Bespoke Careers Podcast

Peter Maddison is the founding director of Maddison Architects and for 108 episodes was the host of Grand Designs Australia. He’s been called Australia’s most recognisable architect.

He’s a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, a winner of the Institute’s National President’s Prize, and his practice has completed more than 300 projects, from family homes to some of Melbourne’s best-known bars.

This conversation covers Robin Boyd and The Australian Ugliness, the brick Peter pulled from a demolition site, failing Year 12 and getting into architecture...

We’ve wrapped season one of the Bespoke Careers Podcast. 42 episodes, from architecture students right up to institute presidents.Here's some of the best advice that stuck with us. Seven ideas worth hearing, from 196 years of combined experience.

Sabrina Klor, CEO of 10Design, on why a well-run business matters as much as the design. She moved from running projects to the commercial side and now leads a 400-person practice.

Chris Williamson, co-founder of Weston Williamson + Partners and RIBA President, on why architects are losing influence and why young architects sh...

James Zagari is the co-founder of EST Lighting, an Australian lighting company he established in 2016 after a career that began almost by accident with a sales role at Philips Lighting.

In this episode, James talks about the unexpected path that led him into lighting, why lighting can be difficult to explain until you experience it, and what gets lost when it is brought into a project too late. He also shares what it was like moving from employee to founder, building EST with former colleagues, growing a team, and creating a showroom designed as...

Download the 2026 Global Salary Guide: https://www.bespokecareers.com/salary-guide/Muyiwa Oki is an architect at Mace and was President of RIBA from 2023 to 2025, the institute's youngest and first Black president, elected after a grassroots campaign that started in a WhatsApp group.He studied at Sheffield, did his Part 3 with RIBA North West, and worked at Glenn Howells Architects in Birmingham and Grimshaw in London before moving to Mace, where he works the front end of projects with public and private clients. During his term he set up the workplace and wellbeing task force and the RIBA's AI advisory...

Illya Azaroff calls architecture his side gig. He's also the 2026 president of the American Institute of Architects and has spent 30 years responding to disasters around the world.His father arrived in the US as a displaced war refugee from Ukraine, and Illya grew up at a dinner table where hunger was a firsthand memory. That upbringing led to a degree in geography, then a career in disaster mitigation, and now the presidency of a 100,000-member institution.We get into what the presidency is like from the inside, why his kids are the reason he ran, the ethos he borrowed...

Shajay Bhooshan is an Associate Director at ZHA Architects and co-founder of ZHA CODE, the practice's computation and design research group, now 28 people inside a studio of around 500.

He studied at the AA's Design Research Laboratory, where he still teaches, and completed his PhD with the Block Research Group at ETH Zurich. His work spans high performance geometry, robotic fabrication, game engines and participatory design, including the 3D printed concrete bridge Striatus.

Scott Clement has seen thousands of portfolios. He doesn't want to see yours.Scott is the CEO of Revel Architecture and Design, a San Francisco firm that grew headcount 50% in 18 months and is sitting right at the 60-person point where he says firms start to break. We get into what an architecture CEO does all day, why Revel grows its leaders instead of hiring them in, the Colliers fit-out that ended with a giant bar the client insisted they didn't want, and the phone call that came 14 hours before we recorded.

Cara Stizza and Robyn Levin run Wildflower, a Melbourne studio that owns the furniture side of a project. Selection, procurement, coordination, everything down to the cutlery in the drawers. Cara built and grew an interior design practice before this. Robyn spent years inside one of Australia's leading furniture brands. Together they sit between the creative eye and the part where it all has to get built, on budget, and hold up.This one's about the business of design. How they cut about a third out of a build-to-rent budget without gutting the design. Why furniture gets wedged in early...

Want to work at amazing studios like Made For? You can browse our live jobs here: https://www.bespokecareers.com/jobs/At Bespoke we work with 1,000+ firms every year across the UK, US and Australia to find them great candidates just like you. Want to know where you salary sits in the market? Download our global Salary Guide: https://www.bespokecareers.com/salary-guide

Mitch Jones built Made For, a Melbourne workplace strategy, architecture and interiors studio, without a design degree. Ten years on it's a team of twenty with a client list that runs from Starbucks to...

