welcome back architect Nation. I'm Enoch Sears. And this is the show where you'll discover tips, strategies and secrets for running an architectural practice that helps you do your best work more often, as you know, on the show here, we bring on leading architects we bring on architects who you haven't heard of before we, we bring on consultants thought leaders. And of course, we produce a lot of content here ourselves around this idea of capturing value in the marketplace and about the value of architecture and what architects provide. And I'm super excited to be joined here today, by the cofounders of Windsor Botania architects who are located in the UK, they're going to tell us more about what their practice is up to we have giovani on the line as well as Ryan. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, the world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture firm owners structure their existing practice. So the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture. Because you see, it's not your architecture design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simplify the running of your practice, go to business of architecture.com forward slash smart to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture. Hello,
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and Ryan welcome.
Thanks, Eric. Thanks, cynic.
Excited, that's
absolutely, well, hey, tell us just to set the stage, I'm going to set a little bit of stage here for our listeners that are listening. Your Practice recently, like all practices, you've done a lot of hard work, we had a little bit of conversation before we started recording here. And just from what I picked up, I can tell that you're both you're both passionate, you have your sleeves up, you're working hard, you're really pushing yourselves to provide an excellent product to your client in terms of design in terms of architecture. So that's sort of the unseen story a lot of times about architectural practices is all the blood, sweat and tears that we've gone through to get us to where we are today. And you've had some pretty impressive and some really great breakthrough projects recently that we're going to talk about. And so I'm glad that we get to share your journey, what you've had, how you came about this. Recently, though, you had two projects that you said, that would be interesting to talk about here on the podcast. Number one is an XR Lab, which is an augmented reality facility that was commissioned by a university. I look for to hear more about that. And the second one is a very interesting, sustainable Villa that you mentioned, that would be interesting to talk about. Now, these projects don't happen by accident. So I'd like to rewind a little bit. And I just like to ask you how this partnership came about? Because Ryan, you mentioned to me you're not an architect, Giovanni, you are an architect and tell us how did you guys join forces? And Ryan, if you're not an architect, why the heck are you working in an architectural practice? That's
a good question. That is a good question in it. So maybe like maybe I can start. So I'm definitely I'm definitely not an architect. I don't touch any of the designs. I do, advise and consult on the projects, but more from a development side. So my background is in developments and investing both personally and through other companies. I've actually sat on a few national charity boards as trustee to help them with their investment strategies. And we met me and Giovanni met in London at an award ceremony, I was getting an award for doing some things in property. And he came and grabbed me to have a chat after I gave my speech.
So I'll pause you right there just for a second Ryan, how does someone like yourself, get into that career path? We're familiar with how architects get to where we are, but I also want to get into the development investment path.
Are you familiar with a TV show called homes under the hammer in the UK?
I'm not pleased Tell me about it. It just
it's a it's a show about people going to auctions buying property, and they follow the journey for them to flip the property, sell it for a profit or rent it out. So I got inspired by this program, and I started actually investing when I was 1718. I couldn't get a mortgage so I had to work with family family, basically to join them, join forces with them. learned some hard lessons on overspending on projects. You know And, yeah, I've been doing that. Since, you know, 16 years later, I've built up a portfolio of properties and yeah, advised for other companies as well.
So when you said you saw at 1617 years old, you didn't have a lot of funds to invest yourself. Do you remember how much did you raise for the first project that you did? I'm curious how that happened. This was
this, this was a few years ago. So numbers are going to be different than today. So this was the crash. So I was living in an area of the country called Norfolk. So a more rural part of the country, small town, and house prices dropped by 40%. And I thought to myself, Okay, that's actually valuable, right, you know, that that's actually creating valuable value there. So you're buying it a lot cheaper. rents were relatively good for the area for the price. And I had saved up from childhood businesses, childhood visitors, ventures, 6250 pounds. And that was the price I negotiated for a 10% deposit on the property. So the property that I was buying or bought in the end was 62,500. And at that time, I could get a 10% mortgage. So I put that down my life savings. It's quite a stressful time. As you can imagine, I didn't know if it was going to work out, but I thought it would. Interest rates were very high like they are today. So profit wasn't there. But I thought this would be a good pension pot for myself. And, yeah, five years later, I re mortgaged on a much cheaper rate when rates came down. And, yeah, that's how I got started in property. Really.
