March 29, 2023 • 29 mins
It is time to move on from the pursuit of iconic architecture.
The issues keeping our clients and collaborators up at night are the same things pushing our cities closer to the cusp of wholesale change.
Things like the competition around attracting and keeping great tenants, providing magnetic experiences and destination workplaces in uncertain times, dealing with 'great bones' in a building and delivering sustainable spaces are all complex, and often perplexing, challenges.
Challenging the building industry to create the momentum our cities will need for people and nature to thrive together, Senior Associate Razvan I. Ghilic-Micu spoke to a cross-industry audience of property owners, managers, developers and creators at TRANSFORM, the Green Building Council of Australia's event for sustainable built environments.
With insights from 'From Ordinary to Extraordinary: A New Iconicity', Razvan was joined by Samantha Peart to talk about the key ingredients needed for this evolution to take place.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm architect Razvan Ghilic-Micu
and you are listening to"Hassell Talks," welcome back.
At Hassell I work in the Singapore studio,
a country where I've lived andpractised for a decade now,
but this is only one ofthe many different hats
I'm typically wearing.
(00:20):
Outside of practise, I'm the chief editor
of Singapore Architect Magazine
and in 2021 I had theprivilege of leading ArchiFest,
Singapore's Annual Architecture Festival.
Whether as a practitioner,editor or festival director,
I have witnessed a widevariety of topics come and go
over the past few years.
But there is one topicthat started bubbling up
(00:43):
more and more with every conversation,
gathering momentum andshowing great potential
to become a real global movement.
The topic of adaptive reuseat an unprecedented scale.
In conversation withlocal and global clients,
I debated the tension between creating
a new iconic building,
the kind it takes 10 years toachieve, or a different route,
(01:03):
that of regenerating an alreadyexisting generic building.
Our cities are full of suchunremarkable structures,
quietly fulfilling their functionunder the radar every day.
Not making the best of them
just feels like such a missed opportunity.
In March, 2023, the Green Building Council
of Australia's Transformed Conference
brought together a diversityof like-minded professionals,
(01:25):
passionate about sustainabilityand the built environment
for a great event inSydney on Gadigal Country.
We have added a link in the show notes
so you can see the wide variety of topics
covered at the conference.
My colleague Samantha Paert,
who is Hassell's headof sustainability and I,
were asked to share withthe audience at Transform
our ideas of shiftingour cities toward renewal
(01:45):
and turn today's ordinary spaces
into tomorrow's extraordinary places.
Many thanks to the team atthe Green Building Council
of Australia for the recording.
I'm really glad we areable to share this with you
and I hope you enjoy it.
(audience applauds)
And maybe I will start by sharing a bit
of an unexpected social experimentthat happened a week ago
(02:07):
in Singapore when I was telling my friends
that I'm coming to your lovely city
and of course I'm an architect,
most of my friends are architects,
and they started tellingme about all the places
I should see, all the wonderful buildings.
And I'm pretty sure that ifwe did a bit of a poll today
in the room, we might comeup with the same short list,
very short list of iconic buildings.
(02:28):
Which brings me to the bigquestion I wanna open with,
which is why are we so obsessedwith iconic architecture?
And look far for me to dismiss it,
I mean, I do understandand I do believe also
that it plays a veryimportant role as a social,
as a cultural bellwether.
It embodies our hopesand aspirations as people
and also quality that weall try to aspire towards.
(02:48):
But there's something really odd
about the reductive identity of our cities
and of our buildings whenyou see them represented
on postcards and on keychains at the airport
and on lapel pins.
Not to mention Lego setslike the one behind me
and it's actually I ownthem and I took this photo
on my dining room tablelast week in Singapore.
(03:09):
Maybe it's a good thing to say that Lego
is not sponsoring me.
These are gifts for my lovely sister,
I'm very proud of them.
But what I found evenmore fascinating than this
is when I was fiddlingwith Mid Journey AI,
and I'm sure you've heard of it
and I'm sure some of you
or most of you haveplayed with it as well.
It seems to have the samenotion about what is iconic
and what is generic whenit comes to buildings.
(03:32):
But today I am herenot to talk about that,
but really focus on the fictional building
on the right hand side of the slide
and the many buildings around the world
that look just like it.
And to put things in a perspective,
I think I wanted first toacknowledge a cultural blind spot
that we have all beensharing around the world
for the past let's say 60 years or so.
(03:54):
I believe we have yetto fully come to terms
with the real impact of ofbuilding a new iconic building,
especially in the petrochemicaleconomy framework of design
and of procurement that I knowa lot of you are experts in,
which is so deep seated inthe way that we are trained,
we have been trained, andthe way that many people
still choose to practise.
And this fantastic book,and I fully recommend it,
(04:15):
"Unless" by Kilimo, hequantifies and analyses
the impact of the Seagram building
and all the differentdesign decisions made.
Did you know that Mies van der Rohe's
signature bronze mullions
account for about 1.8%of the building mass,
but 47% of its emergy,and that's not a typo,
(04:35):
it is a term used by lateecologist Howard T Odom
to measure the amount ofenergy depleted in ecosystems
to create materials.
So, MOS analysis provides really good data
about the materials and energy consumed
when making this building.
And I guess for me one ofthe most evocative drawings
is this scale diagram
that is showing theSeagram building's height.
(04:56):
And you can see it really small dwarfed
at the end of the slide bythe mountain of resources
that went into makingit, into building it.
So this iconic building
is not just one of the mostexpensive buildings of its time,
but its cost has been underwritten
at a planetary time scale.
And speaking of time,
I think time is perhaps
(05:17):
one of the most essential ingredients
when it comes to regenerative development.
There's no such a thingas instant sustainability.
As you all know,
carbon and energy arelong-term investments
and I was really happy
to see my old grad schoolclassmate, Brandon Clifford,
who now runs the Masterof Architecture at MIT
writing this amazing, really delicious,
(05:39):
funny book. "Cannibals Cookbook."
And the book is looking at ways
in which historically human habitation
has relied for thousands of years
on a diet consisting ofits own old buildings.
Adaptive reuse for as longesttime has been our norm
that until industrialization
when producing and tearingdown millions of buildings
(06:02):
has accelerated and what it did,
it created a massive stock ofgeneric ordinary structures
that quietly fulfil theirfunction under our radar.
This is our modern dayheritage by the way.
These are buildings thatmost of us work, live, learn,
and play in, places thatwe walk by every day
on our way to work, back from lunch,
(06:24):
and we never think twiceabout ordinary places
that get pulled down everytime the plot ratio goes up.
Why don't we talk more about them?
