Outsiders with ambitions

 

– When you work on a new matter, it is contagious: smaller ones start to form around, and it may turn out that one of them is about to grow bigger. It is exciting. There are new people around us who enjoy it too. We have already learned a lot from each other, and there is still a lot ahead of us – we talk with Paweł Garus and Jerzy Woźniak about the past and future of their mode:lina design studio.

 

 

Marcin Szczelina: Your beginnings – why did you started the office?

 

Paweł Garus: The story is very simple – we studied architecture together at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. We did a lot of additional competition projects. In the meantime, Jurek went on Erasmus to the Netherlands.

 

Jerzy Woźniak: It was 15 years ago, and the Erasmus system at the university was so specific that you left for a very short time – about 3 months. I felt quite unsatisfied because I saw a lot of potential for development and action in the Netherlands. But I had little money, earned during the holidays, and a micro-scholarship. I motivated myself to create a good portfolio, which I sent to about 40 different offices. Unfortunately, most offered an internship for €300. However, I came across a person from Rotterdam who was quite passionate about what I showed her. She offered me modest but reasonable terms. What surprised me on the plus side was the approach – from the very beginning I was entrusted with designing. I worked there for about a month and a big project came into the studio. The boss announced that we should hire someone as soon as possible, and I recommended Paweł, referring to the projects previously carried out that we made as a duo. We were trying to connect via Skype, which didn’t work out, and finally we came up with the idea that Paweł should just come. That’s how he joined us and we worked together for a year.

 

P.G.: The boss was very pleased, because at that time we were able to design and model in 3D better than the others, and we learned it during joint competitions. That kind of knowledge was not as popular as it is today. Now most people in college probably know the same things or even learn more, but back then we distinguished ourselves from the crowd.

 

J.W.: We designed, and a month later we went to a furniture contractor who realized our visualizations in the form of a large mockup. It didn’t matter that the concept was made by a student from Poland – we were treated as partners. In addition, our boss was a lecturer in Delft for many years. He walked around the office and encouraged us all the time to try something different, to look for cultural contexts, to inspire ourselves by the solutions of bigger names. He awakened in us the perception of architecture, not only understood as making good form, but also as creating a story, conceptualization, embedding in pop culture or psychology. 

 

P.G.: He spoke on important sales aspects too; they were not taught at the time – many people had contact with them for the first time during the process of finishing of their master’s thesis. Meanwhile, the guy showed us how to think about the project from the beginning so that you could defend it. He said that if the client understood the concept, then materials or colors would not be important to him. It should be embedded in the identity of the brand, or refer to something important, and not be an abstraction. This creates strong arguments as to where the form or material comes from. This is also something that competitions have taught us a bit intuitively. At the university, even though we had great professors, we missed a question like: “how do you want to talk about it at the end?”. In fact, we had a bionics lecturer that taught us that way of thinking. You draw from nature, first you analyze how, for example, a leaf develops – you study the mechanism that drives it. And only when you understand it can you translate it into an abstract geometric form. It was a conceptual class, not an abstract one. And it was in the Netherlands that we were shown that this is how everything should be designed – both small interiors and buildings.

 

So, it means that after a year in the Netherlands you came back with a completely new way of looking at design – so to speak?

 

P.G.: We had so much practice that after returning, doing things at school came easily to us. So now we had a lot of time. Already during the last months in the Netherlands, we came up with a name – mode:lina – we thought that we would organize the first small competitions under this name. We returned to Poland and decided that we were going to work on our own brand. We had 1.5 years left at the university, we had a place to live, we didn’t have to spend a lot of money on living. We set up an office to try it out. Our first meeting was held in Jurek’s room.

 

J.W.: I had a big desk, a bed, and a bookshelf. I rearranged everything to make space. It was funny to bump into the idea of having your own office with no real job. Paweł’s mother, now a retired architect, was involved in development projects at the time. It was not our caliber or vibe, but once in a while she asked us to prepare, for example, a facade design. We had cash flow thanks to this, but we focused mainly on what we discovered in the Netherlands. In those days, The Cool Hunter was our benchmark for greatness. We did a project – Media Plaza – where our proprietary solutions were located. Pictures were taken in the Dutch office, but not much happened after that, so I decided to write to this portal. One day I opened my computer and I saw our project. We felt like kings of the world. Then we took our portfolio to various places – for example, Paweł showed it to the owner of a travel agency during his skiing trip, and he commissioned his apartment with us. We have always put a lot of energy to ensure that the final effect is refined to the smallest detail, even in the case of the facades for the developers that we did just to get by financially.

