The loaded generation

Architecture's image may be glamorous again, but the average architect's career path most certainly is not. A new breed of entrepreneurs, though, is pioneering new routes to the big time.

Robert Gaukroger, 31, and Scott Pryde, 27, are typical of the trend. Displaying a combination of hard work and business acumen, they plan to wheel and deal their way to rapid success. Their business plan confidently predicts turnover growth from zero when they started a year ago to £2.5m in five years.

Their latest venture is an 80-storey residential skyscraper. They don't have a client or a site, but figure that a spectacular design and a marketable concept – affordable homes in a sustainable tower – will be enough to convince potential investors or, failing that, generate bucket-loads of publicity. "We think that if it's high, if it's buildable and if it's sustainable, it's sellable," says Gaukroger.

When they set up their practice, they didn't wait for clients to come to them. Nor did they bother with competitions, which they saw as a lot of effort with no guarantee of pay at the end.

Instead, they went out looking for work, scouring London's streets in search of old properties with redevelopment potential. "We went anywhere, crawling around streets, picking out buildings that hadn't been touched," says Gaukroger. "Then, we went to the Land Registry and found out the owners. I'd literally badger them until they'd see me." They would present owners with a partly worked-up scheme for their sites and offer to work for a percentage. The approach landed them a string of residential schemes in Bermondsey, south London.

They soon realised their creativity was earning money for other people, and decided to cut out the middle-man by developing buildings themselves. "We wanted to get a bit of the action," says Gaukroger. They trawled through auction catalogues looking for sites with potential before snapping up a 2400 m2 site in Willesden Green, north-west London, for a rock-bottom £33 000.

The site, a former car park in a residential street, had a history of planning refusals but, after a series of exploratory meetings with planners, they secured permission for four flats. "As opposed to being greedy, we've been cautious and done a small scheme that is in the interests of the surrounding buildings," says Gaukroger.

They own a 50% stake in the project, the remaining half belonging to an estate agent friend who is providing funding.

But the scheme is not simply a money-making venture. The architects will use the project to test an Eganesque modular building system they have developed. Using prefabricated, standard-sized panels on a steel frame, they hope to build the entire scheme in six-and-a-half weeks.

Gaukroger says architecture, not money, is the prime motivator: "We just want to build buildings." The potential rewards are great, however.

Liverpool architect Jonathan Falkingham, 38, became an entrepreneur almost by accident when he left architecture school in the late 1980s. Now, he is a multimillionaire. "There were no jobs and I didn't want to move to London, so I set up a practice," he explains. "It was really hard to get going – nobody took risks with young, unknown architects." His luck turned when a bar he had designed, Baa Bar, got into financial difficulties and he decided to take it over. The business took off.

Shortly after that, he got together with a young businessman called Tom Bloxham and the two formed now-legendary developer Urban Splash. The company pioneered high-quality, modern urban apartments in the North-west and is valued at £20m.

"We realised there was an opening for a developer doing what nobody else was doing," says Falkingham, now managing director of Urban Splash. "Instead of trying to persuade my clients to take brave steps, I was able to do it myself."

Young architects are beginning to realise that their problem-solving skills can be transferred into other business areas, but Falkingham says the older generation still frowns on his approach: "Architects with a capital 'A' think development is dirtying your hands. They think you must be compromising your integrity." He believes the opposite is true: being your own client allows you to reject compromise. Like Gaukroger, he is driven by a passion for design: "I came to development very much as an architect, not as someone who wanted to make money."

The success of Urban Splash has inspired Manchester architect Jonathan Davidson. At the age of 34, he has left up-and-coming practice Arca to set up on his own. He wants to look at new ways of getting his ideas built, and he is not sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. "I'm just going to spend a couple of days walking the streets, finding buildings," he says. "If that means wearing out my shoe leather, so be it."

At the heart of his approach is the belief that architects are selling themselves short. "We're generating value for other people but none for ourselves," he says. He has drawn up a four-pronged strategy for maximising revenue on projects. He has already struck a deal with a developer, which will give him 1.5% of the sale value of any site he finds.

Davidson says architects have to become more entrepreneurial to survive at a time when they are increasingly being treated as subcontractors. "We've got to be much more proactive about it, about what we can do for people instead of being on the back foot all the time. The longer we stand on the sidelines carping about our role, the further we are from the process."

David Marks and Julia Barfield, the partnership behind the London Eye, have shown a jaded profession how a mixture of creativity and determination can overcome almost any obstacle. Last month, they shot back into the public eye with a speculative skyscraper – a 72-storey cluster of residential towers called the Skyhouse. The graceful design, which is looking for a site and a client with £95m, received massive media coverage.

Until quite recently, architects were forbidden from indulging in enterprise and self-promotion of this kind. Until the early 1980s, architects were banned from acting as developers and from advertising their services. The RIBA felt such commercial practices would tarnish the purity of the profession. When the rules were scrapped, practices were slow to exploit the new opportunities.

One of the few who did was Andy Doolan of Edinburgh. "I've been at it now for over 20 years," he says. "Before the ban was lifted, architects had to use their wife's name – the wife was the developer and the husband the architect. We had to hand in our RIBA badge. They gave it back when they changed the rules."

Doolan is now worth more than £20m and owns a string of buildings in Edinburgh, including the city's most fashionable hotel, The Point, which generates profit of £2m a year. He encourages other architects to follow his example but warns them to think things through properly. "When we opened The Point, we researched carefully to see if there was a market for a trendy hotel. It wasn't just a whim. Architects are well known for ego trips and fancy designs. You can't expect investors to support designs that are crazy." He adds: "Architects have to start thinking commercially. They've got to learn how to do research, how to work with property agents, how to put funding packages together."

Doolan is working with Aberdeen's architecture school to launch a course in development. The initiative follows the success of a short course he ran earlier this year in conjunction with the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland. "It was over-subscribed," says RIAS spokesman John Pelan. "It's obvious that architects, particularly the younger ones, are being very proactive in trying to maximise the earning potential of their design, rather than handing it over lock, stock and barrel to a developer."

Gaukroger says the only resistance is coming from the profession's old guard. "Only last week, Scott [his partner] was in a conversation with an older architect, who had a real go at him for not following procedures," he says. "But that guy is 55, he's working for a medium-sized practice, and he's going to dry up there. We're only 30, and we'll have buildings coming out of the ground in the next 12 months. And they'll look the business."