see what I mean. It's a little bit of a cop out in a way, at a deep philosophical level. I'm actually much more of a modernist in decoration, which is ultimately a kind of private art. Leaping right back to the very first conversation, the beginning of this conversation. I love to mix contemporary furniture, antique furniture, contemporary paintings, antique wallpapers, whatever it might be. I love that conversation that is created through history by putting old things and new things and old ideas and new ideas together. And I love playing that game within the privacy of somebody's own interior. You can do whatever you like. As far as I'm concerned. There are no limits at all within an urban environment. I think that I like buildings to be much more background, much quieter, much calmer, much more reticent, much politer, kind of like much more civic because they are going to be there for a very long time and people are going to experience them who have no choice whether they want to experience them or not. And I change my ideas on decoration. It is, that's the whole point of it. You can have fun.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Well, exactly. And I think that there is. So I think there always is an element of fun in your work. But as you also were saying earlier, there is this lack of needing to.

[Dennis Scully]

Have a certain level of polish or.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Feeling like it's done to every detail. So funny enough, there's an image in your book, right? Okay, so you don't remember the headers sometimes, but it was in the Regency Fireworks. It was the Wiltshire house, right?

[Ben Pentreath]

Absolutely.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Okay, so on page 179 of your book is this extraordinary living room with this wonderfully colorful ottoman right between all of this furniture. And there's amazing ceiling work that's been done in this room. And there's incredible pieces of furniture and to your point, it's all mixed. There's mahogany, historical pieces and then contemporary pieces. Anyway, what caught the eye and the fascination of magazine editors and numerous people was a. Here was this photograph where on this ottoman there's Some object that's actually wrapped in bubble wrap or plastic or something. And then the sofa cushion isn't all, like, fluffed up. It's all clearly down, in fact. And so, like, people are wondering, like.

[Dennis Scully]

Oh, my God, how.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

How did this image even get in the book? It's not. It's not finished. Like, how did he overlook it? But clearly it was. You saw the image. You. You put it in the book. And the thing that was wrapped in bubble wrap or whatever on the table, you saw that. And that was obviously part of that family. That family is living there, right?

[Ben Pentreath]

I'm not sure. I'm not sure I have noticed the bubble.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Well, I mean, maybe. Maybe you didn't, but it's. But it's caught the eye of. Of. Of many people. And to the point that. To the point that I was literally. I was instructed to ask you about it. I was instructed to inquire.

[Ben Pentreath]

But one of the photographs. One of the photographs in the book is someone's kitchen. And it's got a giant inflatable wedged in underneath the kitchen islands. And I've had a few questions about that one as well. So my theory, when I'm taking photographs of houses, I'm gonna look up the bubble wrap. Yeah. Where is that?

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Look it up, look it up. But it is funny because.

[Ben Pentreath]

Oh, yeah, there it is. Exactly. Yeah, that'll be. Yeah. Yes. That's. That was all just part of the board games and the kind of boxes and all the rest of it. So I have a theory that. Which is very carried out. When I'm taking photographs of interiors. I don't like to do masses and masses of kind of moving things around and editing. Now that you point out, the bubble wrap I might have taken. I might have made the effort to take that off. I think I took that photograph towards the end of the day.

[Dennis Scully]

It shows you the attention that people are paying to your work, Ben.

[Ben Pentreath]

And it also demonstrates my rigorous attention to detail. But actually, one of the fascinating things for me about producing the book was the process of actually taking all the photographs, which was a massive learning exercise. I realized quite early on that I was going to struggle to engage a professional photographer to help on the projects because they were so diverse in their character and in their geography. That finding a photographer to take photographs of interiors is one thing, finding a photographer to take photographs of modern architectural environments is another thing. Finding somebody who's comfortable in both worlds is really quite tough. And I struggle to find somebody who understood the capturing the atmosphere of some of the Town building projects at the same time as houses and interiors. And I realized that basically I was going to have to kind of learn how to do a lot of this myself. And so as I went through the projects, I realized that quite a few of our houses over the years have been photographed professionally by. By very great interiors photographers. But what I realized is there's a sort of slightly bombastic, dogmatic kind of quality to a lot of interiors photography, where they will bring their camera in, place the tripod exactly where they want it, and then spend the next kind of two hours moving everything around in homage to the position of the tripod, which the photographer set at the beginning. I have been on shoots with multiple assistants where literally hours get spent where, you know, sofas are moved an inch or two further back. You know, everything is positioned and composed for this kind of. And it's. It's almost like the camera is like, I don't know, Louis xiv, you know, the Sun King or something like. And everything is kind of being positioned to kind of worship the camera position. And if you are on your own in a house taking photographs of an interior, you actually just don't have the luxury of all of that kind of pushing and pulling and poking. It's incredibly exhausting, incredibly slow. And actually, the really weird thing is at the end of the day, you create an energy, and a photograph is a very weird representation of reality. You really, really learn as you take a photograph how. How incredibly sophisticated human sight is by comparison to a camera. Just the fact that we have two lenses, the fact that we have our two eyes, which bring in a huge amount of information. The fact that you can simultaneously see things in the near foreground and in the far distance, and there's no focal issues. The fact that I can look out of the window and see kind of buildings in the distance, but my kind of. I can also read the tone of the room inside, and so on and so forth. Like, the human brain and eye are incredibly sophisticated at deep at processing information in a way that camera is incredibly crude at doing so. But one of the things which I learned is that therefore, what you're trying to do as the photographer is to capture the atmosphere of what a place is like, really. And. And the best thing you can do is to gently kind of let your camera move around. And I came up with a basic rule that I didn't touch anything. If it was okay, I photograph it as I found it. In retrospect, I probably should have taken the bubble wrap off. But then the bubble wrap on that ottoman is part of the informality of that house. In a sense, it's sort of. You know, there are some of the projects which are more inherently composed, but in very, very few of the projects in the book, was I pimping anything. In virtually none of them that I can think of was I bringing things in. But there's definitely a narrative. I mean, I know the order in which I photographed the buildings and the houses and the places. And as time went on, I became softer and softer and more and more reticent in my approach. Less didactic, less bombastic, and actually got a lot more nimble at capturing the place as well. Like, I could spend, you know, much less time and actually be able to impart much more information. Because it's all to do with realizing that the camera is not the kind of the powerful thing. The camera's actually the kind of sort of the weak thing in the mix.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Well, I wonder, and you've talked about this a bit, the process of putting this book together and you've joked about.

