Recently, our firm has been selected as Boutique Architecture Firm of the Year on the Middle East Architect Awards 2014.
Nasser Abulhasan received the Boutique Architecture Firm of the Year award at Middle East Architect Awards 2014 ceremony.
We like to think that a Boutique Architecture Firm is a studio that because of its size and structure can offer high quality and flexible services to a short list of extremely demanding customers, both regards to design and to personal treatment.
In any economic sector, and perhaps, with more frequency on architecture, there is a tendency towards setting any number of rankings to highlight the largest firms on its field, for instance, the one drawn up by Building Design, WA100. In this eagerness to establish who stands out on the architecture world, sometimes we pay too much attention to maybe not so relevant yardsticks, as far as the projects’ quality is concerned. Is the size of a company the most important feature? Undoubtedly, the larger it is, the larger will be its ability to range some volume of work. But, is it not preferable to prioritize factors as how a firm has contributed to its area or how the projects have been adjusted to satisfy customers’ needs?
Attention to detail is key in Boutique Architecture Firms
Without the shadow of a doubt, large, medium-sized and small firms are able to carry out architectural quality projects. Nevertheless, somewhere in between we find Boutique Architecture Firms, which have a structure that enables them to obtain high quality and extraordinarily personalized results. This is possible because by dedicating themselves to a smaller number of customers, the architect teams have more time to be able to detail each space on the most careful way, working side by side with the client and coming up with solutions to satisfy their customers’ needs. We search for specialization, carrying out fewer projects and obtaining much better results on each one of them. This level of attention to detail, which you can see in some of our projects in our DECO section, is more difficult to find in other kind of organizations.
Besides, in contrast to smaller studios, a Boutique Architecture Firm should have what Daniel Muñoz Medranda, Managing Director of AGi architects’ Spanish office, has described on a previous interview as the “creative force of the team”, which is greater than that of an individual. And what is more, in the last few years this “force” has become more relevant due to the gradual imposition of horizontal working methods over the unique genius creator, going into a participative system in which everybody learns equally from their peers.
All things considered, if we make the most of the benefits of this kind of company, we have in front of us a working unit that is large enough to develop commercial and architectural activity with appropriate resources, having a multidisciplinary team which gets involved on the work, and the ideal size to maintain a personal imprint, the exclusive treatment to the client and the will of contributing by adding value to the development environment.
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