How did you come up with the idea of starting a digital platform with a focus on engineers and architects?

We realized that the status quo of the application and job search process for architectural or engineering related jobs has room for improvement, mainly in terms of generating relevant search results and leads. The majority of potential employers posting job vacancies do not find their desired talent audience in a systematic manner. We were discussing the shortcomings and challenges in this regard and tried to understand the opportunities for improvement. Naturally we looked into ways how to digitize this and make the entire journey more intuitive for both employers and candidates.

Aside from the basic submissions when looking for a job such as a CV, in our industry space candidates typically will spend (too) much time creating and updating a portfolio. Unfortunately, a creative portfolio will often give a potential hiring manager only a cursory overview or vague picture of your actual capabilities and relevant experience.

For employers, the process of finding a pool of skilled candidates with relevant skills can also be cumbersome. Typically, this involves researching by asking around in your professional network for suitable candidates, as well as looking to a social network. Most companies will post vacancies on their own company websites, sporadic job ads or carry out a dedicated search via headhunters (given a certain level seniority for the open role). Unless a candidate is approached by a headhunter directly (assuming headhunters know where to find top candidates), a candidate’s active job search will be like looking for the needle in the haystack.

Talent within the built environment sector is no longer solely attracted to practice for its strong design and aesthetic sensibility. Today’s top talent also expects an agile working environment which embraces new technologies and established, functional workflows for collaboration and knowledge sharing. No one is looking for a 9-7 cubicle job any longer.

Can you tell us more about the process of creating and starting SKILLARY? What steps did you take?

We are very fortunate to have a great team of mentors and advisors who have continuously supported and encouraged us to follow through on this project. We refine our concepts, test various options along the way, remain open to the team’s feedback and make changes as necessary to help our solutions and products evolve.
This thought process and system of feedback loops were very helpful to develop a clear, solution-oriented mindset and focus on the key barriers. It is one thing to develop a product; but to make sure that it has an actual market is of course paramount.

Why do you think the recruitment process in the building industry is broken?

Broken seems a bit harsh. We don’t feel it is broken but rather feel that it is not yet digitized to a healthy extent. We conducted a survey in 2018 which showed us that merely 30% of all engineers and architects are listed on job or career portals. Clearly, active candidate sourcing via these portals will never lead to adequate results if 70% of the talent pool is in stealth mode. At the same time, our survey indicated that 90% of the same audience would list themselves if there would be a subject matter platform available.

In addition, companies have increasingly complex demands on the skills and abilities for new talent. A mere architect or engineer is no longer in demand. Today, companies are frequently in search of specialists for a certain assignment, with other adjacent skills such as relevant IT proficiency.

While recruitment agents and job portal services work to provide a digital product for job seekers and candidates to interact directly, quickly and efficiently, these platforms do not provide the special subject matter needs in order to be a real asset for our workforce and talent. For this reason, SKILLARY offers a new talent and tasks search feature. As a job portal focused specifically on our industry; we at SKILLARY understand that our sector is subject to constant change and reinvention.

Smaller firms with limited headcounts will often not have a dedicated HR person or department focused on traditional talent management and recruiting as well as on digital recruitment including the social media channels involved. Digitally linking architects, engineers and other professionals to potential employers is a great benefit to complement classic recruiting tools, if not substitute them entirely.

How would you like to develop the company in 2019?

By the end of 2019 our objective is to offer a fully developed platform that enables both candidates and employers to explore collaboration opportunities using an adequate user experience / UIX. We have successfully launched our MVP during the BAU2019 in January 2019 in our hometown Munich. From here we want to roll out into Europe, starting with Germany as a case study.

Do you have any advice for Archipreneurs who are interested in starting their own company in the built environment?

When launching your start-up, have a plan A, plan B and plan C ready. Also, 24/7 ­commitment to your vision is as important as your founding team.

What are your thoughts on the future of the built environment? How can it improve, and what continues to inspire you?

Future projects will be digitized further in order to share learnings from completed projects. There will be many developments in this space and we are keen on being part of this journey. We hope that SKILLARY will contribute to this transformative phase of our industry. —

About SKILLARY

Julia Stöckert
Founder & CEO SKILLARY

Andrea Kaiser
Founder, COO SKILLARY

Andrea Kaiser and Julia Stöckert, both originally from the Munich area, met on their first day of studies at Technical University of Munich (TUM) to study architecture. They worked together closely on various projects and assignments, particularly during their tenure as student research assistants, where they had valuable exposure to the responsibilities and challenges around the planning of larger scale buildings. Andrea and Julia completed their architectural studies and graduated from TUM in 2011.

Andrea then continued her academic career at TUM where she was responsible for the organization and management of the postgraduate Masters program for ClimaDesign. She also practiced as a freelance architect and worked for other architectural offices in Munich where she gained hands-on skills.

After graduation, Julia started her career at one of the leading German architectural companies where she was engaged in international projects, mainly for large industrial clients. Through that project work she learned first-hand about the complex challenges of large projects and how to develop good systems, interfaces and frameworks to identify and conceptualize solutions. She also continued TUM as a teaching assistant, and she began working as an independent architect in 2016.

At the end of 2018, Andrea and Julia founded SKILLARY.

The post Outdated Job Market: A New Way of Connecting Talent and Companies in the Built Environment appeared first on Archipreneur.

The office name of LAVA architects contains the word “Laboratory“. How do you span the conceptual link between architecture and research and what does it mean for you?

Tobias Wallisser: Architecture has always held a position between art and technology. Moreover, art and technology share the common ground of working in experimental ways. That is exactly what we wanted to stress by including the word “laboratory” in the name of our architectural practice, LAVA architects. Deliberately we did not include our initials but wanted to stress that we cultivate different ways of working together. In the end this also leads to fresh ways of generating projects.

Experiments are something we are very much interested in. We are equally dedicated to research just as we fulfill our clients’ needs and demands. For us, architecture is a wide ranging discipline that actively contributes to answering contemporary questions and concerns. In other words, our practice is a laboratory that conducts experiments with a very defined input and a clear research agenda.

Alexander Rieck: As a researcher in a lab you always have a clearly defined approach of analysis – assessing variations, finding conclusions and conducting the research to a final result. It is never linear but consists of parallel informed processes. That is similar to our design approach. By using different digital tools we are able to synchronize different design approaches in order to find the most ideal one.

