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Architecture or business? Or maybe both? Interview with Piotr Gniewek

17 of April '25
summary
  1. Challenges in the architecture profession include low wages, professional burnout and lack of business education.
  2. Changes in architecture are driven by digitization, rising client expectations and lack of adequate salary increases.
  3. Architects' adaptation to the market includes incorporating business aspects and redefining their career path.
  4. Prefabrication and timber CLTs can be the answer to the needs of ecology, repetition and modern modular construction.
     
  5. For more interesting information, visit the home page of the A&B portal

The challenges facing architects today often make them decide to change career paths. Equipped with the ability to think analytically and create creatively, they are looking for ways to combine architecture with business, earning and creative execution. We talk to Piotr Gniewek, an architect who today refers to himself as a designer, about the direction his professional burnout led him, the search for his niche, business alternatives and inspiration from the Bauhaus.


Ola Kloc: Professional burnout, mental health crisis, low wages - these intractable topics have come up a lot in conversations about architecture lately. How do you see the contemporary challenges in the architectural profession?

Piotr Gniewek: The architectural profession has changed a lot over the past few years. Technological changes, economic changes and the scope of the profession itself - the construction process has developed, the methodology, the amount of work, the expectations have changed, and the environment in which we operate has also changed - mean that we are now in the process of adapting to these changes. Adaptation both professionally and financially.


Ola Kloc: What does this adaptation consist of?

Piotr Gniewek: I can tell you about it from my perspective, a man who entered the labor market during the general crisis of 2008-2013. The professional initiation was not easy - we entered the labor market facing many problems: rapid digitization was taking place, new technologies were being introduced, clients' requirements and the amount of work were also increasing, but salaries were not keeping up with these changes. The architectural profession combines many aspects - a certain mission, responsibility to society and the user, legal responsibility, issues of aesthetics and philosophy, as well as a business aspect, because the work must bring financial profit. Labor costs are rising, including software costs. This aspect was previously more regulated, but free competition has emerged, the crisis has accelerated the decline in wages, and the amount of investment has fallen while the supply of graduates has increased. The market has not kept up with these changes. Remaining in the circle of prestige professions, our expectations of quality (in the sense of conditions) and standard of work (i.e. salary) also remained in this circle. Adapting to market conditions involves introducing purely business aspects into the architectural profession, and not just creative ones, so that one can make a decent living while realizing himself creatively.

moduł sauny Tyyni

Tyyni sauna module

Photo: Lauri Humalajoki


Ola Kloc: Could minimum wages be the answer?

Piotr Gniewek: The basis should be education while still at the stage of studies on how to price work, what should be and what should not be priced, that there are no subsequent free revisions, for example. Later, you can start discussing whether or not a minimum rate should be set. If we don't introduce minimum rates, let's at least devote energy to educating both those who are already in the profession, because dumping is a common issue, and students, so that they know exactly the process and what they are pricing. A simple question arises: what would be included in the minimum rate? It took me many years to parameterize the design process and determine - within my small business, of course - how much work is at what stage and what goes into the scope of services. The problem is that two people will price the design work differently, often without telling the client what goes into the bid. If someone wants to "come down" from the price, to be more competitive, he will always do it.

When the issue of wages is disturbed, wanting to take care of the financial standard of living, a person begins to work more, but this affects the number of working hours and the standard of living. This, in turn, affects the problems of job burnout that we started with. So I think the minimum wage is useful, but only if it is followed by thorough education, arrangements so that everyone knows what is being valued and on what terms, to what extent.

moduł sauny Tyyni

Tyyni sauna module

Photo: Lauri Humalajoki


Ola Kloc: How did it happen that you changed your career path?

Piotr Gniewek: I didn't leave the architectural profession because I failed at something, couldn't find a job, or didn't work on sufficiently prestigious investments - I worked in top Polish studios, ran competitions in them, which we won, and which today are published in international magazines. So I had no problem with the creative issue of the profession, the problem became working fourteen hours a day, sometimes six or seven days a week. So I began to wonder what was wrong, is this how it should work?


