Behind the Build: Magnus Ström - Ström Architects

Magnus Ström is the founder and Principal Architect of Ström Architects, a UK-based practice internationally recognized for its refined, modernist approach to residential design. Originally from Sweden, Magnus was surrounded by functionalist architecture from an early age—drawn to clean lines and minimalist forms that would later define his work. His parents’ hands-on building projects and honest critiques of his childhood sketches sparked an early and enduring passion for architecture.

Denied entry to Sweden’s architecture programs due to competitive academic thresholds, Magnus pivoted—first trying business and engineering before ultimately finding his path in the UK after Sweden joined the EU in 1995. He studied architecture at the University of Portsmouth and gained formative experience with PLB Architects during his studies, followed by a pivotal role at De Blacam and Meagher in Dublin, where he worked on one-off houses and absorbed lessons from deeply rooted modernist traditions.

Magnus spent eight years as a director at another firm in the New Forest before founding Ström Architects in 2010. Starting with just £6,000 and a subcontracted project, he grew his studio from modest beginnings into an internationally commissioned design office, celebrated for its precision and quiet sophistication. Key milestones include The Quest, a retirement home that won multiple awards and continues to attract global attention.

With a belief in stripping architecture down to its essence—both conceptually and materially—Magnus emphasizes clarity, craft, and client-focused design. Under his leadership, the practice has delivered projects across more than 10 countries, with a forthcoming international office soon to open. Magnus remains committed to evolving both his design ethos and business systems, striving to elevate every detail while mentoring his growing team.

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Episode Transcript

(00:08):
OK, welcome to Behind the Build.Today I have with me a gentleman
from Europe, not not from North America, not from Toronto, not
from Canada. I have with me today Magnus
Strum. But for the last 30 years, he's
been known as strong. That's right.

(00:37):
Virginally from Sweden, now having spent the last 30 years
in the UK, Magnus has built a substantial practice that has a
global reach and multiple continents, and I am very
honored to have him with me. So Magnus, thank you for taking
time out of your busy day to talk about yourself and your
practice. Yeah, thanks for having me.

(00:58):
So I, I following Magnus's work for a little while, I finished a
bunch of recordings and I neededto get back to it.
And I said, you know, let me reach out to him and see if, see
if he's willing to, to accommodate some time in his
schedule for this, to which he obliged.
So Magnus, you've, you've heard the podcast before.
So I would start it off by asking you a little bit about

(01:19):
your, the early years of your life and what your interest look
like early in life, whether whether it was math or sciences
or it was the arts that you tookan interest in.
What, what was it for you that kind of sparked your interest
that led down the path towards architecture?
We're going to continue with Magnus in a moment, but I have a
question. Have you ever walked up to a

(01:41):
front door and it quietly sets the tone for everything else
that you experience once you walk through it?
Magnus talked about that feelingwhen you walk into a space and
your blood pressure drops. Architecture has the power to do
that, and sometimes so does a door.
The front door to our house is one of my favorite things.
It's not flashy, it doesn't try to be clever, but it's Bill,

(02:03):
right? It moves with almost no effort.
So even 2 year olds on my streetthat are coming by can open it.
My 6 year old, My 9 year old, noissue.
And the large handles in fighting.
The fiberglass frame gives its strength and insulation, and the
side glass offers just enough visibility to see who's there

(02:25):
without giving anything away about the inside.
From the sidewalk, it opens and closes 40 to 50 times a day.
Kids running in and out, grabbing water, snacks, toys,
changing shoes, inviting friendsover.
It's probably the most used thing in our home.
And after all that, it still looks brand new.

(02:47):
That door and every window in our house came from the doors, a
European window and door supplier that we work with a lot
on projects with Drew Mandel, SMPL Design Studio, Eisen
Architecture, and they do customentry systems, tilt and turn
windows. You can feel the quality in

(03:09):
every detail. If you want to know more, check
them out online or send me a note.
It's Jonathan. Jonathan at waldenhomes.ca and
I'll connect you directly. Now let's get back to Magnus.
I think I'm gonna have to blame my parents for that one.
I think, you know, Sweden had a way of adopting modernism or

(03:31):
functionalism as he was called in Sweden much more than in
many, many other parts of the world.
And you had modern buildings around you in life, like, you
know, you went to the public swimming pool.
And I still remember today, it was just like built, designed
and built in the 50s. And it was a beautiful building.
And I remember those things. And my mom's cousin lived in our

(03:53):
1940s white modernist, one of those proper little sugar cube
white modernist buildings. I remember I was always
fascinated with fascinated by it.
My parents were both kind of always said that it should have
been architects, but none of them pursue that career.
So I wanted to be an architect that was five years old.

(04:13):
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.
So had they explained to you what an architect did when you
were when you were that young? Well, I, I think that they came
about because we, you're my parents, they've renovated
houses and then they built a summer house when I was very
little. And my, my, I remember my dad
sitting, you know, doing some drawing himself and doing lots

(04:36):
of building. So I was helping out and
remember building a model of thehouse.
So I started drawing. I remember drawing like plants
and elevations of houses when I was a kid.
And I remember once I was doing it and I was very proud.
And I want to show my dad. And he just looked at me.
He said, you do realize that thestaircase have to be in the same
place on the 1st floor and then the ground floor.
You know, I walked away with my tail behind my, you know,

(04:58):
between my legs. But I, I think that, you know,
there's something, you know, about honest criticism and
honesty in conversations that I like.
But I remember that very clearlyto this day.
And have you drawn this image with pen or with pencil?
Do you? Remember, with pencil and ruler
and, you know, there was proper wall thicknesses and stuff like

(05:18):
that, Yeah. This is.
Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't think I was 5.
I must have been a proud, probably 8-9 or something like
that at that time. But I remember it clearly.
And so did you take that piece of paper and did you erase or
did you go back and like reevaluate how you were going to
design it? I.
Know I can't recall that. I can just recall the, the, you

(05:42):
know, the kind of the comment, the critiques of to speak as we
call it in architecture and you learn from that, right?
Were the places that your parents renovating, What type of
construction was it? Was it was there was a concrete?
Was it stick frame? Was steel like?
What was it? One of them was 1940s and you

(06:06):
know, there was a mix of kind ofblock break and start work that
was filled with newspaper, whatever they used back then.
And and then the summer house that built when I was a kid was
all stick frame, you know, and Iremember helping out.
And then my parents built another house when I was just
starting uni and I got back in the summers and I'd labour for

(06:27):
my dad in the house. As a favor or were.
You but that was like lightweight concrete house.
So I've just been remember doinga lot of some finishing
carpentry on the 1st floor and doing, you know, we actually
rented all the walls inside. We didn't have any dry lining or
anything like that. There was no sheetrock walls.
There was more like, you know, just actually rough plaster on

(06:50):
the walls. It was kind of a rough finish.
OK. And so at that point in
university, how you established the path where you already
studying architecture or were you studying something else?
Is likely more roundabout way about it because in Sweden there
was three schools of architecture.
OK and it's one of the hardest thing that you could possibly

(07:10):
get into. So you either have top marks
across every different subjects and I didn't have good enough
marks. I was I was spending far too
much time sailing actually went to a sports high school.
So Sweden we got high schools inevery kind of sport.
So young kids can do a sport at the high level and have training

(07:30):
without messing up their academics, right.
But my grades weren't good enough.
So yeah, I couldn't get into school of Architecture and there
is test, so you can do see if you got attitude.
And I made the first cut but notthe second cut.
So I then decided to, I studied business because I thought it
was a general degree. And then I did that for three

(07:53):
months and I hated it. And I've dug it up and I begged
bag it up skiing for a season. And then I came back home.
And then I thought, well, do building engineering because
that I couldn't come in the backway.
And then I went to the first lecture because that was quite
easy to get into uni. And I remember the first lecture
I went to then it was like just maths and I absolutely hated it.
And I said, well, I hated maths in school so I'm certainly not

(08:15):
going to do this. I just walked straight out.
I go, that was my shortest degree.
I was 3 hours. I have this fond memory of grade
10. I have also agreed eleven grade
10 math was mandatory in grade 11 math.
That was like 3 weeks into the math and I was like, I got the,
I got this exam. I bombed it.
And I told my teacher, I'm like,I'm I'm dropping your class.

