David marks MBE is joint managing director at Marks Barfield Architects.
The firm will be most known to you I'm sure as the architects of the London eye.
David was educated at the international school of Geneva where he studied architecture at
Kingston Polytechnic for a year before going on to the architectural association.
In 1981, David married Julia Barfield a fellow architecture also studying at the Architectural
Association.
Between 1982 and 1989 David worked as a project architect for the Rodgers partnership, and
in 1989 David and Julia cofounded their own architecture practice, Marks Barfield Architects.
The Clapham based firm has worked on a number of extremely high profile architectural projects
in addition to the London Eye amongst others, some notable projects include the World Centre
in Toulon, the Kew Gardens Treetop walkway, and the spiral cafe in Birmingham's Bullring
shopping centre.
Another landmark project the British Airways i360, a 132 metre observation tower on the
seafront in Brighton, opened in August 2016; if you haven't been there you need to go.
If I had to define the work of Marks Barfield very briefly I would say that it brings together
technological innovation and sophistication with fun, which is a rare combination.
I'm looking forward to what David is going to say to us.
David the floor is yours.
Good morning faculty, parents, friends, dignified guests, graduating class of 2017.
I'm delighted and honoured to have been asked to give you a brief address and what an exciting
day this is for all of you.
I hope you've been inspired through your studies here to move through life with enthusiasm
and a clear sense of wholeness and direction.
For my part I was the first in my family to go to university.
I came from Europe, but with a British father, I didn't think it was going to be a big problem
to enrol at a British university.
Problem was, I wasn't accepted anywhere I applied.
I wasn't considered good enough.
But when I arrived in London and hoiked my portfolio around the polytechnics and universities,
and when I approached Kingston requesting an interview and showed them my portfolio,
they saw something the others didn't and offered me a place.
That was a lifetime ago but I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity it gave me and
the academic and professional path it set me on.
In some ways it feels like only yesterday that Julia Barfield my wife and I set up our
architectural practice.
In others, it feels like a long time ago.
So much has happened.
We've experienced so many changes in the world as well as in our private lives.
Today is virtually all of our work is won through competition, although ironically our
biggest project and success today the London Eye came out of a completion we didn't win.
In fact nobody won that competition as the judges didn't think any of the entire were
good enough.
But history has shown that it was.
As architects we aim to put into practise the philosophy that good design has the power
to improve people's lives and transform the quality of the environment for the better.
We work across many different sectors from arts and culture to education, transport,
offices and the urban realm.
It's wonderfully energising to be engaged in so many different and varied projects both
in the UK and overseas.
We focus on providing an architecture that is sustainable, imaginative and a pleasure
to experience.
Dreaming, designing and making real buildings and structures and environments we can all
stand behind and feel proud of.
We work very closely with talented engineers and other teams of consulates to makes things
better, to do more with less.
And we don't necessarily wait for someone to ask us to help solve a particular problem.
If we see something that needs to be done, and we think we can offer a solution, we try
to make it happen.
We take an entrepreneurial approach, but very much with a triple or quadruple approach to
the bottom line.
It's not just about financial or economic project but equally about benefits to society
and future generations.
Your generation and the next.
But today is not about me, nor about any of us on this podium it's about you, it's about
all of you.
Take a moment to look around you, take a look at the person on your left, the person on
your right, in front of you, behind you.
You are inheriting the world.
The whole of history.
Our place on earth, our place in time, all of it.
Everything.
Everything that's good, bad, ugly and beautiful.
What a responsibility.
And you would be quite justified in asking my generation, what did you do?
The reality is, not enough.
We did what we could, what we thought we could, maybe not all of us but I like to think most
of us, most of the time, or at least we tried.
I'm not going to pretend it's easy, the challenges we have to face as humanity are already huge,
and continuing to grow.
Our generation almost certainly had it easier than you will.
But we know that you can and will rise to these challenges.
Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you.
We're all part of a larger self.
Put faith in yourselves and each other, reject the calls of fear and blame, help those left
behind by globalisation.
Rewrite the rules of the economy, so that the excessive of inequality and exploitative
extractive industries or activates driving climate change and other inequities are halted
ideally reversed.
These are not small challenges, but increasingly pressing.
48 years ago on the 24th December 1968 Apollo 8 captured a picture of our blue planet rising
above the baron moon surface.
It was called earth rise.
It is possibly the most influential photograph ever taken.
It brought home to millions of people in an instant how vulnerable our small blue planet
really is and how desperately we have to look after it better.
For the sake of all life on earth, it was a global wake up call.
I'd like to leave you with that image, that photograph that one picture in which you see
the entire planet, one world, one race, one future, bound together.
It's yours and yours for the making.
My father gave me lots of great advice during his life, and one I never forget is you don't
have to take no for an answer.
My advice to you is be inspired problem solvers.
Don't be afraid to surprise and delight, to shock and amaze.
Today is a great today, it's a day that marks an important transition, your graduation.
A day for all of you and for all of us to remember.
Go forth with a skip in your step and love in your hearts, well done to all of you.