Fika at FOPA. How do you work at Mandaworks?

Ola Kloc

16 of June '21

Mandaworks studio

It's time to announce the next protagonists of the spring edition of the Open Architecture Studio Festival. This time we move to the Swedish capital, where the Mandaworks studio is thriving. What is hidden under the name of the office? What distinguishes the studio? What is the atmosphere there, and finally, what is the Swedish custom of fika? These questions are answered by an architect working at Mandaworks and our guide to the studio - Kinga Zemla.

wnętrze offices

office interior

FOPA, or the Festival of Open Architectural Studios, is an event accompanying the Open Eyes Economy Summit congress, during which we open the doors of well-known architectural studios, together with the architects who work in them we unlock the secrets of the office's functioning, take a look at their daily work and design methods. This year, OEES organizers in cooperation with the City of Lodz initiated another important meeting - the first International Congress on Regeneration of Industrial Cities, we could not miss it! Details of the spring edition of the festival can be found here.

Mandaworks

The multidisciplinary Mandaworks office, based in Stockholm, was established in 2010. Managed by Martin Arfalk and Patrick Verhoeven, the studio focuses on architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and comprehensive planning. The designers are guided by the Scandinavian tradition of allemansrätten ("every man's right"), which asserts people's right to be in touch with nature, of which we are an integral part - so we can draw on natural resources, but with respect and moderation, coexisting with nature.

This coming Monday, June 21 at 1 pm, architect Kinga Zemla will be our guide through the nooks and crannies of the studio:

A&B: Where did the name of the studio come from?

Kinga Zemla: M = meaning, A = action, M-and-A-works! In the design process, we attach great importance to creating solutions that set high urban standards, but above all, multidimensional spaces that will become important places for future users and local communities. The second term - action - refers to the dynamics of our design practice: we do not want to limit ourselves to reacting to phenomena or processes, we are interested in their active co-creation.

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Sätra

A&B: What was your first project about?

Kinga: The team's first project was a square in the small town of Klagshamn, south of Malmö, implemented between 2010 and 2013. The concept was to introduce a new pedestrian-oriented traffic organization, as well as divisions in the floor that delineated successive spatial sequences. Elements of small architecture took on a character inspired by the flint rocks found in the area.

A&B: Does the team have any regular habits / rituals?

Kinga: Maintaining a friendly atmosphere in the team is very important to us. In the days before the pandemic, we celebrated team members' birthdays, Christmas, had a holiday party, organized study trips, met once a month in the office after work, and had breakfasts together every Friday, during which often one of us presented the project he was working on to the others. Now we've been forced to move to the virtual world, but we still meet online to celebrate birthdays or holidays, as well as so-called globalfika(fika is a break for coffee and something sweet in Swedish), during which we try to bring together team members from our offices in Sweden, Canada and China. Each week, too, one person is responsible for putting together a short informal presentation in which we share our progress with each other - showing screenshots, photos of sketches, etc. with brief comments.