Besides that, when entering one of our offices you are likely to encounter numerous experiments we are doing to improve our projects further. We love to do mock-ups and build prototypes ourselves in order to learn more about the process, the technology and its application.

Which of your current projects is the most innovative from the research point of view?

Tobias Wallisser: At the start of every project we immediately look for its potential of innovation. As a matter of fact, the German Pavilion at the Expo 2020 in Dubai is a good example to illustrate this further. From the beginning it combined a wide range of research fields, unifying the research into one single project. Due to the federal German political structure, we needed to find a cohesive agent that on the one hand expressed diversity and on the other hand, unity.

In our project this proved ideal as we ended up with different research elements which were united in one total environment – the German Pavilion as a vertical campus. Seen from this angle, the entire project offers a vast potential of innovation in most different ways. It is our goal to make this pavilion as exciting as possible, integrating as much research and innovation as we can possibly do in both the structure itself and the exhibits.

Both of you teach and research. How do both of you use the knowledge and information you retrieve from your academic pursuits in your architecture?

Alexander Rieck: I started my research work at the Fraunhofer Institute 20 years ago with topics such as virtual and augmented reality. In those days that kind of research had a strong focus on automotive and shipbuilding industries. However, my deep seated passion has always been for architecture and how modern technology can be adopted by the construction industry.

For example, at the Fraunhofer Institute I have been involved in the “Office 21” project for over 20 years now. There we study new concepts of work, like collaborative work spaces or co-working centers. In parallel I did my PhD on “Well-being at the Workspace”, in other words, how to integrate the psychological and physiological effects of the office environment into the planning and construction processes.

Nowadays that kind of research is very virulent because it deals with creative spatial environments in connection with the individual and cooperative well-being. And, as a matter of fact, all of this information is also flowing back into our architectural practice.

My students will be the architects of the future, and they will have to be equipped with the right knowledge, tools and ways of dealing with clients as well as the problems of society.

Further research initiatives of mine have dealt with the future of hotels and the “City of the Future” (“Morgenstadt”) where our office worked on MASDAR City in Abu Dhabi with regard to topics like traffic, energy and the Smart City. Right now I am involved in the subject “Construction site 2030” which deals with the future of the job-site and digital planning processes in combination with industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence (AI).

Tobias Wallisser: There are mutual benefits in running an office and pursuing an academic career at the same time. Teaching keeps you in constant touch with young people, their needs and their views of the world. On the other hand, the daily practical experience in the office tells you what makes the world go round. My interest in teaching brings both of these worlds together.

My students will be the architects of the future, and they will have to be equipped with the right knowledge, tools and ways of dealing with clients as well as the problems of society. Of course, there are also the aspects of teaching which identify future opportunities for architects, introduces you to new tools and ways of thinking and working. I personally like the speculative nature in teaching. There is a nice quotation by Wolf Prix (Coop Himmelb(l)au) saying that: “Tomorrow, today will be yesterday”. For me teaching is exactly about this relativity of time.

Your office designs a very broad range of projects, anything from a skyscraper in Abu Dhabi, the German Expo 2020 Pavilion in Dubai, a speculative office building for start-ups in Berlin or even a youth hostel in Bayreuth. Where is the common link?

Tobias Wallisser: Well, that is a very good question. If you have an office, you sooner or later become an expert in some fields of design. On the other hand, architects are generalists. We are educated very broadly, we are trained to have a wide range of interests and knowledge. Take for example an office building. It is not just about delivering a certain number of square meters at the cheapest price possible. That is not architecture, as only one parameter of many has been investigated.

Unfortunately, a lot of architecture nowadays is done just like that. However, for us at LAVA architects it is more productive to ask: “What type of office building is it? What type of work will be done there and what environment does that type of work really need? Asking these questions allows us to define specific answers.

Often, we rephrase the question and at the same time start the process of providing the answer(s). Take the instance of the Bayreuth Youth Hostel. The question was, why would you stay at a youth hostel at all? With regard to the food on offer, the bunk beds etc. it may not be a very desirable experience. Our answer was: A youth hostel is no standard type of accommodation. It may be simple and rough however, it creates lots of opportunities of meeting people and making friends. So, we designed a shell or a shelter that offers plenty of chances for social interaction. We looked into modular systems, but redefined them.

Our module is not a boxed space. It is rather a space-divider that accommodates all the infrastructure, i.e. showers, baths, toilets and the beds. Thus we ended up with a fairly unique spatial arrangement inserted into a larger structure. And at the same time, it has become a very adaptive structure – a concrete building with a wooden facade which could easily be converted into a kindergarten, a school or an old people’s home.

Alexander Rieck: The link is the approach towards the project. Sometimes we test our ideas in small projects and only then we are able to integrate them in bigger projects. The same amount of passion is injected into all of our projects, though sometimes you can pour more resources into bigger projects.

Have you been cultivating a particular LAVA architects style of design?

Tobias Wallisser: Our architecture is not about a signature style, on the contrary it is a specific way of dealing with problems creating opportunities. However, we go even further by rephrasing and redefining questions – i.e. often the original brief – we have been asked to solve. We systematically single out the space for innovation, research and for a new interpretation of basic needs.

Of course, we still see us as architects or designers with a clearly defined design intent. There is also a certain spatial language which we prefer, but that is secondary. Our pure interest is in developing something innovative as an answer to human needs.

Alexander Rieck: At the moment we are facing a very interesting period when a new architectural epoch appears on horizon, i.e. one that is based on a digital society. Let us challenge the new opportunities and redefine our design accordingly.

Are you implementing technologies like BIM or AI in your architecture and design process?

Alexander Rieck: Naturally, we use a lot of newly emerging tools and implement them into our design work. But, for example, BIM is no tool in our design process. Namely, BIM descripts a data linkage from which you deviate a planning process or a plan. Yet, within the entire digital cycle BIM is only one step and must not be overjudged. In the architectural design process you only have approximately 10% of extreme creative peeks. During the rest of planning process the work deals with rules, regulations, building codes, databases, material products, which are all parts of operative processes. Here, I believe, is a huge chance for automation with the help of AI.

