Brought up in Shrewsbury, Ruth Reed studied architecture at the University of Sheffield where she completed a Masters in Landscape. Her first appointment on completing Part II was with a national house builder on housing layout design. From 1984 she worked at Hadfield Cawkwell Davidson largely on Commercial Projects however an opportunity to design a house for the Partner’s brother that went on to win a CPRE award confirmed her interest in housing design. Combining motherhood and architecture was greatly assisted by a move to part-time working with South Yorkshire Housing Association as a Senior Architect. Her work there consisted of general and special needs projects.
As a change of location and direction, she set up Reed Architects in Mid-Wales in 1992, where she rapidly won a reputation for successfully gaining planning consents, often in the face of restrictive rural planning controls. For a while between 2002 and 2004 she added gamekeeper to the architects’ normal poacher role becoming a fee-paid planning inspector determining built environment appeals.
Much of the practice’s work was in the self-build sector and Ruth joined and became a Director of Associated Self-Build Architects, a national network of architects in the sector promoting architecture through a variety of marketing techniques including stands at trade shows and magazine articles. In 1997 she designed and oversaw the construction of her own house using hardwood and softwood timber frames and breather-wall construction.
Her association with teaching started in 1993 with roles as a visiting tutor at the Welsh School for Year 2 and as a professional examiner again for the Welsh School of Architecture and also for Plymouth and Bath Universities. With her extensive experience and knowledge of professional practice in a variety of business types, in 2006 she took over as Course Director of the Postgraduate Diploma in Architectural Practice at the Birmingham School of Architecture. Her first task on joining was to re-draft and re-validate the course and develop an MA extension. Recognising a need for formal recognition of practice management training she also wrote and had validated a suite of post-graduate courses in Architectural Practice Administration.
At the Birmingham School she has contributes to studio teaching in Year 2 on housing projects and has run School design modules. She teaches modules on Management Practice and Law in Part I and Part II and supervises the Year Out as well as directing the Part III course.
In 2007 she joined Green Planning Solutions as a part-time Partner providing architectural and landscape consultancy support for the practice’s caseload of unusual and challenging planning cases. The Practice is developing innovative concepts of developments in sensitive rural areas and has already developed an enviable success record in winning planning appeals.
Her involvement in the structure of the profession stretches over fifteen years in a variety of roles, including between 2003 and 2005 as President of the Royal Society of Architects in Wales. An RIBA council member for five years from 2002 she was also Vice President of Membership between 2005 and 2007 which saw the start of the successful re-emergence of the regional network as a cohesive force for devolved delivery of RIBA policy. As Chair of RIBA CPD-Sub-committee she drafted and oversaw the introduction of the Core Curriculum.
