Growing up in public housing on Roosevelt Island in the middle of New York City’s East River, Elie Gamburg went to sleep every night staring at the city’s remarkable skyline from his bedroom window. His father was an artist and his mother a mathematician, so, “I guess I sort of had to do architecture if nothing else.” 

Gamburg is a Design Principal at KPF, a global architecture firm known for designing some of the most innovative and high-profile buildings around the world. Working from New York and London, with a lot of travel around the world in between, Elie has been innovating for cities for over 20 years. His work is consistently sensitive to human scale, urban context, and sustainability. Some of the more famous projects he has worked on at KPF are the Seaport Square Master Plan and Channelside in Boston, Atlantis The Royal in Dubai and NYU Shanghai. 

As a kid, everything was about buildings. Drawing them, looking at them, reading about them. After high school, he spent a summer at Cornell University, to see if he was cut out for his life’s ambition. Unsurprisingly, he was. Much of his time is still spent at school; he’s taught studios at his alma maters, Cornell and Harvard. He was an adjunct professor at NYIT for eight years and has served as a guest critic at Yale to name a few. 

Listen in as Vince and Elie discuss how 100 years ago New York was the Dubai of the times, the concept of Central Social Districts, and why he has Ganesha, the god of wisdom, mischief and fun on his desk. 

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As an architect, are you influenced by the environment you grew up in, even if your work looks vastly different to where you spent your formative years? John Pawson thinks so. He grew up in the north of England in the 1950s with his four sisters, playing with kids from houses around their family home. Despite being a master of minimalism, he grew up in a house that was quite the opposite.

John Pawson CBE has spent over forty years making rigorously simple architecture. His work spans everything from London’s Design Museum to the Czech Republic’s Cistercian Monastery, Calvin Klein’s store on Madison Ave in New York and a range of private homes and the furnishings to go with them. His work is defined by the use of natural materials, a sensitivity to light and spare spaces that have a feeling of calm.

At a turning point in his life as a young man, Pawson set off on a ‘round the world ticket with nothing to lose. His first stop was in Nagoya, where he had the idea to become a Buddhist monk. When that failed, he went to Tokyo and met Shiro Kuramata.

Despite having no formal qualification as an architect, his accolades are many. They recognise his influence as one of the world’s leading architects. In 2007 he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his contribution to architecture in the UK.

Listen in as Vince and John discuss knocking down walls to redesign Hester van Royen’s rented flat, the moment Calvin Klein turned up to his office unannounced in 1993 and how starting out can often feel painfully slow.

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Children of immigrants are often hard workers; they’re under pressure to live up to their parents’ dreams. And it’s often thought that creativity and hard work don’t go hand in hand.

Jean Lin has proven quite the opposite. Growing up in Massachusetts she was aware she came from a different place to her friends. But she credits her different upbringing, one focused on valuing family, hard work, integrity, with her success.

Lin is the founder and gallerist of the downtown NYC design gallery and studio Colony. The designer’s co-op in Tribeca that’s changing the way New Yorkers shop for their interiors. With Colony, her goal is to support and foster independent designers and makers. Unlike traditional galleries, who take a 40% commission, her model is based on a monthly co-op fee (to cover the rent) and a small 15% commission. Then there’s The Designers’ Residency, an incubator program that mentors the next generation of young designers. She’s also authored a book, ‘What We Keep’, published by Abrams last year. It offers advice from artists and designers on the joy and benefits of living with the things you love.

Lin originally moved to New York to train as a fashion designer at Parsons School of Design. She always knew she didn’t quite fit in with the fashion set. It was when she landed on her love for art and design more broadly that her career really started to sing. Fast forward to today and she has taught at Parsons, and guest lectured everywhere from Rhode Island School of Design to Pratt Institute and Tama Art University in Tokyo to name just a few.

Listen in as Vince and Jean discuss working on J Lo’s fashion brand, having the transformative realisation that design is literally everything around us and why it’s better value to buy it once and buy it well.

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Is it better to start a business with a fully fleshed out plan? Or can passion be the driver for success? In the case of George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, intent is everything. And you can achieve global success and excellence in your field “while still being fun and nice”.

The partners in business and life founded their international creative design studio, Yabu Pushelberg, in 1980 with curiosity, passion and energy, and have been creating immersive environments and design considered products ever since. Both come from hard working families in Ontario, Canada, whose parents were gifted craftsmen, instilling in them the value of handmade art and objects.

When they began, their focus was on interior design. Today, they’re a multidisciplinary practice with over 100 employees across their New York and Toronto studios addressing multiple layers of the human experience. They care about how people feel in the places they contribute to making. For them, it’s all about designing the world they want to live in. From interiors for skyscrapers to lighting for homes, considered furnishings, and bespoke products for clients including LVMH, Four Seasons Hotels, Molteni&C and Glas Italia, Yabu Pushelberg’s style is a symphony of ideas, never a reflection of trends.