 

It seems that from the very beginning you worked on creating a strong brand.

 

J.W.: It was surprising – people we studied with started using the “mode:lina” as an adjective for describing for example a presentations at college or “mode:lina way of thinking”. After we had saved some money, my parents agreed that we could annex 2 rooms in the basement for an office. It was very low and dark, but we used OSB boards, which was quite avant-garde at the time. As soon as we were done, we took photos, sent them out to the world, and industry portals picked it up.

 

P.G.: From the beginning, we also carried out projects for our good friend, who had various business ideas – selling watches, shoes, etc. He would come and say that he did not have much money, but he would like a project with us. We prepared unobvious solutions for him at that time – stands made of cardboard tubes for selling watches or a shop with expensive shoes, all lined with pallets. Also KontenerART in Poznań is one of our first projects. It was unusual back then, so we established out position at it. A year ago, we gave a lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Szczecin and we came to the conclusion that even these early projects were very ecological – pallets returned to containers, watches were sent to customers in cardboard boxes, paper tubes were 100% recyclable, and one time we even made a stand with rented scaffolding. We did this for financial reasons, but in the end it worked out for the benefit of the environment. 

 

 

How has design changed over the years? Today, the most important challenge seems to be climate crisis, which requires designers to look for materials or design in a slightly different way.

 

P.G.: We need to be careful with greenwashing, so as not to attach ourselves to ideas that sound great in practice, but in fact are meaningless slogans. We leave the carbon footprint to the big players, because even though we carry out our small positive activities, they do not make a difference. Our personal approach to materials has certainly not changed. Sometimes we tell investors that a small facelift with good idea behind it is enough. We advise that something can be reused, or that a given space has potential, despite its ageing. It is also up to the big players – suppliers – to make recycled or biodegradable materials cheaper. It shouldn’t be that they cost more than the standard ones. There needs to be a broader shift in mindset. Ecology may mean that you choose a slightly more expensive, but more resistant and better aging interior, which the customer after 5 years will not reject as outdated. I know that this is now linking philosophy to it, but we have premises that have been operating on the market for 7-10 years and look fresh. One of our designs, Adam’s apple – a shop made of paper bags, wooden fruit baskets and a plywood table – functions in an unchanged form.

 

Do you remember a project that was truly groundbreaking for you? Something that changed the whole dynamic in your practice. Was it one of those projects that age well?

 

P.G.: I think it’s Opera Software’s office – our first design on such a large scale, which began with an e-mail saying, “we would like to have the best office in the world”. I remember that during the interview in Wrocław I showed our portfolio and talked about it, and in the back of my mind I knew that we had never designed anything larger than 300 square meters, and the design we were talking about was supposed to be 5,000 square meters. People on the other side were enthusiastic, but on our way home after the meeting, I thought that we probably don’t stand a chance as a small office with no great achievements. However, it worked. It was our first big project – in terms of space, money and the fact that we were competing with huge offices.

 

J.W.: There was a synergy of enlightened and open people. That is why they chose us, because they wanted something non-standard. We worked hard on every detail. The investors initially saw 2 options, but it was the third version that they decided on. It was a lot of work. Everything was justified. We had a general concept – Wrocław as a city of 100 bridges. The divisions between the rooms referred to bridge trusses and U-section shapes. This created a slightly loft-like atmosphere, while the kitchenettes designs were driven from architectural icons of the city – Skaryszewski Park, Hala Targowa, and the Main Railway Station. In turn, the conference rooms were inspired by the previous headquarters and referred to computer hardware, for example, a room was created where old keyboards were treated as works of art in frames. It was a bit of a game changer on the office market in Poland, and the project itself still looks good. We are very pleased with it, because we used materials that followed the idea, not the current fashion. After this project, we received a lot of inquiries about offices.

 

Was it a moment when you decided to expand the team, or did it happen gradually?

 

J.W.: Everything happened gradually, we have no ambition to create a huge structure. We do not want to clog ourselves with projects taken only to maintain the office. We want to keep up the hype for orders that stimulate us all. We are in the middle of 2 big changes for us right now.

 

We are currently at your new office – this is probably the first of the two changes you are speaking about.