The massive change in architecture will be the switch from linear processes to multi-parallel planning.

However, the massive change in architecture will be the switch from linear processes to multi-parallel planning. There a variety of “umbrellas” will open up – optimized and automated – for each individual design scenario. That will be totally different development processes which will also generate different business models.

Tobias Wallisser: Every designer, architect or any other person who deals with this technology should always ask the following question first: “What can I achieve with the help of this technology which I have not been able to do before?” For instance, most people in the Western world possess a smartphone, hence we might do away with street signs as people could easily find their ways with the help of their phones. Just think, what such an approach would do to architecture?

Therefore, technology should not just be a tool that helps you doing things digitally. It should rather enable you to generate a new environment, for example. Let us revert to the German Pavilion and the Expo 2020 with its motto “Connecting Minds”. We picked it up and interpreted it like this. Every visitor to the German Pavilion will be interconnected with any other visitor during his stay by an intelligent name tag. This will enable every single visitor, if they wish, to interact with each other freely. Theoretically each visitor should get a better understanding about his environment, socially, intellectually and even architecturally.

How do you collaborate with engineering practices such as Transsolar?

Tobias Wallisser: Architecture is a team sport! The size of what we have to consider is far too large for a single person to look at. Driven by the design process experts from different fields are introduced. The architect, as the generalist, is maybe the diplomat whose task it is to negotiate the deal. One could even say the architect is the glue!

The architect, as the generalist, is maybe the diplomat whose task it is to negotiate the deal. One could even say the architect is the glue!

This includes finding out ideal partners, i.e. experts. It is a very complex optimization process where you try to incorporate a lot of different parameters into one experience. That is something which I as an architect like very much. As a result of the negotiations we need engineers with strong opinions, which are rooted very much in contemporary life. In the end it is all about shaping life and you need people to look at that from very extreme points of view.

Alexander Rieck: Being on the cutting edge of architecture we always need the input of people with a similar approach. We love to implement their ideas and some of these outstanding international engineers enjoy working with us. Once you have the right team you are able to perceive a project as a comprehensive entity and not just as a collection of single problems.

Architecture is in a constant process of transformation. Where do you perceive the greatest advances and where do you think lies the future of architecture?

Tobias Wallisser: Architects are natural born optimists. Architecture is also a very slow discipline and there is a lot of disruptive transformation around us. We must not embrace everything at first sight, we have to retain a critical function. Therefore, it is necessary that most architects remain optimists, making a positive contribution in generating better lives for more people. I think that is our challenge.

Technology is one part in that equation, but it is not the only part. One has to look at the broader picture. There are ongoing transformations in many fields, we architects must “edit” the use of technology. In this context I still love what Cedric Price told one of his clients, “You don’t need a house, you need to divorce.”

Certainly, the next great step will be the integration of artificial intelligence into the planning processes and that will bring new solutions in terms of optimization.

Alexander Rieck: In future architecture and the construction industry will be collaborating much further. As a result we will experience different architectures and development processes. Certainly, the next great step will be the integration of artificial intelligence into the planning processes and that will bring new solutions in terms of optimization. Three key aspects are paramount to any kind of future architecture:

1. Reduction of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions: We have to build for 11 trillion people on this planet and simply cannot carry on as before.
2. Digitalization: It affects everything from production, schools, entertainment, shopping to new spaces which fit the demands of society.
3. Building procedures: We need new planning and building regulations as well as new business models in context with new information and data sets.

With all of these developments, I think, we are in the frontline of a renaissance in architecture which will also generate a new architectural language. These are very exciting times and it is a pleasure taking part. —

About LAVA Architects

Award winning international practice LAVA architects was founded in 2007 by directors, Chris Bosse, Tobias Wallisser and Alexander Rieck and was the 2016 European Architecture Laureate. LAVA architects combine digital workflow, nature’s structural principles and the latest digital fabrication technologies to build MORE WITH LESS: more (architecture) with less (material/energy/time/cost). Currently, 50 architects work from three locations on projects worldwide.

Chris Bosse
Director

Chris Bosse heads LAVA architects Asia Pacific and is based in Sydney where he is Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. Educated in Germany and Switzerland, he worked with several high-profile European architects before moving to Sydney. Whilst Associate Architect at PTW Architects in Sydney he completed many projects in Asia and the Middle East. His work on the Watercube Olympic swimming centre in Beijing received the Atmosphere Award at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale; and he won an Emerging Architect Award from RIBA in 2008 London and a 40 Under 40 Award in 2012 and Australian Design Honour at the Australian Design Centre in Sydney in 2015.

Alexander Rieck
Director

Alexander Rieck, Director of LAVA architects, is based in Stuttgart where he works as a senior researcher at the renowned Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart. After receiving a degree in architecture in Stuttgart and Phoenix, he started his research career in the virtual reality environment. Having led many Office 21 research projects, he is a renowned expert on innovations in the fields of office, hotel, living and future construction, and an author of many publications about working environments and building processes of the future.

Tobias Wallisser
Director

Tobias Wallisser, Director of LAVA architects, is based in Berlin and teaches as Professor of Innovative Construction and Spatial Concepts at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. As Creative Director at UN-Studio in Amsterdam for 10 years he was responsible for many projects, the most prominent being the Mercedes-Benz Museum and the Arnhem Interchange. After receiving an architectural degree in Stuttgart, he completed a post-graduate at Columbia University (NY) in 1997. He worked with Asymptote Architecture on the Virtual New York Stock Exchange.

The post A Laboratory for Design: LAVA’s Research-Based Approach for Building Innovation appeared first on Archipreneur.

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Could you tell us a little about your background?

I was born in New York City in Manhattan and spent a lot of my childhood in the suburbs. At a very early age, I was particularly fond of construction and gardening. I came at the profession basically through the construction trade.

From a young age I was working in construction building homes and I ran my own landscape crews—my own company—when I was 18 until I was 24. That was through university and graduate school, to the point where I had my first major client with a $1 million-plus construction project when I was 25.

I love designing a public environment. I felt, and I still feel, that one of the biggest needs of our generation is to provide high-quality public space, affordable living, and alternative mobility in cities. I started to migrate towards this, mostly at the beginning, for environmental purposes. I thought that cities needed to be greener, and so my work was focused on that, originally. I also felt that we needed higher quality public spaces in cities.

