5 minute read
blocher partners - yearbook 2022
Dear friends of blocher partners,
At first glance, everything seems to hinge on military security and economic independence, on social welfare, and on how we’ll get through the winter. Climate change? Sustainability? Long since forgotten? As long as weaponry is the big topic and not wind turbines, we simply content ourselves with window-dressing projects such as turning the lights off and turning the radiator down
The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has shifted the source of fear, despite COVID-19 by no means having become a thing of the past. Rising commodity prices and interest rates – the markets are highly nervous. At the same time, we must remain committed to tackling climate change.
Our architecture practice is likewise exposed to the vulnerabilities of the world. However, what I see is us defying circumstances, particularly as it is less about the events and more about how we respond to them.
By the year 2040 , Germany intends to have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent on the 1990 levels. These environmental goals are closely interwoven with social issues and topics relating to corporate governance: Going forward, we will be focussing all the more strongly on the key concepts of »Environmental, Social and Governance«, or ESG for short.
If we bear in mind the entrepreneur in us all, then it will be easier to creatively handle the related challenges. Our thinking and actions are not defined by the need to preserve, but by our imaginations. We want to square up to the challenges. That clearly includes questioning triedand-true methods, opening new doors inwards and outwards without exactly knowing how safely we will move in the respective spaces.
Our values have helped us learn better from one another. Be it in personal conversations, in the feedback rounds, the seminars in our Academy and at the many events we have held. We’re open to all forms of inspiration – that saw us become owners this year of two colonies of bees, and two colleagues trained as beekeepers in order to tend the hives. The thanks: so much honey that there’s enough for everyone in the company. That is perhaps a slight indication of how we grasp development and processes.
The links we maintain across our various disciplines in an open discourse between colleagues and fellow experts shore up our sense of everyone pulling together and can be felt from the outside, too. Precisely in the »war for talents«, as some call it, we benefit from our often longstanding companions, as we frequently hear when interviewing candidates. The latter are interested in working with us because of our team spirit, work methods, focus on sustainability and our transdisciplinary approach with typenraum, our in-house communications agency.
We have our solid economic base to thank for the fact that we can open doors in the first place and do not get lost in wishful thinking – despite jobs being temporarily halted or cancelled and projects being confined to the back burner. Our eyes are on the future, as looking backwards and complaining are a waste of energy.
For many years now we have worked with developers who emphasize quality and creativity and want to generate value added together with us. We are united by a mindset that excludes nothing. Because not just within the company, but with our external partners too, what counts is that we’ll only progress together.
This is why as much as a year ago we decided to give our design strategy unit a space of its own. We at blocher partners sens work together with you from the inside outwards, in co-creative processes.
Workflow and structures are generated collaboratively – with clients and users alike. That is our way of opening projects up to benefit from a broad spectrum of knowledge and wisdom, enabling them to be grasped in all their complexity.
The transformative discourse possesses more than simply a normative impact. The emphasis is not only on how something should be assessed. Our disciplines intrinsically imply having to understand ever more about ever less. ESG , the aforementioned key sector concepts, ensure that intelligence at blocher partners has many faces. Growing requirements shape our tasks. Because what functions is something decided in practice, whereas theory simply points the possible way(s).
Therefore, another aspect of our work has now been given a footing of its own as an independent company: blocher partners General Planning. This new firm means we can now support our developer clients across all stages of the construction process, from the first draft designs onwards, and including project development, cost control and quality management.
The capacity rooted within our corporate DNA for perceiving signals from the surrounding world and the ability to process them not only have a profound influence on life at our four office hubs, but also drive transdisciplinarity over and above architecture, interior design, product design and communications.
While the current times may bring many up against their limits, they do have a good side to them. The pandemic itself has shown just what we are capable of: testing, learning, adapting or creating new structures.
I am familiar with it and I know what it feels like. Which is why with a view to blocher partners I can safely say that I am truly lucky to be part of this organism. Including now, or rather, precisely now.
