Bespoke Careers Podcast

Peter Maddison is the founding director of Maddison Architects and for 108 episodes was the host of Grand Designs Australia. He’s been called Australia’s most recognisable architect. He’s a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, a winner of the Institute’s National President’s Prize, and his practice has completed more than 300 projects, from family homes to some of Melbourne’s bes...

We’ve wrapped season one of the Bespoke Careers Podcast. 42 episodes, from architecture students right up to institute presidents. Here is a compilation of advice that stuck with us. Seven guests, seven ideas worth hearing, and 196 years of experience. Featured in this episode:Sabrina Klor, CEO of 10Design, on why a well-run business matters as much as the design. She moved from running projects t...

James Zagari is the co-founder of EST Lighting, an Australian lighting company he established in 2016 after a career that began almost by accident with a sales role at Philips Lighting. In this episode, James talks about the unexpected path that led him into lighting, why lighting can be difficult to explain until you experience it, and what gets lost when it is brought into a project too late. He...

Download the 2026 Global Salary Guide: https://www.bespokecareers.com/salary-guide/Muyiwa Oki is an architect at Mace and was President of RIBA from 2023 to 2025, the institute's youngest and first Black president, elected after a grassroots campaign that started in a WhatsApp group. He studied at Sheffield, did his Part 3 with RIBA North West, and worked at Glenn Howells Architects in Birming...

Illya Azaroff calls architecture his side gig. He's also the 2026 president of the American Institute of Architects and has spent 30 years responding to disasters around the world. His father arrived in the US as a displaced war refugee from Ukraine, and Illya grew up at a dinner table where hunger was a firsthand memory. That upbringing led to a degree in geography, then a career in disaster...

Shajay Bhooshan is an Associate Director at ZHA Architects and co-founder of ZHA CODE, the practice's computation and design research group, now 28 people inside a studio of around 500. He studied at the AA's Design Research Laboratory, where he still teaches, and completed his PhD with the Block Research Group at ETH Zurich. His work spans high performance geometry, robotic fabrication, g...

Scott Clement has seen thousands of portfolios. He doesn't want to see yours. Scott is the CEO of Revel Architecture and Design, a San Francisco firm that grew headcount 50% in 18 months and is sitting right at the 60-person point where he says firms start to break. We get into what an architecture CEO does all day, why Revel grows its leaders instead of hiring them in, the Colliers fit-out th...

Cara Stizza and Robyn Levin run Wildflower, a Melbourne studio that owns the furniture side of a project. Selection, procurement, coordination, everything down to the cutlery in the drawers. Cara built and grew an interior design practice before this. Robyn spent years inside one of Australia's leading furniture brands. Together they sit between the creative eye and the part where it all has t...

Want to work at amazing studios like Made For? You can browse our live jobs here: https://www.bespokecareers.com/jobs/At Bespoke we work with 1,000+ firms every year across the UK, US and Australia to find them great candidates just like you. Want to know where you salary sits in the market? Download our global Salary Guide: https://www.bespokecareers.com/salary-guide Mitch Jones built Made For, a...

Selasi Setufe came out of architecture school with two degrees and couldn't get a job. Two interviews in two years. An unpaid internship in Slovenia she'd "highly not advise." So she stopped trying to fit the mould and built her own route through the profession. Selasi is a co-director of Black Females in Architecture, the network she co-founded in 2018 that now runs to a global...

his summer, RIBA elect the institute’s next president. Four candidates are running to be president: Duncan Baker-Brown, Chithra Marsh, Jay Morton and Austin Williams. We sat down with all four, to hear their vision for the future of the profession. We’ll be releasing one episode per day in the lead-up to the voting opening on Monday, 15 June. Next up: Chithra Marsh. Chithra is a Director at Buttre...

This summer, RIBA elect the institute’s next president. Four candidates are running to be president: Duncan Baker-Brown, Chithra Marsh, Jay Morton and Austin Williams. We sat down with all four, to hear their vision for the future of the profession. We’ll be releasing one episode per day in the lead-up to the voting opening on Monday, 15 June. Next up: Duncan Baker-Brown Duncan Baker‑Brown is the...