What would our cities really look like
if these buildings that command 90%
of our collective realestate were improved?
And I think some of thework that our Hassell team
has been doing here in Sydney
(06:44):
is starting to show the potentialof meaningful intervention
from the scale of the citydown to that of an interior.
Because in reality, in most markets,
80% of the buildings thatwill be around in 2050
have already been built.
Now anecdotally, 2050 is aboutwhen I should be retiring,
so I think my generationshould dedicate our smarts
(07:04):
and the rest of ourcareers to really building
on what has already been built.
So what drives change?
I know it's easier said than done.
Obviously a major influenceris policy, food policy.
In Singapore we are fortunate
because the URA has beenskillfully planning that island
for the past 50 odd years and planning it,
there's a long term plan happening
into the next half century and beyond.
(07:25):
And these incentiveswere passed back in 2019,
but they were all put in place in the CBD
for five years only to ensurethat we bring quality places
and people back to the city.
And these are critical
without which it will be really impossible
to move the needle and helppeople change their habits,
because frankly we'vebeen doing this all along.
I mean, all building ownersconstantly fix their buildings
(07:48):
one way or another.
But the problem is that eitherthrough lack of incentives
or lack of business creativity,
it's all been part of a well oil process
of upgrading the the minimal baseline
or just enough to flipthe property for a profit.
And I'm not here to pontificate
and critique the business as usual
because we all want grey liftsand we all want vast Wi-Fi.
But I have to ask myself as a designer,
(08:09):
as an everyday citizen,does it do anything more
than just keep the building serviceable?
And the cracks are already showing,
I mean, here you cansee a cloud of concerns
that were generously and candidly shared
by some of our clients.
And I'm pretty surethat you will find some
that resonate with you
or some that you have heard yourself.
And I won't dwell too much on this slide
because the only way forward from here
is to recalibrate our approach.
(08:31):
Quality is all relativeto the expectation bar
and that's constantly moving up.
And everything that you'veseen a few slides ago,
you know the business as usual,
is right there below that bar.
We expect lips to work, we expect Wi-Fi,
we want a building that's maintained.
There's nothing new about that.
Does it make it a better place?
Probably not.
(08:51):
The way out of our rutstowards better buildings
and better cities is all about investing
and going above and beyond that bar.
Redefine your new normal,redefine your aspirations.
This is how buildings acquire
exceptional relevance overtime, but also increase value.
This is what turns today's ordinary spaces
into tomorrow's extraordinary places,
(09:14):
and this is where great design comes in.
In a world filled with uncertainty,
business as usual will make a difference,
but creativity and insight will.
So what are some of the key ingredients
to extraordinary places?
Well, maybe first you should ask yourself,
are you being a good host?
Who is frequenting yourbuilding and its amenities?
(09:35):
What's the footfall anddemographic of your tenants,
of your workforce,
of people who come in and nowthe visitors to the building?
And look, if you don't know, that's okay.
We have big data.
At Hassell, we work quitefrequently with our partners
from Place Intelligence tocreate great places with purpose
and really understand thefootfall, the neighbourhood
who comes in and out of the building,
how we can cater and tweakand fine tune the place
(09:57):
for those people.
How do you attract newpeople to the building?
And once you host themand you have them there,
how do you then expand it tocreate community and belonging?
I mean, at the end of theday, that's what we want.
We want to belong, we wantto be a part of something.
And are you playing to your strengths?
This is where design strategystarts to kicking in.
Matching your floor play configurations
(10:19):
to the right type of businesses
will allow you to focuson the right audience
but also maximise the performancefor the right culture.
One size doesn't fit all.
And if you do take that approach,
sometimes you can achievea lot more with a lot less
if you get your strategy right.
And behind me you can see thePurpose-Built headquarters
we did for Farmer J and GSK in Singapore.
(10:41):
What you cannot see in the image
is that we made the buildingactually a little bit smaller
in order to bring to life three heritage,
black and white bungalows behindit and create an ecosystem.
Before we even put pen to paper,
we really looked at the strategy
of what GSK was aspiringtowards as a company
for the future.
And that doesn't need to be just,
(11:02):
I guess the privilege of new buildings.
Innovation doesn't mean new build.
For most buildings,
the primary structuralsystems being the columns,
the force lamps, they havemost of the embodied energy.
And look, in a climate
like the harsh tropical one in Singapore,
they tend to outlastthe facade a lot more.
So a well-designed re-clad of a building
will dramatically extendits lifespan, its relevance,
(11:25):
while also minimises theoverall embodied carbon
and future energy consumption.
And in time, we come backto the concept of time,
the cost reductions will showup as the building performance
is being optimised.
So these changes will make the investment
not only worthwhile,
but gives it that time tobecome measurable and lasting
as a good impact for renewal.
(11:46):
One of my favourites,green it like you mean it,
I like a good rhyme coming from Singapore
where if you put a broomstickin the ground in the evening,
you'll see flour growingout of it the next morning.
Doing greenery is so easythat it's no longer enough,
you have to do it in a meaningful way,
not just for the sake.
In holistic biophilia,
and we've heard a lotthis morning about it
is more than just planting.
(12:07):
As the science ofsustainability and carbon
and energy evolves,
the world is moving awayfrom decorative images
of buildings with plantsand trees on them,
which are lovely,
but we're moving towards amore performance based approach
to building an ecosystems.
And a lot of these highperformance solutions
are most often more than skin deep.
And again, what we didat GSK is create spaces
(12:30):
that are not just token outdoorterraces that no one uses,
but by creating shelter,by moving the air,
by getting evaporativecooling at skin level.
They are real external workplaces
that people are lookingfor throughout the day.
And to zoom back out to city scale,
no building is an island as we all know.
Being a good neighbourmeans adding to your context
(12:50):
and knowing how to leverage it
and interface with theurban fabric around you
in a very conducive and welcoming way.
Creating that recognisable meeting point
for the rest of the neighbourhood,
and finding ways to buildan urban and a street level
that is active and invitespeople into your lobbies
can transform an ordinarybuilding into a destination
(13:10):
and a really key part of your community.
Because essentially,if you think about it,
building thriving communities
is all about creating places people love,
which is our mission at Hassell.
And if you wanna delightyour existing community
and attract new friends, havingthat address is not enough.
You can think of a strategic cafe,
(13:30):
great meeting spaces, collaborative areas,
even wellness focused environments
will turn a transient experienceinto a place of belonging.
They build trust and theyencourage your community
to form and to thrive.
This would be good for your building
and definitely muchbetter for your cities.