 

P.G.: We had our first office in the basement. Then Ewa from Concordia contacted us and invited us to rent a place. This involved a change from an 80 square meter apartment to a 20 square meter space. However, we thought it would be good to work surrounded by ambitious young people. We built a mezzanine in this office, so we had more space. Two, maximum three people were climbing up the ladder. Concordia was a good place, because there we met many people with whom we ooperate to this day. Some of the companies that were invited to share this Cooffice with us are still operating today and have grown significantly: from renting one room to occupying 2 floors of the Baltic office building (next to Concordia).

 

J.W.: We also started to grow, but there was no extra space in Concordia. We spent about 5 years there. At the beginning, it was a huge creative cluster and small offices with big dreams, but some of them have grown – they have taken over several rooms, and thus the atmosphere of diversity has settled down a bit. Another thing is our business approach – we want to own real estate as an investment. We took one more room to have a conference room, but it cost as much as a loan installment. So, we moved to a great place in Poznań’s Jeżyce – in a newly renovated tenement house. We obtained a loan to buy it, but it turned out that the building is problematic, and the developer needs to renovate it.

 

P.G.: We got a temporary place at the Old Market Square in Poznań, they paid us for the move and all the renovations. The new place was huge, but in the attic – the heat and the very slow elevator made our everyday life miserable. The employees, however, said that regardless of this issue being a pain, we have large windows and a lot of light.

 

J.W.: Then there was a pandemic, and my friend who lived in the area asked if we had moved out of the office in Jeżyce. It turned out that she had always liked this place and wanted to have a studio in it. We prepared a rental offer, she accepted it, and we quickly looked for another investment and we managed to find it.

 

P.G.: The apartments on the ground floor of the Zajezdnia were empty, there was no interest in them, so the price was very attractive. We signed a contract with the developer, went to the bank, and there was a handbrake. We lost orders, our financial fluidity decreased. Before we signed the loan agreement, we had already started doing renovation work. We had a finished office at the time of signing the loan agreement for the premises. We paid the developer and bought the premises as one of the last ones, and we were the first to start using it.

 

J.W.: Everyone went to the home office mode for 3 months, so all that was possible. Real estate is probably the most sensible investment. And if you are able rent – it all pays off. After some time, we will be able to own the estate and maybe it will become our pension.

 

 

What is then the second big change?

 

P.G.: After Opera Software, everything took off – we completed a lot of projects, many commercial ones, but also a lot of private ones. After the first year of the pandemic, we noticed that there was strong competition and we do not want to compete with others in terms of prices. I also felt that we started clipping coupons from our success too quickly – we used to be quite unique in the market, so we cannot keep trying to do the same thing. We decided to talk to a recommended business coach who listened to us carefully. He analyzed both how we work with people on site, as well as what we want to communicate outside and what we dream of doing.

 

J.W.: Since the beginning of our activity, every month we sit down alone with each employee, even for a quarter or half an hour. We ask how she or he is doing, what bothers them, what they would like to change or liked recently.

 

P.G.: The coach encouraged us to do a bigger retrospective – project and with people – on an annual basis.

 

J.W.: In these conversations, it turned out that apart from finances, people are excited about being able to run a project and talk to clients. They identify very much with the projects and what they do. What matters to them is agency and space for creativity. We gave employees more freedom in their actions so that they could talk to investors and present their projects in person. The majority of our co-workers assessed the change of approach very positively.

 

P.G.: In addition, there was a change in communication – now we want to talk in a different way about what we do. More and more young studios are appearing on the market. We have been on it for 13 years and we need to focus on what we thought was too trivial to communicate. It is a lot of experience and delivery on time. We want to focus on office and commercial spaces. Our new site is a story, that speaks about our so-called reasons to believe, an explanation of the structure, a guide through the design process. It turns out that what is obvious to us, for someone who comes to the office for the first time, does not have to be so. Our client will get a thoughtful, interesting project, with a story, carefully drawn, with all details solved. This is very important for companies or commercial spaces – retail, gastronomy, or offices. A great project is not everything, it still needs to be delivered and a person deciding who to entrust it will certainly take this aspect into account.

 

J.W.: In the end, they will choose less magic over certainty. For us, cooperation with a business trainer was an interesting process. The change also resulted from the fact that we had to rework our archetypes, the so-called Brand Archetypes, based on Jung’s concept. We used to be a mix of rebel, wizard and magician. It all evolved towards a care giver. In order to go a little crazy, a solid foundation must first be created. Another change is PR. We no longer want to focus on likes-gathering content with publications, awards or empty projects. This kind of communication is focused now on the architecture itself and not on people. We want to be present in various places, show the functioning of the designed spaces with the users and the functioning of us as an office. This is important to us because we have a committed team that we are proud of.

