SAOTA by CMB Media Group

S A OTA

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SAOTA

SA’s SAOTA International

Industry Leader PRODUCTION: Karl Pietersen

In its 30th year, SAOTA is now a major player in the international highend architectural and design industry. Completing projects all over the world, and gaining new contracts for future business, this is a company that is always moving forwards. Director Greg Truen tells Enterprise Africa more about politics, Africa, Europe and virtual reality.

As one of the shining lights in South Africa’s strong architectural industry, SAOTA continues to broaden its international exposure, taking on projects in distant locations including Mexico, Nigeria, the UK, and the USA. Since being established by Stefan Antoni in 1987 (then known as Stefan Antoni Architects), the business has grown significantly and is now home to around 200 people including architects, designers, technologists, marketing and support staff. Headed by Stefan Antoni, Philip Olmesdahl, Greg Truen, Phillippe Fouché and Mark Bullivant, SAOTA calls some of

the country’s greatest design and architectural minds its leaders. Starting out as a specialist in villastyle single residence buildings, over the past 30 years SAOTA has grown in ambition and reputation, taking on major projects including hotels, multi-residence apartment buildings, government buildings, infrastructural planning, and much more. Its footprint covers five continents and its people is a group that drives innovation in the design space, constantly looking to stay aligned with an ever-evolving industry. With many flagship projects to list, SAOTA recently added to its

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INDUSTRY FOCUS: PROPERTY

portfolio with the completion of the Clifton Terraces development, a luxury apartment building in Cape Town’s wealthy Clifton suburb. Discussed in Enterprise Africa in November 2016, Clifton Terraces has been exciting for SAOTA and Director Greg Truen says that commercial success has capped a brilliant experience for the business. “It’s largely complete at this point, and it’s largely been sold,” he says. “It’s looking amazing and we are very happy with the way the whole thing has turned out. It’s a fantastic building from an architectural point of view and it’s been pretty successful commercially as well. “It shows that there is still resilience in the Cape Town market and the city continues to have a lot of opportunities at the top-end of the market. Hopefully the politics will hold

together through the next year and things will ease up as that has been a major challenge for us going forward.” UGLY ECONOMY? Even though SAOTA has established itself as an industry leading business, it remains exposed to the volatility of the local and international economies. In the past 12-months, the uncertain South African economy has lived up to its reputation, proving to be more unpredictable than ever. This has, of course, resulted in lacking confidence from construction, development, and investors. And this has impacted on the architecture industry. But Truen and SAOTA remain resolute. “Our market has largely shifted out of South Africa, somewhere between 10 and 15% of our work is here and the rest is now elsewhere.

Currently, we are working in more than 50 cities around the world so we have quite a nice spread which is great as it insulates us from isolated issues in certain countries. For example, with a country like Nigeria which was very active for us five years ago but went completely flat, our spread allowed us to pick up work and compensate for that,” he says. In the longer-term, if FDI in South Africa is to fall and confidence in the market is to remain edgy, SAOTA could see more of its work coming from markets that are not its home. Fortunately, over the past three decades, the architects leading the company have grown into astute businessmen with an eye for such cyclical hurdles. Regarding a solution, Truen thinks the government could do more.

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SAOTA

// NIGERIA SEEMS TO BE WAKING UP AGAIN AND THAT IS EXCITING FOR US AND REMAINS THE MOST IMPORTANT MARKET IN AFRICA, WITH HUGE POTENTIAL // “What worries us relates to policy issues and the government’s inability to make the right decisions. A good example is mining. We’ve got such potential and given that the global economy has picked up, we should see a pick-up in mining activity but we’re not seeing it because exploration licenses are not being issued and that just makes no sense. There should be more of a focus on building business and building the tax base. “I don’t think there has ever been meaningful investment into our side of things. We see investment into

things like tourism which then has a knock-on effect into development and construction but for us, we’re not heavily involved in infrastructure-type projects so there’s very little direct impact from policy. The bright spot in the economy is that tourism continues to grow at rates of more than 10% per annum and that has been great for us. “It’s been a strange year because the Rand spent much of the last 18-months being one of the best performers in the Forex markets but it’s now the worst. It’s been working against us and that has put a bit of

pressure into our systems which we hope will be relieved soon,” he says. INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE With a strong project pipeline setting up an exciting 2018, Truen says that SAOTA’s book for international work is looking strong. The company is busy in regions including Sydney, Barcelona, Miami, Ahmedabad, St Tropez and Jakarta among others, but the African continent is particularly interesting. “Nigeria seems to be waking up again and that is exciting for us and remains the most important market in Africa, with huge potential. The Ivory Coast and Kenya are positive countries for us and we’re feeling bullish about those markets. We’ve recently started working in Rwanda which has been quite interesting for us. Elsewhere,