Ola Kloc: In view of this, what was your process of shaping the business model like? Since there is a lack of such education, I understand that you learned it yourself?

Piotr Gniewek: I did my business education on my own, I searched for modern business models, start-ups, what and how to do, where profit is created. I read, studied, tried, failed, including financially, and repeated.

The financial issue in architecture is derived from the profits of the construction process, and we, as an essentially service profession, are almost last in the margin distribution, in a very profitable sector of the economy. At the moment it is a documentation service, which sometimes bears the hallmarks of creativity, but a common joke in the community is that housing developments are created in the excels of sales departments, not in studios.

After deciding that I would rather leave this classic model of practicing my profession, I quickly joined the business people. So my conversations and explorations were no longer conversations with architects or other creatives about what to do to make money in architecture, but contacts with the business community, which in its nature has conversations about cash flow, about margin, about product, about profit, about business models. So it was a combination of self-education and changing the environment.

moduł sauny Tyyni        detal modułu sauny Tyyni

Tyyni sauna module

Photo: Adriana Misiek


Ola Kloc: So today you would call yourself an architect or a businessman?

Piotr Gniewek: I stopped referring to myself as an architect - I am a designer. I see the business I do as a process in which I realize my creative need - from branding, brand image, through promotional materials, the issue of selling the product, convincing customers of it - these are all aspects analogous to architecture, only the object we design changes. There is also an architectural object in the process, so I have a certain advantage over my competitors - if I get feedback from the factory about the technology, I am able to make changes in real time if necessary. The products we create are very architectural, but they are primarily used for the business model I have adopted - I don't make a service for someone else's order, but I create an idea, a product, an object. I spot a niche, and then I test my assumptions on a group of early adopters. When the business model works, then I offer the product to the target group. So I reverse the direction, I don't wait for an order, I don't enter a competition, but I create and look for an audience.


Ola Kloc: Please tell us a little more about the product you are creating.

Piotr Gniewek: The start-up I am creating has an open business model - it has many fields of activity. We check which ones work and develop them, others we let go. A carpentry shop produces boards, an architectural studio "produces" construction documentation, and what we develop is a kind of know-how about prefabricated, modular construction. Finishing my adventure in the studio, I was looking for opportunities to scale my work. Architecture today is pretty disposable - except for catalog homes, this more ambitious architecture is created once, these are 1:1 scale prototypes. I wanted to create a repeatable process that I could refine from stage to stage, and that I could scale, because from my individual studies it came out that one of the simplest methods of economic growth is scalability. In architecture, that scalability refers to larger investments and more employees in the office - that was a model I didn't want to operate in. So we decided to prefabricate and develop modular architecture precisely for these reasons: lower construction costs, possible scalability and CLT wood, which is a modern, eco-friendly material, so it fits in with modern trends and is perfect for prefabrication. We are developing the know-how to produce repetitive modules. In its simplest version, it became a module of the Tyyni sauna, a fairly small, simple, predictable object that is not used for habitation. It has become an excellent laboratory for us to create and then master the production process - from inventing the object to completing the production documentation.

moduł sauny Tyyni

Tyyni sauna module

Photo: Lauri Humalajoki


Ola Kloc: How do you envision the scalability of this idea?