(08:37):
He's like, you're dropping math.I said, yes, done.
He handed me a sheet of all the jobs that you would no longer be
able to get. And I said, do you think in any
of those jobs, by the time that I'm old enough in my career that
there won't be some level of like assistance for math or that
it can't turn to someone that has the skills?
I'll be OK. Yeah, no, no, I hate this.

(08:58):
I remember I'm not doing that. And then so that was 2 failed
degrees, right. But I think that you've got to
learn to fail gracefully. And then I, you know, just
messed about them. But then in, you know, comes to
a point where two years after I finished school, I got I really
need to do something. And I wanted to be an architect
is what I wanted to do. And then in 95, Sweden became

(09:19):
members of the European Union. And that meant that I could
apply for any university in Europe and study for free.
So I thought I would language, do I speak like, you know, I
could do this Scandinavian countries of Germany or England.
And I thought like, I don't fancy Germany.
So I thought, well, try England.So I applied to 4 universities
in England and accepted a three.Yeah.

(09:39):
And then it was just like potluck where I went.
Soon you'll hear Magnus talk about something that really
resonated with me, his belief inclarity and minimalism in
architecture. That restraint, knowing what to
include and what to leave out, has a way of shaping how we
live, not just how things look. It's the same principle that
guided the kitchen in our home. We chose panel ready appliances

(10:03):
not just for the clean aesthetic, but because we didn't
want the kitchen to announce itself.
Everything blends in. It feels quiet, refined and
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(10:27):
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they understand the differences.Panel ready or stainless?
Bold colours or minimalist. It's about knowing what fits the
project and the budget. Their team was thoughtful and

(10:49):
informed, which is rare and madeall the difference.
If you're in the middle of a spec or you want someone to walk
through options with you, you can visit Kaplans online or
reach out to me directly and I'll gladly make the
introduction to one of their team members. e-mail me.
It's Jonathan. Jonathan at waldenhomes.ca.

(11:09):
Now back to Magnus. And are you still in contact
with any of the other students that you went to school with?
Yeah, I got one of the guys withmy technical director.
He was actually a year above me in Unix, so he works for me now.
Amazing. Yeah.
OK, so, so let's so let's go through this.
So you finish, you finish university.

(11:30):
How long? How long was the degree?
So in England we do three years bachelor's degree and then we
work in practice for a year, normally school of Part 1
placement and then you go back into your masters for two years
and then you do another year in practice before you come set
your professional exam. So when I did my year out, I did

(11:50):
a short stint in London. But I remember my first job
there, it was, you know, 12 and a half, £1000 a year.
And by the time you paid your rent in London.
And then, you know, I remember eating like the cheapest sliced
bread with value jam on it, likethat packed lunch because that's
all I could afford. And then I got out after three

(12:10):
months. I got with, this is actually
quite rubbish. So we're actually going to job
down South of England instead. And yeah, and I had a really
good year out there. And then actually I stayed on
working at that practice throughout my masters, which is
very good. So I worked through my old
masters. Is this a place that you would?
Do you want to talk about where it was?

(12:31):
Do you want to leave it? Leave it.
They called it called architecture PLB in his funny
because he was one of those firms in Winchester that loads
of there was some tutors that were teaching university that
work there. And and there's a lot of other
people that, you know, around myage that I work there and now
have their own practices or they've gone through it.

(12:52):
So it's one of those places. They did a lot of residential
and educational. Was it, was it also it was when
you say residential, was it single family or was it?
No, it was, it was multifamily and schools, yeah.
OK. And was, it, was, it was
dedicated to a certain region orwere they, were they open to
working in different areas? Like I, I'm, I guess what I'm

(13:15):
where I'm going with this is, and we'll get there.
But with your practice now having worked in multiple areas
across the world, I'm curious was, did you get some flavor for
that previously? No, not in that.
That was most of their work, mostly in in South England.
OK. But when I then went back into
my masters and then when we do our final crit sit speak, we

(13:36):
have external examiners and I had an external examiner called
John Mayer from Dublin, Ireland.So he was my external examiner
and he offered me a job. So I went, I went to work for
them in in Dublin after I graduated from my masters
program. The firm was called the Blackman

(13:58):
Meyer. And and what was it like working
there? That was a really cool
experience actually because he was the black Camaro is a firm
that is very well regarded in inin Ireland and Shane the
Blackham had worked for Louis Kahn and John Mayer worked for

(14:21):
Scott Ventura Brown and they both came back to Dublin at
around the same time and set up the kind of a partnership
together. All the day was almost like 2
separate officers and run one umbrella because Shane was doing
more civic work. It was like very Carney and and
heavy brick whereas John was doing that.

(14:42):
He's doing a lot of one off houses but inspired by Alto and
he was very well connected in Ireland so he worked with lots
of celebrities and and so on across across Dublin and and
also they did houses overseas aswell.
OK, so this is this is where yougot like a really strong
foundation of. Yes.

(15:03):
I mean, I suppose I was always interested in the one of House
of projects and I, I, I enjoyed that massively and in in
university as well when we had to do urban studies and they're
kind of master planning. It was not my thing.
I wasn't interested in that at all.
I like them more humane scale and the touchy feely scale of

(15:23):
it. It's interesting because it's
such a different experience working with a homeowner versus
a board of directors or an ownership group or.
Absolutely, yeah. So, so how long did you stay at
the at that practice? I was sitting there for about a
year actually, OK, I worked on avery interesting house for an

(15:45):
Irish film director and it was areally good experience.
And then I got a call one day from one of my old cheaters at
university who said I'm opening up a practice because he had had
a practice in the late 80s. But then the recession hit and
they went more into teaching andthen he was getting some work
again, so I joined him. So I was there for eight years

(16:07):
and doing mostly one-off rezi but also some multi resi.
And and where was this location?There in the New Forest where I
am right now. OK.
Yeah. So, so there were some travel
involved in in the startup of this career.
Back, yeah. OK.

(16:27):
And so, so you were there for eight years and like, what was
it about where you were professionally that had you kind
of thinking, I are itching that I should go out and start my own
practice? I think I, I was always
interested in having my own practice somehow.
But then when I was working in that job, I kind of at some
point I thought like, I don't need to do that because I had, I

(16:50):
was director of that practice and I thought I had a very good
kind of trajectory and how that was working.
It was a director of 36. Now that's an that was quite
young and I had a lot of responsibility and that was very
rewarding. But I think that, you know, and
then 2000 and eight, 2009 recession.
And then, and they always say like people that are practicing
their recession, right? It was something that around

(17:13):
that time that where interests, you know, diverged and, and, and
that's when I thought, now I need to do this for myself.
So I set up in in 2010, which isnow 15 years ago.
And at this point, just out of out of curiosity, were you, were
you on your own? Were you married at this point?