Through graduate school, I started to work almost exclusively on urban brownfields as a landscape architect under my mentor Barbara Wilks, the founder of W Architecture and Landscape Architecture in New York City. We worked mostly on brownfield redevelopment projects on the waterfront in New York City. I took on international projects, where I worked in about 12 other countries. I was working in the United States, Canada, Asia, the Middle East, and on some pro-bono projects in Haiti. Some of my projects have even been built in Europe, as well.

Over eight to nine years in New York City out of W Architecture, I was running quite large projects for Barbara. Our largest, or maybe the happiest project that I had, was in Canada, which was a 12-hectare waterfront park in the center of Calgary. This was the centerpiece park in a $350 million redevelopment project that was completed in 2015 and has since earned dozens of international awards.

You also founded reSITE, a global non-profit acting to improve the urban environment. What is the reSITE idea, mission and story?

Yes, in 2012, I started the nonprofit reSITE, which is focused on making cities greener and more livable through high-quality design and collaborative thinking. We focus on improving the public life of the city.

When I first came to Prague in 2012 as a Fulbright Fellow, the idea was to broaden the horizons of people working in architecture in Central Europe, to think about the kind of work that I was doing abroad, which focused on redevelopment of landscapes in the centers of highly dense environments that needed green, open space designed by landscape architects.

The original mission was to talk about that. Since then we’ve expanded rapidly beyond the initial idea, focusing on all topics that have an impact on quality of life in the city from the sharing economy to transportation, civic architecture and mobility. The latest topic we investigated was housing.

We’re now pushing new boundaries and horizons. In 2018 and now 2019, we’re working in San Francisco at the intersection of sound in architecture. We’ve now migrated through the various topics that we think improve quality of life.

We do this mostly through events and media. We have organized 160 events over the last 6 years, ranging from bike rides and film festivals to these large flagship conferences that we run under our own brand. We’ve also created and produced hundreds of video interviews and lectures, many of which are on our YouTube page.

We’ve done most of this work in Prague and we’re now in Lisbon, Berlin, and the United States on reSITE topics, media and events.
Since 2015, this has been my full-time job. I spend my time between reSITE and Manifesto Market as the Chief Creative Guy and CEO.

Why did you start your business in Prague?

It was one of the hardest decisions of my life, to leave my beloved Brooklyn and hometown of New York City. That was a really traumatic time for me. In 2015, I left my apartment in Brooklyn. I left a partnership offer at W Architecture on the table after we just finished the large park in Calgary. I actually finished three projects in Calgary at that time, and the largest of which had since won over 20 design awards.

You might consider this a new peak in my career, at 35 years old. I just up-and-left a great thing – what I thought might be the top. It was a hard thing to do, to shift gears and fully focus on reSITE. From the fast-paced New York City to a smaller, quieter Prague, almost overnight. It was like someone turned the lights out and I had to start over. It was me who turned them off.

The idea was to come from what was a kind of nights-and-weekends job for me and full-time for my team, to what’s become the focus of my life. I moved halfway across the world to work on a nonprofit. I spun Manifesto Market out of the nonprofit, because the kind of work was changing. The things that we were doing were changing. Some of them needed a sustainable and self-sufficient funding and revenue model.

You said that you were growing tired of what is known as a classic architecture, landscape or urban design firm before starting reSITE. Could you elaborate on that?

Yeah. That definition, it’s still true, but maybe the way I think about it has changed a little bit. I wanted to do something different, originally, I wanted to try to get away from strictly client-based work.

I had about 17 projects on my plate that I was actively managing and working on. There was one client, which constituted two or three projects, which I liked. In architecture, you have to take on projects just to keep the office running, and I think every architect experiences this.

Regardless, I wanted to see if we could redefine the work that we did to be more civic and to have more public good in mind. A more kind of social architecture firm that spends time on education. The core of reSITE is about educating people about the ways in which we could build the city differently. I wanted to see if we could build a firm with this kind of approach as the centerpiece of the work. We’re an events and experience design company as much as we’re a physical design company. We are inventors of experiences.

We’re an events and experience design company as much as we’re a physical design company. We are inventors of experiences.

I think that’s what needed to change for me, and I loved the idea to create experiences for people. When I look back at the work I did in landscape architecture, it was all about designing an experience with physical space and using the highest quality materials that we could afford or we could find and the most interesting furnishing arrangements to create social spaces and private spaces at once, and environmentally conscious public spaces.

All of this is about an experience and also a kind of light impact.
There’s a part of my younger self that thinks this is a betrayal of my training and the path that some of my idols or mentors have taken. But then, I squint, and I think about the fact that I don’t want that prototypical path. I struggle with what’s expected of one in the profession versus what I’ve wanted for myself.

I’m happy with the way it’s gone. But, at the same time, I still have this part of me that’s saying like, “Well, you should run a classic architecture practice.” “You should be, you know, just putting your head down and working on the things that everyone trained you to work on.” I mean by this, there’s this kind of paradox.

Why did you start reSITE as a nonprofit?

That’s a good question. I started as a nonprofit because I wanted to do work based on education and events mostly that wasn’t profit-driven. I wanted to focus on the content and not do expos and this kind of activities to fund it. I was able to attract cultural funding and social innovation funding to help educate the decision makers in the private, public, and civic sector. And so, there was a nonprofit mission, and there still is this mission.

I developed it based on models that we have in the United States for nonprofits in this kind of field, between culture and policy. In Europe, this model doesn’t really work. Because in the U.S., particularly in New York, there is a high level of philanthropy funding and private benefactors that like to support these kinds of initiatives. So, I realized this after a few years that individuals are not supporting the nonprofit sector.

In the Czech Republic, the average donation from an individual citizen to the nonprofit sector in a fiscal year is about €2.50 per year. And the grant funding from government institutions and municipal institutions is so low, particularly in the Czech Republic, that it’s nearly impossible to create a revenue split like I wanted. Our revenue split today is basically 40% to 45% private funding sponsorships, 40% grant funding, and 15% to 20% is coming from ticketing from our main event. And it’s not enough. I really wanted it to be 70% private funding and 20% granting and 10% independent sources of revenue like ticketing.

