Roundtable: Forging a Team of Leaders

We’re pleased to offer our first-ever San Francisco Roundtable on the topic “Forging a Team of Leaders”.

Leadership is an essential component of entrepreneurship – we have to inspire others to follow us (and hire us!) to take on great challenges, even hardships, in pursuit of our goals.

As businesses grow, it also becomes critical to nurture other leaders in our organizations who can lead in areas that are not our strengths, whether that might be sales, marketing, finance, operations, or even management itself.

In this Roundtable, we’ll discuss approaches to nurturing leadership in our teams and how this can increase our ability to scale and take on more complex challenges.

Roundtable Austin: 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.

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.

Site Visit: 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 Friday May 9th 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.

Roundtable: 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.

Austin Site Tour: 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.

Workshop: 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.

Roundtable: 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.

Workshop: 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!

Roundtable Austin: Making Better Decisions

How do you make decisions?

Do you use a values-based decision-making framework, or another framework to check your instincts?

In this Roundtable members will share their experiences in decision-making and how the use of frameworks has influenced their memorable business decisions.

Site Tour: 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.

Workshop: Art, Identify & 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.

Roundtable Austin: 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.