So in closing, the climateemergency makes it a must
(13:53):
for all of us to curb carbon emissions
on all of our projects starting now.
Change is coming, I think,faster than we all anticipated.
And the cost of doingnothing or doing too little
is greater than ever.
And what I would liketo encourage all of you,
all of us and maybe challenge you
is to become early movers in that space,
(14:15):
if you care about your relevance,
don't wait for someoneelse to try it first.
If the framework or thesystem or the funding
or the incentives are not idealwelcome, when are they ever?
Make them happen, change the system.
It is our collective responsibilityto turn ordinary places
and spaces of today into theextraordinary of tomorrow
(14:38):
with our wit and ourknowledge and by collaborating
and that will become ourlegacy and our new icon.
So on that note, I willjoin Sam right over there,
I look forward to a chat with her.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you so much Raz for coming over
and sharing this with us
and I was really excitedwhen you agreed to do this
because it is a different lens
and I've worked in engineering,I've worked in consulting,
(15:00):
I've worked in development,I've worked in government
and recently and very kindly been invited
into the world of design with Hassell.
It's given me another perspectivein tackling the big issues
we're all here to talkabout because as Raz said,
we do all have a role to play.
The world of existing buildings
is really an interesting space
because the maintenance piecethat Razvan talked about,
(15:20):
we are all really familiar with that.
We're familiar with how itimpacts operational carbon.
We've also heard a lot,
a lot about embodied carbonin the last couple of days
and how revitalizationof existing assets is key
given kind of the carbon has underwritten
the development of those assets.
So a lot of your,
I guess invest part ofthe diagram there, Raz,
(15:43):
showed your six ingredients,
but they're not explicitlyfocused on carbon,
I think you mentioned carbononce or twice in those.
So what are the drivers beyond carbon
that you are seeing on theground from asset owners
and people who occupy theseexisting places and spaces?
- That is a great question,thanks for that Sam.
Honestly, I think that obviously carbon
(16:04):
and energy and cost and time
are really good at framing,I guess, the issue,
because they're quantifiable.
I'm not saying they're easy to solve,
but they're easy to frame
and there's a lot of focus going on that
because you can implementwhat you can measure
and you can measure what you implement.
What I think we can all seeover the past five to 10 years
(16:25):
is a bit of an awakening to authenticity
that a lot of us are experiencing.
I mean, think of how many times you turn
a bag of something that you buy
to see sort of thenutritional facts on the back.
People are starting to dothat with the buildings
and with their workplaces
and with their organisations, right?
And again, carbon andthings you can quantify
are only one half orless of that question.
(16:47):
The other half is the unquantifiable,
and I don't remember exactly the source,
but I was listening to a lecture
and the speaker was talking
about how at the end of theday we are emotional beings
and a lot of the decisions that we make
when it comes to purchasing,and who are our friends
and what brands we align ourselves with
are not about the speed of the processor,
but about the lifestyle it enables.
(17:08):
It happens in the limbic brainand it's highly emotional.
And you can see thathappening in buildings
where people no longer have to go to work,
they have to want to go to work,
they no longer have to be anywhere,
they should want to be at that place.
And that's where, I guess, the emotional,
mental value alignment comes in.
(17:30):
And I know it's scary becauseit's bloody hard to quantify.
It's all about quality.
So the answer is,
and the reason why I didn'tfocus so much on carbon,
although I deeply care about it,
is that we have so manybrains in this room
who know that stuff way better than I am.
So I'm trying not to looktoo silly in front of them,
but in reality you need bothand you shouldn't think either
(17:51):
or, I think binary thinkinghas gotten us to where we are.
I think disclaimingbecause of a spreadsheet
got us to where we are.
And I think the way forward,
and when you were talking about,
I'm not talking about compromise,
but when you're talkingabout setting priorities,
it should really startto look at the things
that cannot be quantified.
Design in its kind ofnature and how we work,
(18:15):
it's highly unpredictable
because we deal with unpredictable inputs
and that is confronting,it's really scary.
But I think that's therole of the designer
and that's why I'm reallyhappy to be in this crowd today
is to advocate for someof the cross pollination
that needs to happen betweenfact and interpretation,
between tangible and intangible,
(18:36):
between quantifiable and qualifiable.
And I think that's whereyou can see communities.
You know, the SG in ESG,everyone's struggling with it
because it's pretty hard toput kind of numbers on it
other than, oh, I've done three events.
- You started to talk aboutkind of the role of design
in creating this quality
(18:57):
and helping us be lessaddicted to new as iconic,
and I think we are doing a project
at the moment in Vancouver,where the building owner,
there's a set of two buildings in the city
and the building owner has spent 10 years
investing in getting it to a equivalent
essentially six of our neighbours.
It's an amazing programme, right?
And for me, I'm like,cool, what else do you do?
(19:18):
Like coming from a different background,
this is my first introductionto being in the design space.
We're doing a master plan
for the redevelopment of theexperience of that building
to make it competitive in a market
where new buildings arecoming up around it.
And I kind of wanna want youto talk a little bit more then
about how you see the role of design
interacting with thedeep industry expertise
that already exists, alot of it in this room
(19:39):
around financing,engineering and body carbon
to focus on the stuff we already have
and creating that demandthrough experience, right?
To evolve our cities into places
where people in nature thrive together.
- I guess maybe I'll volunteer
that little bit of personal info,
which is I do have stressfulhobbies outside of my day job
and one of them two years back
was being the festivaldirector for archivist,
(20:01):
Singapore's Architectural Festival.
And the topic I said forthat one is Design Evidence
and it was on purpose
because representing thearchitectural community
in many ways, I can hear a lot of anxiety
that designers have
looking at how other professions,much more specialised,
(20:22):
much more valued in thewhole kind of ecosystem
of the construction industry,
are borrowing knowledge and language
from design, processes from design, right?
And they feel more and more obsolete.
And I try to avoid theterm design thinking
'cause I know everyonemust have had a course
at one point or another, wekind of call it thinking.
And what I was trying to do
(20:43):
is kind of dismantle thatreading of it's us and them,
different sides of thetable that is sequential,
I mean all of that nonsense.
And what I was encouragingdesigners to do,
is really kind of soul searcha little bit and think about,
is what we do for aliving wishful thinking
and highly aspirational?
Are we able to, not steal back, but borrow
(21:04):
some of the language,some of the processes,
some of the knowledge thatyou see across the table
or around the tablefrom other consultants?
And that's why,
I mean, you are such awonderful unicorn, five in one.
And I think that is the spirit,
at least I don't wannabe doing the same thing
for the rest of my days.
I love what I'm doing,but I'm hoping I can grow.
