At Enderun’s “Ambitious Ideas,” PARTISANS co-founder Alexander Josephson considered what it takes to defend a design, get it built, and sustain the practice behind it.
A client hires an architect for expertise, then occasionally discovers that expertise comes with an opinion. This can make the relationship less comfortable than either party had imagined.
Alexander Josephson knows the difficulty. He has argued for a design, pushed a client too far, and lost commissions. He has also been reminded that being someone’s architect does not make him their friend. It was an unusually candid account of a profession more often presented through beautiful photographs, with the difficult conversations left outside the frame.
Speaking at “Ambitious Ideas,” a talk and conversation hosted by Enderun Colleges’ College of Architecture and Design for its architecture and design students, Josephson discussed how his studio began and what it takes to keep an idea intact. His presentation moved through early commissions, fabrication experiments, software development, and the business of architectural practice. A student- and faculty-led interview followed, before questions opened to the audience.
The subject was ambition, but much of the afternoon concerned what happens after someone approves the ambitious drawing.
PARTISANS’ work at Toronto’s Union Station and Grotto Sauna in Georgian Bay, Ontario, illustrates how technical invention can shape the experience of a space, from a busy transit hub to a lakeside retreat.
Josephson is the President and Co-Founder of PARTISANS, the Toronto-based architecture studio established in 2012. Its work brings together design, material research, technology, and entrepreneurship. Grotto Sauna, Bar Raval, and its work on Toronto’s Union Station have given the studio more substantial credentials than an impressive collection of renderings. partisans.com
Grotto Sauna received a 2015 Ontario Association of Architects Design Excellence Award. Bar Raval earned a 2015 R+D Award from ARCHITECT for its approach to design and fabrication. These projects matter to Josephson’s argument because they required the studio to figure out how an unconventional idea could actually be made. architecture-excellence.org
He named the practice PARTISANS because he sees architecture as an expression of values. Buildings reveal what a society is willing to fund, preserve, prioritize, or overlook. That makes architectural work political, even when the brief would prefer everyone to avoid the subject.
It also makes agreement a more complicated professional habit.
During the interview, Josephson described how easily architects can spend their days saying yes. The client is paying. The commission matters. Nobody particularly enjoys being fired. Yet if the architect never questions an instruction, it becomes difficult to explain what independent judgment the client is receiving.
This is not permission to turn every meeting into an argument. A design still has to answer to its users, budget, safety requirements, and site. Josephson’s examples suggest that the stronger position is to understand those conditions well enough to offer something better.
At Toronto’s Union Station, that meant taking a ceiling seriously. PARTISANS challenged a proposed suspended ceiling and developed fixtures that combined lighting, ventilation, and fire-safety services. Josephson argued that keeping more overhead space open helped create a more inviting setting for independent businesses.
It was a modest-sounding intervention with consequences for how the place felt. Not every architectural contribution needs to announce itself from across the street.
Bar Raval in Toronto, designed by PARTISANS, features a sculpted wooden interior that required custom machining techniques to turn its curved forms and textured surfaces into built work.
At Bar Raval, the challenge was harder to overlook. The Toronto bar’s sculpted wooden interior required the studio and its fabrication partners to resolve machining problems and adapt manufacturing software. The design could not survive on enthusiasm alone. Someone had to make the machines produce it. www.architectmagazine.com
Josephson was equally candid about Grotto Sauna: the team had presented the design before knowing exactly how to build it. Client approval settled the question of whether they would proceed. How they would proceed became their problem.
For students, this is a useful adjustment to the pleasure of a successful presentation. Getting someone to believe in your idea is an achievement. Delivering it requires another set of skills.
Nor does defending a concept mean preserving every detail. Josephson described a residential tower proposal whose facade was initially too complicated to manufacture efficiently. Further analysis reduced it until three component types accounted for approximately 85 percent of the facade. Understanding production allowed the team to simplify the system while protecting its character.
The harder task is recognizing when simplification stops helping. During the audience Q&A, he described how an idea can weaken through small decisions, easier alternatives, and delays. His advice was to find advocates within the project team. Being convinced yourself is useful. Being the only person convinced makes for a long project.
That concern with control also shaped his discussion of technology. PARTISANS has developed software to support its own workflows. Josephson sees an opportunity for architects to influence their tools, while remaining responsible for what those tools produce. An AI-generated image may impress a client. It does not settle the construction details.
From there, the conversation arrived at the business of architecture, a subject its more romantic accounts tend to hurry past.
Josephson spoke about operations, marketing, staffing, software costs, and the financial logic of development. These concerns affect how much time a studio can give to research, which projects it can accept, and whether its people can earn a decent living.
During the closing discussion, his definition of ambition became more revealing. He wanted the studio’s experiments and businesses to create prosperity for the people working there. A few successful individuals at the top did not satisfy that objective.
For a talk full of unusual forms and technical experiments, this was perhaps its most practical proposition. A practice should make good work possible and give the people producing it a reason to stay.
For aspiring architects and designers, Josephson’s account offered a less polished understanding of professional life. You will need ideas. You will also need to understand materials, money, tools, and people well enough to give those ideas a chance.
For practitioners, the question is more immediate. When you agree to a change, do you understand what the project gains and what it gives up?
The client may not always welcome the answer. That does not make the question any less part of the job.
