How Might We

New-works co-founder Tom Lewith joined Patrick Scally on his podcast, How Might We.

How Might We is the podcast designing solutions to solve pressing challenges facing East London today. 

In Episode 75 of the How Might We podcast, New-works co-founder Tom Lewith speaks with candour about the evolving role of architectural practice, the need for new models of collaboration, and the practice’s venture with Augarde & Partners and AMR: Fieldwork.

Fieldwork invites landowners to imagine their sites as generative forces for community, not just assets to be defended. The conversation ranges from the internal culture of architectural firms to generational thinking in development.

What if we asked landowners, “What do you care about?” rather than “What do you want to build?” What if they were collaborators rather than gatekeepers?

Fieldwork seeks to insert a pause, a listening phase, before design begins. In that pause lies potential: for unexpected partnerships, for slow revelation of latent possibilities, for the co-creation of land that is not merely “developed,” but grown with community. The relationship is structured to share the value added by the conclusion of the process, aligning interests and opening the opportunities up to asset rich, cash poor landowners.

It invites us to shift mindset: from protecting land as static, owned asset, to imagining land as relational, emergent possibility. It calls us to recalibrate incentives, revisit trust, stretch horizons, and create platforms of collaboration.

For New-works, Fieldwork is a step in that direction. But the ideas it explores are generative: they are invitations not only to New-works, but to other architects, landowners, communities, and institutions to experiment, listen, and reimagine the logic of making places together.