Architecture & Design

Architecture & Design | 19 Having served as President of the Kamra tal-Periti and on numerous national and international boards, what leadership lessons have stayed with you throughout your career? The most important lesson is also the simplest: listen more than you speak. Leadership in a profession like ours requires you to hold many different perspectives simultaneously — the technical, the political, the social, the aesthetic — and the only way to do that well is to genuinely hear what others are telling you, even when, especially when, you disagree. The second lesson is about the long view. Institutional change, in planning, in conservation, in the way a profession organises itself, is slow, a reflection of the slowness of the building process itself. But the belief and the arguments you make truthfully, persistently and in good faith eventually become the common sense of the next generation. That is worth remembering when progress feels invisible. And thirdly is the importance of remaining a practitioner. Leadership roles can absorb you entirely if you let them. But the credibility that makes your leadership useful derives from the work itself. It is important to keep this dichotomy of professional life in productive tension. As Chairman of the Valletta 2018 Foundation, you played a key role in securing Valletta's designation as European Capital of Culture. What are you most proud of from that experience? Leading Valletta's successful bid required me to think about architecture not merely as built form but as a framework for how a society understands and projects itself. Valletta 2018 was an opportunity to move regeneration from being building led to becoming culture led, in a post-colonial, young European country. In seeking a balance between economic growth and cultural preservation, we still need growth in those areas 'beyond preservation', where we need to apply the lessons learnt from the past to contemporary culture and our responsibility to create the new heritage of tomorrow. Valletta 2018 promoted the idea of a Valletta, and a Malta I called a 'Greater Valletta', where the latter grows from the notion of the planned city and which struggles to maintain the same quality of the former. The bid process itself was transformative. To make the case for Valletta as a European Capital of Culture required us to articulate, with accuracy, honesty and passion, what this city is and what it might become — to tell a story about a place that those of us who live and work here are passionate about. The process engaged people who had not previously thought of themselves as participants in the cultural life of the city. Architecture, heritage, public space — these are not specialists' concerns. They belong to everyone, and the Valletta 2018 process, at its best, reflected that. The designation also demonstrated and convinced Europe that a small capital in a small country could produce something of genuine significance. That continues to matter to me as an argument about scale. That ambition is not proportional to size. Having said that I cannot say I am satisfied with the outcome, especially in terms of community involvement, but that's another story for another day. Valletta will need a new strategy if it is to be driving for excellence towards its 500th anniversary in 2066. In your opinion, what are the greatest challenges currently faced by Maltese architecture and planning? The challenges are both structural and cultural. Structurally, planning in Malta has for too long been subject to short- term political influence rather than expert, independent, long-term vision. I argue for a planning system genuinely led by professionals from a range of fields, operating with an independent and clear mandate and insulated from the electoral cycle. Without that, no individual policy will be sufficient. Culturally, the construction sector remains predominantly driven by residential and commercial real estate pressures rather than by a considered national vision for the built environment serving productivity. The result is a form of development that accumulates without composing, that adds volume without adding quality. The gravest risk is the loss of what makes these islands distinctive. Attractiveness is not a marketing asset; it is a quality of life. If Malta remains a pleasant, beautiful, coherent place to live and work, it will serve its residents and its visitors alike. If we sacrifice that quality for short-term gain, we will have lost something that cannot easily be recovered. If you could influence one major change in Malta's built environment over the next decade, what would it be and why? A genuine shift from building-led to culture-led regeneration, and here I mean culture in the fullest sense of the term, not restricted to heritage or the arts. I want to see Malta move from a model in which the built environment is primarily shaped by development pressure to one by a deliberate, shared vision of what kind of place we want to live in. Where our architecture - and infrastructure - are there to support our goals. This requires, among other things, a proper national strategy for existing building stock, for the repurposing of what we already have before we add further to what we do not need. The benefits of adaptive reuse are not only environmental but social and economic: existing buildings carry memory, identity, and patina that new construction cannot replicate. Valletta is the model I return to. A city that has been inhabited, adapted, and reimagined across centuries without losing its essential character. The question for Malta over the next decade is whether we can apply that information at larger scale. Not as nostalgia, but as a genuinely contemporary way of building, if we are to continue the country's legacy of creating new heritage. When future generations look at Malta's architectural and urban development in the early 21st century, what do you hope they will say about the contribution of architects, and about AP Valletta's contribution in particular? I hope they will say that architects argued consistently and in public for quality, for long-term thinking, and for the human experience of space over the imperatives of the market. That the profession held its line when it was not easy to do so. And I hope they will say that AP Valletta—through its projects, its research, and its people—demonstrated that it is possible to practise architecture as a civic discipline from a small island at the edge of Europe. That the practice left behind not only buildings but ideas: about how to engage with the past without being constrained by it, about how to build for the future without betraying what already exists, about what it means to take a place seriously. And above all, that AP was a place of opportunity for the many young people who started their professional career there. The concept of Involution, which we have been developing in our research and manifesto work, is part of that contribution. A small step back can be the foundation for a very large leap forward. What advice would you give to young architects entering the profession in Malta today? Take our context seriously. Malta is not a limitation; it is a privilege. To work here is to work within one of the most layered, historically rich, and intellectually demanding built environments in the Mediterranean. That is not a small thing, and it should fuel your ambition rather than diminish it. Invest in research. The best architecture comes from deep understanding of a place, of a brief, of a material, of a structural principle. The projects that endure are the ones that were thought about hard before they were built. Remain engaged with the public and the social dimension of the profession. Architecture shapes the lives of people who did not commission it, who did not vote for it, who may not even notice it. It carries a civic responsibility that goes beyond any individual client relationship. Finally, find collaborators who challenge you. The practice of architecture, at its best, is never a solitary exercise.

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