I'm hoping everyone in this room
(21:26):
will do something different next year
and in five years, in 10 years,
and you're not gonna do itin sort of your echo chamber
of your own discipline,
it has to be done aroundthe table with others.
And what I also see in, as in again,
back to the practitioner hat,
not just us as a practisebut also other practises
and related industries,
(21:47):
really understandinghow other people work.
Back in the day, and I think Iwas making fun of architects.
I can't 'cause I'm one, I'msaying we're just like, Alexa,
we only come to life whensomeone has a brief for us.
But are we part of creating that brief?
Are we part of advising?
Are we part of strategy?
Well we should, not because we're greedy,
but because if you don'thave a kind of a brain trust
(22:08):
around the table, you mightbe missing something out,
and missing something out breaks me out.
So, out of that desire,
I think that everyone shouldhave to learn the branch out
to cross pollinate, which isexactly what's happening today
and happened yesterday.
I think that is the future of trans,
I'm not even call it cross-disciplinary,
I'm gonna call it transdisciplinary
(22:30):
where it can be both and the other
when it comes to your knowledge,
what you do and how you do it,
but it's all driven by a sense of purpose.
So we should be less driven by a brief
or a contractual kinda to-do list
and driven by a shared sense of purpose.
And then all the petty things that happen
in the life of a projecthopefully will go away.
(22:50):
- What you've just describedis exactly what's happened
with our Perth team doing a project
with a school, essentially.
And instead of the schoolfinding an existing building
'cause they needed an existingbuilding because no space
instead of going right,
we found a building sorted out for us,
the whole consultant team, notjust us were on board to go
(23:12):
and assess existing buildings
and what would work based on their needs.
So we were actually all of us together
developing the brief with that source.
So we're turning a commercial building
into an inner city school essentially,
which is a really exciting project
that we're all learning from patterns,
I guess, the design processthen maybe look different
(23:32):
with those six ingredientsthat you talked about
for those existing assets,like is it a different process?
So yep, all at the table brief,good, what about after that?
- Well, for this one Ithink, I mean in a sense,
when it comes to developing a new project
there is a good way of starting that.
So, you do start at the sortof start line with a to-do list
(23:54):
and ideally you get to implement all of it
in a holistic way.
Now when it comes to an existing building,
the problem is you havepreexisting conditions
and you have to give it a thorough,
I dunno why I'm doing medicalmetaphors, but here we're,
you gotta give it a thorough physical
to understand what's there.
And I think that'swhere the whole process,
(24:15):
well, I wish I just thought it,
but I know it from aproject that I'm working on
in Singapore currently,
that, that process is messy
and that process requires even more,
I guess, open transparent collaboration
because you don't knowwhat you don't know.
So in a sense, I think it relates back
to your previous question, whichis, how do you collaborate?
And this one I think it's also,
(24:36):
how do you then out ofthe entire laundry list
of due diligence, ofprofessional knowledge,
of code that may apply,
have the ability to siftthrough and figure out
what's relevant, what's irrelevant,
what's a priority and what isn't?
Now, is it messier?
Yes, it is.
Is it more difficult?
Yes, it is.
(24:56):
But I believe there are great impact
that will be seen downstream.
And I think the notion oftime that I spoke about again
has to be reintroduced here
because things don't goto plan almost always.
But in reality,
when you are just kind ofgoing down a straight line,
most things will go to plan.
(25:17):
You can kind of stake on course
and you might or mightnot see the benefits
once it gets implemented.
But for existing buildingswe can see the benefits
like suspending your disbeliefas the process is messy
will start paying backdividends over time.
What I don't see a lot of unfortunately
is the patience and wisdom
to take on perhaps a bigger CapEx
(25:40):
perhaps a more risk upfront
in order to have the patienceto stay with the asset,
to see it pay back.
We're still in that kindof quick flip mentality.
And to paraphrase, kindof quote a friend of mine,
he was saying, "If youdon't change the system,
"you cannot operate within it."
He was saying it, "Sustainable buildings
"are like low tart cigarettes,
"you think they're not as bad for you,
(26:01):
"but they'll be the same in the end."
So the question is, if we try to innovate
within the same mindset,we're just kidding ourselves,
we have to change that structure.
- It's kinda like chicken and egg gear.
So you're talking about essentially
through mixing those six ingredients
and thinking beyond the carbon piece
and into creating the experience
that then creates the demand.
Yeah, so it is, I guess weare kind of hovering in limbo
(26:23):
waiting for one to move.
Claire Perry from Development Victoria
has sent us through apretty curly question,
which I'm gonna throw at you.
How far back or how deep intothe sector do we need to go
to unpack that egoinvolved in creating new?
How do we flip thecompetition to create pride
in doing the best wecan with what we have?
- That's a very good one.
It it is a very good question
(26:44):
and I think, I mean ego is one,
I think, also measuringexcellence is the other one.
And I was really heartened last year
to see the building of the year being,
I guess a poster child forwhat we're talking about today.
I don't think we needto go back that much.
I think it's really aboutunderstanding what is valuable
and I know that sort of whole cost
(27:05):
and value conversationis a pretty heavy one.
And I think once weframe what is valuable,
and that's why I tried a little bit
of a slight of hand here with iconicity,
in the beginning like, whyare we obsessed with it?
And at the end, I'm like,
well, here's a new way of doing iconicity.
We all wanna be proud ofwhat we do for a living.
Let's not get that wrong.
But I think if we think of fixing
(27:27):
or if we think of workingwith old buildings
as just bandaid, oh I'mjust repainting my car
hoping it'll go for anotherfive miles, it's not that.
Like, think of it as completely changing.
I mean if there's so much pride,
I don't think we're that far from it.
- I just wanted to thank you again
for coming all this wayto spend time with us
because I'm so glad thatessentially the rest of this room
(27:50):
got to see the excitementand the motivation
within the design communityto address the issues
that we're all trying to tackle.
So thank you very much, Raz.
- Right on time, thank you.
(audience applauds)
So although the event was held in Sydney,
it's incredible how the conversation
(28:10):
really took on a global scale.
We were approachedafterwards with questions
relating to the AustralianAsia region and beyond.
And most importantly, how toextrapolate lessons learned
from one country to another.
It was great to see delegatesrepresenting developers,
tenants, legislators,finance and engineering
so fired up about designand the potential it has
(28:32):
to reframe some of theroadblocks they have been facing.
I couldn't help but feellike the whole industry
is really on the cuspof something special.
And just like I said in my address,
it only takes a handful ofhungry and creative clients
to move into this space and really open up
an entire wave of renewallike we haven't seen before.