Selasi Setufe came out of architecture school with two degrees and couldn't get a job. Two interviews in two years. An unpaid internship in Slovenia she'd "highly not advise." So she stopped trying to fit the mould and built her own route through the profession.Selasi is a co-director of Black Females in Architecture, the network she co-founded in 2018 that now runs to a global membership of more than 400. She's a registered architect, a Public Practice alumna, and a Principal Project Officer in the GLA's Place Unit, after years as a Senior Architect at Be First in Barking and...

his summer, RIBA elect the institute’s next president. Four candidates are running to be president: Duncan Baker-Brown, Chithra Marsh, Jay Morton and Austin Williams. We sat down with all four, to hear their vision for the future of the profession. We’ll be releasing one episode per day in the lead-up to the voting opening on Monday, 15 June. Next up: Chithra Marsh.Chithra is a Director at Buttress Architects in Manchester, with over 30 years’ experience across practices of varying size. She leads on community regeneration, social value and equality, diversity and inclusion within the practice, which is both B Corp...

This summer, RIBA elect the institute’s next president.

Four candidates are running to be president: Duncan Baker-Brown, Chithra Marsh, Jay Morton and Austin Williams.

We sat down with all four, to hear their vision for the future of the profession. We’ll be releasing one episode per day in the lead-up to the voting opening on Monday, 15 June.

Next up: Duncan Baker-Brown

Duncan Baker‑Brown is the founder of BakerBrown Studio, a small practice based in Brighton, and has over four decades’ experien...

This summer, RIBA members elect the institute's next president. The RIBA president chairs the institute's council, sits on its board, and speaks for the profession to government, media and the public. Whoever wins takes office as president-elect on 1 September 2026 and serves as president from 2027 to 2029. Those two years run straight through housing policy, climate targets, architectural education, and what the job looks like for the people coming into it. There are four candidates standing. We sat down with each of them, asked them the same questions, to help you decide who to vote for. We'll be releasing one episode...

This summer, RIBA members elect the institute's next president.

The RIBA president chairs the institute's council, sits on its board, and speaks for the profession to government, media and the public. Whoever wins takes office as president-elect on 1 September 2026 and serves as president from 2027 to 2029. Those two years run straight through housing policy, climate targets, architectural education, and what the job looks like for the people coming into it.

There are four candidates standing. We sat down with each of them, asked them the same questions, to help you decide who to vote for.

Noris Obijiaku, known online as Mr Chuck, is an architecture student and content creator with more than 300,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram.

He's become known for his tours of London's housing estates, leading him to interview London's mayor Sadiq Khan, speak on panels and partner with the likes of Arsenal and Dezeen.

Born in Italy, raised on a London estate, now finishing his Part 2 at the London School of Architecture while working in practice. In this episode we get into the estate tours, the crits that skin you, and...

What does it actually take to run 400 architects across nine studios?

Sabrina sits down with us to talk about the business of architecture - the side most architects would rather not think about. Sabrina Klor is the CEO of 10 Design, a global architecture and masterplanning practice employing 400+ architects and designers across studios in London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Miami, Dubai, Dallas, Edinburgh, Shenzhen and Singapore.

10 Design is part of 10N, a 1,500-strong collective of six architecture and urbanism practices under Egis Group.Sabrina is also Chair of Women in...

Tim Fu is the founder of Studio Tim Fu, a design practice working at the sharp end of AI in architecture, where the conversation is no longer just about the visuals and starts being about real projects with real risk and real responsibility.

Tim's work sits in that gap between hype and reality, looking at what AI can genuinely do, where it doesn't quite meet the standard and where it's going to.

Our conversation is a dissection of some of the practices latest international projects, exploring the opportunities and complexities around authorship, liability, and even...

Sanjay Puri is the founder of Sanjay Puri Architects, a Mumbai-based practice of 100 people with projects spanning 55 cities across India.

The studio has won over 350 international awards and is known for sculptural, climate-driven design, using massing, shading, and natural ventilation instead of bolt-on sustainability.

Charlie Caswell and Adam Dainow met at architecture school in Sheffield, climbed the ranks at London practices, and then walked away from it all to become property developers.

In this episode, they talk about what they had to give up, the five-year grind of building a business from scratch, why they think architecture education is broken, and what architects can learn from the development side of the industry.

Charlie and Adam are the co-founders of Cawell&Dainow, a design-led property development company that transforms London's overlooked sites into high-quality...

Evelyn Lee is an architect, entrepreneur, and tech strategist who served as the 2025 President of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). She operates at the intersection of design, technology, and business, currently serving as a fractional Chief Operations Officer (COO), startup advisor, and angel investor within the built environment.

Download the 2026 Salary Guide: https://www.bespokecareers.com/salary-guide/

Adam Haddow is an Australian architect, partner at SJB and the current National President of the Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA).