(17:34):
Or were you? I had just met someone.
OK. Yeah, I asked them.
It became my wife. Yeah.
It's, it's a, it's a between that and then starting your own
practice, like leaving what you know and the steady paycheck.
Yep. And it's and working towards
establishing yourself and the unknown can be a daunting task.

(17:57):
When you've now you've, you've formulated some form of
relationship. It's it can be hard.
Yeah, of course it is very hard to set up, you know.
So when you when you went out onyour own, did you have a project
to start off with or or how did that?
What? Did that.
Well, you know, that's like we all did.
We all moonlighted a bit and maybe did a couple of smaller
things on the side, you know, did an extension for someone

(18:19):
there, a friend there, he did the extension and then they, I
had, I remember I had £6000 saved in the bank.
You know, that's not a lot of money but you know, it's a
little bit more in back then maybe £6000 in the bank.
And I also, I had worked very closely on a project as my
previous practice and the clienthe said like, well, I want to

(18:43):
continue working with you Magnus.
So I made a deal with my ex bossthat the product would be
subcontracted to me. So they would still be like we
had a joint credit in it, but itwas subcontracted to me.
So I did the work in drawings package and then delivered it on
site through through straw markets and that was my first
products. Wow, Yeah, that's that also says

(19:05):
a lot about the relationship that you had with with that that
owner. Yeah, absolutely.
Out of respect for each other and what you had been able to
establish. Yeah, that's special.
So. And the, the moonlighting is, I
would say probably the most common thing I have heard from

(19:26):
everyone. It's otherwise you're foolish to
go out on your own thing. Yeah, but it's normally, as I
would say, like there's three ways to set up for practice.
You know, 1 is you are a Rockstar, right?
Like, like Bianchi Angles, you know, he had a summer off and he
won three competitions, I think he was.
And then he was launched. 2 Two,is that you, you work at the big

(19:48):
practice like, you know, like Fosters or something and you're
a director and you leave and youtake lots of clients with you
and you set up like make architects or three is that you
start doing French garish extensions and so on, or there
is some kind of mix between the three.
But that's not one of the three options, right.
Yeah. Maybe I'm wrong, but I always

(20:09):
thought about. It that's, that's, that sounds
pretty accurate. I've I've heard far more out of
the the moonlighting and yeah, and the small little additions
here and there or the basement renovation or kitchen
renovation. Yeah, then, then.
That is that how how do you build a reputation based on

(20:32):
doing this little extension and so on?
There's not the work you want todo.
You don't want to be recognized for it too much.
So what work do you put up on your website?
Do you? And that's the whole thing about
having a portfolio. You're going to attract the kind
of work you have in your portfolio.
You're going to make sure that you just don't have, you know,
small garish extensions or something back of house
extensions in your portfolio because that's you can attract

(20:53):
that work that you're going to make sure that you're very
carefully what you put up and what you don't put up.
Right, Yeah, I, I actually, so I, I had interviewed someone
awhile about a year ago now. Her name is Vanessa, and she
runs a successful practice here in Toronto.
And I remember when I helped gether the her first project as a
new build. Yeah.

(21:15):
And she was like, it was the first time we were able to do
like a full beautiful schedule of windows and what that feeling
was like and what it did for theportfolio.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think to your point,
but it's also hard to turn down work when you're trying to go
out on your own. Do you actually present the work
that you're getting paid for or do you keep that kind of to

(21:38):
yourself until the bank account is is somewhat stable and then
hopefully you can start to get something a little bit more
interesting? Well, so I, I, you know, you do
both. I was very fortunate that I
could have a couple of projects that I had worked on that I
could have on my website right before.
And then some of the smaller stuff that in the beginning,

(21:59):
I've never showed that, you know, it's never made its way
out. And, you know, I know someone
that set up similar time to me and they put up took on all the
work and they put it out everywhere.
And they grew a lot quicker and had a much bigger business very
quickly. And I said, like, I don't want
to do that because I don't want to get known for doing that.
So I, I played it a lot slower. So it was much slower in the

(22:20):
beginning for me, I think. And then, you know, I managed to
get a couple of one of houses. It was gracious in one of the
first ones I got, you know, I was interviewed one of five or
six architects and including my old boss was interviewed as well
for it. And they, you know, the client,
when I got the job, I said, like, why did you give the job
to me? And they said that you were the

(22:42):
only one of five architects thatasked us what we wanted.
And I thought that was pretty striking.
Everyone else went to them and said, like, this is what we'll
do this what we'll do for you. But I asked them what they
wanted. So I, you know, that was a big
kind of learning as well. And very early in the beginning
that you need, you know, it's all about the clients.
You don't understand what what it is they want and what they
are asking for slightly changed now that when you when you been

(23:06):
in the game a bit longer becausepeople know what you do.
So you don't have to fight for it so much anymore because there
is a portfolio there that they kind of bind to expose.
And So what when you when you established your practice and
we've talked a little bit about like what some of these projects
were and these one off homes, had you established the type of

(23:28):
product that you wanted to design?
Did you know that you want to, do, you know, minimalist,
contemporary or modern work, or were you kind of open to
whatever would come your way as long as it kind of fit a certain
criteria of scale of project? No, I was always very focused on
doing, you know, modern contemporary architecture

(23:48):
definitely. But I remember when I kind of go
one of my first projects and youstart thinking like you've been
working for someone else for many years and you sit down with
a blank sheet of paper and you go, what, what am I about?
Right. So I went straight back to my
university studies and, and whatI did my, my dissertation and
thesis on. And I, I looked very much back

(24:10):
at them then which, how you can build architecture in a way out.
You know, I looked at trying to analyze buildings through
structured details material in order that is actually, you
know, tectonics of architecture,you know, Kenneth Frampton and
so started that way. And I think that's something the
clarity of that is something that still is in the work that

(24:31):
how your pragmatic about how youhow you build and how you
design. But I think that as you get more
experience and you get more, youget more knowledge the way
design develops. And sometimes either there's a
lot of architecture that I thinkis process driven and you can
see it in some architects how they drive a process when they

(24:51):
design and the architecture endsup looking a certain way because
of the process. I think that when you are
experienced and you've done something for there better time
and you might done, you know, I don't know, maybe done 50 houses
in your life, something like that, including previous work,
you know, I call it. For example, we did, we're doing
a house in Finland at the moment.

(25:12):
So you you spoken with the client a lot.
You spin out, you know, you wantto go out there and you sit and
have lunch with the client and have lots of wine and you talk
about whether this they want to get out of it.
And we went out on the water anddrove around the boat to see it
from different angles. And you really kind of you
subconsciously, you everything goes into your head.

(25:32):
You absorb all of this information and then your brain
synthesizes as it all now standing on site without my iPad
and I was just going like I justliterally sketched out what I
wanted. I'd like because I could have
the divine download. It's because you don't think
about it. You just instinctively know,
like having you know, thought about the brief and how chat

(25:54):
with the client. All of that is just
automatically synthesized. Yes, you can.
You could arrive at exactly the same place, but going through
the process of, you know, doing your analysis diagrams and this
and that, but you absorb it and you could you post rationalized
in the same way. And I think so sometimes that
comes really easily because you just know with your experience,

(26:15):
but sometimes you have to betrayall the steps to kind of get to
the same result. And sometimes it's hard,
sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's really easy.
And I think that you kind of because you know what you're
doing. And how was the Did the client
know that you were going to be pulling out your iPad to start?
No, no, no. And were they?