Thanks again to the team at Transform
(28:53):
for recording our session
and allowing us to sharethis episode with you.
And we'd love to keepthe conversation going,
if you've heard something youwould like to explore further,
please get in touch.
We'd love to know yourthoughts and work together
on creating the future extraordinary.
I'm Razvan Ghilic-Micuand thanks for listening
to "Hassell Talks."
(29:14):
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm architect Razvan Ghilic-Micu
and you are listening to"Hassell Talks," welcome back.
At Hassell I work in the Singapore studio,
a country where I've lived andpractised for a decade now,
but this is only one ofthe many different hats
I'm typically wearing.
(00:20):
Outside of practise, I'm the chief editor
of Singapore Architect Magazine
and in 2021 I had theprivilege of leading ArchiFest,
Singapore's Annual Architecture Festival.
Whether as a practitioner,editor or festival director,
I have witnessed a widevariety of topics come and go
over the past few years.
But there is one topicthat started bubbling up
(00:43):
more and more with every conversation,
gathering momentum andshowing great potential
to become a real global movement.
The topic of adaptive reuseat an unprecedented scale.
In conversation withlocal and global clients,
I debated the tension between creating
a new iconic building,
the kind it takes 10 years toachieve, or a different route,
(01:03):
that of regenerating an alreadyexisting generic building.
Our cities are full of suchunremarkable structures,
quietly fulfilling their functionunder the radar every day.
Not making the best of them
just feels like such a missed opportunity.
In March, 2023, the Green Building Council
of Australia's Transformed Conference
brought together a diversityof like-minded professionals,
(01:25):
passionate about sustainabilityand the built environment
for a great event inSydney on Gadigal Country.
We have added a link in the show notes
so you can see the wide variety of topics
covered at the conference.
My colleague Samantha Paert,
who is Hassell's headof sustainability and I,
were asked to share withthe audience at Transform
our ideas of shiftingour cities toward renewal
(01:45):
and turn today's ordinary spaces
into tomorrow's extraordinary places.
Many thanks to the team atthe Green Building Council
of Australia for the recording.
I'm really glad we areable to share this with you
and I hope you enjoy it.
(audience applauds)
And maybe I will start by sharing a bit
of an unexpected social experimentthat happened a week ago
(02:07):
in Singapore when I was telling my friends
that I'm coming to your lovely city
and of course I'm an architect,
most of my friends are architects,
and they started tellingme about all the places
I should see, all the wonderful buildings.
And I'm pretty sure that ifwe did a bit of a poll today
in the room, we might comeup with the same short list,
very short list of iconic buildings.
(02:28):
Which brings me to the bigquestion I wanna open with,
which is why are we so obsessedwith iconic architecture?
And look far for me to dismiss it,
I mean, I do understandand I do believe also
that it plays a veryimportant role as a social,
as a cultural bellwether.
It embodies our hopesand aspirations as people
and also quality that weall try to aspire towards.
(02:48):
But there's something really odd
about the reductive identity of our cities
and of our buildings whenyou see them represented
on postcards and on keychains at the airport
and on lapel pins.
Not to mention Lego setslike the one behind me
and it's actually I ownthem and I took this photo
on my dining room tablelast week in Singapore.
(03:09):
Maybe it's a good thing to say that Lego
is not sponsoring me.
These are gifts for my lovely sister,
I'm very proud of them.
But what I found evenmore fascinating than this
is when I was fiddlingwith Mid Journey AI,
and I'm sure you've heard of it
and I'm sure some of you
or most of you haveplayed with it as well.
It seems to have the samenotion about what is iconic
and what is generic whenit comes to buildings.
(03:32):
But today I am herenot to talk about that,
but really focus on the fictional building
on the right hand side of the slide
and the many buildings around the world
that look just like it.
And to put things in a perspective,
I think I wanted first toacknowledge a cultural blind spot
that we have all beensharing around the world
for the past let's say 60 years or so.
(03:54):
I believe we have yetto fully come to terms
with the real impact of ofbuilding a new iconic building,
especially in the petrochemicaleconomy framework of design
and of procurement that I knowa lot of you are experts in,
which is so deep seated inthe way that we are trained,
we have been trained, andthe way that many people
still choose to practise.
And this fantastic book,and I fully recommend it,
(04:15):
"Unless" by Kilimo, hequantifies and analyses
the impact of the Seagram building
and all the differentdesign decisions made.
Did you know that Mies van der Rohe's
signature bronze mullions
account for about 1.8%of the building mass,
but 47% of its emergy,and that's not a typo,
(04:35):
it is a term used by lateecologist Howard T Odom
to measure the amount ofenergy depleted in ecosystems
to create materials.
So, MOS analysis provides really good data
about the materials and energy consumed
when making this building.
And I guess for me one ofthe most evocative drawings
is this scale diagram
that is showing theSeagram building's height.
(04:56):
And you can see it really small dwarfed
at the end of the slide bythe mountain of resources
that went into makingit, into building it.
So this iconic building
is not just one of the mostexpensive buildings of its time,
but its cost has been underwritten
at a planetary time scale.
And speaking of time,
I think time is perhaps
(05:17):
one of the most essential ingredients
when it comes to regenerative development.
There's no such a thingas instant sustainability.
As you all know,
carbon and energy arelong-term investments
and I was really happy
to see my old grad schoolclassmate, Brandon Clifford,
who now runs the Masterof Architecture at MIT
writing this amazing, really delicious,
(05:39):
funny book. "Cannibals Cookbook."
And the book is looking at ways
in which historically human habitation
has relied for thousands of years
on a diet consisting ofits own old buildings.
Adaptive reuse for as longesttime has been our norm
that until industrialization
when producing and tearingdown millions of buildings
(06:02):
has accelerated and what it did,
it created a massive stock ofgeneric ordinary structures
that quietly fulfil theirfunction under our radar.
This is our modern dayheritage by the way.
These are buildings thatmost of us work, live, learn,
and play in, places thatwe walk by every day
on our way to work, back from lunch,
(06:24):
and we never think twiceabout ordinary places
that get pulled down everytime the plot ratio goes up.
Why don't we talk more about them?
What would our cities really look like
if these buildings that command 90%
of our collective realestate were improved?
And I think some of thework that our Hassell team
has been doing here in Sydney
(06:44):
is starting to show the potentialof meaningful intervention
from the scale of the citydown to that of an interior.
Because in reality, in most markets,
80% of the buildings thatwill be around in 2050
have already been built.