I mean, that's, it sounds impressive for someone of that age 16 to 17. Most of us are, you know, chasing girls and go into the video game store. And you're investing in properties. That's great.
Yeah, I was I was a bit of a strange kids. Yeah.
Okay. All right. And what was it, Ryan, that causes you to go? Or I guess, let's go this way. Giovanni. Giovanni, why did you Ryan spoke at this event where he was getting an award, what was it that made you want to go meet Ryan?
So I, at a time when there was back in 2015, or 16, I was in full networking mode, right. So I was running my own event for developers in central London, which was called Hold On Property meet, right? That was a side gig I was doing while I was working at fostering partners. So during the day arcade fostering partner, for some partners during the night, I was doing this events for developers, which because I was really passionate about exploring other side of architecture, then so what's behind the architecture, you know, the numbers, the developments, the developers in general, right? So I was getting passionate about this development world this investment world right? This is why I started expanding my network in this direction and that night at the strand hotel I believe Ryan several we are the several weeks are in the void this Stan was the location Savoy was there with hell yes, was like a black tie event tuxedo, you know, like, just born doing James Bond movies? Yeah. I just heard his historic acceptance speech for the for the word. And I just thought, you know, I should speak with this guy. You know, I like the way he speaks. I like the way the way. It was, um, but it was coming across humble as well. And so we started chatting. And, yes, he told me his story. I told him my story working for fostering partners with his Apple stores. So my role was mainly in a team, which was working for Apple stores. I also been leading the design of the Chancellor's a apple store in Paris, which was completed in 2018. So all really cool projects. But I just felt that my sort of career wasn't into a corporate. So I wanted to start my own thing. And I wasn't sure that that thing was architecture, another architectural practice, I was going more in the direction of property property investing as well. I also have my portfolio of properties, which I started in 2017. So we started speaking, and then it didn't happen on that night. He didn't ask me, Do you want to open up architectural practice? But it took a few months because I invited him to my networking event. And that's the power of networking events, right. You can invite whoever you want to your networking event and you are the sort of the opinion leader, you are the reference point of the event. Right? So so your reference point and you have the power to invite whoever you want for how many times you want to be the relationships, right. So I started inviting Ryan, and asking him to share about his property journey, you know, at the time, we have like 5060 people in the room. So Ryan Windsor, please welcome Robin. So round of applause. And he was sharing his story, right. And then after months and months, you know, obviously we got close to each other's I, he called me to visit one of the properties he was planning to buy. That was in effect for the state of Norfolk, there was he wanted to convert this, this former council building or something like that into a block of flats, right? He needed an Ikea to go and tell him, you know, if it was possible in the first place. So I went, and it happened that I was with an estate agent, which was showing me around and they basically, you know, I was like, I asked the estate agent, can I go into the loft? Is it safe? He said, Yes. I went into the loft. And they happen that the floor collapsed when I was inspecting the loft, and I fell through the loft. Right? I left a big hole in the ceiling, right? So I came out or plenty of dust in front of the estate agent and the estate agent was paralyzed by terror. Right? Then he didn't know what to say. It was like he was like, all good. I said yes. Oh, good. It was a really weird moment. We were spared of dust and then we left the building and the following day. He's his company sent over an email asking for to pay the damage right. So Ryan was really nice, because it jumped in and in basically protect myself against the time with the annoying thing about this viewings are they were working? And who was responsible for what and basically he said, you know, actually, you agent, you should have that duty of care. Right? So it's your responsibility if he didn't, you know, in a lift the devil in the ceiling. And that what momentum was actually the moment where really, we started bonding with each other be each other's right. To the point that I went to his future family house, they did a sketch for you for for him for without charging anything. We had a dinner together, etc, etc. So it was a really good, really good, really good dinner at the sushi restaurant. Yeah, they really treated me well, that night. And the one day, you know, I was sitting at the Vauxhall bus station in Vauxhall, and in London, sorry, in London. And I get this message from him on WhatsApp, you know, and it was like, you know, do you want to start an architectural practice together? Yeah. And I said, Yes. So everything started from there. And at the beginning, we got like, one client in the first six months, right. And then it took off really, really slowly. Right? Yeah. And we quickly realize that the partnership was working out. Because as the as we know, right, when you are, when you go into a partnership, one plus one must make three, not two, right? So it means you know, the two partners, they really need to bring a lot of value to each other's. So the fact that he was, he's a completely different he has a completely different skill set than mine is fantastic. So we say that, you know, he's, he's a business person, right? property developer, but also he has a fantastic sale. skill set. Yeah, it's a fantastic salesman, right. talks a lot to me me too much, sometimes.
