Founder of Make Architects talks to Building about the buzz around the London and China and Ecobuild event later in March

Now we’re three days in - just about - what are your thoughts on the vibe?

London is fantastic. Everywhere else in the UK is a bit dire. There is hardly anything happening in the regions. There is plenty happening in the capital but once you get outside there are pretty much no tower cranes to be seen anywhere. Even in the bigger cities.

So how is Make faring at the moment then?

We’re doing a huge amount in London - Broadgate, London Wall, 1 Hanover Square - and we’re doing a little pavilion at the bottom of the Orbit on the Olympic Park which is fun. And then it’s China. Around 30% of our revenue came from China last year. We have 15 people out there and we have set up a little start up in Hong Kong. People say China is going to encounter problems but I haven’t seen any evidence of that at all. It still seems to be on the up and we are still getting lots of enquiries.

We’ll be seeing you at Ecobuild - you have been helping us with an exciting project we’re launching on day one at the conference

Yes. It’s going to be great. We have been working on a concept, as you know, for a Bamboo inspired design for a Chinese charity. A model will be on display and people will be able to help add bricks to it in the form of Lego pieces. It’ll be good fun. We were hoping to get some Lego pandas to go with it. But I am not sure Lego does pandas. They do other animals that maybe we could paint black and white. Though I imagine that would be pretty time consuming.

A quandary indeed - anyone reading this, answers on Twitter please!

Ken Shuttleworth will be on the UBM stand at Ecobuild on Tuesday 20 March in the afternoon to launch the Bamboo City model. Please stop by…