Among the studio's missions there is "providing places for people to come together". How do you create places that encourage the building of a community?

If the making of fine arts concerns the process, whether it is about how paint is layered onto a canvas or how the stone is carved, then it does not matter if we are talking about Michelangelo or Basquiat. The idea of process remains deeply rooted in the value of the art being created. Similarly, architecture is not simply something you look at. It is, rather, something you live in, experience, that carries you through its process. Frank Lloyd Wright himself used to speak of the hearth of architecture and its importance as a gathering place. Just like Lloyd Wright, we believe that a building, if conceived in a certain way, namely as a work of art, creates communities. And we ourselves must encourage that to happen.

A recent example is a 35,000 square foot office building commissioned by an international financial public relations firm. In the wake of the pandemic, the company faced the question of how to bring people back to the office, now accustomed to working from home with all the comforts it entails. For this reason, we did not just think about desks and meeting rooms. We went further. We deliberately broke down the scale of the building, transforming it from one big corporate block into many distinct neighbourhoods. The result was that of many small areas surrounded by green pocket parks, with small circular squares. Then, interspersed with these natural elements, we designed social spaces, hubs, living rooms, providing alternatives to sitting at one’s desk or standing in front of a boring coffee machine.

In terms of furnishings, we included sofas, chairs, and tables of different sorts, outdoor spaces covered by pergolas, and entrances resembling hotel lobbies. The effect was that of a clubhouse, with spaces dedicated to friendly conversations that would otherwise not occur in more traditional workplace settings. I would say it was all planned for the accidental, to give people the beauty of casualness, of the unexpected. A bit like what happens in cities, or when traveling. And thus, through architecture, we turned an office building into a destination, a place one enjoys returning to.

What are your top design predictions for the year ahead?

I believe that summer 2023 marked a turning point in our collective consciousness, at least for me and the people I work with. The experience of sweltering heat, the devastation caused by wildfires. Unlike previous summers, the last one was neither carefree nor light. It led us to understand how much attention we need to pay to our behaviour towards the environment and how much we consume it. This awareness is translating into quite dramatic and significant mental processes, prompting us to ask: what does it mean to create today? What is the value of creation? 

According to a recent study conducted in the UK, to be truly sustainable in the fashion industry, one should not buy more than nine pieces of clothing a year – I learned this by listening to the Financial Times podcast some time ago. In short, one more piece and you are no longer sustainable. Therefore, bringing this study into my field, I began to wonder what it means to be sustainable in architecture: what is the impact of our design process consumption? How to design in a changing world? How to fully understand the nature of living today? As Andre Kikoski Architect studio, we are already actively working to answer these questions in the language we know best, that of design. 

Currently, we are working on the Neom project in Saudi Arabia to create an agricultural complex in the middle of the desert that will replace food production from fertile land thanks to cutting-edge greenhouses. Inside them, the right temperature, light, and irrigation will be provided by solar energy, while harvesting will be done using robotic models. Behind a project of this magnitude, there is a thorough analysis of future perspectives, on how we will live, nourish ourselves, and build businesses. And I believe that questions like these should always be incorporated into projects if we want them to stand the test of time. 

We are also operating on a residential project for a client in New York who moved to Colorado during the pandemic, where he lived on the side of the mountains, surrounded by nature. Back in New York, he asked us to simulate that nature inside his home. To this end, we are researching lighting prototypes that mimic the intensity of the sun throughout the day, as well as controlled LEDs to improve the circadian rhythm. The question we asked ourselves when undertaking this project was: how do we make people feel comfortable in the space? We thus looked at the design of space stations to understand how to optimize living in a city with all the benefits of nature. And I think it is really beautiful to employ technology to live better and more responsibly in a world that is no longer what it used to be.

Speaking of new technologies and innovations, how is it possible to turn something ordinary into something extraordinary through intelligent design?

I find the term ‘intelligent design’ interesting because it has different meanings for different people. I think of every project as a series of questions in terms of capabilities and possibilities. It is about the extra application of effort to arrive at the best solution. In the mentioned Neom pilot greenhouses project, for example, this extra effort was applied to colour studies. In the desert, buildings tend to be constructed in white due to low heat absorption and high solar reflectance with white paint. However, we and our partners from Neom did not want the project to result in a sort of Martian film installation. 

Rather, we wanted to celebrate the landscape and blend the buildings with it, to bring a more balanced design proposal. We spent a great deal of time studying paints, metals, and panels, to understand how we could bend them to our idea. This led us to discover the latest technology in pigmentation and texturing so that we could propose buildings that looked like they were made of Corten steel, even though they were not. And I think it is an extraordinary example of how intelligent design leads us to do extraordinary things. 

As for the use of new technologies like AI, we do experiment a lot. Before starting a new project, we often type into AI for research images. Sometimes we show them to the client, but more often they are for our own understanding. We tend to always go beyond those images, beyond the banal, the obvious, and what is gratuitous. Many designers use it as a form of inspiration, not creation. We also use it in our relationship with manufacturers and in our collaborations, to best convey the intention of our project. As in historical collaborative projects between the arts, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Duomo of Milan, or the dome of Brunelleschi, it is important to know how to communicate with people about what is possible and how to get there. It is a beautiful aspect of being human and not machines. From this point of view, things have not really changed much.

What is the most challenging project you have done so far?

My favourite project, and the most challenging, is always the next one. The project yet to come will be the result of what has been learned so far, of our increased understanding of creativity, community, our role as environment makers and consumers in a rapidly moving world. The question in this case is: How do all these things come together in the next thing that we are about to undertake?