And it’s almost impossible to get there with the level of private philanthropy in Europe. So, I’m starting to think about whether we need to change the model.

What do you think drove you to create these new aspects and businesses within the field of architecture?

I think there’s no right path in architecture. I think that it’s important that we start to make our own projects.

But people like me, we also love to create our own work. That’s one of the reasons why I’m becoming more involved in property development. I found that it was easier for me to get what I wanted out of a project by building it myself than it is to just find a client to do it and to rely on others to do it.

I wanted to create a practice, which is focused on experience and experience design and creating new kinds of places for people to engage the city in exciting ways. What does that mean? Now, it means that we’re designing events through reSITE. We’re designing physical places and digital communities with Manifesto. We’re doing branding and real estate consultancy with another company I have, called City Crew.

There’s no right path in architecture.

I’m combining my ideas based on my educational background. I have a degree in history, which I didn’t mention. I have a degree in business, and I also have a master’s in landscape architecture. I feel like I’m doing my best to try to combine these skill sets and put them together to wholly understand the world in which we’re working and trying to design environments that are responding to that. That’s exciting for me.

I’m spending more and more time now on Manifesto and not just the market that you see online or in the papers. But Manifesto as an idea and as an experiential development company. Manifesto’s turning into a kind of a proptech company, and I think there’s a lot of ways the work that we’re doing at Manifesto can help modernize the property industry, particularly the hospitality and food and beverage industry at large.

The Manifesto Market is the first brainchild of reSITE. There you have also acted as an urban developer. What is the project’s background? How did you manage to start, complete and finance the project?

I had the idea to create this kind of place in 2013 when reSITE was basically a year old. I pitched my idea to do a café and co-working spaces in containers, to a couple of companies and no one was interested. They thought it was stupid and crazy. At that time, it wasn’t a full-time job. When reSITE became full-time, I started to pick up this idea again. We really didn’t know what we were doing. Looking back, it was kind of crazy.

I knew that we wanted to create a place that had a food and beverage central focus and some opportunities for co-working. Using the container is, for someone that’s not a real estate developer, a cost-efficient and flexible unit. It is relatively cheap to build a development out of containers, and they’re flexible, and they’re considered temporary. You can do it a bit quicker and more affordably.

So, how did we do it? We started with an idea that we wanted to do this. We got the land basically by scraping or scouring my network of real estate developers in the city, which is pretty extensive. We spent some time in Karlin, an up-and-coming district in Prague, because we really wanted to be there, but the developers didn’t want us. They didn’t understand it, and they’d rather see their sites just be empty or be parking lots.

After six months of waiting, we had a deadline by the end of the week. I think it was like January or February of 2017 because we wanted to use the project and a ­concrete site as the centerpiece of a student architecture competition. I made a phone call to one of our partners at reSITE, who’s actually our main sponsor. They had this site in Prague, and they decided within 24 hours that they would give it to us for this project.

So, it really took less than a day to decide where it was going to be, and we got permission to use it for the competition and also for the whole project.
After the student competition, we selected three finalists. We interviewed all three, we chose the second-place finalists which were a student group of two young women who were finishing their studies in Prague. They then became the architectural consultants for the project. From the competition to the date we opened it took roughly nine months, and they redesigned and redeveloped the project based on our need to expand it.

I found the financing privately. I had some seed funding contributed by a friend. He contributed some seed capital to start and to pay for consultancies and stuff like this. Then, once the project got going and we entered a contract for fabrication of the containers, I had two private loans that allowed us to finance the construction.

These are loans by local businessmen in real estate and in culture, actually. We’re combining cultural funding and real estate funding. We didn’t get any public subsidies, and that was intentional. We didn’t want any support from the city or from the state. We wanted to do this fully independently.
We got some support from the landowner who gave us a friendly lease. It was a way for them to attract attention and to build some positive action on the site before they have construction. It’s a free development site. The final project will be built by the developers of Zaha Hadid’s project, a quite high-profile site.

Finally, we had support from Mastercard. That’s why I wanted to focus on digital payments. Ultimately, we decided on a cashless project, meaning only credit cards or digital payments are accepted. Mastercard supported us through the technology and also with some funding for cultural projects like music and films.

Today, I’ve been asked to speak a lot about Manifesto. Everyone wants to know how we’ve been nominated for the best retail project in the country after only 6 months of operations. We won the best customer experience award in 2018 against giant brands such as IKEA. Everyone in property and real estate wants to know how it became so successful. My answer is that we don’t know what the hell we’re doing. So, that’s why it’s successful.

The site is awaiting its permanent redevelopment by Zaha Hadid Architects? What will happen to Manifesto Market when the project receives permission?

We have a two-year lease with an extension option. If they don’t get the permissions to build the planned Zaha project, then we would stay longer. This is the advantage for such temporary projects in working in the cities that have a long approvals process. Basically, in Prague, the approvals process is about seven years, so you have a lot of sites that are laying empty for six or seven years.

What is the business model of the Manifesto Market?

We have 24 tenants in my 27 containers, and they have a lease with me. It’s a typical real estate model in that sense. They pay a flat fee plus services that we offer to keep the place running. We have a turnover rent model as well, in which we take a percentage of what they make. It is a bit like a shopping center lease.

The other revenue streams are pretty straightforward. It is one of the most popular places in Prague right now and a lot of companies want to do events there. So, we’re lining up a lot of events for 2019 already.

This year our revenue model gets more complicated. There is a combination of financial technology revenue sources and a classic real estate and events model. We’re doing food tours in 2019 because we have 20 really good restaurants. These will be special market tours starting in the spring. We will also have some revenue coming from financial technology that we’re developing this year.

What are the next steps and ideas for Manifesto in 2019?

The goal is to develop more. We’re now very close to a growth-
series round of funding to reinvest in the market and reinvest in the ideas so we can build digital technology for a better customer experience. The idea is to invest in new technology and to build new sites, including another one in Prague and one in Lisbon by the end of 2020.

In 2019, we’re becoming more of a PropTech company, because we realized that there’s a lot of management that goes into maintaining the site. We started to look for property management tools to do that. The property industry is super outdated but quite simple to modernize. There are no modern tools, other than an Excel spreadsheet to do property management. We’re now developing some digital tools that will help the hospitality industry better manage their projects. And you will be able to find some things in the physical space that can disconnect you to digital spaces.