Piotr Gniewek: It's about scalability not in terms of product size, but in terms of quantity. With each generation we can refine our product, thus making it better over time - unlike in architecture, where a building is built and all the mistakes the architect didn't think of stay. Here we can improve them and in the next generation of the product eliminate them. After the Tyyni project, together with a larger team from the construction industry, I started working on another start-up called Hombee - focusing on the construction and sales aspects of new technologies. We went from a small wooden "box" to a larger component: prefabricated modules for construction. We are already implementing the first project - a settlement of prefabricated modular houses in the Polish mountains. We will manufacture the modules in a factory, and the assembly and finishing will take place on the plot. And here comes another aspect of scalability, we have gone through a process, we already have some experience, now we are going to a larger scale - we want to develop a repeatable wooden module, which can be additionally factory-fitted with a 6in1 HVAC module, roof, solar, SmartHome, electrical installations, sandwich walls to the woodwork. This module put together several times in different configurations can give architecture on a diverse scale. I want to point out that we take financial responsibility for the investment, so we have to manage the scale rationally, we can't go into too much investment too quickly.

moduł        moduł z dachem

module

© Piotr Gniewek

I am also aware that this in a way limits architectural creativity, in this technology and methodology I will not realize any investment and any vision, but this is a situation that as a creator I am able to come to terms with. The very creation of certain assumptions for this module, prefabricated is already interesting, creatively stimulating.


Ola Kloc: Will these residential "boxes" be modifiable?

Piotr Gniewek: We want the module to be quite universal, later it can be supplemented with additional elements that will make it modifiable, but the base is to be repeatable. I would compare it to the car industry - we want the architecture of our products to be as repeatable and predictable in its production as cars are. What we are currently working on is a kind of frame into which we put parts. We can - to use automotive language - change the color of the body, the power of the engine, the additional equipment, but the base as a rule within a given model remains the same. We have our limitations. No one comes to a car dealership and says: "this is a beautiful car, but I wish it were 10 centimeters longer". We view our modules in the same way - they are planned for a specific type of functionality, but also our production capabilities, for the specific housing structure we want to achieve, and we move within those capabilities. Introducing modifications will throw us out of the business model, because we lose scalability and repeatability, so we go back to a one-off prototype.

gotowy moduł        wizualizacja gotowego modułu

visualization of the finished module

© Piotr Gniewek


Ola Kloc: We're talking about modules and CLT, do you face any legal challenges when it comes to using this technology and material, still crawling on the Polish market though?

Piotr Gniewek: Adequate legislation is to be introduced to wooden construction, mainly when it comes to fire, structural issues. Single-family houses and outbuildings, such as saunas, have the least requirements in terms of fire and fire resistance, so the issue of safety and certification is not a problem on this scale. We give ourselves time for legislation to catch up with market opportunities, we use it to fine-tune our process. Our goal is to grow the company sustainably, we are doing it with our own money, at our own risk, so we have to calculate financial, market and legal risks. If we grow too fast, we will start to lose details, and they are important to us.

budowa modułu z CLT        ściana z CLT

building a module with CLT

© Piotr Gniewek


Ola Kloc: So what is your business model based on?

Piotr Gniewek: We own the intellectual rights to a registered industrial design in the European Union. Local companies license the know-how for the production of objects, and they are the ones who, based on the BIM documentation, produce and deliver them to their customers, so there is no situation where I produce something in Poland from Scandinavian wood and then carry it on an ocean container to America. This is an optimal model that follows our philosophy of sustainability, of ecology. This model is also perfectly immune to tariffs, duties, unforeseen costs - we don't have to transport objects from one continent to another, so we are not susceptible to economic turmoil, we don't have to worry about additional fees, or that our components will become unavailable. By sending a file, we cross borders not only physically, but also customs or tax.


Ola Kloc: So you encourage architects to change their career path?

Piotr Gniewek: I myself experienced professional burnout and related frustration. That's where my search came from. In this model I found a perspective for development - I stopped being a service provider at the end of the process chain, I went higher up. As a young architect, I was fascinated by the stories of the Bauhaus, designers who created their furniture or technology while sitting in factories - this business restored my energy, my belief that the marriage of design, technology and business has a chance to work.

People in the architecture industry are extremely capable, competent, with a wide range of skills that work well in many fields. So I would like to encourage them to seek and act - there is nothing to be afraid of!

Ola Kloc: Thank you for the interview.


Ola Kloc

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