In this conversation, Adam makes the case that architects have spent decades drifting toward irrelevance, avoiding the hard conversations about cities and housing while celebrating beautiful houses and hoping politicians notice. He believes that needs to stop.

We cover what meaningful influence looks like for the profession, why AI is the biggest democratisation architecture...

Phineas Harper is a London-based writer, founder and cultural leader. A regular contributor to The Guardian, their career spans criticism, curation, education, youth work, journalism and sculpture.

00:00 Intro

1:00 The personal toll of speaking out

3:22 Discovering architecture

6:47 Working at the Architecture Review

10:51 Do architects see the value in writing and critique?

13:51 Architecture Foundation and New Architecture Writers1

5:37 Open City and Open House Festival

21:20 The big wall between architecture and the public

23:43 Architectural communication

25:58 The protection of function<...

Lucy Carmichael, former Director of Practice at the RIBA and current Board Member for the University of the Built Environment, explains why the traditional, linear path into the industry is failing most students, and what the alternative looks like.

From her upbringing with architect parents, to navigating the "heyday" of design policy at CABE, Lucy has spent her life 'falling in and out of love with architecture.' The thing that keeps her coming back is the huge potential for positive impact on society.

We explore the "radical realism"...

Founder of Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Kathryn Gustafson reflects starting a studio in a second language, and learning the business side of practice through trial, mentors, and persistence.

00:00 Intro

0:59 Growing up in the desert

2:35 Discovering design

6:33 Journey from fashion to landscape architecture

12:04 Business vs Art

16:31 Founding her businesses and 'the invisible years.'

25:47 How to be a good leader

28:39 Building a workplace culture

29:21 Key projects and dealing with criticism

35:52 Navigating cultural contexts as a designer

38:59...

Kai-Uwe Bergmann is a Partner at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), where he leads global business development and oversees urban design and landscape projects. Known for his strategic approach to "the political scale," Bergmann has been instrumental in scaling BIG from a Copenhagen-founded practice into a global force operating in over 40 countries. He is a primary contributor to Manhattan’s "Big U," a 10-mile coastal resiliency project designed to protect the city from future climate events.

BIG, often described as "pragmatic utopian," focuses on transforming complex societal challenges (from energy and food distribution to affordable ho...

On 1 January 2026, Chris Williamson took a deliberate and provocative step. He allowed his registration with the Architects Registration Board to lapse, describing the framework as 'absurd'.

In practical terms, the sitting President of the RIBA, a practitioner with more than forty years’ experience and the founder of one of the UK’s most successful practices, can no longer legally call himself an architect.

"Since I was 18 it's all I've ever wanted to do. But to be asked to pay an annual fee (which is increasing each year) to the ARB...

Simon Allford is never short of a view, and this conversation covers the parts of architecture people usually avoid.AHMM was founded in 1989 at possibly the worst moment in modern British architecture.

Gold cards maxed out to cover office debt, competitions won but never built, consultancy work drying up. Those five years of survival shaped everything that followed. The rule from their student days still holds: the best idea wins, not yours or mine. If everyone's comfortable with a design, it's probably not good enough.

His infamous "first we storm the building, then we take...

When Alyssa Anselmo quit her New York design job to build a daycare in Canada with next to no experience, everyone said she was crazy. Since then, she's delivered multiple award-winning projects, amassed a social media empire of 1M+ followers and built a studio that lets her choose work entirely on her own terms. Safe to say she made the right decision.

Alyssa breaks down the decisions, the risks, and what she's learned about taste, money and attention.

Her message is this: You don't need permission. You don't need a decade of experience. You need...

Sarah Gibson & Nicholas Karlovasitis leave uni, cram a fledgling furniture brand into a Newtown flat, and decide they are going to export Australian design to the world. That is the starting point for DesignByThem. In this episode we unpack how fifteen years later, they're actually pulling it off.

We talk about building a design brand from a tiny local market, backing Australian designers, and choosing factories around the world without losing the integrity of the work.

The conversation gets into IP, copies, pricing, cashflow, and why treating business as a design problem changed everything for...

A few times in a generation, a piece of technology comes along that changes everything. The internet, smart phones, or if you're an architect, CAD and BIM. Now, we have AI to add to that list. But can our profession embrace this, move forward, or even absorb another push for efficiency without hollowing out our expertise or having to question our real value now or in the future?We wanted to find out the answers to these questions and more. So we spoke to Rada Daleva, project lead at Studio Tim Fu, the leading AI-first architecture firm working with...

Shawn Adams is an architect and outreach lead at HTA Design. He co founded POoR Collective (Power Out Of Restriction), a platform that works with young people to co design projects and build real skills. His work sits at the intersection of practice, education and community, bringing young voices into live briefs and treating them as the client.

