Hiring & Firing

Whether hiring for growth, for a niche skillset, for diversity, or for a new strategic initiative, the process can be time-consuming and even overwhelming.

For small businesses (and especially for service providers) knowing the right time to hire, and making time to get the process right is a difficult balancing act, but one that has the potential to yield transformative results over time.

In this discussion, we’ll hear from our seasoned co-leaders as they share insights gleaned across hiring markets and different geographies, with companies big and small. We’ll reveal some of the common pitfalls with recruitment (and firing), and some of the tools and techniques that can accelerate the processes and improve outcomes.

Joy

Joy can often lead to better project outcomes, and it can certainly lead to a more satisfying work process. It’s alternative, a joyless slog up an unscalable mountain, seldom leads to lasting success.

In this roundtable, titled Joy, we will explore the role of joy in creating highly-motivated teams and successful projects.

We’ll discuss strategies and insights for fostering a supportive, inclusive, and positive workplace, and the role of leadership in setting the tone for a joyful work environment.

Fall Cocktails

We’re thrilled to invite Pro and Council Members and select guests to join us for drinks and canapés at Maxwell Social, Tribeca’s newest private club.

We’ll gather in this lavish, moody, and intimate space for cocktails and conversation. This is the perfect opportunity to explore an exciting new venue and connect with members of our community in person.

Building People, Building Teams

How to you ensure your employees are on a continuous growth curve that shows you are invested in their career and professional success?

How to you motivate and reward employees who provide training, skill development and coaching to junior team members?

In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss strategies and insights for internal workforce training and development.

Conservatory of Flowers

Brick & Wonder Pro and Council members are invited to a private tour of the Conservatory of Flowers at Golden Gate Park.

Set in a landmark building — the oldest public wood-and-glass conservatory in North America — the Conservatory of Flowers inspires awe and fascination with its rare and exotic plant collection.

Smart Building, Smart Finance

We welcome all Brick & Wonder members and select guests to join this online workshop focused on smart finance and the tax code 179D.

The session will be hosted by EPSA, a specialized tax consulting firm.

St. John the Divine

Pro and Council members are invited to a private tour of St. John the Divine.

Join Nicolas Kemper, publisher of New York Review of Architecture, for a private vertical tour of St. John the Divine. The tour goes up 124 feet following the stairs and platforms built into the armature of the cathedral’s nave, ending on the roof. It is possibly one of the most riveting sequences of architectural spaces in New York. Kemper has led occasional tours of the cathedral since writing an essay about it, “How to build a Cathedral,” in 2019. Begun 132 years and still unfinished, he enjoys sharing and discussing the cathedral’s story, which includes a slew of New York rivalries, the origins of both the skyscraper and gothic architecture, and lessons in hubris, institution building, and of course project management.

Tour Modernist Houses by CHENG Design

We’re thrilled to invite all Brick & Wonder members and guests to register for a special event hosted by Brick & Wonder member George Smart, Executive Director of USModernist.

For over 30 years, CHENG Design, led by acclaimed designer Fu Tung Cheng, has been at the forefront of crafting exquisite award-winning custom homes in California with sustainable, emotional, and timeless design—and a unique focus on crafted concrete. Cheng will attend the Sunday night sunset cocktail party and select house tours.

Proceeds from ticket purchases benefit the nonprofit USModernist, a digital resource for Modernist residential architecture.

The Specialist vs. The Generalist

Most are familiar with the adage “jack of all trades, master of none, ” and you’ve likely debated the pitfalls of specialization or generalization in your business and personal skill set.

Whether project types, services offered, or clients cultivated, it can be hard to choose between perfecting your niche or expanding your offerings.

In this Roundtable, we’ll explore how real estate and design rewards and punishes specialization, generalization, and the area in between.

Why Should Anyone Follow You?

Designing and communicating a compelling vision for your company is an essential aspect of entrepreneurship.

How do we convince other people to put their faith in us, work hard for and with us, and stick around the the going gets tough?

How do we inspire the people we lead to do their best work, and to believe in our plan for where we’re going and how we intend to get there?

Sales Tax Wins and Losses in Construction, Development and Design

Do you know whether the services you provide are taxable in your state? For example, did you know that an architect who provides interior design services is providing a taxable service, even if their typical, licensed architectural work is non-taxable?

