Joana Sa Lima, Architect Partner at Compte Bureau

  Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. And as we've been talking about in the last few episodes, we've connected the dots from a poet to a violinist today, an architect and designer. We really look at the big picture of creativity and say, what does it take to get inspired?

How do we organize our ideas? And then ultimately, how do we gain the confidence and make the connections to launch our work to make an impact? Out in the world. And our world travels take us today to Oslo, Norway. And my guest is Joanna Salema. Joanna, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Mark, to have me.

Joanna and I had a chance to meet when I traveled to Oslo not long ago. And we were talking specifically then about the impact of design and design thinking and architecture on sustainability and environmental causes. Joanna is also a dynamic creative with a unique blend of experiences from all over Europe, Porto, Rome, Berlin.

Now Norway. I think we start there, Joanna. How do these various experiences and places help inform your creative thinking? That's a very

Interesting question, Mark. I'm from Portugal. So I left Portugal when I was 22 to study architecture in Italy. And although the sort of the change is not very big in Italy, of course, there is this whole historical sort of heritage and this sort of Very heavy presence of Renaissance and Baroque styles and all of this sort of, architecture history.

That sort of gave me a lot of interesting sort of background in how we have developed and how we are. About with the using architecture to frame the space and the world we live. Then from that, I went to Berlin where I took a little bit more diving into the technical part, do you know, like a bit of the cliche of what Germans are really good into this sort of technical and more sort of technological part of architecture.

And that was very interesting. And and then Holland, where I work with the. With one of the best architects in the world at that time, Ram Koolhaas is well known in the States by he has designed the Seattle Library, that is a very kind of well known building, and he has had impact all over the world.

That was extremely relevant because Working with them gave me this broadness of understanding the world and understanding different parts of of the context, where we were developing this amazing, crazy project, sometimes really crazy project. You saw the project that we did in Dubai.

That I showcased in my presentation when I met you. And that was designing a city for one million people. That kind of scale you cannot do in Europe, of course. And it's quite, it was quite intense and quite interesting. But also it opened up my mind into going deeper into the research and to really go deeper into asking the right questions when you actually start the project.

And that's where somehow I came about to come to Scandinavia. And Scandinavia, it's a very particular little testing ground in the world because in itself is a very small, Oslo and I'm talking about Scandinavia, of course, but let's focus in Norway. That's what I know the most. And Norway is a five million inhabitant super large and big territory, but with five million inhabitants.

And that's precisely the number of inhabitants of Madrid in Spain, a city. With a very rich economy, and with a very advanced way of really understanding people's problems and welfare system and social democracy and all of these things that we lack all over the world they made this little territory into a.

great experiment that actually works pretty well. Yes. So that's where I ended up. And I've been here for 10 years now or more, actually 15 years. Oh my God. I

don't like to remember that. Time flies. Yes. It's interesting. You're describing these diverse, cities and environments for sure.

But I liked it and I wanted to springboard off of the term that you were using the research driven design, and I think that applies to a lot of creative fields that we're not just coming up with. Creative ideas and whatever we can think of, but they actually have to be research based and smart when it comes to meeting the brief, don't they?

Yeah, and that's the most important thing. And that's where I bridged from architecture into social sciences and into design thinking as well. My office that we haven't introduced yet, but that

yes, that

I started in Oslo is actually a bridge between those worlds. And we are not only architects, but we are social scientists.

Design sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and as well designers, service designers system designers and in general, we apply design thinking and sciences in order to inform Form our decisions when it comes to design and the design can be of course, buildings, but it's also services is also digital products, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. And that is, it's a very important way that we work that it's like, we need to collect enough data and that's sometimes quantitative and sometimes qualitative data in order to be able. to really design things that we believe that might have better impact. And as we discussed previously, and to make the right decision, if we should design new things or

not.

This was the provocative. First, let's introduce the company, the Compto Bureau. And Compto, tell us about the origin of the name. I love even the two parts of the name, that there's a bureau behind the name.

Yeah. August Compt is is actually a French scientist. He's considered the father of social sciences.

And when we started the project or the we call it the project, still a project, but when we started our company. We decided that we needed this very scientific ground to it, let's really go deeper into this. And and I always believe that somehow architecture should be connected to social sciences.

Somehow calling it Compte made a lot of sense at the time, maybe not the best branding because we keep on having to explain what Compte is. And some people still think that is a cheese and but, but when we tell the story, people understand what are the grounds somehow and Bureau was to actually make it a kind of a sort of a credible sort of office to go and to get proper information and to get proper Products or designs that were believable, credible and and it

has this investigative sound to it.

Yes. And so you could have called it a lab, a studio, a space, a workshop, a co op, a conglomerate. Yeah. There's a lot of words that people can put at the back of their company. And that's why it does stop you and go something different must be going on inside those doors.