(26:35):
Were they present? Were they watching as you
started? Do you feel the pressure while
they're there? No, no, If you, I mean, if you
don't have the ideas, you don't get that part out, right.
You don't get the sketchbook out.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Sometimes with someone over yourshoulder as things are starting

(26:56):
to unfold, you know, and you're going to be susceptible to
criticism in that exact moment. Clients, but I find the client
love to see the process of pen and paper and seeing how you
draw, how you think they love that, absolutely love it.
And the other thing that I said,like, you know, and after you

(27:17):
got to learn to draw upside downso that when you sit opposite
them at the table and they startdrawing, you start drawing
upside down, they go, Oh my God,you're drawing upside down.
I love doing that because it kind of is.
It's really funny. So, OK, so, so you, you get to
the, I mean, let's let's let's in some ways conclude what that

(27:39):
was like. So you, you, you pull it out
your drawing for them. And do they have the wow factor
or, or and it I guess in more sonot like did you hit it on the
first try because you very rarely can.
But are they, were they standingthere saying like, you know
what? This, this kind of feels like
the right thing that we're doingright now that the.

(27:59):
Yeah. OK, it's, it's hardly changed at
all. We just started on site and you
haven't really changed. It has gone through numerous
iterations, but it's like the concept is the same.
It's like, you know, we, we did,you know, in a funny way we did,
it's a holiday home, but also kind of a legacy project for,
for them and their family. And it's started off with that.

(28:20):
They come there in the summer and sometimes they come within
the family, extended family. They know there's going to be
grandkids in the future, but allthe time it's just two of them
and it's going to be used in different ways.
So we almost like did a deconstructed building when we
took the whole brief for a houseand deconstructed it in three
different buildings. Actually 5 if you include the
little garage sitting in a saunaon, on a little island.

(28:43):
So we deconstructed the house. So the main house is almost like
a little Farnsworth house. It's like A1 bed pavilion and we
had one little building with four bedrooms in it and one with
two studies in it. So sometimes they can all be
full with people if everyone there.
But you can also just go and open up one building or when you
come in with kids. Yeah, when you come up with kids

(29:04):
and grandkids, there can be in the other building.
So you have a little bit of separation and so on, which
which I think really helps as well.
I like, I like the concept of that.
OK, so, so let's kind of go backto what it was like.
So you you open the practice, it's just you, right?
And how many projects do you were you working on at the early

(29:26):
stage of practice? So within the first two years,
how how many projects would you have had?
3 or 4 projects, something like that.
So at what point did you realizeI need someone to help with
this? Plus, when it is quite funny
that before then it was kind of funny.
In 2010, when I sat up suddenly,that's when all the really good

(29:50):
photographic quality CGI kicked.Off, OK.
And you had magazines like, you know, online magazines like
Discipline and Archdaily startedto come about and suddenly I
think magazines who, you know, used to publish 8 magazines a
year and they would have two, you know, 2 projects or
something like that back. So it was like very low demand

(30:12):
to get something published, right?
It was very hard to get in. And suddenly these people were
putting out 10 stories a day. And so you could get stuff
published if you had really goodthis for your project.
And I remember when I got one ofmy first houses, I happened to
have seen a guy who did this fantastic render.

(30:32):
So I just rang him up and I said, would you do some renders
for me? So I spend like 25% of the fee
for the project on on Peter to do surrenders.
And that was a serious. Tell you this was a crazy
business decision. Want the best decision I've done
right, because it got published and he got into design and art
daily and and so on. And you could and social media

(30:56):
started to kick off and suddenlyyou had all of this, you know,
you get publicity and that started to them then spiraled.
But the other that project that really kind of changed it.
It was the project called the Quest and that came to us and
maybe it wasn't 2013. I think it was something like
that. And it was an elderly couple in

(31:16):
their 70s. They wanted the House of their
retirement and their friends haddesigned a house for my with my
previous practice. So they had to ask them the
recommendation and said like, oh, we go to Magnus, it's just
set up his business. So I went to see them when they
were just buying the site and, and that was a really fantastic
project. And it was kind of, it's almost

(31:38):
iconic in a little way because we did that building.
There was 2 concrete slab that acted like a space being a
cantilevered out over a wall andhad a car parking underneath.
And it became very striking and visually easy to understand the
project. And I think because he was so
easy to understand the architecture very quickly, it,

(31:59):
it just got a lot of traction and it, it won numerous awards.
I think it won 7 or 8 architecture awards.
And it was published in lots of magazines online and it's been
in the books. And you know, that's still kind
of today sometimes gives us client inquiries.
They were one of the clients approach we're doing in the

(32:20):
States at the moment in in Western Virginia, he said.
I love that project and he saw it in a book.
He started that project in 22 I think.
So you know, it helps being in business for a bit longer
because it's all accumulates somehow.
You've got a bigger network of stuff out there that people can
discover. I, I, I see the project.

(32:40):
So you know, a lot, a lot of glazing.
This is like an early stage, somewhat early stage of using
all the fluting too, the detail on the exterior, which has
become so, so popular nowadays. So would you, are there certain
materials that you like really like to work with and play with
in the in your architecture? I, I think that there are

(33:02):
certainly some things there's we, I love timber in many ways,
being Scandinavian, whether we use it internally or externally,
we very often used for cladding,but very often we use it for
ceilings, for example, ceilings that run inside, outside, it
gives a real warmth to the interior, but it, it can also

(33:23):
help you acoustically very well.Sometimes we can hide servicing
behind it and so on. So it works in many ways.
We work a lot with stone locals here in England.
We do a lot of local stone, yeah, brick every now and then
as well, and then stone and lotsof stone.
Stone tiles, porcelain tiles andthen minimalist glazing.

(33:46):
And yeah, I noticed, I noticed that a lot as much as you can a
lot of if you again, if you can forward to ceiling glass.
Beautiful. Yeah.
So back-to-back to the question that I had asked before.
So what? Who, Who or what role did the
first person you brought into the practice?
What did they fill? So that there were just, she

(34:09):
would say an architectural assistant.
So she had finished her degree and she had worked, but she was
just going through a professional exam at the moment.
So she came in as an assistant, but very quickly she became a
project architect and and ran her own projects.
How many how? How?
I guess how many years in did you start to realize I need a

(34:31):
staff? Like 3 or 4 years and when I got
my first officers. When you moved out of those
spare bedroom at home. And and was it all, were all the
staff that you brought in peoplethat were working on design or
did you bring in anyone to help with the operation?
Well, so my, my ex-wife, now ex-wife, then wife, she helped

(34:56):
me on and off sometimes with some of the office management
stuff. And you know, and, and that was
really helpful because you know,there's a lot of stuff you need
to sort out all the time, like, you know, all the background
stuff. But I think that when we were
about, I don't know, 6-7 people,something like that, I hired

(35:17):
another office manager who I, you know, I said I was really
good hire and she worked as an office manager maybe for three
years, something like that. But as the business grew a
little bit, we became a little bit busier, maybe we became 1011
people, something like that. Are you still doing quite a lot

(35:37):
of the businesses side and didn't have enough time?
To. Work as an architect really.
So she got a promotion and I made her managing director of
the business. So she now runs the business.
And I mean, for me that's like agodsend because I don't have to
sit and deal with all the businesses stuff.