[Dennis Scully]

About the many delays involved in putting.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

The book together, but also the, you know, the sort of extraordinary undertaking required, but how one looks back on their work and the decisions that you made at various projects right, over the years and you see how your work evolved. I wonder what you walked away understanding better or thinking about with both your work and career.

[Ben Pentreath]

You know, I'm at a sort of an interesting time. I've been working for 20 years. If I was a certain type of person, I could say, well, I've got another 20 years or 30 years to work. Yes, I wanted to. Are you that person to work? No, I'm not. I'm actually genuinely not. Because I have quite a strong feeling that an awful lot of architects like to think of themselves, that the older they get, the better they get. And I'm not sure that's true. I think that there is a moment at which one's interest and sort of like joie de vivre or sense of excitement at life and at the challenges of life can begin to diminish a little bit. And I think there's a sense at which. There's just sometimes a sense at which it's good to change the pace of your life and not pretend that you need to kind of be this very controlling, dominating person forever and ever and ever and ever. So I definitely do not feel that I want to carry on at the same sort of pace as I have been at the moment for as long as I have been so far. I really do feel that quite strongly. I think looking back at things teaches you what's important, what's less important. And, I mean, it's fascinating being up here in Orkney and beginning to think about the house up here and how we're going to do things slowly. And, you know, unlike when I was first decorating the parsonage down in Dorset, where, you know, that was very much. That was sort of 18, 17 years ago at the start of my career. You know, we're now tackling a house, I won't say at the end of my career at all, but, you know, kind of in the second half, if I can put it like that. And I'm definitely feeling our approach up here be, I think, a lot gentler, a lot quieter, a lot more sort of like. I mean, I'm increasingly less worried about things being designed, if that makes sense, particularly when it comes to interiors. Yeah, it's this. This particular house has got a very, very quiet, reticent energy, which I'm. You know, this is. It was interesting how the parsonage wanted color and pattern, and in a way this house doesn't. And maybe that's just me going through a slightly different phase of life. I'm.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Well, I mean, it's interesting in part because we've been talking recently about succession. My colleague Fred wrote an extensive piece about talking to different firms. David Kleinberg, who tried to figure out a succession plan for his firm, and it didn't really work out as he had hoped or intended. And it's very challenging for many designers to step away, or architects to construct a plan that will allow someone else to take over in the future. And, I don't know, I mean, it feels like. And, you know, I was. I just had the pleasure of celebrating your birthday with you in New York.

[Ben Pentreath]

Yeah, exactly.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

I was thinking about your age and sort of where you are in your career, and I wondered, and it sounds like you are, if you were thinking about. Okay, you know, it doesn't have to be this intention, exactly.

