{"id":55265,"date":"2019-07-17T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T16:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/?p=55265"},"modified":"2020-09-03T05:53:01","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T09:53:01","slug":"architect-michel-rojkind-knows-the-value-of-being-a-team-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/community-stories\/employee-spotlight\/architect-michel-rojkind-knows-the-value-of-being-a-team-player","title":{"rendered":"Architect Michel Rojkind knows the value of being a team player"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Michel Rojkind is constantly looking to push boundaries. Over the past 15 years, his Mexico City firm, Rojkind Arquitectos, has earned a reputation for stylistically diverse projects that blend pragmatism and community engagement with adventurous forms and often inventive facades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s his outside-the-box mentality and collaborative spirit that helped land Rojkind his new post as The We Company\u2019s senior VP of architecture, where he is tasked with heading up a growing number of large-scale building projects while also helping elevate its standing as a design-world thought leader. Rojkind is just the latest high-profile design talent hired by the company as cofounders Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey continue to push in new business directions, including an expanded real estate portfolio overseen by the recently launched ARK division, a private real estate investment arm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bjarke Ingels, who joined The We Company in an advisory role of chief architect a year ago, was instrumental in recruiting Rojkind. The two are friends and occasional collaborators, and they\u2019ll be working closely together on company projects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Rojkind, operating within a corporate structure is a completely foreign\u2014but welcome\u2014challenge. \u201cI\u2019ve never worked for anybody in my life,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first announced project Rojkind will lead is also his first building in the U.S.: a 200,000-square-foot development to be constructed in Bentonville, Arkansas, featuring coworking spaces, shops, and other components. Though few details have been released, the idea is \u201cto do a building that is born from Bentonville,\u201d says Rojkind. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to come in and impose but instead say, \u2018Let\u2019s sit down, let\u2019s see, let\u2019s look at how you guys live.\u2019 We have to propose architecture that adds value to communities, gives something in return.\u201d
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The Nestl\u00e9 Chocolate Museum in Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico. Photograph courtesy of Rojkind Arquitectos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A similar approach and spirit defines most of Rojkind\u2019s best-known work, such as his 2007 Nestl\u00e9 Chocolate Museum<\/a> in Toluca, outside Mexico City\u2014a project that took less than six months to complete and brought him global recognition. Composed of twisting, folded origami-like spaces clad in scarlet-hued corrugated metal, the structure serves as a dynamic public gateway to Nestl\u00e9\u2019s factory complex and quickly became a popular destination for families and schoolkids. More recently, his two-year-old Foro Boca concert hall, a brutalist cluster of windowless concrete volumes perched on a previously dilapidated waterfront in Boca del R\u00edo, Mexico, is not only a defining landmark for the town but a vibrant hub for diverse cultural programming that has spurred revitalization in the surrounding area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt feels like what I\u2019ve been doing\u2014creating architecture that is a catalyst for community\u2014has been training for me to come to WeWork, a company that has always been about making environments where people can thrive,\u201d says Rojkind, whose firm will continue to operate separately. \u201cAt WeWork, I can do it on a bigger level. I can have more impact. I don\u2019t care if my name is there or not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming from a successful, ambitious architect like Rojkind, that last statement might seem unexpected. It certainly contrasts with the cult of individual creative genius that has long prevailed in the architecture field. But very little about Rojkind or his career path can be called conventional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rojkind (at WeWork 85 Broad St in New York) is sensitive to community culture for each architecture project he takes on. Photographs of Michel Rojkind by Michael George<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The youngest of four kids, he grew up mostly in Mexico City, though the family spent a few years in the New York City area in the seventies, when his father, a prominent liver specialist, took a position at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Rojkind believes he suffered from ADD (though he was never diagnosed), and says he channeled his hyperactivity in part by taking up the drums as a teenager\u2014which, as it happened, would lead to a successful music career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the late-eighties and early-nineties, Rojkind recorded four albums and toured extensively with the popular Mexican band Aleks Syntek y la Gente Normal while simultaneously taking architecture classes at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. \u201cA lot of my teachers told me, \u2018I see your videos on MTV. Do you really think you\u2019re going to be an architect?\u2019\u201d he recounts. \u201cAnd I would say, \u2018Don\u2019t judge me because I\u2019m in a band. Judge my capacity to do architecture and engage in projects in the right way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rojkind got his degree in 1994; within a few years, as he was feeling alienated by changes in the music business and Aleks Syntek\u2019s shift toward more of a pop sensibility, he got his first commission to design a home. He decided to commit to architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Particularly at first, some people in Mexico who knew him as a drummer resisted taking him seriously as an architect. To support his practice early on, he did renderings for other architects. Two prominent figures in Mexico\u2019s architecture scene, Isaac Broid and Miquel Adri\u00e0, admired Rojkind\u2019s work enough to bring him into a partnership that lasted three years. That period proved pivotal, as Rojkind found himself \u201csitting down with all of these bigger architects,\u201d he says. \u201cI was part of their conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2002, eager to push in new directions, Rojkind went back out on his own and founded Rojkind Arquitectos. Among his initial breakthrough projects was his 2003 PR34 House, a boldly contemporary extension to a 1960s residence that consisted of two interlocking, glass-fronted volumes wrapped in smooth steel shells with rounded edges and painted an electric red. The new headquarters he devised for the medical supplies company Falcon that same year featured a translucent exterior of asymmetrically gridded yellow glass, with openings at irregular intervals, revealing interior plantings and blurring distinctions between indoors and out. Both projects featured elements that would become Rojkind signatures: coupling digital design with local craftsmanship, and using facades to create visual dynamism and break up rigid conventional geometries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people started seeing what I was designing, they were like, \u2018Wow, we want to interview you because you have a different profile and see things differently from most architects,\u2019\u201d he says. Being in the music world and touring with his band opened his eyes to new cultures and communities and the role that architecture plays in the social experience of places. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Unlike many architects, Rojkind loves to collaborate on his projects. “The more people there are sitting around the table, the more interesting the projects get.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It also taught him a lot about collaboration. While architects are traditionally reluctant to share work and ideas, it\u2019s \u201csuper natural\u201d for musicians, Rojkind says, to get together and \u201cjam.\u201d He says his mind-set has always been \u201cI don\u2019t want to be this architect who is siloed somewhere and doesn\u2019t speak to anybody. The more people there are sitting around the table, the more interesting the projects get.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, many projects in Rojkind\u2019s portfolio have dual credits: the Tori Tori sushi restaurants he created with designer Hector Esrawe; the Cineteca Nacional and Liverpool department store projects he did with Gerardo Salinas, who worked as a partner in Rojkind Arquitectos between 2010 and 2014, helping to guide the firm through a period of rapid growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At WeWork, Rojkind says he expects collaboration to remain central to the company\u2019s architectural projects. \u201cWe want to create a design platform where we can connect with different colleagues, collaborate, and have amazing buildings,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collaboration and exchange are, after all, at the heart of the WeWork ethos. The idea is that  \u201cWeWork becomes this lab of culture,\u201d says Rojkind. \u201cThe conversations and connections people make have the most impact.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s especially intriguing to Rojkind is the ability to gather, assess, and apply members\u2019 feedback to future designs. \u201cWe\u2019re paying attention to what people want and learning from that,\u201d he says. He wants to use that information to rethink what buildings should be in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eager to push the next boundary, Rojkind isn\u2019t limiting his scope to the ARK-funded projects currently in development. \u201cI\u2019m not the type of person who can stand still at his desk and wait for stuff,\u201d Rojkind says. \u201cI\u2019m going to figure out how to get clients and start working on projects now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n