(35:59):
And so we, you know, and it's even, we're Arsenal practice.
We run it in a kind of, we have a board meeting every month that
is just the two of us right now.We run it as a board meeting.
So we, we run our like a CEO report and we have an hour left,
same agenda every time and our financial reporting and so on.
And we been doing a weekly reporting as well, just checking

(36:21):
in where we are, what's going on.
And it says she deflects and saves.
You know, she, she keeps me sane.
Yeah. I couldn't do what I would do
otherwise. Yeah.
I mean what? Because what I what I have seen
is one of the most common traitsof any business owners that the

(36:41):
most taxing element of the business is the business.
And it's not what you know. As much as you want to be a
business owner, running a business is a challenge.
This. Boy.
It is really tough, you know, and, and I, I have a lot of
ideas and all the time about howwell, how we should do things

(37:02):
and what we should change and weshould make it better.
But I'm not the best person to implement it, that's for sure.
Yeah. And and have you, have you found
that by obviously, I mean you'vealluded to it already, but the
change in bringing her in to do that has now afforded you the
opportunity to be far more involved with your design team?
Yeah, absolutely. And it has it has it freed up

(37:26):
your overall time in some capacity to be able to allow you
to do other things that you wantto be involved with.
So whether that's like the the creative elements of what you
just described of trying to pushthe entire business forward in a
new direction or in or, or coming up with ideas for things

(37:46):
that you want to improve or be on that taking on like a hobby
that you haven't been able to take on because you've been
trying to push a business for 20years.
Now, I think there's a couple ofdifferent answers to that.
One is that I'm I'm a single dad.
I'm divorced and I have my kids 5050.
So every second week I am of my dad, right?

(38:09):
So I'm going to do the school run and luckily I have someone
helping me with makeup and stuff.
But you get up, we're home for dinner and you're doing that.
And, and that's, that's, that's a lot of work, like everyone
knows apparent, right? And then you're going to run a
business on top of that. And then you going to try and
stay fit and you're going to tryand try and try and have some
form of interest and do some hobby.

(38:29):
You're going to try and see somefriends.
Then you're going to try and, and maybe have some form of
relationship with someone as well.
And you can say, I called a second gas cooker, right?
And you got 5 or 6 burners on it, but you can't have more
burning at at once. Or at least none of this, and
not on high. So, so that, that, that's really
challenging. And I think so without having my

(38:52):
MD, I wouldn't be able to kind of, I think it would be much
harder and I certainly would have to throttle back on the
business. But I, I don't want to throttle
back. I, you know, I think that you
got to keep pushing you, you gotto, got to keep pushing all the
time. You got to keep innovating, you
got to keep changing and you're gonna keep pushing, whether it's
the sign or push with the business is going.

(39:14):
And I think if you don't do that, you stagnate.
And I think it's very easy to kind of fall away or, you know,
stagnate because I think that, you know, I, I think that, you
know, you might want to bleep this out.
But I think that the UK, I thinkthe economy is fucked basically.
And you know, we're running at 100% debt, national debt to GDP.

(39:36):
You know, we have signed very few projects in the last three
years. We have signed 2 projects in the
UK. And if we in this got back to
the whole thing about innovatingand pushing, If I hadn't been
pushing and pushing and pushing,we wouldn't have been able to do
more of the overseas work. So if we wouldn't have been able
to pivot at that time, we would have been decimated.

(39:57):
But because you you got to look forward all the time.
Sometimes I go like, you know, you say like you know, you're
actually really tired. You need to take some time out
and that's why I'm I'm right there at the moment.
But there is no other option, right?
You've got to keep pushing. Another friend of mine who runs

(40:17):
the business, he said like, you know, slightly they're, they're
much bigger. But he said it's like servicing
a jumper jet while flying it. And Netherlands, right?
And that that's the truth to it.It's, it's a constant thing and
you've got to keep picking at itthe whole time, the whole time.
So the whole time is about improving systems.
You know, earlier today I was sitting down before I call and I

(40:39):
was updating our procedures for what our project lead should be
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(41:03):
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(41:24):
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(41:48):
or reach out to me directly. For an introduction to Yuri, the
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It's Jonathan. Jonathan at waldenholmes.ca and
now Magnus, Yeah, yeah, you and I, you and I had this
conversation very lightly in ourarea conversation.

(42:10):
Because I, I just came out of a client meeting earlier today
when the client was saying like,I'm not happy with what you've
done here, here, here and here. And I get like, OK, alright.
And you got to respond, right? You got to respond.
And The thing is that you do delegate when you delegate,
you've gotta have an understanding of your delegate,
an accountability. What are people accountable for

(42:32):
and how, how do you how do I manage that?
And how, how do I review, reviewthat on a weekly basis?
So all the time we are changing and improving our systems and
you know, and because of it becoming a better practice.
And the other thing is like, I think that, but because you
constantly pushing, it's like a listen to something else.

(42:53):
The other day it was Simon Bayless of HDA design.
He said, like architecture is one of the best professions you
can have if you're willing to work hard.
And if you're not, there's a lotof other careers that would be
already much better and far morefinancially rewarding as well.
But if you, but it's a fantasticjob and to have.
And I think that I feel like I'mconstantly pushing what we're

(43:14):
doing from, you know, how we deliver projects based from that
whole kind of delivery side project management, but also
what we deliver in terms of design, because everything is
constantly moving and you do something and then you see
someone else doing something very similar and you're like,
oh, can I push again and do something different?
And you keep pushing and pushing.
And I think that at times it's very frustrating because I'm

(43:37):
never happy. I'm never content because if you
are content with like, this is my project now and this is the
best thing I've done. And then you kind of you
stagnate, right? And you gotta keep pushing
forward so that you're always looking for the next thing.
Or did I hear someone say, was it on your podcast, McKay saying

(43:59):
like, what's your favorite project?
It's the next one. Yeah.
And I think there, there, there,there is something to that,
right. And you've got to keep pushing,
innovating. And then you you also trying to
keep an office happy. And I think like, oh, here's
magnitude is changing again. It's pushing again.
And I think that sometimes it's exhausting for the office and it
can be very tiring for the office.
But I think that they, you know,and I I'm not the best at

(44:23):
celebrating the small wins all the time.
And I think I need to get betterat that.
And, you know, and, you know, toappreciate the team sometimes.
And it's like because without the team, we're nothing.
And, and they work so hard and they're doing so well all the
time and they're in my poking atthem all the time because I'm
trying to make them even better.And, and, and, and it's not, you

(44:45):
know, and this kind of, but I suppose it's my job to some
extent. And it's not because it's
because I'm trying to make what we do better all the time, all
the time and trying to push us because I know that I know
there's not many other practicesin the UK that can deliver the
products that we do to that quality.
So, you know, you keep pushing. Funny, you know, so as you're
saying all of this in your, you're providing some analogies.

(45:08):
I actually, so I play, I play tennis my whole life.
There's I coach for many years and I took a long time away from
it and I've gotten back into it in the last few years and what I
have come to appreciate about itnow differently than before.
And when you when you look at professional players, the top

(45:29):
echelon of player in tennis has a white board of a mind.
And that is that they can celebrate that winner and then
completely erase it from their mind as they start the next
point. And the next point in many ways
is in some ways similar to what you're describing.
Like that's over, it's behind us.

(45:50):
We've completed that project in this beautiful.
Let's focus on the next shot andand it's happening at that pace.
Yeah, and the The thing is, well, when you're in a project.
Yes. All you see is every little
problem you you forget to see the overall thing.
And it's the same thing about building a business.