Yeah, there is. I like that.

I didn't think about that. But it's it is a lot of investigation. Let's put it that way. Research is all about investigating and go deeper into that. Yeah, I like that idea that it's an investigation investigating Bureau.

There's this provocation that, science and research have to and social.

Sciences particularly have to be underneath and foundational to the design thinking to the architecture and going to the provocative statement that you made at the conference was, when we think about sustainability, we're not just designing, but we're designing to build, but we may be designing not to build or to build some other way or to build something different or to take a different.

Path and that I think that's what perked people's ears and said that's a different kind of discussion, isn't it?

Yeah, but because that is a discussion that we don't want to have when we run a business, isn't it? Because we

can that's the provocative scary part. Did you just say design not to build?

Yeah, but that's that's the questions that we should be asking because if we really want to I mean We are at a critical point. I don't know how you in the states how you guys talk about this, but in Europe, we are very kind of direct

discussing. We are slow to be direct. Let's say that we and we, it's still a bit controversial, but I think people realize the inflection point has arrived.

Yeah. And we are at the point that we can't just run business as usual. We need to think new and we need to. To think new very fast. And in that specifically platform where we were discussing innovation and conscious innovation we need to be able to ask the right questions.

And in a way, In that setup, it was important for me to say that, as an architect, I have made the decision to change somehow my business plan around the way that I do business, to actually question things and to actually say, do I need to continue building? Do we need to? Can the answer be another one?

Do we need to always to answer to the problems by saying, Oh yeah, that's what I do. I'm an architect. I run a business. Let's build more. No, I have to stop and think, okay, is the problem that we're trying to solve solvable in a different manner? So do we have enough in infrastructure? Do we not have enough buildings that we can transform or can this be solved with an app, can the problem be solved?

with different times of occupation of the space, for example, and a good booking system. So sometimes we just need to be able to reframe a little bit the problems and to give different answers to the solutions that we're trying to find. And that was the discussion that we were having when we were talking about there was, we need to contextualize a little bit this conversation because.

In my group, in the debate that you were present, there was, of course, a furniture maker and and designer that was, the whole business plan is to sell clothing and to sell more t shirts. And one wonders how many t shirts do we need in the world? You know how we can with the amount of tissues that we have today, we can dress one person.

We're talking about every single person in the planet three times a day, and that's an a crazy number. So when do we say it's enough? We don't need more t shirts. Yeah. And this is something that we need urgently to question and to change our business plans. And we can only do this if we really, instead of greenwashing our products and greenwashing our businesses, we just say, okay, we have to stop.

We have to be conscious about what we are doing. Yes. And that's why innovation is so important because we need to really invest to start thinking differently and to do things differently.

And you brought up designing some of these experiences or, whether it is an app or a new way of thinking.

I was intrigued by one of the other presentations at our conference of a social agency there in Oslo, who was really changing the way maybe immigration and social services provided to new citizens, but then it made me go back to your website and there was a nice three hour. Vimeo. Now, I can't tell you.

I watched every minute of the three hours, but it was a really a deep discussion of the experience of buying of reserving of, a really lab intensive, but research based discussion. And it sounds like that's the kind of parsing we can start doing that says what part of the process could we be improving.

Yeah. And for example, I don't know exactly which video you watch but there has, there is a very interesting thing in relation to loneliness. And I'm going to talk about loneliness because it's a societal issue. And I'm going to introduce a new word that is societal issue.

That it's something that we try everything we do in the office is trying to somehow. Tackle a societal issue. Yeah. So let's put let's put loneliness as a very big problem that it's increasing substantially among young people because of the use of technology and use of social media, kids are becoming more and more isolated and less in contact with their peers.

In a normal manner as we did when we were younger and this is actually becoming a serious problem in Norway and other parts of Europe. I'm not so sure about in the States. No, I think it is. Yes. Yes. And and we've been and this is a study that we did over a year where we actually went out and interview a big sample of different different young people between 18 and and 22 in in academic sort of age, way or and And we try to go deeper into understanding the behaviors and to understanding the needs and to understanding what makes them lonely.

And based on this information we actually designed housing to promote social interaction. Housing that have in itself spaces and the way that the circulation is designed, the way that that even the the private spaces are designed, it accommodates for for a level of how to say balance between privacy and social life.

And this the building is being built now, but this research has been informing not only one neighborhood in Oslo, or sorry, in Trondheim, but it has been informed every single student housing that has been developing now in Norway. So this is what I mean by if you have the right data and if you have the right information you can actually use architecture as a tool to have bigger impact.

And now we know that what we are building. Is answering to a problem is not creating a problem in this case, in this specific case. Oh, sure.

It's very encouraging and very strong. Now I wanted to slow down a little bit though, because you made it sound like we did some research and found loneliness, and then we came up with this idea and now we're building the building.