Being very quiet now. And
it's fantastic with clients. So we say that basically, he fishes the fish and I fry the fish. This is how, you know, we structured our partnership. And this is how we actually basically successfully build the company so far. Wonderful.
So it started at a sushi restaurant, and you're still frying and catching fish.
But it's easy, it's easy to you know, talk to clients, if you believe in the in the product and the service, right, you know, and and Giovanni didn't mention this but you know, in between We are courtship if you will to go into business together, I had a consultancy helping people invest in property and giving them guidance. And a lot of the time, I refer had to refer them to other experts, because I was very clear with them. I'm not X Y, Zed, I know my stuff, I've got experience, but I can't give you architectural or planning advice to the level as a qualified professional. And when I met Giovanni, I started to refer clients to him, and they all came back and they said, He is the best architect I have ever worked with. He is great at communication, great designs, he thinks outside the box, you know, he's he's not just thinking about the thing that's in front of him, he's thinking about the next problems that could occur and already bringing solutions to the table. And I thought, well, actually, that's a really nice way to consult, you know, like you're an architect is actually creating things. And then you can actually see the building, whereas I just give the advice. So I said, Why don't you Why don't we merge that that was my idea. So, you know, we're a very commercially minded practice. And I think our clients appreciate that.
And you said to the first six months, it was real struggle. What did you do during those first six months? To bring in projects? Talk to a lot of people? Yeah, what did that look like? When you say talk to a lot of people tell me,
I think it was going through my contact list and tell it just telling them raising awareness of you know, what we're doing, you know, I'm moving away from just pure consultancy, to actually offering a service and architectural design service, and promoting Giovanni, and what what we could do together, and then seeing if they had any contacts, who would be interested, you know, sometimes they weren't interested at all, but at least they knew about it now. And again, following up like following up with these people, and making sure they would advocate for us, because you know, we've given them I've given them advice or help them in the past. And
how long did it take was the first really substantial project that you got after that process of reaching out to the network and talking to so many people?
So we things really took off when we started working with a building team. And they basically started referring us a lot of clients. So
when you say a building team, you mean
a construction company? Yeah. So they, they were specialized in working for developers in around London, mainly in the northwest. So Liverpool and Manchester. So we started getting a lot of projects over there, to the point that I moved to Liverpool for two years. And I lived in Liverpool for two years to consolidate our sort of presence in the area. Yeah. So the spike of in project, that first spiking project, which really gave us the boost to set the foundation of the practice was via this building team.
I'm curious. So from the beginning, even up until now, what what is the company viewpoint on profit? How do you all see profit and tying that back in the business and architecture? What's your philosophy on profit, as an architectural practice?
Like any business, you need a surplus, you need a profit, right? It's important, it gives us sustainability, to take risks to to hire new people to try and do something new. Obviously spend it on intangibles like marketing, you know. And I would say, for me, this really hit home actually, during COVID. So we didn't, we had profit in the business. And we felt quite comfortable not having to even consider letting any of our team members go. Because we had that financial security. And I think, you know, some people say that you need like three or six months, operating capital. And I said to God, that's rubbish, we need two years. Right. And that might be too much, but at the time of COVID, that seemed like the right amount to have. And we we've gone through a really, we go through a really tough interview process with our team. You know, it's not just a general chat, and then they're hired, they have to do tests, or we really need this cultural fit. So you know, that might take a month or two, to really like find that that one person once we've shortlisted and then I was thinking, the worst thing that can happen is if we have to fire these people that have entrusted their, their careers to us, because we don't have the money to keep them right, you know, and COVID was a unique situation. But I just think that sort of set the groundwork of actually we need to get in projects that give us a profit so we can it benefits the company and obviously our team,
what are the steps that you take to ensure that that profit is there? What are the key lever points that you're looking at to make sure that it is profitable.
