BUILD Q2 2018

32 Build Q2 2018 eadquartered in New York, Soluri Architecture creates extraordinary environments through an award-winning design process that balances the practical and functional with a deep understanding what is most important to our clients. Predominantly, the firm’s clients are progressive, outside-the-box thinkers at the cutting edge of their industry. With expectations constantly rising, clients are not interested in cookie-cutter design or blending in. As they boldly chart new territories and challenge the status quo, they seek spaces or buildings designed to reflect their unique values, mission, and lifestyle. With the team constantly striving to produce the best outcome for clients, it is important that the internal culture within the firm is cultivated so that all staff working towards achieving the same mission, and endeavour to deliver the best result that they can. As such, Soluri Architecture strives for a creative, collaborative and open culture in its office. Amongst the team, staff are trained holistically so they can become project architects that can manage projects on their own. This is in comparison to most other architecture firms who focus their employees into one specialised area, but Andre and his team prefer the employees to get their hands full in a variety of areas so they can become better archi- tects. Subsequently, this makes for an interesting and enriching experience. Differentiating the architecture firm from its competitors, Soluri Architecture is design focused and process oriented, and uses a unique methodology to create exceptional buildings and environments. The firm believes in a fully collaborative process and works from the inside out, beginning with a deep, holistic understanding of a client’s projects, their vision, and the integrated elements and requirements that are needed. Currently, within New York and London, the architectural industry is thriving, and Andre provided us with his thoughts on the sector, as well as explaining some of the challenges that the team has had to overcome. “The architectural service industry is quite busy at the moment - with a tre- mendous amount of construction in NYC and London. Because of this, there appears to be a staffing shortage due to the increased activity. As our firm is almost 13 years old we have had to overcome many challenges, but the single biggest challenge was the Great Recession when most of the con- struction work dried up. We struggled through it but managed to hang onto our office on 5th Avenue in mid-town and survived through perseverance.” Soluri Architecture: Constantly Thinking Outside the Box Soluri Architecture is an award-winning, boutique firm that provides integrated, client-focused design services. We profiled the firm before inviting Principal Andre Soluri to tell us more about the firm and the services that it delivers, as well as the attributes that have contributed to the firm’s success. H Gaining an increasingly impressive reputation across the architectural industry, Andre is keen to tell us about the firm’s most successful project to date, and he comments on what the most important lesson the team learnt from this project was. “To date, our most successful project to date has been a new 62,000sq ft mixed-use city hall that was built in a town near Seattle, Washington called University Place. To get the project, we won an invited design competition and then lead a team of 8 sub-consultants. This 13M publicly-bid project came in 5% under-budget due which is almost unheard of — this was due to an extensive pre-construction process which was one of the most important things we learned. Although we were the youngest company on the team, we learned that by truly listening to and understanding our clients’ needs one can create a clear, strong and flexible design framework that can evolve through the many challenges inherent in designing and constructing new, large buildings.” With technology evolving every day, Andre and his team must make sure that they come up with innovative solutions which will help the team main- tain its success. He comments on the methods that his team utilise in order to ensure they continue to be successful.