I fill in some gaps. Because to really overcome some of these obstacles, some are political, some might be, policy, some might be a lot of things. How do you go from we have a great idea to we're building the building?

That's very interesting because of course that This is a very aware society and both clients in the private sector and in the public sector are investing quite a lot in this problematics.

So it's very they understand the value of the economical value of tackling these problems very early on. Because if they don't tackle these problems when they start appearing with services, with architecture or whatever, with other products, and with the welfare system as well, if they don't tackle this very early, they know that this becomes pathological and it goes, it can follow this youth through their whole life.

So then they start being medicated instead of, and then you have problems with opioids and then you have problems with this and that. So it's it's a sort of a chain of events that if it is preventing very early, and if you can actually, you will save a lot of tax, taxpayers money by the end of time.

So this is the very interesting thing about having. Five million population with a high income is that do you know, people are highly educated and people both in the government and both in the private sector, understand the value of providing good services for their, For the population in general.

Yes. Yeah. I wanted maybe to turn the corner a little bit on this thought and think about how many of these new and innovative and creative ideas often come through competitions or academic projects that you've had a chance to be a jury member on many of these competitions. And it's interesting that you describe, that it's a Problem to solve, not just a creative or pretty project, to develop.

Are you seeing that

shift? Yeah. It's very interesting because I'm also, I also been a teacher at the university here and you see a very interesting shift that is the students are no longer interested in the sort of the statical exercise that architecture has been at least for The last 20 years where we've been trying out really a lot of interesting technology, of course, and a lot of interesting new sort of constructive techniques that we didn't have before with the Bilbao Museum and structures like this that are, that were impossible to make before we actually have access to to the softwares and all of these new things.

But that arrived to a point that how many more museums Can museums, can we have, how many more fantastic buildings can we have in the middle of the city that sort of reflect the capitalistic and the sort of great achievements of our society. Now we have to retract and really focus on climate change.

And we have to focus on what it is really relevant that it's like we need to build spaces and we need to build buildings if we are to building it, that actually can have a bigger impact in this societal challenges that we are facing today and the students are so aware of this.

And they are looking for new methods and new tools to actually be able to answer to this. And that's why design thinking became so so relevant. And it's becoming even more relevant because you go you get to tools and methodology to go deeper into understanding people's needs and to really involve people in the whole process and to learn by prototyping and testing before you move forward into developing do you know, structures that are not relevant.

And then of course, the fact that they are looking into social sciences to really. Understand society, understand behavior behavioral design has become a really interesting thing to look into and really understand why we do the things we do. And we were discussing you, you were very very aware of the five whys and the discussion of the five whys.

And this is a technique that we use like to really go deeper into understanding. Why is why in a way when I ask when I tell you we need a swimming pool and that was the I think the example that we have there when we go to a neighborhood and we ask people what do you need in this neighborhood to actually create some sort of dynamic and better quality of life for the neighborhood and a lively neighborhood and people always tells you we want a swimming pool.

And we know that a swimming pool is not sustainable and that it's super expensive to build and to maintain and all of that. So we go deeper into understand, but why do you need a swimming pool? Oh, because we need a space that we can park the kids after school and they are safe and someone is taking care of them.

And, they are learning something useful for their future lives. Okay. But why do they need to be parked after school? And then you go deeper, and then you realize that what they actually need is just a safe space. space for kids to play around and to be safe and to be preventing them to, to join gangs or do stuff that they shouldn't be doing.

And then maybe just a pavilion with a lot of activities that is much cheaper and much more sustainable. And that has someone taking care of them is enough. To answer to that why and that first problem. So this type of tools, we gain it from social sciences. Of course, I'm simplifying quite a lot, Mark

here.

Yes, of course. But it goes back to the basis of the company. In other words, we're not just here to design. We're here to think and solve. Societal problems. And I was curious as we look over the horizon, you're reminding me of all these sort of famous architects and their work, it's the size and scope sometimes of the work is what we remember.

Do you think in the future we'll remember the tallness of the building or will we remember the societal impact it had?

That's a very good question. But the difference here is that I don't think that my students and myself putting it that way with our company, we are actually, we don't care about the ego and being remembered as a as an individual entity that has a signature, do you know, we are not.

We don't believe anymore in this fountainhead character so we believe that we as a unity and as a group of the people collaborating and extending that collaboration as much as we can and learning from each other. As a sort of organism that it's connected can actually have a much bigger impact in a shorter period.

And that we don't need to be remember as individuals, but we need to be remember that, or we need to remind ourselves that what we are doing is for a cause. We have a mission. We are not doing it to satisfy any ego by any chance, but to satisfy, to make sure that our kids have a future.

And I think about your that's how we do get excited.