(46:13):
When you live in a day-to-day you all you feel is the the
critiques, the grind, the hardships, the you know, the
everything are being fired at you and you kind of good trying
to log back it away. And you know that's what I was
going to say yes. And and sometimes you see all of

(46:33):
those little negative things andyou kind of niggling at you and
you forget to stop and actually look.
So when you, so one of the favorite things I think about
when you, when you we are projects, it is that some
clients you, you, you develop a bit of a relationship with.
And sometimes you go, you might go back and see them or, or when
you go back and doing a photo shoot and you've got might go

(46:55):
back and do some, I don't know, some filming or whatever it is.
And you go back and, and you seethe clients.
You know, I recently did a videoshoot.
I've talked to shoot the front of a project and the client had
just come in from work and, and I said like any we just talked
about and said, Oh, I love living in the house.

(47:16):
And I said like, like went out. He was self building whilst
working as well as he said, likeit almost broke me and I I hated
it almost like, you know, and they said like, but now we lived
here for a bit, like the after the first year.
Then now they absolutely love it, right.
And you see how it's changed andit settled in and they have a
family are settled in and they really made the house.

(47:36):
There's you coming back and you see the products of that level.
You can, you can, you going to go, Wow, this is what we
achieved. And the same thing when you walk
in through the office door, sometimes you can go and open
the door and you, you see like you see all the desks, right?
And you get up. We did this.
So I think it's important to celebrate this little, then
wince and and yeah, something I need to get better at.

(47:58):
Well, so here's an idea. I didn't know that we would go
there. But if you have other meetings
that are about the project improvement and all the rest of
it, maybe there's an incorporated meeting as a as a,
as a company where it's literally it's, it's 10 minutes
in the week and it's just sharing some of the successes of
the week. That's all it is.

(48:18):
Yeah. Everyone gets to share 1
success. Either it was a detail that was
evading them when they came up with and they now have solved,
or it was a client issue. 10 minutes every week, and it can,
and you do it toward the end of the week and it allows someone
to be able to feel like they're being heard.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we incorporated a couple of

(48:40):
years ago, we incorporated a town hall every two weeks, talk
about areas of improvement and we talk about things that are
going well and we talk about whywe do certain processes from the
point of sale to what it, what'sbeing delivered as you go.
And it just reinforces a lot of the requirements that we look

(49:02):
for from the construction managers and from our back end
team that support the architecture we're building.
Yeah, it matters. You know, you want to, to align
everyone and it's hard. It's, you know, to the point
that you made. It's, it's hard.
It's hard to not be the person that is always trying to drive
forward. Yeah.

(49:22):
And it's hard because you becomethe one that's negative as well,
right? Because you're saying, like,
this is not good enough, we can do this better.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Well, so, so, so then let's talkabout, let's take a moment and
talk about what you feel have been some of the more ambitious,
but in your own opinion, some ofthe most rewarding perhaps

(49:47):
details or projects that you've had.
Is there are there some specificdetails on a project that you
really had to rack your reign ofaround around with some of the
team that when they were executed you said like it was it
the IT was worth the squeeze? I think that there are lots of
little things all the time and there are, you know, one thing

(50:10):
people always ask us, how do you, how do you do that?
How do you do that detail? Like, you know, a thin edged
roof, for example, How do, how do you do that?
We always get asked that and youthink that we have, but what
about all the snow, loads of water loading and water, how you
take water away? And it's like we just keep on
working on them and we, we know that now we do that, you know,
we just how we paper steel frames down and, and so on and

(50:33):
how we deal with, you know, getting the water away and
stuff. I mean, that's always tricky.
But but I think that one of my strengths is that I'm a far
better curator than I am a designer, which means that it's
wanting to sit down and come up with something, anything.
But it's. But if something in front of me,
I can, I can say what's wrong with it and make it better.
So, you know, when I was workingon my own, I used to pretend to

(50:56):
be two different people. I was sitting on one side of the
table and force myself to designsomething and pretend that, you
know, like that was what my bosshad given me.
And then I would sit on the other table on the run the other
side and said, I'm just giving you need to make this into
something. And it was literally a way of
forcing me into doing work rather than because you expect
yourself to come up with something amazing.
But there's a process. Yeah.

(51:17):
And then the other thing is like, I think my strength is
that I very good to see, You know, I can see through the
trees. You know, I can, I can, I can
look at something and I can digest it and I can see it and I
can see the solution. So with one of the architects in
the office and they have an issue and I can go like, well,
just do this. And I go like, how do you know
how to do that? Well, you know, it's like you

(51:38):
can almost, you see all the information and, and your
processes without thinking aboutit.
And that's one of my strengths that you can, you can really go
through that process very, very quickly.
And so the question again, kind of.
If there was, If there was a specific project or detail, the

(51:59):
the you found to be challenging that you were able to achieve
through some form of dialogue and experimentation that.
When you actually hate. It you're like, ah, there it is.
I think it's like Eureka momentslike that.
I think it's just a process of, of going through things and and
trying to think. You know, I had a meeting

(52:20):
earlier today when we were trying to we working on the
priority in in Romania and we working through some some
details and they were saying like, oh, we have to have this
upstand here because we like or down stand here because we have
to, you know, strengthen the slab here.
It's like, well, we can't do that because we got our window
sitting flush with the floor there.
So we can't do enough space for it.
So we we had we just like the one you can't, you gotta have

(52:43):
this. Why don't you just hang it?
Why don't you put that the beam in above the when the roof space
to go space there and go like, Isuppose we can do that, right.
It's like it's, it's how you think about things just because
you it's about thinking about designing.
When we did the the quest for example, what was unique with
that house was that we worked very closely with the engineer
at that time and we we decided as an A concrete frame, but we

(53:09):
inverted it. So it's an exposed concrete
frame and the whole structure iscalled and then it's insulated
on the inside. So the waterproof concrete and
the house is a dry line box on the inside of the concrete.
And that's like, I can't remember seeing any houses done
like that. But it it was a very easy way of
doing the concrete frame and making sure it worked well

(53:30):
because otherwise we couldn't expose the concern we have to do
thermal breaks in the concrete and all of this and it would
have been very complicated. So Ted turned something that
could be complicated, and something was very easy.
Yeah, I could appreciate that. So, so tell me, you know, you,
you, you've alluded to the importance of integrating things

(53:51):
like renders when it started andthe opportunities of getting in
front of some of the publications earlier when they
started to come out. So as you move forward now, what
do you see as an, as some of theopportunities that you want to
try to pursue or that you might want to change in what you're
doing to connect, to continue tostay ahead?