We’re also developing the front-end system for the community of Manifesto, the customers that are coming, just to better inform them about what we’re doing and to help them find out about the cultural program, for example.

Then we’re developing an integration of new digital payment tools. The market is completely cashless, which means we have the opportunity to employ some new digital payment methods that aren’t being used in many places in Europe. We are the first cashless place in the Czech Republic and one of the fully cashless places in Europe. Now, we develop the tools so we will have our own easy payment method for Manifesto.

Do you have any advice for people who are interested in starting their own project or company within the build environment?

One thing I would like to mention is to never underestimate the value of being collaborative and opening new doors. I spent a lot of time meeting people and seeing if there are ways in which we can collaborate, intersect and offload some value to them, and they could offer the same to me. As an entrepreneur, you have to create a good network. We all need to help other people and we need to be helped ourselves, so I always try to help people if they’re asking for it.

My second advice is that you have to remain positive. I could have quit reSITE and Manifesto over a hundred times probably. There’s so much bad news when you start your own ventures. Just because one thing doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to work. If you keep your eye on the horizon and on the goal, it just means you have to find a new avenue to get there.

In “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, he says that brick walls are built only for us to figure out how to get over them, not to stop us from achieving our dreams. It’s a little bit cheesy, but I really believe that. You’ve to find a way over the wall, if you really want it.

We’re talking about a lot of different things, but everything is design-driven. You can utilize this architectural background and knowledge, which is basically about how to understand people. Our work is how to understand people and how to create spaces that people can enjoy and which will improve their lives. That’s central to our work.

What are your thoughts on the future of the built environment? What are the major opportunities? How can it improve, and what continues to inspire you?

I always say, the future of the city looks a lot like the past, which is more dense urban environments and more physically networked places. I think we’re going to focus more and more on alternative mobility, mobility is probably one of the core issues of our generation. This is an old argument, but transit-oriented development in the United States will become a necessity, as it’s been in Europe.

We have to stop using automobiles to get between places. Now, it’s taken something like 50, 60 years, 70 years, but the effect on cities will take at least as long to unwind. In the UK, for example, 100% of college-educated millennials want to live within 5 kilometers of the central business district. I think 50% of those between the ages of 25 and 34, in the United States, want to also live within 5 kilometers of the central business district.

We want to live in the heart of the city. We want to work, live, and play in the same place. That’s only possible if we can rethink how we live, which focuses on the house and what our home looks like. I think we need to start living in smaller urban spaces, as we’re already seeing.

The work that we’ve done on sharing indicates that we’re willing to share more, in order to have some of the conveniences of living in a denser urban environment. It means we’re willing to share transportation. We’re even more willing to share space, to some extent. We’ve got to rethink the way that we’re designing housing, both at this kind of affordable scale and the luxury scale. I think housing is really going to be central to a lot of the changes that we see in how we live in the city. —

About Martin Barry

Founder & CEO
Manifesto & reSITE

Martin Barry is the Founder & CEO of Manifesto Market, and Founder & Chairman of reSITE. His work has been published widely in The New York Times, The Atlantic Citylab, Monocle Magazine, Dezeen, Designboom, among dozens of others.

As a landscape architect, Martin has led multi-disciplinary teams on complex urban projects in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He is the 2016 recipient of the President’s Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and his projects at W Architecture have received dozens of design awards in North America. He is a Fulbright Scholar and a Fellow with the Design Trust for Public Space in New York.

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Guest article By Edgar Gonzales

On a sunny afternoon in 1952, Thomas J. Watson Jr., the recently appointed president of IBM, was walking along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and found himself increasingly amazed by the brightly colored and impeccably designed, sleek typewriters in the Olivetti shop. They shared space with sculptures and paintings in an airy, theatrically lit, well designed, modern showroom, in sharp contrast to the boring products and dull experience that characterized IBM’s retail outlets at that time.

Some years later, when Watson became CEO, he defined the strategy for the future of the company, declaring: “I will put my stamp on IBM though modern design.” To help him fulfill this task, he hired Eliot Noyes, architect and industrial designer, to serve as design consultant for the company. He was charged with creating a corporate design program that hasn’t been matched since. Noyes oversaw everything, from the creation of IBM products, logos and marketing material, to the design of its buildings. Noyes strategized an underlying design philosophy and brought in many of the most talented designers of the day: artists and architects like Ray and Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Paul Rand and Isamu Noguchi. “Good Design is Good Business” insisted Thomas J. Watson Jr. in a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania, some years later in 1973.

The complexity, unpredictability and fast pace of change in today’s world is familiar to all, and the situation will not become easier. So, we need to face it and learn how to operate in it. In every aspect of contemporary life, we have outgrown a reality where problems were (more or less) simple, knowable, and independent, to one where the complexity, fuzziness and interdependency of the challenges we face are more and more difficult to frame, let alone solve them.

Corporations are not immune to this either. Two months ago, the McKinsey Quarterly, the consultancy firm’s prestigious publication, was dedicated to the Business Value of Design, conducting one of the most ambitious surveys ever made. More than 300 companies were contacted over the course of five years and their design decisions tracked, along with financial data, in order to measure what the McKinsey Design Index (MDI).

The consultancy intends to publish the data soon, along with a tool that can be used to measure your company’s MDI and compare it to others. Each of the indicators at the MDI shows that design is one of the best investments a company can make today.

The World Economic Forum predicts that vision, creativity and critical thinking will be the top three skills for 2020 for the ongoing, so-called, Fourth Industrial Revolution. Every company wants to be at the forefront and on the cutting edge of innovation, and to achieve that, yours will need highly creative employees.

Creativity is a much sought-after quality, and not one that can typically be achieved through training. It takes time to develop a proper creative attitude, and it doesn’t come alone: working comfortably with ambiguity, uncertainties, asking for disruptive innovative solutions, keeping a critical state of mind, willingness to alter the status quo and inventiveness are just some of the other aptitudes required by successful creative practitioners.