This summer, RIBA members elect the institute's next president. The RIBA president chairs the institute's council, sits on its board, and speaks for the profession to government, media and the public. Whoever wins takes office as president-elect on 1 September 2026 and serves as president from 2027 to 2029. Those two years run straight through housing policy, climate targets, architectural...

This summer, RIBA members elect the institute's next president. The RIBA president chairs the institute's council, sits on its board, and speaks for the profession to government, media and the public. Whoever wins takes office as president-elect on 1 September 2026 and serves as president from 2027 to 2029. Those two years run straight through housing policy, climate targets, architectural...

Noris Obijiaku, known online as Mr Chuck, is an architecture student and content creator with more than 300,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram. He's become known for his tours of London's housing estates, leading him to interview London's mayor Sadiq Khan, speak on panels and partner with the likes of Arsenal and Dezeen. Born in Italy, raised on a London estate, now finishing his Part 2 at...

What does it actually take to run 400 architects across nine studios? Sabrina sits down with us to talk about the business of architecture - the side most architects would rather not think about. Sabrina Klor is the CEO of 10 Design, a global architecture and masterplanning practice employing 400+ architects and designers across studios in London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Miami, Dubai, Dallas, Ed...

Tim Fu is the founder of Studio Tim Fu, a design practice working at the sharp end of AI in architecture, where the conversation is no longer just about the visuals and starts being about real projects with real risk and real responsibility. Tim's work sits in that gap between hype and reality, looking at what AI can genuinely do, where it doesn't quite meet the standard and where it's...

Sanjay Puri is the founder of Sanjay Puri Architects, a Mumbai-based practice of 100 people with projects spanning 55 cities across India. The studio has won over 350 international awards and is known for sculptural, climate-driven design, using massing, shading, and natural ventilation instead of bolt-on sustainability.

Charlie Caswell and Adam Dainow met at architecture school in Sheffield, climbed the ranks at London practices, and then walked away from it all to become property developers. In this episode, they talk about what they had to give up, the five-year grind of building a business from scratch, why they think architecture education is broken, and what architects can learn from the development side of...

Evelyn Lee is an architect, entrepreneur, and tech strategist who served as the 2025 President of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). She operates at the intersection of design, technology, and business, currently serving as a fractional Chief Operations Officer (COO), startup advisor, and angel investor within the built environment.

Download the 2026 Salary Guide: https://www.bespokecareers.com/salary-guide/ Adam Haddow is an Australian architect, partner at SJB and the current National President of the Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA). In this conversation, Adam makes the case that architects have spent decades drifting toward irrelevance, avoiding the hard conversations about cities and housing while celebrating be...

Phineas Harper is a London-based writer, founder and cultural leader. A regular contributor to The Guardian, their career spans criticism, curation, education, youth work, journalism and sculpture. 00:00 Intro 1:00 The personal toll of speaking out 3:22 Discovering architecture 6:47 Working at the Architecture Review 10:51 Do architects see the value in writing and critique? 13:51 Architecture Fou...

Lucy Carmichael, former Director of Practice at the RIBA and current Board Member for the University of the Built Environment, explains why the traditional, linear path into the industry is failing most students, and what the alternative looks like. From her upbringing with architect parents, to navigating the "heyday" of design policy at CABE, Lucy has spent her life 'falling in and...

Founder of Gustafson Porter + Bowman, Kathryn Gustafson reflects starting a studio in a second language, and learning the business side of practice through trial, mentors, and persistence. 00:00 Intro 0:59 Growing up in the desert 2:35 Discovering design 6:33 Journey from fashion to landscape architecture 12:04 Business vs Art 16:31 Founding her businesses and 'the invisible years.' 25:47...

Kai-Uwe Bergmann is a Partner at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), where he leads global business development and oversees urban design and landscape projects. Known for his strategic approach to "the political scale," Bergmann has been instrumental in scaling BIG from a Copenhagen-founded practice into a global force operating in over 40 countries. He is a primary contributor to Manhattan’s &q...