(54:13):
Is is there something that you see now, or are are you just
always keeping an open mind to what's in front of you?
I, I, yeah, we are keeping an open mind towards in front of
us. But I think at the moment with I
feel that the the climates and how it is in terms of the
financial climate and I don't think the UK is, is alone in

(54:35):
this. Here too.
So, you know, you, if you're trying to grow a practice, you
can't grow it like going up withthe economy.
It's just like everything's going up and you're growing.
So you so instead you got to take market share from other
people and be better than other people.
And that makes it even harder, right?
So, but I think that there is hard enough to to work in, you

(54:58):
know, it's hard enough to try tomake it in one place.
So if we can't just get enough work here, we've got to go
overseas. And I think for us the working
overseas has been a godsend and we now done producing I think
more than 10 countries and I seethey continued expansion

(55:18):
overseas for us, right. We are going to open up our
first office overseas this year.OK.
I can't say where yet because we're just going through all
the, you know, permissions and legal stuff.
And until we've done that, I can't say where it is.
So that's going to be a really exciting and I have a business
partner there who's who's already in place that's, you

(55:41):
know, 10-15 years experience there.
So that's kind of access to new market somewhere.
We're already done work. Yeah.
So I I think that definitely. Wait, hold on.
I'm going to do what you say younever get to do.
And that is, I'll say congratulations in advance of
it. Thank you.
Yeah, OK. Because that's, that's a big,
that's a big move that's also putting a lot of trust in what

(56:01):
the relationship is with someoneoverseas.
So congratulations on that. It's it's hard to hand over that
type of equity. It is, it is it, but you know,
I'm, I'm really looking forward to that because I think that we,
it's going to be easier to create growth in, in other
places. Thank you.

(56:24):
Overseas as well. There can be, you know, if we
can access certain countries where there is a lot more money
and people are spending a lot more money on houses.
I mean, if you think about, for example, that the US, US and
Canadian clients that, you know,that very often can and spend

(56:45):
money in other places and they spend a lot of money there is,
you know, the same thing in the Middle East.
There's a lot of opportunity there.
And we've done several product stuff and people are spending
more money than they perhaps doing in the UK on the houses.
And also it's not so frowned upon perhaps to spend money on
something, you know, success. It's like, you know, people

(57:06):
celebrate success and they're saying like, oh, great for you,
you're building a great house. Whereas here we, you know, it's
like we're building a house for rich people.
It's like, yeah, that's not really cool thing to do, and
that's reflected in the. Here as well, but like.
Yeah, but you know, it's like there's certainly certain awards

(57:26):
or awards now at the moment thatwouldn't even bother submitting
for them because it's just completely quixotic.
It's just like so driven by political agenda.
And if you know them, the right side of it, you just like, you
know, had had architect judges come and see projects and
they've been turning up the noses of what the client what
What Car the client had because they offended them that they had

(57:47):
a nice 911. And, you know, it's like there's
always going to be people that have more money than others.
There's always going to be people who are successful and
they're always going to want to,you know, spend the money on
something. And yeah, we can choose not to,
to build houses for them or but you know, then of the day
they're going to buy houses. So and they're going to help

(58:09):
them design. I'd rather help.
I'd rather help them do it in ina good way.
When they creating some architecture, it's going to last
for a couple of 100 years. Maybe we're lucky.
And also something that's sustainable and and make a
positive contribution rather than these naughty boxes and
very ugly multi housing. It's being churned out.
Have you integrated AI at all into what you're doing?

(58:33):
Are looking at so you know obviously we're using the usual
chatting practicing writing staff and and so on and we have
looked at it and I actually had found some young people to it in
the office early this year to look at it and it tested a few
things, but we played around with some kind of renders and so
on but what I see is that it's nothing that quite impresses me

(58:57):
at the moment because it's wanting to create an image but
what does an image what does an image actually mean You know you
can get maternity spit out some cool images, but is it that you
know what I should do for the architecture it might be good
for ideation or something like that but you know sticking on
Instagram, you know but hopefully we can build something

(59:17):
that's got a bit more meaning toit.
I there is Simon Sinek said something about you can get a,
you know, a chatty Patty to spitout the book for you on
leadership or whatever. But he said like, what does that
actually mean? But he said like, if if he
writes a book about, you know, something like that, it it means
something because it's been talking about it and living it

(59:39):
for 25 years. And you know that someone takes
the time to sit down and write it down and that it's actually a
life lived without experience. And I think it's the same thing
about, but architecture. We as as being with turning 15
years this year, the process of practice.
And they started instead of shouting about ourselves too

(01:00:01):
much, we are doing a series of little films where we are
interviewing and talking to other people in other creative
industries. So we've just done a film with a
tailor from Savile Row and you know what, what's the link
between tailoring and architecture?
And maybe not direct, but sitting down with the chap James

(01:00:22):
from CAD and the Dandy. And we were talking about the
process of that. You actually creating something.
How do you, how do you create a suit and what is it?
You know, what's that process? And is is the whole process of
knowing something, of having done it before and experience.
Of course, you can go and buy a nice Hugo Boss suit off the
shelf, but this is a bespoke experience.

(01:00:44):
And I think that's very much where we sitting with our
architects. Yes, you can go and churn
something up at 3:00. I, I'm sure a lot of stuff going
to be replaced, but we're tryingto do something that is, has
perhaps a little bit deeper meaning, something that is based
on humanity and experience and the life lived.
I think that, yes, sure, we can replace a lot of stuff, but the

(01:01:08):
we we're trying to do something that's got a bit of a human
touch to it. I'm gonna say that AI can't go
on the boat. It can't walk, it can't walk the
site. It doesn't understand the smell.
It doesn't understand it. It can't.
It can't, it can't replace that,at least not yet.
And I don't know that well and necessary necessarily in the

(01:01:28):
near future. So outside of all of this, you
alluded to it a little bit before about some of the
different burners. So what do you like to do that's
outside of practice? What do you do for yourself that
allows you to take your mind offof the things that are
perpetually driving you forward with business?
Hobbies do you know what the wayThe thing is like I love

(01:01:52):
sailing. I sell my whole Life OK.
And we normally got racing on a Thursday night here.
I live in a town that's got, youknow, 3 marinas and there's a
lot of Thursday night sailing going on.
And the fun thing about going just doing club racing on our
first night here is that you will be out and there would be
world champions and Olympic champions sailors down here

(01:02:13):
because they they all come from here as well.
Not that not all but several of them come from here and live
here. So you, you go out and have a
Thursday night sailing with themand if you, you know, and then a
few beers after and Dustin, I think that is a lovely setup.
But because of the pressures don't lie, I haven't been able
to get. I've been this been one week

(01:02:33):
this year. I've been able to go and that's
just like that. The moment that, that there,
there is a lot of pressures and when that because someone every
second week, I said, you know, the kids.
So every other week then is whenyou're doing all the meetings
and the travel and and so on. I haven't been away for a little
while now, but sometimes there'sa lot of traveling and being

(01:02:53):
overseas and you're trying to fit it all in.
I'm just teaching myself to playgolf at the moment.
So you got to do something and it's, you know, I was thinking
of buying myself a little dingy and getting out, but I, I know I
wouldn't be out in it enough andthey would just be feeling
guilty for the money sitting in the, in the, in the harbour and
not doing anything. And I, then they go like, oh,
it's raining today. I don't fancy going out and

(01:03:15):
being wet and cold. So it's easier to go and hit
some golf balls. So I'm trying to trying to do
that at the moment. Are on a course.
It's a little bit of both that we got a nine hole golf course
very literally between my officeand my house.
So it's very easy to go this week.
Actually been to hit a couple ofbuckets twice this week after

(01:03:36):
work because I don't have any kids this week.
Yeah. And what about like an early Do
you do any early morning walks? Or do actually, I, I got into a
very good morning routine and for me it's one of my ways of
keeping me sane. And I know that and I'm burning

(01:03:56):
the candle at both ends. I, I know it instantly because
that's when my headaches and migraines start.
So well, normally do is have my alarm go 6 every morning and I
normally go up and I'll do a quick 15 minute meditation and
then that God for I woke up likeright next to a forest.
Now go for 15 minute walk, normally plug up podcast in or