Nevertheless, there are professions where creativity is at the very core of their practices. Designers and architects, whose work depends largely on applied creativity and critical thinking to bring innovation to their everyday work, have been practicing each of those skills since time immemorial.

By definition, design is intrinsically innovative. What is the point of designing something that already exists? So, when hungry for innovation, there is a clear choice for professionals to look at: good design!

About

Edgar González
Director, Bachelor in Design, IE School of Architecture and Design

Based in Madrid, Edgar González leads the Bachelor in Design program at IE School of Architecture and Design. He founded EGD Edgar González Design, a Strategic Design Agency, where he serves clients as a strategic consultant specialised in applying design processes to complex problems and narratives. As, Editor-in-chief of edgargonzalez.com since 2002, one of the main reference websites about architecture and design in the Spanish speaking world, he is tuned in to news and trends in architecture and design throughout the world. HE Holds a Bachelor in Architecture ( ITESO University, Guadalajara, Mexico, 1996) and a M.A. in Complex Architecture (Alicante University, Alicante, Spain, 2007).

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In its beginnings, Atelier MEL embarked on a deep study of artisan glass techniques to create a set of modular collections of three dimensional illuminated mosaics. This was the first step towards developing conceptualizing, designing and building customized art pieces in a great variety of different materials.

As pioneers of parametric design, Atelier MEL have created design tools which make it easier to work with interior designers and architects and shorten the process chain that can link a complex art concept to its materialization. This has allowed them to reach new heights of creativity, efficiency, and quality.

Could you tell us a little about your background?

I have an architecture and design background, having completed my studies in architecture in 2008. I worked while in university and continued working as an architect for several years after I graduated, but the economic situation in Spain became very difficult. Despite having a good job, the prospects for growth weren’t encouraging.

That was my reason for starting a Master in Architectural Management and Design at IE School of Architecture and Design with a focus on marketing and business administration. The program was targeted at architects and design professionals in order bridge the gap between business and design, and I was enrolled in their founding year. The program was mainly online and partially in Madrid and one month in London.

It was a good opportunity to meet professionals from all around the world. There were fellow students from the US, Mexico, Spain and Germany which I found really enriching. Before the Masters program, I really lacked business knowledge because we weren’t taught anything about business in architecture school. In business school, I learned how some of the architecture studios I had worked for were run inefficiently, and I would talk with a very good friend about doing something together someday. That was the start of Atelier MEL, almost five years ago already.

Were you always interested in creating an architectural product? Are you still practicing traditional architecture next to running your own company?

I never really made a conscious decision to create an architectural product, but I was always more interested in small-scale projects mainly because of the speed.

When I worked for architecture offices on huge projects like hospitals or high-rise buildings, I rarely saw a project from start to finish because the duration of the project cycles was so long. Since I preferred small-scale projects, and I was also really interested in lighting when I was working as an architect, the transition into this field of products felt natural.

Geometry and architectural drawing were also my favorite subjects in university, and these are essential skills for product design. Product design typically involves working with much more complex shapes than architecture, and it can train your brain geometrically, which I really enjoy.

How did you come up with the idea of creating artistic glass lighting modules and create the company Atelier MEL from this?

I was always working on the design side of architecture, and I had a really good friend with a consulting company for architects and engineers. We often talked about the idea of working together, but I always felt I needed to work closly to the design itself, not as an consultant.

One day, we saw an opportunity. One of our mutual friends owns a glass workshop in Cartagena. We visited and saw skilled glass artisans who were our age working in a very traditional craft in the traditional way. They were repeating what their great grandfathers had been doing for decades. They weren’t innovating and they were struggling to sell the products they produced.

Roberto, my friend, had a company specializing in high-end technologies of digital production and parametric design. Seeing these glass craftspeople who are really well trained but struggled with their product and market fit, as a designer I felt uniquely positioned with the ability to connect technology with craft. Since I am really interested in crafts and also working in small scale, Roberto and I saw an opportunity to work together with the skills and experience of his company.

The idea was to combine these two things together, with me as designer and manager working together with Roberto’s team. We said, “Let’s try it, let’s get crazy,” because it was a really crazy idea. We literally had no experience in the product design process and no experience at all in lighting design, as well as very little experience in glass craft, but that was a thing we could learn from our friends.

This is how we founded Atelier MEL. Today, we produce a wide range of products and sculptures made of glass and other materials. We recently introduced dynamic lighting, which enables us to do dynamic lightning installations.

That is very inspiring. Can you tell us more about the process of creating your first glass product from scratch? What steps did you take?

In the beginning we traveled to the workshop in Cartagena. This was in the second week after our first brainstorming session. I had read a bit about glass production techniques before and when I arrived there, I started asking the craftsmen “How do you do this?” and “How do you do that?” The craftsmen recently confessed that they thought that I was crazy, wondering “Why does this woman want to know all these things?”

I wanted to learn what we were able to do with the material. We knew from the beginning that we had to target the high-end market with our glass products, since glass is an expensive material which is hard to produce at a low cost due to the hand-made fabrication process. I wanted to understand its potential.

I wanted to learn what we were able to do with the
material… I wanted to understand its potential.

From the outset our idea was to produce something modular, like a jigsaw puzzle, that each architect or interior designer could adapt to their project. We started designing and prototyping and we launched two modular collections called DUNA and LOTO. The DUNA system is composed by softly curved rounded glass pieces assembled following a triangular pattern. The LOTO system is composed by flower-shaped glass pieces assembled on a square grid.

We were really lucky that the first products were successful quite early, which allowed us to continue pursuing new products and projects. Today we have built up a portfolio of many different products.

How did you go about finding clients at first?

The first thing we did was that we subscribed to a design competition for young designers of “Maison et Objet”, the large trade show in Paris. It was not a win-or-lose competition, but young designers could be selected for a free fair stand at the show, and we were selected with our first DUNA and LOTO designs. We got a fair space at the young designer’s corner which was sponsored by the trade show itself, and we displayed our first product selection and showed our work which got us some attention.

Looking back, the young designer’s corner was not the best place for us to exhibit, because we have a high-end product and didn’t reach our target audience there. We should have been in the luxury section of the fair, but of course we couldn’t afford this at that time.

During this time Roberto, my business partner, was already working with consultant clients in Doha, Qatar. He had some knowledge about the market, which is open to very exclusive products. That is way we developed a strategy to target the middle east market with our first products.