Now anecdotally, 2050 is aboutwhen I should be retiring,
so I think my generationshould dedicate our smarts
(07:04):
and the rest of ourcareers to really building
on what has already been built.
So what drives change?
I know it's easier said than done.
Obviously a major influenceris policy, food policy.
In Singapore we are fortunate
because the URA has beenskillfully planning that island
for the past 50 odd years and planning it,
there's a long term plan happening
into the next half century and beyond.
(07:25):
And these incentiveswere passed back in 2019,
but they were all put in place in the CBD
for five years only to ensurethat we bring quality places
and people back to the city.
And these are critical
without which it will be really impossible
to move the needle and helppeople change their habits,
because frankly we'vebeen doing this all along.
I mean, all building ownersconstantly fix their buildings
(07:48):
one way or another.
But the problem is that eitherthrough lack of incentives
or lack of business creativity,
it's all been part of a well oil process
of upgrading the the minimal baseline
or just enough to flipthe property for a profit.
And I'm not here to pontificate
and critique the business as usual
because we all want grey liftsand we all want vast Wi-Fi.
But I have to ask myself as a designer,
(08:09):
as an everyday citizen,does it do anything more
than just keep the building serviceable?
And the cracks are already showing,
I mean, here you cansee a cloud of concerns
that were generously and candidly shared
by some of our clients.
And I'm pretty surethat you will find some
that resonate with you
or some that you have heard yourself.
And I won't dwell too much on this slide
because the only way forward from here
is to recalibrate our approach.
(08:31):
Quality is all relativeto the expectation bar
and that's constantly moving up.
And everything that you'veseen a few slides ago,
you know the business as usual,
is right there below that bar.
We expect lips to work, we expect Wi-Fi,
we want a building that's maintained.
There's nothing new about that.
Does it make it a better place?
Probably not.
(08:51):
The way out of our rutstowards better buildings
and better cities is all about investing
and going above and beyond that bar.
Redefine your new normal,redefine your aspirations.
This is how buildings acquire
exceptional relevance overtime, but also increase value.
This is what turns today's ordinary spaces
into tomorrow's extraordinary places,
(09:14):
and this is where great design comes in.
In a world filled with uncertainty,
business as usual will make a difference,
but creativity and insight will.
So what are some of the key ingredients
to extraordinary places?
Well, maybe first you should ask yourself,
are you being a good host?
Who is frequenting yourbuilding and its amenities?
(09:35):
What's the footfall anddemographic of your tenants,
of your workforce,
of people who come in and nowthe visitors to the building?
And look, if you don't know, that's okay.
We have big data.
At Hassell, we work quitefrequently with our partners
from Place Intelligence tocreate great places with purpose
and really understand thefootfall, the neighbourhood
who comes in and out of the building,
how we can cater and tweakand fine tune the place
(09:57):
for those people.
How do you attract newpeople to the building?
And once you host themand you have them there,
how do you then expand it tocreate community and belonging?
I mean, at the end of theday, that's what we want.
We want to belong, we wantto be a part of something.
And are you playing to your strengths?
This is where design strategystarts to kicking in.
Matching your floor play configurations
(10:19):
to the right type of businesses
will allow you to focuson the right audience
but also maximise the performancefor the right culture.
One size doesn't fit all.
And if you do take that approach,
sometimes you can achievea lot more with a lot less
if you get your strategy right.
And behind me you can see thePurpose-Built headquarters
we did for Farmer J and GSK in Singapore.
(10:41):
What you cannot see in the image
is that we made the buildingactually a little bit smaller
in order to bring to life three heritage,
black and white bungalows behindit and create an ecosystem.
Before we even put pen to paper,
we really looked at the strategy
of what GSK was aspiringtowards as a company
for the future.
And that doesn't need to be just,
(11:02):
I guess the privilege of new buildings.
Innovation doesn't mean new build.
For most buildings,
the primary structuralsystems being the columns,
the force lamps, they havemost of the embodied energy.
And look, in a climate
like the harsh tropical one in Singapore,
they tend to outlastthe facade a lot more.
So a well-designed re-clad of a building
will dramatically extendits lifespan, its relevance,
(11:25):
while also minimises theoverall embodied carbon
and future energy consumption.
And in time, we come backto the concept of time,
the cost reductions will showup as the building performance
is being optimised.
So these changes will make the investment
not only worthwhile,
but gives it that time tobecome measurable and lasting
as a good impact for renewal.
(11:46):
One of my favourites,green it like you mean it,
I like a good rhyme coming from Singapore
where if you put a broomstickin the ground in the evening,
you'll see flour growingout of it the next morning.
Doing greenery is so easythat it's no longer enough,
you have to do it in a meaningful way,
not just for the sake.
In holistic biophilia,
and we've heard a lotthis morning about it
is more than just planting.
(12:07):
As the science ofsustainability and carbon
and energy evolves,
the world is moving awayfrom decorative images
of buildings with plantsand trees on them,
which are lovely,
but we're moving towards amore performance based approach
to building an ecosystems.
And a lot of these highperformance solutions
are most often more than skin deep.
And again, what we didat GSK is create spaces
(12:30):
that are not just token outdoorterraces that no one uses,
but by creating shelter,by moving the air,
by getting evaporativecooling at skin level.
They are real external workplaces
that people are lookingfor throughout the day.
And to zoom back out to city scale,
no building is an island as we all know.
Being a good neighbourmeans adding to your context
(12:50):
and knowing how to leverage it
and interface with theurban fabric around you
in a very conducive and welcoming way.
Creating that recognisable meeting point
for the rest of the neighbourhood,
and finding ways to buildan urban and a street level
that is active and invitespeople into your lobbies
can transform an ordinarybuilding into a destination
(13:10):
and a really key part of your community.
Because essentially,if you think about it,
building thriving communities
is all about creating places people love,
which is our mission at Hassell.
And if you wanna delightyour existing community
and attract new friends, havingthat address is not enough.
You can think of a strategic cafe,
(13:30):
great meeting spaces, collaborative areas,
even wellness focused environments
will turn a transient experienceinto a place of belonging.
They build trust and theyencourage your community
to form and to thrive.
This would be good for your building
and definitely muchbetter for your cities.
So in closing, the climateemergency makes it a must
(13:53):
for all of us to curb carbon emissions
on all of our projects starting now.
Change is coming, I think,faster than we all anticipated.
And the cost of doingnothing or doing too little
is greater than ever.
And what I would liketo encourage all of you,
all of us and maybe challenge you
is to become early movers in that space,
(14:15):
if you care about your relevance,
don't wait for someoneelse to try it first.
If the framework or thesystem or the funding
or the incentives are not idealwelcome, when are they ever?