Everything starts from the contract, right? So we quantify how many hours when I take on the project, sometimes we use the debt as a as a measure of the amount of hours we believe it's going to take and how much we get paid per hour. And sometimes we use a percentage of the construction cost. So rarely we use a fixed fees. But in general, we like to leave a good gap in between our expenses and in the income you will receive, to avoid having having basically to work for a non profit, right. And that's why actually we are faced with you know, clients, which wish we were charging less. And they, they actually decided to go for service providers, which are charging really little in comparison to what what is appropriate for the job, right? To the point that sometimes they hire also architect, other professionals, which don't have maybe the right insurance cover or things like that, but they take some risk. So as you know, in in England, there is a little bit of our perfect, perfect storm, in a sense that there is high inflation, high interest rates construction cost is is skyrocketing. That is lack of labor, in affordable labor from the from Europe, because now I believe these are really regulation around the minimum salary to be to have the visa, the working visa in England, which is now 38,000 pounds before used to be 26,000 pounds. So less, sort of a shortage of lorry drivers shortage of labor, for construction sites, everything driven drove the construction costs up. So perfect storm in that sense. So in what we see is that developers are and even homeowners are trying to save part of their budget by hiring service providers, which are obviously charging much less, and they're willing to take a risk with that, as long as they reduce the budget for the services. At the moment, we didn't have the need to lower down our prices. Because obviously, we don't want to flood our team with too many projects to overwork them. We tend to choose, you know, cherry pick those projects, which are still meeting these requirements. And, and we we were trying to keep these strategy as the standard also for the rest of the year. Excellent.
So, all right, so And before we hopped on the we had a little bit of pre talk before the podcast and, and we don't want to sugarcoat this, this is a real, this is a real obstacle in the industry, not just in the UK, but also here in the United States, which is architects, our fellows are colleagues who are willing to drop their fees solo undercut and and and you gentlemen note like are from your knowledge, like how are these other practices doing it? Where are they cutting back? Because we know they have to be cutting back somewhere? Are they just not making money? Are they are they living like poppers themselves? Are they giving not as good scope in terms of the projects? Or what's what's going on here?
When it comes down to reducing price, obviously, there's also another way to reduce price, which is reduce the scope of works, right? So you reduce the quality, you reduce the you know, the amount of service, you provide less meetings, less design revisions, right? But then you start really heating into your sort of profit. And there's no way around it. Right. So some practices might decide to break even as long as they retain the client and they keep the client the long term. That can be another strategy, right. It's a strategic strategic decision based on the fact that that that client might bring more projects in the future. Right. So these my point of view, Ryan, do you have any any other idea of that?
I mean, it's tough, isn't it? I mean, we've we've seen it in recent news, you know, some big name companies, they have just not been making enough, they've probably been under bidding on the projects. They've been successful in winning them. They've been done doing some very prestigious projects. But you know, there's news literally every month of, of a big name, architectural practice, you know, in the UK that has filed for bankruptcy or closed. Right. You know, it's not where we want to be.
You don't want to be bankrupt and closed. Ryan was recently told.
I don't think that was in our strategic plan at all. No.
It's not under Strategic Plan your growth plan?
Yeah. Anti growth plan? Yeah, definitely not. I think, you know, it's better to have solid foundations and maybe, you know, grow a little bit more sustainably than take on too much. And do it at the at the peril of other other things. Right?