 

Do people working with you stay for a long time?

 

J.W.: We are focused on long-term cooperations. It takes at least half a year before someone gets caught up in our way of working, gets to know the team, adapts to how everyone works. People work with us for 5, 6 years, and the record holder – 11 years. We are fresh from having most of the annual talks proposed by the business coach. Most people say they like the changes from the last year and a half. At the same time, we started working on a quasi-technological project – AI is developing very much, and we want to be up to date.

 

P.G.: The project uses part of our work methodology – creating images and visualizations. The tool is to be used to talk to the client and gather guidelines. We want to translate that into AI and see what comes of it. Funding was the accelerator of everything. Then we asked a friend who is an investor in technology companies and has received many grants for help. He invited people with whom we did workshops. For this type of projects you need to have R&D, so we invited Cogision, which works mainly in UX. We have assembled an interdisciplinary team. However, it turned out that subsidies are not an easy matter – the money is not available yet. And since they are blocked, we decided that we would not get involved in this, because if you get a subsidy, sign a contract, then you have to move on with the program. And they’ll pay you maybe in half a year. There are also many moments where you can fall out. During the workshops, it turned out that we have interesting ideas, everything is well thought out and not obvious. It would be good to streamline design processes.

 

J.W.: In the end, we decided that in that case the three of us would try to invest in it and act. It will be a separate company that will create a tool that will not only satisfy us. It must engage the client in a dopamine way, taking away the risk of them forgetting about some aspect of the brief. In addition, when you work on a new issue, smaller ones start to form around it, and it may turn out that some of them will grow soon. It is exciting. There are new people around us who enjoy it too. We have already learned a lot from each other, and there is still a lot to do.

 

I wonder how you function in Poznań – are you connected to the local architectural community or rather act as outsiders?

 

J.W.: We’ve been consciously staying a bit on the side from the beginning. We do not belong to associations – we do not have the right to do so, because we did not have time to do internships. In addition, we should have previously worked at someone’s office and on the construction site for a required amount of time.

 

P.G.: We wanted to do our own thing from the very beginning. We know the regulations – we know what can be done in accordance with the law. We consult with subcontractors at the design stage, who, after the concept is completed, take over the construction and executive design – in consultation with us, because we determine the technical aspects. As natives of Poznań from the very beginning, we have a very business approach to all projects. In addition to being creative, we look at how to do the work and deliver the final result as soon as possible while maintaining the quality.

 

J.W.: We also don’t know the exact situation because we don’t go to meetings of associations. We are not interested in belonging to any group. We got burned several times while networking, like arranging projects through relationships. If someone wants to work with us because they like what we do, they simply find the way. We do not sell repeatability, but creativity. We want to be independent and create freely, not to feel that we have obligations because someone got us a client and now, we must bend our values.

 

This interview will probably be read by many young people who are wondering which professional approach to choose. What tips would you give them?

 

P.G.: Not everyone can set up a studio and be successful, because you need thick skin, a lot of self-denial and strong nerves. Sometimes it is also better to become a one-man project entity, which still requires a lot of self-organization.

 

J.W.: I would rather advise that if they want to convince themselves of something, they should try, regardless of the industry. If someone has talent and will not develop it with systematic work, they will not win anything – no matter if it’s selling socks or designing skyscrapers. In the beginning, a lot of commitment counts.

 

PG: Proper time planning is also important. When you start something, you first look for activities to fill your schedule. Eventually you get to the point where you have to choose what to do and when to make it on time. Both the beginning and the continuation require a lot of organization.

 

 

Finally, I would like to ask you, how do you define “luxury” which is the leading theme of this issue of our magazine? 

 

P.G.: For us, luxury in design has never been associated with the traditional understanding of the concept. It is not expensive furniture or materials. We see luxury as a possibility of making a project on our own terms – inventing a story, shape, form and functions. Searching for such a concept and material solutions to fully implement the idea. The ability to have your own rules and not bend. And in all of this, time for yourself – we try to ensure that our employees do not stay up late at night.

 

J.W.: Well-designed spaces, functionality that does not overstimulate, are the qualities that increases social satisfaction. You do not focus on the things that annoy; you are just able to function. In addition, your satisfaction increases when you surround yourself with aesthetic and durable things. It is also a form of luxury.