[Ben Pentreath]

I began to think about this quite intensely a few years ago, and I've talked about it a little bit with people, but it was a definite sad moment in my life where my mum had an unexpected heart attack and died. And my father needed a lot of care and attention and love, which my brothers and I gave him. I mean, obviously there was the sort of. To a certain extent, that was just the shock of mum dying. And then, sadly, but rather beautifully in its way, literally within a matter of weeks, my dad died, really not very long after my Mother had died after 50 plus years of being married and being together. In a way, he just couldn't really cope without her. It was a rather wonderful thing. But then I had another whole period where I was kind of needing to at that moment, look after myself, as it were. And that was now, about five years ago. And there was a really crazy moment for me on a professional journey which those two events nearly almost simultaneously made me reflect on in a way that I think if it hadn't happened in quite the way, it might have taken me a little bit longer to realize the reality of life. And at that time, without a shadow of a doubt, almost every single decision in the office in some way, shape or form was coming back and landing on my desk. It was just how things were. And suddenly, at a minute's notice, my mum died on a Sunday night at 9 o' clock in the evening and on the Monday morning, instead of me being in London as planned, you know, running the whole show and being center of the whole thing, you know what? I wasn't there. And I wasn't there for weeks and weeks and weeks. I was intermittently there, but really hardly at all. And obviously I was already wrapped in a lot of love and support from the studio and from clients and all sorts of stuff. But what was absolutely fascinating is that during that entire process, absolutely nothing missed a beat. And I don't mind admitting that it was at the end of that process as I was coming back into the office and reconnecting and realizing that and having been set up in a system where, as I said, every single decision it was in some degree or another landing on my desk, which made me a very crucial spoke to the wheel. A very important person suddenly realized that I was utterly dispensable at a certain point. And I also realized another thing, that I had grown the practice to a scale where it also was beginning to develop a life of its own and attract talent of its own and create systems of its own. It had its own culture. Culture. And I think it really put that starkly into focus for me in a rather beautiful way. I was like, okay, this is really good. And so I actually asked my accountants to just prepare a document for me to discuss different ways of what happens next type of thing. Because one of the things I was absolutely certain of is that the earlier I thought about it, it the calmer and more processed and more successful any succession would be. And in there was a very interesting setup by the government quite a few years ago now in England called an employee ownership trust. Which allows somebody like me, in any sphere of life, who's created their own company, to divest ownership from the individual into the company as a whole. And the reason the government is really wanting to support that is because there is a strong amount of evidence that businesses where employees have a sense of ownership of the company while they work within the company actually prosper better than those which don't. And so, to cut a very long story short, that was the method that I then set up. And I guess about two or three years later, two or three years ago, I took the company down that route. So it's actually now owned by a. The trust. I'm obviously a founder trustee, but there will be a moment where I pull away from the trust and there will be a moment where the company has effectively, over a very long period of time, paid me back for the value which was set by the HMRC when we did the company valuation, at which point I will actually no longer have any, as it were, financial interest in the company. I'm just a normal employee. I'm currently just a normal employee now, just like everyone, everyone else. And I think of all of the different metrics that I could look at to create a place where effectively a collaborative approach can outlive my departure, that was the one that I could see that would be most robust for the long term in gender, kind of least rivalries or jealousies or those sorts of issues that can bubble up in firms with succession. And I think in order for that to succeed, actually, that there must be a moment which we still need to work out exactly when that is, but there must be a moment at which I stand back and begin to stand back and sort of make it clear that I'm beginning to stand back. And so that process is just very, very gently underway. And so that's quite exciting for me to think that we've sort of got to a point where the trust is now set up and will exist. There is a definite sense of which I'm highly conscious that there be, there really will be a moment sooner than I care to imagine, where I know that the firm, the practice, the studio, the philosophy, the kind of, you know, the nugget of what we are about, will be led more successfully, kind of not by me. I think will actually be one of the best gifts that I can give to the longevity of the practice, because it's all about letting the next generation, who I'm carefully focused on at the moment, kind of have the time and the space, crucially, to kind of prosper and do what they need to do. One of the first updates, which I think will be happening later this year, is that the name of the studio is just ever so slightly going to shift and it'll be goodbye to. To Ben and hello to Pentreath Studio. But I think that, again, it's all part of. I mean, we had a whole discussion within the Office about kind of just losing that name entirely. Sure. It's no skin off my nose. Do we call ourselves traditional architectural design? And then everyone thought, on balance, when I was chatting to all of the directors, I was like, they were like, that seems like quite an easy way to just put your reputation through. Through the Treasure, in a way. What's the point in that? We've built a strong reputation and that's nice to continue to reference. But I think that very much increasingly I will be trying to create a world in which less of the personality is about me.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Well, but you've built this tremendous brand equity and so there is a lot behind Pentrif. There is a lot of meaning and value behind it. And so I think that's a very clever way to continue and to work towards. So this is big and I'm excited about this for you and as I say, we're going to check back in with you and see how it's progressing.

[Ben Pentreath]

Absolutely, yes.

[Podcast Co-host or Interviewer]

Ben, it's been an immense pleasure speaking with you and I thank you so much for the time.

[Ben Pentreath]

I've absolutely loved it, apart from that plastic bag.

[Dennis Scully]

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to keep up with the latest design industry news, visit us [e-mail] where you can sign up for our newsletter, browse job listings and join our BoH Insider community for access to online workshops, a free print subscription and much more. If you have a note for the podcast, drop us a [e-mail] if you're enjoying these conversations, please leave us a US a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others to discover the show. This show was produced by Fred Nicolaus and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.