Yes, the future. I think about the word collaboration that you just highlighted and just to use our mutual experience and think about how to collaborate and design thinking in total. I think across the agenda and the stage that we shared that experience. How can the clothing designer and the furniture maker and the electronics retailer and some of the other people that we shared that experience with, where does collaboration come into play so that we aren't just sitting at our individual offices with our individual teams trying to make impact?

I think everyone is trying to answer that question, Mark. With all the situations that we have going on in the world, do you know, this is a moment where we are all asking, how are we going to solve this? And during COVID, COVID was a great period to really see how collaboration between countries and between institutions and organizations and, actually managed to solve a very Problematic issue in a very short period of time.

We managed to create the vaccines. We managed to close people inside of their houses for months and months. And people actually did that. Then we in some places, not everywhere, but do you know, present city,

not

exactly, but it's like, there is, there was a kind of global collaboration and intent on solving a problem and we managed to do it and we.

we are able to do that, but when again business as usual comes back, then we just think about our own sort of, do you know, our own businesses and our own pockets and our own sort of Individual sort of mark in the world. And then we ruin everything.

Yeah. That's why we can't let the pendulum go all the

way back.

Yeah. Yeah. And so it's but it is going and that this economical recession and all of this crises and I don't want to talk about the war that is happening because it's, it is very present for us here. I don't know how present it is for sure. Yeah. So these conflicts are actually taking us back and the economical recession even more that it's caused by these conflicts, of course.

And as I actually was discussing previously, it's I don't know if I talked with this about you but it's we are defunding innovation in a lot of sectors and this is a big problem because all the advanced advances that we did in COVID are now. And the momentum that we gained in COVID are being lost now with the funding of a lot of programs and a lot of innovation grants and a lot of interesting things that were going on because we are just cutting everything down to the bone.

And in this moment where we have these problems is where we should be investing even more in innovation, even more in trying to solve these issues, even more. Making these networks and this collaborative organisms that are working together to actually solving something. But we are, we, the biggest organizations that we have in the world UN and NATO and all of this, even those organizations are losing momentum now and credibility.

It is, we are facing a very, we are in a very strange moment. So we, the private sector, need to do something about it. And

maybe we speak to our individual impact, and maybe you could leave us with some encouragement and inspiration for the one creative, person who might be listening.

And we have artists and musicians and authors and All sorts of people trying to pursue creativity to make a human connection. And maybe if we've boiled down the societal things to the human one to one connection, what sort of insight could you provide an inspiration to those creative people to make a more human connection with their creative work?

It's

a very hard question, Mark.

We don't ask the easy questions.

No, that's a very hard question. But it was like, I don't want to fall into that kind of very cliche approach to it. But I actually think that it's more than ever, we should be listening. We have to listen. We are in this echo chambers and we are creating even more deeper echo chambers and we only care about those that actually speak the same tone of voice that we do and that care about the same colors that we do.

And that is the wrong thing to do, in my opinion, and this is always my opinion, of course, that's the wrong thing to do at this moment. We should actually. Be much more aware that making this cross or do you know, open up to the differences that, that we all have is what's going to make us better and what's going to make us survive in a way, because we are becoming we are becoming less and less tolerant and this is pushing us back.

In very seriously pushing us back to a period of time that that I'm not so sure if I want to go back to.

That's exactly right. You've really helped bring us full circle in one respect because we started thinking about creativity and problem solving, by understanding societal needs.

But you've brought us back to this is not just going to open up your creativity. This could save the world. By making those one to one, open up to a different point of view. So this is not about, breaking old habits and ways of thinking just to make better work. This is about to make better people and you've really underscored it quite well.

Yeah, I think that's crucial and that's what we need to be better people. Yes.

I appreciate that. It's so good to talk to you again, Joanna, and I'm going to put all your contact information in the show notes because I know people are going to want to know more about you. Your research, your work.

We haven't even touched on the journalism and magazines and publications you've been a part of. We'll have to make a part two of this. You have such a wide range of creativity. We'll have to do another interview and get back together real soon, but thanks so much for being on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Thank you so much, Mark. It's lovely to speak

with you. Yes. Enjoy the winter there in Oslo. Thank you. And this is where your bright spirit has to lighten the city. So wherever you go, leave the light on, will you?

Minus ten right now. Oh my goodness.

It's not easy. There you go. Keep the warmth of your creative spirit alive and listeners come back again next time.

We're continuing our around the world journeys, talking to creative practitioners of all kinds. We've talked about how to get inspired. We've talked about how to organize ideas and move them forward, gaining the confidence and often the connections to launch our work out into the world and make the kind of impact that Joanne has been talking about at the society level and at the very personal.

Level and that's what we need in the world today for now I'm mark stinson, please come back again next time and we'll continue to unlock your world of creativity