(01:04:18):
something like that. And then I come in and I'll try
and eat a really healthy breakfast and then I'm, I'm in.
Sometimes I do a little bit of journaling, writing, and then
I'm a little bit of thinking, just having a bit of headspace.
No, it's easy to do on the weak side of kids, but I'm trying to
do that. And when I had that headspace

(01:04:39):
before I come into the office, it completely changes my outlook
for the whole day and how you can approach things.
And because you just take another bit of time to digest
and think things through makes an extraordinary experience and
enormous difference for me. It has been a pleasure chatting
with you and getting to understand really all you know

(01:05:01):
and and as as quick as a way as possible as learning about your
life and learning about the experiences you've had and what
you what you've accomplished foryour practice.
I thank you for taking the time.I I think you, yeah, I do.
You're welcome, It's been pleasant.
Likewise, stay in touch and, andI, I hope to hear as we continue

(01:05:23):
to stay in contact, hopefully about how you can start
celebrating some of the small wins because they're, that I
from what you've said that seemslike that's the one of those
areas that will change things. I think so.
And, and the other thing that I'm really trying to focus on is
that we celebrating the wins, but also it's all the little

(01:05:46):
bits between all the big events.That's all the important stuff,
right? It's always everyday things
about sharing moments with someone else or sharing life
with someone. And I think that's something I'm
trying to put more and more focus on, and I'm trying to do
it consciously because yeah, we're not going to be around

(01:06:07):
forever, right? No, we're not.
We have an expiry date, but but if what we've done while we're
here plays a part in, in longevity, I think architecture
is one of those areas where you can, you know, you hopefully get
to live on in some capacity for a longer period of time.

(01:06:30):
The the other thing I was going to say that's because I'm sort
of this the other day, there is an American job called Arthur
Brooks, who's like a writer and policymaker.
And I saw he's he's a clip on something.
I can't remember where it was. And there's analogy I thought
was so relevant to you saying that he used to travel a lot to
Taiwan. And everyone said like, oh, if
you got some time, have you got to go and see the Palace Museum?

(01:06:52):
It's got the biggest collection of Chinese art in the world, and
it's extraordinary, basically simply so big that you can't see
it. So the way to do it is to hire a
guide and say, gun, show me the 10 most important pieces and
tell me why they're important. So he was walking around and
learning lots of stuff. And then they stopped in front
of this kind of massive jade sculpture.
And he asked, how do I intrinsically know that this is

(01:07:12):
is Chinese art? And he goes, oh, that's not an
art question of the philosophical question.
And this is, oh, that's interesting.
Tell me more. How do you mean?
He said like, well, when you andthe Western culture think going
off a piece of art that is yet to be started, what do you think
of? And it goes blank canvas.
And he goes exactly. Whereas we in the Western world,

(01:07:34):
we think of this piece, this jade boulder, the piece of art
is in there has always been in there.
We just need to chip away all the things that is superfluous
and not necessary to reveal the true essence.
And he said, and the same thing goes for life in the Western
world. You know, your definition of
success is that you collect moreand more things, right?

(01:07:56):
You add things to that cameras, you know, more brush strokes,
more paint, more colours, right?More TV's, the more holidays,
more cars, more friends, more whatever, right?
More Instagram followers and by the time you're 44 to file, your
cameras is full. So you add more things and it
doesn't add anything to your life.
And it said, whereas you look atit from an Eastern philosopher's

(01:08:16):
perspective, you're trying to remove everything that's
superfluous. And the more you remove, the
more you left us with the real essence of life that the most
important. And I think that's absolutely
beautiful. And I'm trying to think about
the same way when it comes to architecture sometimes.
Soon you'll hear Magnus describea home he designed in Barcelona,

(01:08:39):
reduced to its purest form. A floor plane, a roof plane and
just one column holding it all up.
Nothing extra, nothing wasted. That kind of restraint doesn't
come from guesswork. It's engineered and more
importantly, it's built by people who know how to make it
real. We've worked with Henry Rothberg
Steel and some of our most demanding residential projects.

(01:09:00):
500 pieces of steel, pages upon pages.
Hundreds of pages of structural drawings where structural
expression isn't just hidden behind drywall, but part of the
design. They understand what it takes to
deliver clean steel solutions that hold bold architectural
moves with precision, strength, and trust.

(01:09:23):
Whether it's a single moment of support or a full structural
package, their team works closely with architects,
builders, and fabricators to deliver steel that's both
expressive and exact. So if you want to learn more
about them, reach out to me. And I'm happy to make an
introduction to Brett and his team. e-mail me.
It's Jonathan. Jonathan at waldenhomes.ca.

(01:09:46):
And I'm happy to connect you with Robert Steele.
For now, back to Magnus. So if you look at our house in
Barcelona, for example, that sits and looks out of the
Mediterranean Sea, we were goingthrough a process of editing and
editing iteration after iteration to just remove
anything that was superfluous and wasn't needed.

(01:10:08):
So what you end up with is a floor climb and a roof plane and
it's one single column holding in the whole roof up and that's
it. And all of those tiny, tiny
decisions you do to what material something is hard
supported of what you removed. And it's like, it's like, even
as an architect make thousands of decisions every day and
individual, are you trying to make the best decision in each

(01:10:28):
case? Or how big should that be?
What, how big should the gap be?What's the, what's the material?
How does that touch? What does it feel like?
But when they all come together,they create something so much
more and bigger than the sum of all the individual units
together. I call it The issue is a quiet
of building. Right when you go into a
building, you can feel, if you walk into a house and go right

(01:10:50):
wow, you feel that your your blood pressure drops, your pulse
drops, you know, you just feel it and you can't explain what it
is. And that's the key to what good
architecture is for me. I can't tell you what it is.
I can't tell you how to do it, but I can tell you what it feels
like. And I think that's the really
important thing. And I think, you know, a few

(01:11:12):
years ago, I took the Oval Office to Barcelona for like an
annual trip. And we, everyone was like in the
minibus joking and laughing up to the house.
And then we got up to the house,never walks in the house, and
everyone went silent. But 10 minutes, everyone was
dead quiet for just 10 minutes walking around because they were
just taking it in And, and that's surely what it is about.

(01:11:38):
So, and that's the thing about life, you know, we're, we're
here for a certain time. So that's, you know, they were
matters and you know, and that'swhy that's what we're trying to
do the best we can by our kids. So darkness, relationships,
whatever it is, right? I mean the the quote that you
referenced just now is making melook around my entire space here

(01:11:58):
and saying I think I should do amassive purge.
Yeah, we all do sometimes. But you know, so when people
move, every time we do a new house with people and they move,
they do a massive perch and you realize what you need and what
you don't need. Thank you.
Thank you. This that even these last few

(01:12:19):
minutes were actually to me weresome of the best.
So I, I appreciate it. A great way for me to be able to
go into the weekend. You shared a lot and I, I've
learned a lot. And actually, I'll say this to
you so you can you can know it. Yeah.
A lot of the way that you operate is very similar to the
way in which some Bruce, who is one of the owners of Walden, in

(01:12:43):
a way he operates and driving and pushing.
And arrest of it. So there were a lot of, a lot of
similarities that I can appreciate from what you've
described and what I what we, the way we work.
So thank you very much. I again very, very much
appreciate your time. Thank you, Sir.
Pleasure to Yeah, always good tochat, right?

(01:13:05):
Yeah. Take care, hope to stay in
touch. Yes.