Sales tax can have hidden complexities that directly impact your business, your billing, and your clients.

Clients can also benefit from your understanding of qualifying Capital Improvements resulting from their projects.

This session aims to inform you about hidden risks and opportunities with tax law relating to Construction, Development and Design.

Art, Identity & Growth

We welcome all Brick & Wonder members and select guests to join this online workshop focused on Art, Identity & Growth.

We also encourage Brick & Wonder members to invite their own clients who may be considering art purchases for their projects to join this session.

This session will cater to those who already love and understand art, those who don’t and may be “art curious”, and anyone in between.

In this Workshop, we will provide easy, actionable ways to reconsider the way we see and use art. You will leave this workshop with a better understanding of how you want to grow individually and/or professionally, and how thinking about art in new ways can help you achieve your goals. In turn, art can become more relatable to your everyday life, enriching your daily experiences, and propelling you forward.

Summer Social

We’re excited to invite Brick & Wonder Select, Pro, and Council members and select industry guests to our Summer Social in Dumbo!

We’ll celebrate the warm weather on a private rooftop terrace as we enjoy cocktails and light bites accompanied by live jazz kindly provided by JennAir.

Seeding Innovation

We invite Brick & Wonder Pro and Council members to join us in San Francisco for our Roundtable titled Seeding Innovation. 

Innovation in the ways we work, and in the products and services we produce creates opportunity. Yet innovation is an ongoing proposition – it’s not enough just to innovate once. In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss approaches to seeding innovation in your field and nurturing the capability to innovate in your teams – even among the consultants you hire.

Mentors and Mentees

We invite Brick & Wonder Pro and Council members to join us for a Roundtable on Mentors and Mentees. 

Do you have a mentor? Do you have a mentee who looks to you for guidance?

In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss the nuances of mentor/mentee relationships and the value of both having a role model and being one to others.

Perelman Performing Arts Center

We are thrilled to offer Brick & Wonder Pro and Council members a private tour of one of New York’s most sensational new buildings – the Perelman Performing Arts Center.

The creation of a performing arts center is a key component of the 2003 Master Plan developed by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to rebuild the 16-acre World Trade Center campus.

Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC) is a 129,000 square foot building on multiple levels. The performance space offers flexible layouts in three theater spaces that can be combined to provide dozens of seating configurations, and the lobby level includes a restaurant, bar, terrace, and stage open to the public.

PAC NYC has three flexible, intimate performance spaces. Automated walls and flexible seating systems enable numerous configurations that create a range of unique experiences for audiences and artists.

The tour will be generously facilitated by Sean Michael Cummings, PAC’s Director of Individual Giving, and led by direct project collaborators sharing their first-hand experiences working on the building.

Financial Management for Service and Consulting Businesses

Many of the businesses that make up the built environment industry have service-based business models: architects, interior designers, engineers, accountants, publicists, strategists, brand designers, photographers, and more. These businesses can be challenging to manage and grow, partly because a service model tempts us to over-deliver value to please the client. We hope to sustain the project, perhaps earn repeat business, or win future referrals.

The online workshop will be led by financial management consultant, Yotam Kedem. While Yotam is an expert in financial management for architecture and engineering firms, insights from his experience will apply across many of the disciplines in our diverse professional community. We encourage you to join us!

Making Great Decisions

How do you make critical decisions? Do you use a values-based decision-making framework, or another framework to check your instincts?

In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss strategies and insights on how to make better decisions and ease decision fatigue.

Alloy Block

We are pleased to invite Brick & Wonder Pro & Council members to a private tour of the newly opened Alloy Block.

The Alloy Block, Downtown is five buildings, old and new, adjacent to Atlantic Terminal, that provide residential, educational, office, cultural, and retail spaces for people in Downtown Brooklyn.

Alloy Development led the development of New York’s first All-Electric Skyscraper, a mixed-use tower with 440 market rate and affordable homes and retail spaces along Flatbush Avenue. The building is the first tower of phase 1 of The Alloy Block and the inclusive design celebrates the creation of new spaces for diverse groups of people to live, work, and thrive. Community engagement and support of local non-profits have been central project goals and the tour will be led by designers who worked on various aspects of this project.