Well, good on both of you for drawing a line in the sand and taking a stand. Because that's what we're about here on Business of Architecture, say, let's take a stand, let's stop devaluing what architects do. And I understand that because having practice full time, as an architect, I know what it's like to sit across from the table from a client, who's telling us that their budget only goes so far that they want to take out of the architectural services, that they're trying to talk down the fees on the service aside. From both your perspective, I'd like to know what do you think it is that causes us architects to be so and I know what happens in other professions too, but maybe just not as architects, as humans to devalue our own value? And some standing for a powerfully
is a fantastic question. I mean, I've been asking myself this question since the university, so because it's not a problem of today. Right? It has always been the sort of threat of the architects in general, I feel that is because architects, I mean, we are really passionate about our job, he's a creative job. And we ended up over working, you know, and thinking about the aesthetics, the functionalities, we get really into it. And the artistic sort of approach that we exercise on in this profession doesn't play a great role in, in seeing the profession as a business sometimes, right? If we were, if the education system would provide a better business culture to architects, maybe we'll see less of these of these problems, in relation to our fees in general. And also working over time is a is a is a another problem, which is associated perfect to the profession. If you speak with a lawyer, and you know, they even calculate the minutes, they're working for you, and they make you pay every single minute, minutes extra, right? If you ask a client, or an additional practice to pay you additional money for every minute, you're working there, they're going to have a laugh, right? So it's difficult to convince them to pay an architect for additional hours that are working. So is it's kind of a culture around the profession. It's like, you know, musicians, you know, why should they pay you like, you know, you're what you're doing is like a passion, right? Why should I pay you a lot of money? And the same with architects you know, they people think architects out there to draw and do wonderful buildings, because they love it and they should be Payless is a cultural thing?
Yeah. I would say I mean, just I mean, if we summarize, you know, it's, I think it's because we care. We care maybe too much. You know, especially when the project is a special project and it has some meaning. We, you know, we want to go the extra mile, even if the client doesn't have their budget, you know, we tend to want to just see it through.
Ryan from your resume, from your perspective, why is this happening in industry as an outsider, when you look with a business perspective, looking in at the design and true, why do we Why do we undervalue ourselves? Why are we so willing to drop our pants to any client that asks us to be architectural horse, so to speak for the entire world?
I again, I think it's maybe it's, you know, the prot some of these projects are like our babies, right? And we just want to see them grow up and to be finished. And clients know that. They know, it's important for us to be involved in the whole process. We've been going through some, some nice projects at the moment where we've designed something fantastic, and then they say thank you very much. We're going to stop your services and go to builders to see if the builders want to hire you now. Yeah, you know, and it's kind of like Wow, really, you know, we might not be involved in seeing this to fruition. So then, you know, when the bill does come, you know, you might be more willing to discount right you know, or you know, Just psychologically right because you want to the project continue to continue. It's tough. But I think it's because we care. We care, and we want the project to go well, and, you know, some of these professions, Giovanni mentioned, you know, maybe lawyers, or maybe it's being a bit harsh on them.
They don't care. They're just in it for the money. I'll take you live for all the baristas out there.
I was gonna say, Yeah, you know, maybe maybe we stereotype of if, but, you know, those professionals might be seen as more like cold and calculated. You know, we're more warm profession.
Certainly. Okay, gentlemen. So we have about 10 more minutes for the episode. And I'd love to hear about these two innovative projects that you recently pulled off that are quite interesting. So if we can maybe spend about five minutes on each or whatever the budget allows for that, who would like to tell us about the project number one.