Listen in as Vince, George and Glenn discuss and the liabilities that come with ego, the importance of staying curious, and the secret to staying relentlessly determined for decades.

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Does having a social agenda matter when you’re a landscape architect? At first, you may not think so. But when you truly understand the impact a compassionate designer can make on the spaces we inhabit, the answer is clear.

Sacha Coles is a Global Design Director at ASPECT Studios and founder of the design practice’s Sydney studio. As a global design influencer, Sacha leads projects of transformational change spanning placemaking, infrastructure, play space, academic, civic institutions, and green infrastructure. If you live in Sydney, his work has impacted your life. Most likely for the better.

His focus is on innovative design within a social framework, reinforcing the role that cities can play in creating economic and creative opportunities. Sacha is interested in uplifting quality of life, encouraging social equity and elevating the human spirit through design. He's been recognised as one of the top 30 Landscape Architects working globally and holds several advisory and board positions in the field.

Listen in as Vince and Sacha discuss how growing up with parents obsessed with wellness and the outdoors has shaped him, redesigning some of Sydney’s most iconic public places, and bringing cityscapes closer to nature.

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Being a change-maker in the humanitarian space is universally understood to be driven by the desire to help others. Equally, a love of travel and being motivated by difficult and hard to manage problems can be a huge benefit to working in the sector.

Thanks to parents who were avid travellers, and her childhood home in Massachusetts being filled with foreign exchange students, Jocelyn Wyatt grew up curious about the world. After completing a BA in Anthropology at Grinnell College and an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management, she was on her way to Washington DC where she got involved in global development work. Her dream career, travelling and doing good, was set.

Wyatt is CEO of Alight, a humanitarian organisation where she leads a team of over 3,500 members globally as they work alongside displaced people to co-create high-quality services and programs that address their needs. She’s also the former CEO of IDEO.org, the nonprofit design organisation she co-founded in 2011 after leading IDEO’s social innovation practice, where she spoke widely about how Human Centred Design is changing the social sector.

She’s also worked for humanitarian organisations in Kenya and India, is a program advisor to the Clinton Global Initiative, an advisory board member to Marketplace, a board member for Airbnb.org, Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, and an Aspen Institute First Movers Fellow.

Listen in as Vince and Jocelyn discuss being on the ground at IDEO at the birth of Design Thinking, how spending time in cultures very different to her own have shaped her, and how the Human Centred Design Toolkit democratised design.

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We’re kicking off the new year by hearing from two internationally acclaimed experts in data-driven cross-sector insights and global market intelligence. We hope the takeaways from this conversation helps set you up for a dynamic 2025.

When you’ve been in business together for 25 years, and life partners for 30, parameters are important. Almost as important as knowing the right parameters to put into your AI tool to get a reliable result.

Martin Raymond and Chris Sanderson are expert at both. As the founders of The Future Laboratory, they help brands and businesses around the world succeed by spotting the deviancy happening in culture before anyone else does. They’re both innately curious about the world around them, and about people. Their foresight presentations are legendary for anyone interested in being at the bleeding edge of trends.

A journalist and creative director by trade, they founded the editorial platform for future trends in 2000. Just the two of them, and their dog. Fast forward to today, and they’ve collaborated with over 1,000 businesses in 50 countries worldwide, sharing foresight and ideas with over 20 sectors. Their desire to understand what makes people tick is what drives them.

Listen in as Vince, Martin and Chris discuss how the tropes we now laugh at were once signs of innovation and change, the questions every CEO has and what AI can, and can’t, do.

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Designing sustainable tall buildings is no mean feat. Especially when the average lifespan of a commercial office building can be as little as 20 years.

Oliver Tyler, Managing Director of WilkinsonEyre, one of the world’s leading architecture firms, spends his time doing exactly that. Delivering projects like the Battersea Power Station redevelopment and the award winning 8 Bishopsgate building in London with engineering and sustainability at the forefront. He’s helped build some of the most remarkable landmarks in the world.

It seems his career was destiny. Aged eight or nine he was told, ‘you ought to be an architect’, thanks to his interest in building things and drawing things. Around the same time his parents were rebuilding a property, and the process of seeing drawings manifest into a built form captured his imagination for good.

Tyler’s other key projects include the recently completed Elizabeth Line Liverpool Street Station, the £500 million reconstruction and oversite development of London's Bank Station and the Emirates Air Line cable car over the River Thames. He has a particular interest in the technical development of materials and the advancement of building envelope design and has guest lectured at Oxford Brookes University, is an editorial board member of the New Steel Construction magazine and sits on the judging panel for the Structural Steel Design Awards.

Listen in as Vince and Oliver discuss why he knew wanted to be an architect at just eight years old, building tall buildings among London’s medieval streets, and what the city will look like in 50 years’ time.

https://wilkinsoneyre.com/

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