Spring Cocktails

We’re excited to invite Brick & Wonder Pro and Council members and select guests to our Spring Social at Artemest Galleria in Chelsea, NYC!

Join us for a fun and informal gathering for Brick & Wonder members, and guests interested in learning more about the Brick & Wonder community.

We’ll celebrate Spring in NYC in a beautiful and newly renovated indoor-outdoor space.

Financial Modeling for Real Estate Development

Want to build your understanding of real estate development deal analysis? Interested in starting your own speculative development project? This Workshop is for you!

Led by Lead Analyst at Accredev, Stephon Smith, this online session will cover the fundamentals of commercial real estate (CRE) financial model design. It will focus on the key elements that are most often omitted from financial models, including multi-perspective project cost analysis, income offsets, dynamic debt constraints, and financial statement design, among others.

Community First! Village

We are pleased to invite Brick & Wonder Pro & Council members in Austin & beyond to a private tour of the Community First! Village in Austin, TX, featuring 3D printed homes from ICON.

Community First! Village occupies 51 acres on Hog Eye Road in northeast Travis County.

This remarkable community development has been described by the New York Times as “one of the nation’s largest experiments in affordable housing to address chronic homelessness.”

It is currently home to more than 350 formerly homeless neighbors. With the completion of all homes projected by the end of 2023, it will soon provide housing and community for as many as 500 of our friends who once struggled to survive on the streets of Austin.

How to Handle Client Relationship Breakdowns

Though we enter new client engagements with energy, enthusiasm, and high hopes for what the future holds, the reality of realizing any built project is that it places stress on the clients, the project collaborators, and on the original vision for the project.

We are wise to counsel clients (before we engage!) that there will be ups and downs, and that this process can often be additive, though it seldom feels like it at the time.

Many projects survive or even flourish in the crucible of getting the work done. Others, for a variety of reasons, do not.

Manitoga Residence and Russel Wright Design Center

We are pleased to invite Brick & Wonder Pro & Council members to a private tour of the Manitoga Residence and Russel Wright Design Center on Thursday May 16th 2024.

Located in Garrison, New York, approximately one hour north of New York City, Manitoga is the former home and 75-acre woodland garden of American industrial designer Russel Wright (1904-1976), envisioned with his wife Mary Einstein Wright (d. 1952) for their family. Manitoga is a National Historic Landmark, an Affiliate Site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and one of the few 20th-century modern homes with original landscape open to the public.

In 2021, the Russel & Mary Wright Design Gallery opened to the public, offering a permanent onsite display of the Wrights’ groundbreaking designs for the American home.

Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center stewards Manitoga as the embodiment of the Wright’s design philosophy and life work and celebrates good design for living in creative harmony with nature through tours, programs, events, and free year-round access to woodland trails.

The Power of Collaboration

We’re delighted to welcome Brick & Wonder members and select guests to our inaugural London Roundtable, generously hosted by Brick & Wonder member firm, Hayes Davidson.

Intuitively, we know that we go further together. Collaboration may help us do better work, and it can even increase the joy in the work we do, but in the crucible of doing our best work, things can sometimes get heated…

In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss strategies and insights for developing and sustaining collaborations that unlock new opportunities in business growth.

The Sustainable Building Imperative

The built environment contributes up to 42% of global carbon emissions. These emissions take the form of embodied carbon needed to build and repair buildings, and the operational carbon that buildings consume to stay warm or cool, connected, and productive.

As professionals designing and building the places people live, work, and play, we are both part of the problem and part of the solution.

This Roundtable will explore the imperative to build better, more sustainable buildings. Our lives and the future of life on our planet depend on it.

Forging a Team of Leaders

A Public Affairs Case Study

Following a Brick & Wonder Site Tour of Newlab in the Brooklyn Navy Yards in February this year, we’re thrilled to present a Public Affairs Case Study of the Newlab development project.

Public Affairs and Partnerships are often overlooked aspects of taking a real estate development project from concept to commissioned building.

How do major and especially innovative real estate projects like Newlab take shape, and, in turn, shape our cities?

The Power of Collaboration

Intuitively, we know that we go further together. Collaboration may help us do better work, and it can even increase the joy in the work we do, but in the crucible of doing our best work, things can sometimes get heated…

In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss strategies and insights for developing and sustaining collaborations that unlock new opportunities in business growth.