So with with XR lab, the extended Reality Lab, is a project we did for the Eastern education group in Norfolk. They are a group of colleges and universities based in Norfolk, which is nearby Cambridge. So they had these hanger building, which they were using for different activities. And they basically pick up one of the five angles of the building, which they were using as, as our automotive school, automotive school, that workshop. So when we stepped into that, building that hangar for the first time, it was like, breezy, you know, with all these engines all over the place, the ceiling falling apart. And they invited us to basically tender for the design and construction support for these in NOC innovative augmented reality facility, a research lab for deploying the latest technology in relation to the virtual reality AI, etc, etc. So the topic, the basically theme was to create the future space of education for students to learn by via augmented reality, that was the topic. So we tendered, we actually won the bid against AJ 100. Company, B. Kevin Hart, I think they have, you know, around 100 architects or something like that. So we've been quite, you know, strong in that company competing for that project. 2 million pounds construction cost funded by the government. And it was really cool, because the principal of the of the university had a really clear idea of what he wanted. He wanted a building looking like a spacecraft landed into a hangar, right? And so we got we got really excited. You said, you know, I want people to walking into the hangar and say, Wow, what the hell is that? Yeah. And then they were entering the building, and finding out another a new way of learning a new space, the future of education. So this was a fantastic brief coming from a client, right? And we have to reinterpret the brief and turn it into an architecture. Okay. So, and we did it successfully, we've been praised. We got the Education Department, government departments coming over to open for the opening ceremony. So it has been a success. So how did we got to these success? How do How did we get to this? The success was via, you know, really pushing with this vision, right? Of the spacecraft, right? So we took some inspiration from the Monolithos of 2001, Space Odyssey, from Tesla, the cyber truck to design the exteriors of the building. So if you look at them, the tubes, feature walls of the port inside the hangar, they look like the shape of the cyber track with a sort of a triangular mesh, which remember, connects visually with the visual environments, right? So a lot of people are taking pictures. On the side of the wall, you know, is the Instagram moment. We did a lot of interviews with these kind of really cool, fissure wall. And then when you go inside, we chosen black and white color palettes taking inspiration from men in black. So we really wanted like the students to feel like they were protagonists of the future of education. So like many blacks, they were, you know, entering the inside of the building and In finding a new world, a secret world with all these augmented reality headsets, on the walls, they were wearing them, put him there, knock them on, and then they were ready for action to learn by manipulating objects in 3d, and doing group activities in 3d environments. One of the main things that we're doing was like working with 3d engines, of airplanes of cars, manipulating them with these, these active gloves, and, and, and, and special suits. So all together, you know, created this, this really cool space, which, you know, has been praised by by University and the client overall, the overall project was designed and built in, in nine months. So really, really fast turnaround on time and on budget. Yeah.
What was what was the most? What do you think it was that that allowed you guys to win that project? Would you say?
We were the right architects at the right time? I would say, because, basically, what happened is that there was a really short window of time, during which we had to produce a concept, to show them to show to show the client that we were understanding their vision. And so we did, we basically put together a concept within this window of time, and we just convinced them to hire us. When
When we asked the question to the, to the educator to the university, you know, why they basically said, you know, we know what our current kind of architect does, and it's okay. But for this project, it needs to be a flagship, it needs to be the beacon of of our college, now, we're going to change education, this the principle of this, this, this college, he is a visionary, you know, and, you know, you see what he's doing, he's doing some really, really great things. And he needed the building and the architecture to reflect that. So, again, Giovanni has been quite humble in that I think the other people that were bidding for it, they just put like a quick sketch together, you know, to D, we 3d model the space, and we worked in CGI, our team works a lot very in a very short space of time, like a week, and we built out like a full concept, and pretty much what we had built look like their original concepts, which they were quite amazed on, because they know that doesn't always happen. And they said, We got exactly what we what we wanted from you guys. Right. So I think that helped him with confidence. Using the CGI is
fascinating. How does it how to, like, how does it feel to pull up that project? I mean, there's you talked about award, you talked about you on time and on budget, like how does that feel? Amazing.
I mean, it's so great is why you start this profession in the first place. I mean, that's, you want 10 of those every year, ideally. Even
better, though, because you can see the real impact it's having, you know, you go back and you speak to the team at the college, you see the students learning, you see what they're doing. It's really great.
They recently did a documentary on BBC as well. So you can look and find it on BBC. Okay,
amazing. Grades are listening, go there, check it out. It's a great project to go look at. Obviously, you can go to the Windsor petunias website, they have videos on there, but do interviews. And it's pretty, pretty fun. So tell us about there's another project, we only have time for one more, but we'd love to hear about this, this villa that Ryan, you're very excited about it, because you mentioned it earlier, who wants to tell us about this project?