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SAOTA

Mexico is looking promising despite any worry from the Trump situation. “A market we’ve always been keen on is Ethiopia which is very interesting but difficult to open up. It’s a huge market with more than 70 million people and strong growth. We’re exposed to most of sub-Saharan Africa and some of North Africa. Egypt is another place that is still of interest but we’re in all of the markets that we’re most interested in which is Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Kenya,” he says. Rob Green, CEO of executive search, market entry, board advisory and leadership consulting firm, GRM, said in a recent article for Business Day that South African firms, particularly those with tech expertise, should take advantage of expansion opportunities in international markets. “It might seem contradictory to suggest

expansion after listing the many problems facing SA, but when the economy is not fruitful or performing well, you have to look a decade ahead to see what will potentially bring success and looking overseas could very well be the answer.” Of course, SAOTA has already made the jump, and its international clientele is only growing. “Another interesting market for us, which is growing and has a high conversion rate, is Europe,” details Truen. “Particularly Spain, France, Switzerland and Germany have been very active we have around six projects underway in Switzerland but we’re finding that things are also picking up in Sweden and Finland, and it’s unusual for South African companies to be working that much in Europe. It’s exciting for us and we see a lot of potential there. Spain

was absolutely dead but has recently came back to life and the phone is definitely ringing.” SA PARTNERS A further challenge that can be exacerbated by a slow economy is sub-contractors being negatively affected and the value chain being impacted. But, despite the South African situation, SAOTA’s carefully selected partners and contractors continue to deliver first-class work, worthy of the magnificent buildings that they support. “Our suppliers are quality suppliers with quality products,” says Truen. “They’re the kind of suppliers that allow us to do special work in Cape Town that really stands out. They’ve given us more options. “I think we lean towards being

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INDUSTRY FOCUS: PROPERTY

contemporary and I think we’re quite focused on unpacking and how people actually live in buildings; we’re quite conscious of designing buildings that give people a better quality of life. We’re very conscious of how buildings engage with the environments they sit it and we specialise in extending space from inside to out. One of the reasons that people call us from all over the world is that they recognise a set of qualities that are of interest to them and they struggle to find in their local market,” he adds. SAOTA is also leading the way with the use of technology in architecture and design. While many architectural businesses are at the forefront of technological advances, SAOTA has made cutting edge technology its go to partner, and this

has helped with the development of international business. Advances in virtual reality (VR) software in particular have been hugely successful for SAOTA.

// WE’RE QUITE CONSCIOUS OF DESIGNING BUILDINGS THAT GIVE PEOPLE A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE // “We’ve historically always worked in Cape Town on steeped sites with mountain and sea views and that’s what opened the door for us in places like Switzerland. We’ve also developed

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a way of working with local architects and local consultants and we have a model that allows us to work remotely. We built a company, Tenebris Lab, to devolve VR software and we’ve also developed a piece of VR software, which we completed recently, called LUX Walker and we are putting that to market now. It allows us to design in VR and work remotely with clients and consultants. For example, with one of the jobs we’re doing in Switzerland, Phillipe will sit in Cape Town with VR goggles on and our client in Lucerne will sit with his goggles on and the two can see each other and talk to each other while working around the model.” VR software has the potential to be a real game changer in the architectural industry and is already being used by many practices around the world. It changes the visualisation process and can bring formerly flat and difficult to understand designs to life. “It helps us make design decisions quicker, it helps us coordinate engineering into the plan a lot quicker, and it helps the client engage with the design itself much quicker,” explains Truen. “Whether they’re sitting at their computer looking at 360 VR renders or are in a live model, we always model the landscape around the design so you can see the sight lines and sun movement; it’s pretty amazing. I think it will be a game changer in the industry going forward.” This approach to business future-planning and encouraging innovation - is what has resulted in an award-winning culture within SAOTA. Picking up a host of high-profile awards over the past few years alone, this is a business that consistently achieves excellence and Truen puts this down to world-class employees. “It can be demanding to work here,” he admits, “but we have an amazing set of people. “It’s a different skill set to what

SAOTA

// WE’VE HISTORICALLY ALWAYS WORKED IN CAPE TOWN ON STEEPED SITES WITH MOUNTAIN AND SEA VIEWS AND THAT’S WHAT OPENED THE DOOR FOR US IN PLACES LIKE SWITZERLAND // one would find in other companies so there’s definitely a learning curve that people need to go through. For somebody who’s interested in design and interested in connecting with other parts of the world, it’s a very unique opportunity. Because we have a design focus, we have a much higher turnover of projects, people are exposed to much more design than they would be when tracking projects right through their life cycle.” Talking about growing the team in the future, Truen is clear that qualified people will be given the chance: “We

give our staff a lot of creative freedom,” he says. “The model is built on trying to build a broader design skillset in the office. We have four primary architectural teams that all have subteams and there’s a level of design decision making that devolves all the way down – if someone can contribute then they can contribute.” Going forward, as the economic picture in Southern Africa remains unclear (political situations in South Africa and Zimbabwe causing uncertainty), organisations that are exposed to multiple international

markets with a spread of risk are those that are likely to realise security. SAOTA is perfectly positioned to grow its market share and continue producing work of the highest order. You can find SAOTA in Cape Town or Durban, or get in touch through their active online channels.

SAOTA 021 468 4400 info@saota.com www.saota.com

“I graduated in Durban in the early 90s and then worked in a small practice with a friend for two or three years in Durban but that wasn’t really going anywhere so I moved to Cape Town and had an interview with Stephan, joining in 1995 and I’ve been here ever since, going through all the cycles that followed. “When I started there was about 15 of us. It’s been absolutely amazing to watch us grow. It’s been a process since the beginning of our careers. It’s been a difficult learning curve and the first three of us never really worked for anyone else so we don’t have any institutional knowledge that we picked up and so we’ve learned on the run. There has been a lot of pressure and we’ve never had the chance to stand back and consider what’s happened here but it’s not something one would have imagined when we first started out.”

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Journey of a

Lifetime

Exclusive interview with CEO Andrew Darfoor ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

Buffalo Coal / Nautic Africa / Grindrod / SAOTA

AS FEAT UR ED IN

ENTERPRISE AFRICA

DECEMBER 2017