He is a published writer with bylines in Wallpaper, Frame and Icon. He trained at Portsmouth and the Royal College of Art, and came through the New Architecture Writers programme. Shawn’s focus is clear. Make de...

Peter Murray once herded longhorn cattle down St Johns Street in London to make a point: Architecture should speak to everyone. In this conversation he unpacks a life spent shaping that dialogue from AA student to editor of Building Design and the RIBA Journal to co founding Blueprint, Wordsearch, the London Festival of Architecture and New London Architecture.We get into why so much architectural writing misses the public, how to switch the language, and when he realised he was becoming institutionalised and needed a reset. He talks candidly about raising the game at BD, opening the debate beyond...

Download the report

Here is the State of Sustainability in Architecture and Design 2025. A clear view of how sustainability is shaping hiring, skills and careers right now, based on a global survey of 350 professionals across the UK, US and Australia, plus straight talk from six pioneers who are pushing practice forward.

Chris Simmons speaks with editor Hattie Hartman to unpack the findings. You will hear what candidates want, which skills are in demand, how teams are built, why evidence beats slogans, and where firms fall short between big promises and delivery.Featuring insights from...

Architect and urban designer Mariana Cabugueira has bridged the worlds of physical infrastructure with immersive digital realms in the metaverse.

In this episode, she traces her path from studying in Lisbon to honing advanced skills in London, and from her years at Zaha Hadid Architects to spearheading ambitious virtual projects.

We explore what architects can contribute to the metaverse, how AI and parametric tools are changing workflows, and the challenges of building healthy design cultures.

Mariana also talks openly about stepping away from a dream role to start something new.

What does it take to run one of the world’s leading architecture practices? Grimshaw’s Group Managing Partner Mark Middleton shares lessons from three decades shaping global mega-projects, leading studios across continents, and keeping architects inspired on the world’s biggest stages.

0:00 - Intro

1:17 - Why architecture?

2:51 - How practical experience shapes better design

5:46 - Architecture school and a switch in work ethic

8:43 - Joining Grimshaw, working with Sir Nicholas Grimshaw and staying in one job for 30 years

11:44 - Becoming Group Managing Partner at Gri...

From cubbies in the bush to projects in Melbourne, London, and New York, Martin’s career has spanned continents, practices, and passions. Now an Associate at FXCollaborative, he reflects on what drives him as an architect and his advocacy for diversity through Build Out Alliance.

00:00 Intro

02:51 Designing for the end user’s needs and enjoyment

05:38 DIY projects family building and formal training

08:09 London office planting the seed for international work

11:49 Getting licensed from the UK to New York

16:19 Balancing the technical and creative sides of architecture

18...

The numbers aren’t great. Women in architecture are still paid less, promoted less, and leaving the profession at higher rates than men. It’s not unique to architecture, but there’s plenty of work to do. According to a Bespoke Careers report, the gender pay gap in Australia sits at 20.6% — nearly triple that of the UK and US. Angela Dapper has seen those realities up close, and has made it her mission to be the change she wants to see in the industry. Over a career in Melbourne and London with Grimshaw, Architectus and Denton Corker Marshall, she’s led land...

What does it take to become a successful architect? How do you build an award winning practice culture? How do we fix the housing crisis? And are architects still hungry enough to make a difference?In this episode, Simon Bayliss, Managing Partner at HTA Design, shares what he's learned from 25 years at one of the UK’s leading housing-focused practices.

0:00 - Intro

0:56 - Why Simon became an architect

3:26 - Where architects bring the most value

6:41 - Going from Part II to Managing Partner at HTA Design

11:58...

We spend roughly a third of our adult lives at work. A third. That's about 90,000 hours over the course of a career. And yet, many of us have never stopped to really think about how our physical environment is shaping our mental health, our productivity, and our overall wellbeing every single day.

We're living through the biggest shift in how we work since the Industrial Revolution. Hybrid working, which felt revolutionary just a few years ago, is now the norm.

But as Kirsten will explain, we're still getting it...

Fed up with the traditional way of procuring architecture, Qutaibah Al-Atafi joined forces with builder Ryan Underwood to create something different. And with Underwood, their Melbourne-based design-led design and build firm, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Immigrating from Iraq and growing up in the outer suburbs of New Zealand, Qutaibah was left questioning why some places felt like home and others didn’t.

In this conversation, amongst other things, we discuss whether architecture is still worth it. With tight fees getting tighter, and AI rewriting the rules, what’s keeping architects going?

...