What a Sketch Taught Me About Leadership, Sustainability and the Non-Linear Path

Published for International Women's Day 2026

At an architecture lecture years ago, something unexpected appeared on the screen.

Not a building. Not a polished masterplan. Just a sketch.

A line wandered from A to B - but not neatly. It looped, paused, doubled back. Some routes stopped altogether. Others curved before finding a new direction.

It felt strangely reassuring. Because it looked like the truth.

That sketch was shared by Amanda Levete - architect, founder of AL_A, and one of the most quietly radical voices in our profession. I have thought about it ever since. Not just as a description of a career. As a description of how real progress actually moves.

A Career Path - As It Actually Looks" - the diagram that has stayed with me since first seeing it at a lecture years ago. Dead ends included.

☉ The myth of the straight line

Architecture school implies a clear sequence.

Study → qualify → build → lead.

In practice, none of it unfolds that cleanly. Projects shift. Briefs evolve. Planning resists. Construction reveals what drawings cannot anticipate.

For women in architecture, the path has historically been even less predictable. Opportunities were limited. Leadership roles were slower to open. Voices that should have shaped the profession were too often overlooked.

And yet some of the most influential architects working today arrived precisely because they refused those limits. The detours became part of the design.

→ What leadership actually looks like

There is a version of leadership architecture that sometimes celebrates - decisive, singular, heroic.

The leadership shaping the future of our profession often looks different.

It is collaborative. Patient. Persistent. It questions assumptions, builds strong teams, and pushes toward better outcomes - often quietly, and often over a very long time.

Amanda Levete's keynote at the Homes for Londoners event at City Hall in June 2024 reflected exactly this. Drawing on five AL_A projects, she made the case for public space as an act of care - for how we live alongside each other and alongside nature. It was the kind of thinking that takes decades to develop. You do not get there in a straight line.

← Sustainability and the long game

The connection between this kind of leadership and sustainable design is not accidental.

Designing buildings that genuinely perform - thermally, environmentally, over their whole lifetime - requires the same disposition. Long-term thinking. Resistance to shortcuts. The willingness to insist on a better solution even when the easier one is available.

At RISE, we work within a fabric-first philosophy. Before specifying systems, we ask what the building envelope can do on its own:

→ How can orientation, daylight and thermal mass work harder

→ Which materials minimise carbon while ageing well

→ Where does simplicity outperform complexity

These decisions take patience. They require clients who trust the process and teams willing to think beyond the immediate. In many ways, this mirrors what the women who have shaped architecture over decades have always done - improving the profession steadily, through clarity of purpose and determined, quiet change.

☉ Constraints that reveal opportunity

Architecture rarely begins with perfect conditions.

Budgets are tight. Planning is complex. Existing buildings resist intervention. And yet within these constraints, the most interesting solutions tend to emerge.

The same is true of careers.

The architects who have most reshaped the profession often began by navigating systems that did not fully support them. What looked like obstacles became catalysts. The dead ends were not the end of the story - they were where the real thinking started.

→ For those earlier in the journey

IWD 2026 arrives at a moment when sustainability is finally becoming central to how London builds - not a niche position but an expectation. The Passivhaus standard is gaining ground. Fabric-first thinking is entering the mainstream. There is genuine space for new voices, new leadership, and new ideas.

Your path does not need to be perfectly mapped.

The most meaningful work in architecture tends to come from curiosity and persistence rather than certainty. The profession is still evolving - and that is precisely where the opportunity lies.

☉ The sketch worth remembering

Progress rarely travels in a straight line.

Careers evolve through exploration, setbacks and unexpected breakthroughs. Practices grow through experimentation and accumulated precision. The same is true for the change we mark on International Women's Day.

Real progress loops. It pauses. It redirects.

But over time, those lines form something powerful - a new direction for architecture, for sustainability, and for the people shaping the future of both.

Keep building - together

At RISE, we believe that good architecture is never accidental. It is the result of asking harder questions for longer, holding a vision through uncertainty, and refusing to accept that the easier option is good enough.

If you are thinking about a sustainable home in London - one that performs as beautifully as it looks - we would love to talk.

→ Email us at architects@risedesignstudio.co.uk
→ Or call the studio on 020 3947 5886

RISE Design Studio, Architects, Interior Designers + Sustainability Experts

☉ Architecture for people and planet
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