Grace Farms Design For Freedom Summit

Join the Brick & Wonder team at the Design for Freedom 2024 Summit at Grace Farms on March 26th as we come together for a day of action and awareness.

Grace Farms’ Design For Freedom initiative accelerates the movement to eliminate forced labor from the building materials supply chain by engaging leaders from architecture, interior design, manufacturing, policy, owners, and developers, as well as engaged community members and not-for-profits that are committed to a more humane future.

Branding the Built Environment

Brand is as essential as it can seem ephemeral. How do we define it, craft it, and drive its visibility in a noisy and competitive landscape?

How should it evolve over time? And when is it time to throw it all out and start again, with the huge undertaking of a strategic re-brand?

Brand strategy matters to businesses – and to buildings – and there isn’t a fixed formula for making it work.

In this workshop, we’re thrilled to invite Alexandra Thom, Executive Creative Director at Revolver, to walk through project examples with substantial strategic foundations and share some guiding principles that shape the way she and her highly creative team think about designing and developing brands.

Cultural Projects with Gabriel Smith

For this online Workshop, we’re thrilled to invite you to join Brick & Wonder Founder Drew Lang as he hosts a conversation exploring the dynamics of cultural projects with acclaimed museum architect and Brick & Wonder member, Gabriel Smith, Principal at Allied Works.

Cultural spaces hold a special place in our hearts, and for good reason: they are spaces devoted entirely to the joy of human expression and creation. They are also spaces to which access is largely democratic. Though great architecture can create exceptional private homes, luxury condo developments, cutting-edge office buildings, and even exceptional infrastructure, museums and galleries are one vehicle for architectural expression and creativity that anyone can enjoy.

Performance Under Pressure

Entrepreneurship, leadership, and management all create great stress and pressure on those who lead, but we don’t always succeed in managing these moments well.

In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss strategies and insights for navigating intense workplace pressure, avoiding failure, and supporting those we lead and manage to do the same.

Newlab

We are pleased to invite Brick & Wonder Pro & Council members to a private tour of New Lab – a remarkable adaptive reuse project located in The Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Newlab is a multi-disciplinary, high-tech design and prototyping center that opened in 2016 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

DBI Projects led the development and project management of Newlab from conceptual planning and financing through entitlements, construction and completion.

DBI engineered the Public-Private Partnership between the developer, Macro Sea, the property owner, Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp, and the State of New York through the Empire State Development Corporation and the City of New York through the Brooklyn Borough President, the City Council and the Economic Development Corporation (EDC).

Newlab was founded to address significant societal needs by scaling and commercializing emerging technologies and companies.

Today, Newlab includes more than 900 entrepreneurs, partnerships with forward-thinking corporate and civic entities, and the support of domain experts—all working together to scale frontier technologies.

Is Design + Build the Silver Bullet for Optimizing Construction?

We invite you to join Brick & Wonder Founder Drew Lang as he hosts a conversation with acclaimed Design + Build Architect Tom Gluck, Principal at Gluck+ Architects.

In new construction, renovation, and adaptive reuse, traditional approaches to design and construction involve an architect leading the design phase, and a general contractor executing the construction by assembling the right team of subcontractors, creating a triangular relationship with the client.

While there is certainly room for mastery in both these siloed disciplines were not always as separate as they seem today. Each approach has benefits and drawbacks, but as US construction costs climb ever higher, there is a case to be made for streamlining project delivery. Design + Build approaches promise to do just that – but do they live up to the claim?

Intelligent Risk

Risk is an essential dimension in business (and life!), but it can be the making or undoing of businesses, ideas, partnerships, projects, and teams.

How do you manage and take risks in your business? What are the qualities or factors you weigh in taking risks? What is the course you are plotting with the risks you’re taking?

We invite Brick & Wonder Pro and Council members to join us in Austin for a Roundtable on Intelligent Risk. 

Professional Portrait Day

Are you in need of a new professional headshot?

Join us in January as we offer a day of complimentary headshot photo sessions to Pro & Council members with the talented portrait photographer Harry Zernike. This is the perfect opportunity to update your professional image.