We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Davide Rizzo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Davide, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?
After my studies and after working for a year in New York as a set designer and as an architect in Switzerland and Japan, I decided to start my own business and open an architecture studio in Berlin even though I would have had to take over my father’s company in Switzerland, a designer kitchen shop and factory.
It was the beginning of 2000 and Russia and the East in general were gaining ground.
I met my first customer by chance while I was working with a furniture store in West Berlin. The client was building a house in Moscow and had a lot of problems with her architect… it didn’t take long to convince her to bring me to Moscow to act as her consultant. After two weeks she had fired her architect and it was with this project that 24 years of fantastic projects began… where in some unfortunately I had to sell myself and follow the clients’ taste but fortunately Russia and the neighboring states were changing quickly and the style was becoming more refined and defined.
This lady was a style icon in the metropolis and it didn’t take long until all her friends and enemies were knocking on my door. Within a few years my office expanded to 25 employees. Each family we took care of had their own villas, their own yacht and their own private plane that had to be designed and built.
The word spread and after a few years we had the first projects in London, Paris, on the French Riviera, in Tel Aviv up to Los Angeles and even in India. With private villas, work began for large cosmetic companies such as L’Oréal and Aveda (Estée Lauder).
Over the years I have had to adapt to various economic crises and finally, what we are still experiencing now, with wars. My team expands and shrinks as it adapts. Sometimes the projects are no longer as sensational as I would like but I always adapt by delivering the best of myself.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Rizzo architects is in Berlin and there will soon be a branch in Sicily. We always try to offer timeless but at the same time exceptional and avant-garde materials and styles.
We work with specialized Italian companies to offer new materials and techniques.
Our goal is to become impeccable but at the same time have fun. We are neither scientists nor surgeons and we do not save the world or even lives… or perhaps we have saved some in recent years… a couple of marriages for sure :-)
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Oh I like this question. After years of experience of leading a group of people, traveling a lot and expecting too much from everyone and after understanding that being “the boss” in the classic sense didn’t work, I discovered the method of intuitive command through friends. It means perceiving the potential and desire (!) of each collaborator and using them only for that. There is always someone who wants to lead a group just as there is always someone who doesn’t want to have responsibilities but still work hard…
In my studio you start working when you want, and go on holiday when and how much you want. The important thing is how much you deliver and not how many hours you sit at the table.
Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?
I’ve never sold a business… but I’ve thought about doing it a couple of times. I think the mistake I made at the beginning was using the name…who would buy my name? no one I think
Contact Info:
- Website: www.daviderizzoarchitects.com
- Instagram: Daviderizzoarchitects
Image Credits
Foto by olaf Blecker and Stefan Korte