How one woman is overturning stereotypes in the construction industry

Hussain Architectural Design has expanded to four offices across Burnley, Blackburn, London and Manchester and 12 staff that are two-thirds female

Saira Hussain was awarded entrepreneur of the year at the Precious Awards, which celebrate women of colour (Courtesy Photo)

Saira Hussain started working as an architectural planner from her bedroom in her parents house in Burnley, in 2011. But one job led to another and soon she was looking for an office, so she wasn’t bothering her family by holding meetings in her living room.

Just seven years later, Hussain Architectural Design has expanded to four offices across Burnley, Blackburn, London and Manchester and 12 staff that are two-thirds female. Hussain herself is a celebrated advocate for women in the construction industry. She was recently awarded entrepreneur of the year at the Precious Awards, which honours women of colour.

Stories like hers are rare. Women occupy just 10 per cent of the highest ranking jobs at the world’s leading architecture firms, according to a survey by Dezeen in 2017. They also face a gender pay gap, with female architects earning 18 per cent less than men, according to data published by the government in 2018.

“It’s still a bit of a niche market for a female to be in,” Hussain says down the phone from Manchester, where the fourth branch of her practice has been two years in the making. Hussain studied architecture at Huddersfield in a class of 60, where only two of the students were women. “We used to get it off the guys, they’d say, “You’ll never make it, you’ll just get married, you’re only doing architecture because you like drawing.’”

Hussain actually did like drawing, but that is only half of the story. As a child, she was always good at art, but her dad, a retired engineer, encouraged her to learn maths and tutored her and and her siblings after school. “I hated it then,” she says, “but I’m grateful for it now.”

Saira Hussain started her business out of her bedroom in Burnley in 2011 (Courtesy Photo)

When a teacher asked Hussain what she wanted to do at her school careers fair, she said she wanted to do something with art and a little bit of maths, to please her father. The deputy headteacher, sensing her ambition, started to show Hussain courses that she could do at university. Once, she turned up at Hussain’s house and spoke to her father about where she could study architecture. With her parent’s support, Hussain applied.

When Hussain graduated in 2010, it was in the middle of the recession. “Loads of buildings had come to a halt, architecture practices were closing or laying off staff,” she says. “A lot of my friends from the course went into other jobs, some went abroad.”

Hussain took a job in planning and when her hours were reduced, worked part time in a call centre to supplement her income. Then a neighbour came to her with a single storey extension that she agreed to do over the course of six months from her bedroom. One job led to another. Before she knew it, she had turned the living room of her family home into her first architecture office.

When she first set up on her own in a small office in Burnley, Hussain kept her job at a call centre, and returned to work on projects late at night when her shifts ended. But as things picked up she quit the part time job and hired an old school friend called Nixie Edwards.

It was the start of a rapid expansion. Hussain Architectural Designs has benefited from the support of local councils. Burnley Council asked to meet with Hussain when she landed on the high street. When developers later showed an interest in a grade II listed nightclub in the centre, the council recommended Hussain’s practice for the work. She won the contract, worth £2 million, to turn the building into luxury flats. “We got that project through the help of the council,” Hussain remembers. “That’s when we were taken seriously, at least in Burnley.”

The nightclub project is typical of Hussain’s favourite commissions, adapting listed buildings and warehouses for a new purpose. She has since converted a warehouse near the Olympic Park in Hackney Wick, East London, into galleries and studios and worked on a similar conversion of a mill in Greater Manchester.

The practice has grown to a second office in Blackburn, plus projects in Manchester, London and around Yorkshire. Hussain credits her success to long hours, a dedication to the job and the visibility that came with setting up on the high street. “We always had a shopfront,” she says. “You never see traditional architectural practices in town centres, they’re in an office somewhere. But because it worked for us, we carried on with that tradition.”

The practice has expanded to four offices in Burnley, Blackburn, Manchester and London (Courtesy Photo)

Since she became established in the field, Hussain has tried to be a positive role model to other women and women of colour who are interested in the industry. Four years ago, she started holding drop-in sessions at a Burnley school for students on GCSE design and construction. At the time there was only one girl in the class – now the split is 50/50. Hussain is also an ambassador for the University of Huddersfield architecture department, where she studied, and regularly appears in UCAS materials in an effort to improve the representation of women in the industry. She says: “When you see someone like you who has done it you realise you can do it too.”

She also invites architecture students on work experience placements and hires the best students to work at the firm. “One of these girls, Jodie, sent me an email about how she was struggling in interviews, and I said why don’t you come in,” Hussain remembers. “She was in for a few months, then I took her on fulltime and now she has moved back to Liverpool for a job.”

Hussain still comes up against industry sexism. Once, at the Burnley office, a new client turned up, walked straight past Hussain and her team to the male intern at the back of the room and said: “We have some work for you.” Another time, Hussain was discussing a box cutter with a client and he asked if there was a man in the office who he could talk to instead. “I used to take it away and think about it, but I’ve got used to it,” Saira says. “Recently I’ve not felt that way at all.”