I also started to travel to the Middle East, without knowing anyone, knocking on doors and presenting our first designs. At some point I got to know the owners of a famous shop for modern furniture in Doha. They were interested and bought a LOTO installation. That was our first sale.

Who are your target customers today and what projects are you working on mainly?

The hospitality industry is our core market. We do a lot of work for exclusive hotels, like four and five-star hotels and also for restaurants. We also work for private clients with residential projects a lot.

Retail shops are a growing field, too. Lately, we have done quite a lot of work for company headquarters, like an installation for a pharmaceutic company headquarter in India or another lightning installation for a new bank in Qatar.

Each of our light installations is unique since the cost of the designs are quite high.

How did you develop your acquisition strategy and process? What have been the challenges and how do you reach your target customers today?

In the beginning we started replicating the sales approach of Roberto’s consulting business: literally going door-to-door visiting clients and presenting our products to them. But that turned out not to be very successful because our clients are spread around the world. Since our installations are quite exclusive, the decision process is typically long and clients are usually not repeat customers within a short time span. Clients won’t buy one piece per month — they might buy one piece per year — so we need a lot of clients to keep the business running.

Today, we acquire most of our clients from social networks like Pinterest and Instagram

At one point, almost by chance, we were getting published in the press by the American Interior Design magazine. This was a huge boost for our success in the in the US. We had never travelled to the US for sales before that article, but we sold ten projects from that single article. That was a lucky break and it opened the US market for us, which nowadays is our most successful market.

Today, we acquire most of our clients from social networks like Pinterest and Instagram. We have an in-house team member dedicated to social media marketing and social networks. 90% of the time we are contacted by architects, interior architects or designers who discover our work through these channels and who want to implement our products into their projects. They will specify our product or recommend us to their clients, but then we wait until the day the construction is finished because our product is the last piece to be bought and installed. This time gap is very long, and for a young company with a small team it can be very difficult to manage this from a cash-flow perspective.

That is why we have started to work with art consultants recently. This isn’t a common job profile in Spain at all, but it is quite popular in the United States and in China, and it is becoming more common in the Middle East and in the UK. It benefits us to connect with art consultants because they are typically involved only in the last phase of construction for a project. An art consultant would receive concepts from interior designers and look for artists, firms or products to realize these concepts.

This is ideal for us, because we love the challenge of turning concepts into a real object. Since we have a modular product collection, we are able to solve complex shapes and geometries. We are able to offer a very wide variety of options in a very short time.

These skills are not so common among interior designers; perhaps it’s a little bit more with architects. Interior designers usually struggle to work with complex shapes, so we partner with help them to improve the concept. It is a win-win relationship because we enjoy that process and they are very happy to have our help elevating their concept and bringing it to life.

How much does an Atelier MEL installation usually cost?

A small installation usually starts at €3,000. The most expensive installation we have ever sold was around €300,000. This was a huge installation for a big hotel.

What is your future plan with Atelier MEL. How would you like to develop the company?

Since we are all designers and architects, we are likely to focus on the design and service side of our business. We cannot be so competitive on the production side, because we are a new firm and there are huge competitors in the lamp and furniture market. Our whole fabrication process is carried out in Spain currently.

We are at a point where we could choose to develop the venture more into a product company or more into a service company, and we find it more comfortable to strengthen our profile as a service company. That is why we are focusing more on doing unique artworks and installations of any type since this is our core strength.

We call this section of our business “Bespoke Designs” as you can see on our website. The projects are usually large and unique. They are a lot of fun because it’s always a new challenge which we start from scratch. We do a wide variety of different projects within this field.

The second part of our company is called the Modular Collection. These are modular glass products which are already pre-designed and can be produced in a couple of weeks. If we wanted to grow our business on the Modular Collection side, we would need to build a factory with our own production. A factory could speed up the production process and would also let us store material, but considerable investment would be required to build this into a holistic product company.

It is leaner for us to develop our service arm and outsource production. However, we are starting to talk to potential partners like large lighting companies who could take our modular collection into production. Our clients would then be able to use the digital composer to design their own shapes, select colors and their location and place an order. We think this could work well with the right partners, but you never know, perhaps in a couple of years we will manage the production ourselves. For now, we are focusing on the service side.

Do you have any advice for Archipreneurs who are interested in starting their own company in the built environment?

Oftentimes we limit ourselves. Try to develop an attitude of thinking and believing that when you are brave, and you persevere, you can reach much further than what you would initially expect.

Surround yourself with those who complement you and those who can help make a project grow. The team is much more important than the idea, as the team is who is going to do the difficult part of implementing the idea.
In the beginning of our startup I really trusted my friend when he encouraged me to start this venture with him.

I couldn’t imagine that we would find clients in Doha without knowing anybody there. I thought this was impossible, but now we are in Doha, and we have even sold a lamp to the queen, the Sheikh. Nothing is impossible. Be brave.

Surround yourself with those who complement you and those who can help make a project grow. The team is much more important than the idea

What are your thoughts on the future of the built environment? How can it improve, and what continues to inspire you?

I would say is that the future is absolutely based on technology. We should all embrace it and start changing our brains to be much more parametric, much more systematized, much more efficient. In the beginning of my career I was the typical architect, much more interested on the design side of architecture than on the technical side of architecture.

By working together with this team of consultants, I really learned how powerful you can become as a designer mastering the use of technology. Before I considered design and technology as two different things, but now I see how powerful they are in combination.

About Maria Ruiz Pardo

Director at Atelier MEL

After earning her architecture degree in Barcelona, Maria Ruiz Pardo practiced in Spanish studios for several years before pivoting to pursue a career in product design and business management.

After earning a Master in Architectural Management and Design at IE School of Architecture and Design in Madrid and the Royal College of Art in London, Maria founded Atelier MEL in 2013 where she works as director and lead designer.

At Atelier MEL, Maria has assembled a multidisciplinary team of design professionals who work at the intersection of artistry and digital design technology to create exclusive art installations.

Based in Barcelona and Cartagena, Atelier MEL are now developing projects which juxtapose cutting-edge design tools with a rich understanding of traditional craftsmanship worldwide.

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