Make them happen, change the system.
It is our collective responsibilityto turn ordinary places
and spaces of today into theextraordinary of tomorrow
(14:38):
with our wit and ourknowledge and by collaborating
and that will become ourlegacy and our new icon.
So on that note, I willjoin Sam right over there,
I look forward to a chat with her.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you so much Raz for coming over
and sharing this with us
and I was really excitedwhen you agreed to do this
because it is a different lens
and I've worked in engineering,I've worked in consulting,
(15:00):
I've worked in development,I've worked in government
and recently and very kindly been invited
into the world of design with Hassell.
It's given me another perspectivein tackling the big issues
we're all here to talkabout because as Raz said,
we do all have a role to play.
The world of existing buildings
is really an interesting space
because the maintenance piecethat Razvan talked about,
(15:20):
we are all really familiar with that.
We're familiar with how itimpacts operational carbon.
We've also heard a lot,
a lot about embodied carbonin the last couple of days
and how revitalizationof existing assets is key
given kind of the carbon has underwritten
the development of those assets.
So a lot of your,
I guess invest part ofthe diagram there, Raz,
(15:43):
showed your six ingredients,
but they're not explicitlyfocused on carbon,
I think you mentioned carbononce or twice in those.
So what are the drivers beyond carbon
that you are seeing on theground from asset owners
and people who occupy theseexisting places and spaces?
- That is a great question,thanks for that Sam.
Honestly, I think that obviously carbon
(16:04):
and energy and cost and time
are really good at framing,I guess, the issue,
because they're quantifiable.
I'm not saying they're easy to solve,
but they're easy to frame
and there's a lot of focus going on that
because you can implementwhat you can measure
and you can measure what you implement.
What I think we can all seeover the past five to 10 years
(16:25):
is a bit of an awakening to authenticity
that a lot of us are experiencing.
I mean, think of how many times you turn
a bag of something that you buy
to see sort of thenutritional facts on the back.
People are starting to dothat with the buildings
and with their workplaces
and with their organisations, right?
And again, carbon andthings you can quantify
are only one half orless of that question.
(16:47):
The other half is the unquantifiable,
and I don't remember exactly the source,
but I was listening to a lecture
and the speaker was talking
about how at the end of theday we are emotional beings
and a lot of the decisions that we make
when it comes to purchasing,and who are our friends
and what brands we align ourselves with
are not about the speed of the processor,
but about the lifestyle it enables.
(17:08):
It happens in the limbic brainand it's highly emotional.
And you can see thathappening in buildings
where people no longer have to go to work,
they have to want to go to work,
they no longer have to be anywhere,
they should want to be at that place.
And that's where, I guess, the emotional,
mental value alignment comes in.
(17:30):
And I know it's scary becauseit's bloody hard to quantify.
It's all about quality.
So the answer is,
and the reason why I didn'tfocus so much on carbon,
although I deeply care about it,
is that we have so manybrains in this room
who know that stuff way better than I am.
So I'm trying not to looktoo silly in front of them,
but in reality you need bothand you shouldn't think either
(17:51):
or, I think binary thinkinghas gotten us to where we are.
I think disclaimingbecause of a spreadsheet
got us to where we are.
And I think the way forward,
and when you were talking about,
I'm not talking about compromise,
but when you're talkingabout setting priorities,
it should really startto look at the things
that cannot be quantified.
Design in its kind ofnature and how we work,
(18:15):
it's highly unpredictable
because we deal with unpredictable inputs
and that is confronting,it's really scary.
But I think that's therole of the designer
and that's why I'm reallyhappy to be in this crowd today
is to advocate for someof the cross pollination
that needs to happen betweenfact and interpretation,
between tangible and intangible,
(18:36):
between quantifiable and qualifiable.
And I think that's whereyou can see communities.
You know, the SG in ESG,everyone's struggling with it
because it's pretty hard toput kind of numbers on it
other than, oh, I've done three events.
- You started to talk aboutkind of the role of design
in creating this quality
(18:57):
and helping us be lessaddicted to new as iconic,
and I think we are doing a project
at the moment in Vancouver,where the building owner,
there's a set of two buildings in the city
and the building owner has spent 10 years
investing in getting it to a equivalent
essentially six of our neighbours.
It's an amazing programme, right?
And for me, I'm like,cool, what else do you do?
(19:18):
Like coming from a different background,
this is my first introductionto being in the design space.
We're doing a master plan
for the redevelopment of theexperience of that building
to make it competitive in a market
where new buildings arecoming up around it.
And I kind of wanna want youto talk a little bit more then
about how you see the role of design
interacting with thedeep industry expertise
that already exists, alot of it in this room
(19:39):
around financing,engineering and body carbon
to focus on the stuff we already have
and creating that demandthrough experience, right?
To evolve our cities into places
where people in nature thrive together.
- I guess maybe I'll volunteer
that little bit of personal info,
which is I do have stressfulhobbies outside of my day job
and one of them two years back
was being the festivaldirector for archivist,
(20:01):
Singapore's Architectural Festival.
And the topic I said forthat one is Design Evidence
and it was on purpose
because representing thearchitectural community
in many ways, I can hear a lot of anxiety
that designers have
looking at how other professions,much more specialised,
(20:22):
much more valued in thewhole kind of ecosystem
of the construction industry,
are borrowing knowledge and language
from design, processes from design, right?
And they feel more and more obsolete.
And I try to avoid theterm design thinking
'cause I know everyonemust have had a course
at one point or another, wekind of call it thinking.
And what I was trying to do
(20:43):
is kind of dismantle thatreading of it's us and them,
different sides of thetable that is sequential,
I mean all of that nonsense.
And what I was encouragingdesigners to do,
is really kind of soul searcha little bit and think about,
is what we do for aliving wishful thinking
and highly aspirational?
Are we able to, not steal back, but borrow
(21:04):
some of the language,some of the processes,
some of the knowledge thatyou see across the table
or around the tablefrom other consultants?
And that's why,
I mean, you are such awonderful unicorn, five in one.
And I think that is the spirit,
at least I don't wannabe doing the same thing
for the rest of my days.
I love what I'm doing,but I'm hoping I can grow.
I'm hoping everyone in this room
(21:26):
will do something different next year
and in five years, in 10 years,
and you're not gonna do itin sort of your echo chamber
of your own discipline,
it has to be done aroundthe table with others.
And what I also see in, as in again,
back to the practitioner hat,
not just us as a practisebut also other practises
and related industries,
(21:47):
really understandinghow other people work.
Back in the day, and I think Iwas making fun of architects.