Maybe Maybe I can jump in. So I mean, just to give you a background, so the client of the villa, and this is a pretty special villa is a client is an investor. He's a developer. And I had been speaking to him for a number of months. And you know, nothing really took off. And he finally said, Okay, I have a problem project. I've had two or three architects work on it for two or three years, I've had planning consultants, I need to make it bigger and better. It's a central London commercial building. I want to give you a go. So we said okay, well, we actually most of our projects that we get given are like the complex projects, right, you know, that we have to get through planning or something. And we seem to seem to thrive on those types of projects. So he gave us this project, and we got more out of the project. We got it approved everything all done in six months. And he said, Okay, now I'm going to give you another one. Another problem project. We got, again, a great result through planning very quickly said again, I wish I found you two years ago, that's what I want to hear from the clients. Right. You know, so, you know, it's kind of like what we're proud of and I Guess he thought, I'm gonna give these guys a chance now, you know. So he said, I'm buying a piece of land in prestigious part of London ascot. And I want to build a contemporary villa. But I want a big villa. Right, not the biggest villa, but I want to be big enough to house all of the sustainable elements. And at the end, I want this to be one of, if not one of the most sustainable properties in the UK. And, you know, obviously, if you, you know, some people might say, well just go live in our 70 square meter house in the woods, that's pretty sustainable. But he wanted it to be a luxury villa, etc. And, yeah, I mean, we've been working on this project for a few years now. Lots of challenges, negotiations with the council. And I think God, you can confirm that we finally got planning, planning permission, just recently. We
are quite close to it. Yeah. I mean, we've got one planning permission. We're looking for another one. Yes. Yeah, what we got was this great, complex process, because we're in the Greenbelt there. So in the Greenbelt, is really complex to build. Especially if you're trying to build a building, which is larger than the average of the buildings, you have to go through a lot of different planning applications to basically to get to your final desired result.
Yeah, incredible. Anything.
Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, in terms of the building itself, it has 112 solar panels on the roof. So it runs mostly on solar power, with heat pumps, as well. So it basically generates more energy than it produces. And, and also, thanks to the materials we are deploying is gonna be a zero carbon project as well. So that's the target is one of these one, here's one of those projects, but declined to also want to, to basically plant trees as part of the overall scheme. Just to bring back to the environment. The emphasize the the overall eco friendliness of the of the project.
What's next? Where's the practice headed? What are the what are your plans or goals? Where would you like to take this vision, I
want to attend exit relay. And we wanted to next the number of projects of the site we are having. We don't want to I mean, we want to have a team, which is more experienced. So we want to hire people, which are, you know, bring in a lot of experience on board. And we want to make the difference. In terms of sustainable design, and also high tech projects like the Excel lab, we got into wet labs design as well. We're getting into designing labs for science. We did a few concepts. So he's another space we want to expand. And we're also starting working in in sustainable substations, which is another big topic in in London in the London area. So we partner with the engineers for the design of of substations, which, I mean, they don't look great. They are kind of they are what the Alki Paepcke buildings, but as far as the engineers say they save a lot of energy. So we like to be involved also in those projects, in terms of providing, you know, technical knowledge.
Beautiful Gentleman, thank you for being on here today. I think this is a great example of what can happen when you pair up a business mind with architecture and design. And literally, we have two minds here, coming from both worlds, building this practice. So appreciate you coming on sharing with us. We'd love to have you back on the Business of Architecture podcast in the future to catch up. But I know there's a lot of lessons or listeners can learn here from networking, creating a networking event yourself to how to price projects. You know, I love what you said, Giovanni that it starts with the contract, the profit starts with the contract. Excellent. Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Nick. And that's a wrap. Oh, yeah, one more thing. If you haven't already, head on over to iTunes and leave a review. We'd love to read your name out here on the show. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice. The world's leading step by step business training program that's helped more than 103 architecture firm owners structure that are existing practice. So the complexity of business doesn't get in the way of their architecture, because you see, it's not your architecture or design skills that's holding you back. It's the complexity of running a business, managing projects and people dealing with clients, contractors and money. So if you're ready to simple Find the running of your practice, go to business of architecture.com forward slash smart to discover the proven simple and easy to implement smart practice method for running a practice that doesn't get in the way of doing exceptional architecture.
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