I can't 'cause I'm one, I'msaying we're just like, Alexa,
we only come to life whensomeone has a brief for us.
But are we part of creating that brief?
Are we part of advising?
Are we part of strategy?
Well we should, not because we're greedy,
but because if you don'thave a kind of a brain trust
(22:08):
around the table, you mightbe missing something out,
and missing something out breaks me out.
So, out of that desire,
I think that everyone shouldhave to learn the branch out
to cross pollinate, which isexactly what's happening today
and happened yesterday.
I think that is the future of trans,
I'm not even call it cross-disciplinary,
I'm gonna call it transdisciplinary
(22:30):
where it can be both and the other
when it comes to your knowledge,
what you do and how you do it,
but it's all driven by a sense of purpose.
So we should be less driven by a brief
or a contractual kinda to-do list
and driven by a shared sense of purpose.
And then all the petty things that happen
in the life of a projecthopefully will go away.
(22:50):
- What you've just describedis exactly what's happened
with our Perth team doing a project
with a school, essentially.
And instead of the schoolfinding an existing building
'cause they needed an existingbuilding because no space
instead of going right,
we found a building sorted out for us,
the whole consultant team, notjust us were on board to go
(23:12):
and assess existing buildings
and what would work based on their needs.
So we were actually all of us together
developing the brief with that source.
So we're turning a commercial building
into an inner city school essentially,
which is a really exciting project
that we're all learning from patterns,
I guess, the design processthen maybe look different
(23:32):
with those six ingredientsthat you talked about
for those existing assets,like is it a different process?
So yep, all at the table brief,good, what about after that?
- Well, for this one Ithink, I mean in a sense,
when it comes to developing a new project
there is a good way of starting that.
So, you do start at the sortof start line with a to-do list
(23:54):
and ideally you get to implement all of it
in a holistic way.
Now when it comes to an existing building,
the problem is you havepreexisting conditions
and you have to give it a thorough,
I dunno why I'm doing medicalmetaphors, but here we're,
you gotta give it a thorough physical
to understand what's there.
And I think that'swhere the whole process,
(24:15):
well, I wish I just thought it,
but I know it from aproject that I'm working on
in Singapore currently,
that, that process is messy
and that process requires even more,
I guess, open transparent collaboration
because you don't knowwhat you don't know.
So in a sense, I think it relates back
to your previous question, whichis, how do you collaborate?
And this one I think it's also,
(24:36):
how do you then out ofthe entire laundry list
of due diligence, ofprofessional knowledge,
of code that may apply,
have the ability to siftthrough and figure out
what's relevant, what's irrelevant,
what's a priority and what isn't?
Now, is it messier?
Yes, it is.
Is it more difficult?
Yes, it is.
(24:56):
But I believe there are great impact
that will be seen downstream.
And I think the notion oftime that I spoke about again
has to be reintroduced here
because things don't goto plan almost always.
But in reality,
when you are just kind ofgoing down a straight line,
most things will go to plan.
(25:17):
You can kind of stake on course
and you might or mightnot see the benefits
once it gets implemented.
But for existing buildingswe can see the benefits
like suspending your disbeliefas the process is messy
will start paying backdividends over time.
What I don't see a lot of unfortunately
is the patience and wisdom
to take on perhaps a bigger CapEx
(25:40):
perhaps a more risk upfront
in order to have the patienceto stay with the asset,
to see it pay back.
We're still in that kindof quick flip mentality.
And to paraphrase, kindof quote a friend of mine,
he was saying, "If youdon't change the system,
"you cannot operate within it."
He was saying it, "Sustainable buildings
"are like low tart cigarettes,
"you think they're not as bad for you,
(26:01):
"but they'll be the same in the end."
So the question is, if we try to innovate
within the same mindset,we're just kidding ourselves,
we have to change that structure.
- It's kinda like chicken and egg gear.
So you're talking about essentially
through mixing those six ingredients
and thinking beyond the carbon piece
and into creating the experience
that then creates the demand.
Yeah, so it is, I guess weare kind of hovering in limbo
(26:23):
waiting for one to move.
Claire Perry from Development Victoria
has sent us through apretty curly question,
which I'm gonna throw at you.
How far back or how deep intothe sector do we need to go
to unpack that egoinvolved in creating new?
How do we flip thecompetition to create pride
in doing the best wecan with what we have?
- That's a very good one.
It it is a very good question
(26:44):
and I think, I mean ego is one,
I think, also measuringexcellence is the other one.
And I was really heartened last year
to see the building of the year being,
I guess a poster child forwhat we're talking about today.
I don't think we needto go back that much.
I think it's really aboutunderstanding what is valuable
and I know that sort of whole cost
(27:05):
and value conversationis a pretty heavy one.
And I think once weframe what is valuable,
and that's why I tried a little bit
of a slight of hand here with iconicity,
in the beginning like, whyare we obsessed with it?
And at the end, I'm like,
well, here's a new way of doing iconicity.
We all wanna be proud ofwhat we do for a living.
Let's not get that wrong.
But I think if we think of fixing
(27:27):
or if we think of workingwith old buildings
as just bandaid, oh I'mjust repainting my car
hoping it'll go for anotherfive miles, it's not that.
Like, think of it as completely changing.
I mean if there's so much pride,
I don't think we're that far from it.
- I just wanted to thank you again
for coming all this wayto spend time with us
because I'm so glad thatessentially the rest of this room
(27:50):
got to see the excitementand the motivation
within the design communityto address the issues
that we're all trying to tackle.
So thank you very much, Raz.
- Right on time, thank you.
(audience applauds)
So although the event was held in Sydney,
it's incredible how the conversation
(28:10):
really took on a global scale.
We were approachedafterwards with questions
relating to the AustralianAsia region and beyond.
And most importantly, how toextrapolate lessons learned
from one country to another.
It was great to see delegatesrepresenting developers,
tenants, legislators,finance and engineering
so fired up about designand the potential it has
(28:32):
to reframe some of theroadblocks they have been facing.
I couldn't help but feellike the whole industry
is really on the cuspof something special.
And just like I said in my address,
it only takes a handful ofhungry and creative clients
to move into this space and really open up
an entire wave of renewallike we haven't seen before.
Thanks again to the team at Transform
(28:53):
for recording our session
and allowing us to sharethis episode with you.
And we'd love to keepthe conversation going,
if you've heard something youwould like to explore further,
please get in touch.
We'd love to know yourthoughts and work together
on creating the future extraordinary.
I'm Razvan Ghilic-Micuand thanks for listening
to "Hassell Talks."
(29:14):
(upbeat music)
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