Architecture's 2010 Hot Shop Wins A Billionaire Patron

Plenty of architecture’s biggest names have been laid low by the Great Recession, as I wrote recently in Bloomberg Businessweek. One partnership has never had it better, however: New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

On Monday, the 60-person shop was named chief architect of billionaire Eli Broad’s $80 million-plus art museum in downtown Los Angeles, beating out a collaboration by starchitects Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry. The commission came just two months after the boutique was chosen to design an arts and film center for the University of California in Berkeley.

DS+R had a dizzying 2009 as well, completing two high-profile projects in New York: the High Line elevated park, which was created from a long-abandoned railway line, and the redesign of Alice Tully Hall in the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

The studio’s partners—Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, who founded it in 1979, and Charles Renfro, who joined in 1997—may busy again in 2011. DS+R, which got its first big assignment with the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, which opened in 2006, is completing a museum on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach and a media studio in Abu Dhabi. It is also in the running for three projects, including a factory in China. (Yes, that’s right, a factory.)

The firm’s payroll has grown from 25 six years ago, with plans to expand at least another 15 percent next year. Revenue should surge 150% this year. “We have to wonder that if there wasn’t a building bust, would we be winning even more?” Renfro says. “We’re thankful that we are bucking the trend. We’re not getting rich, nor are we starving.”

I caught up with Renfro, 46, as he took a train from his office on Tuesday. Here’s an edited transcript of what else he had to say:

Q: How do you explain your winning streak?

A: The obvious answer is that we finally created several major commissions and people have heard of us and they hadn’t before. Not until the last four years have we worked on complex jobs and proven that we could pull them off.

Q: The firm has been around more than 30 years, though. Is this an example of perseverance? Or is it just good luck?

A: I wish I could provide you with a silver-bullet answer, but I think it’s a combination of all that. I also think our approach toward building and design is much more sympathetic to the economy. It’s no longer the go-go ’90s or even the 2000s. We’re operating at the crossroads of making an icon and a very thoughtful response to clients’ problems.

Q: Is it harder to do architecture in 2010?

A: It’s probably harder for some people. There are many architects who are used to working on high-profile jobs, making iconic architecture. I think you will find them getting fewer commissions in this day and age. Maybe we’re reaping the benefit of the downturn in this way. It’s not harder for us.

Q: How would you describe the firm’s design philosophy?

A: We take our inspiration from the context of the project. Having said that, we’re very interested in pushing the limit of technology, of form-making, of structure.

Q: Has it become a challenge to manage the firm as it has grown so fast?

A: It goes without saying that anytime there’s a quick jump in the staff of any business, there will be growing pains. We operate like a family. I think we’re going to continue to operate on a similar manner.

Q: What would advice would you give to a student who is thinking of becoming an architect?

A: Go into law.

Q: And if he doesn’t listen?

A: There are many other kinds of outlets that have become available to architects, from making shows to getting into museum and exhibit design to getting into writing online. Hope is not lost. The money is down, however. We were never a well-paid profession, much to a lot of other people’s surprise. Definitely, there’s less money out there to build buidlings. So we all have to be more creative.

King Oscar on the Near West Side 8/15/10

Banksy on the Near West Side 8/15/10

Groupon's Management Secret in Two Words

Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of social-shopping site Groupon, was part of a panel discussion at Google's Chicago office last night on innovation and startups. One of the questions he was asked was to sum up his management credo in just two words. "Cultivate ownership," Mason answered. Then he told a quick story.

When Groupon was launched in Chicago in November 2008, the seven employees were "just a bunch of rascals." They included one twentysomething guy who, though "supersmart," had so little gumption that Mason thought he'd end up working at Shoney's when he was 45. But given responsibility for a specific area, the guy flourished and now manages a staff of 65.

Mason also gave a shoutout to Eric Lefkofksy as the outsider most responsible for Groupon's success. Lefkofsky is a Chicago-based serial entrepreneur who, though his Lightbank venture capital firm, was Mason's original backer and adviser.

Groupon is en fuego. It is up to 11 million subscribers, offering group coupons for restaurants and retailers in 160 cities in 22 countries. In its 20 months, Mason said, the site has saved customers $300 million with its daily deals.

It also has its own pilot fish, according to this post on WiseBread. Say you can't use your Groupon discount or you think it's worth more than you paid, you can sell it on sites such as CoupRecoup and DealsGoRound.

The discussion was organized by the Chicago Innovation Awards--Groupon was a 2009 winner--and hosted by Google, which is one of the contest's silver sponsors this year.

Michelin Restaurant Guide Comes to Chicago; Who's Next?

Michelin is becoming more American with its restaurant guides. The tire company just announced it will publish a guide in November for Chicago, its third U.S. city. (New York came first in 2005, with San Francisco the next year.) The dining directories, begun 110 years ago, are based on secret visits by a staff of 90 trained critics, a method that seems increasingly old-fashioned—and costly—as other ratings outfits from the Zagat Survey to Yelp rely on volunteers.

While Michelin executives were in Chicago to promote its latest edition, I caught up with Parmeet Grover, chief operating officer of Michelin’s Travel & Lifestyle unit in North America.

Grover does not have a gourmand’s background. He hired on with Michelin’s U.S. subsidiary in Greenville, S.C., in 1996, after receiving a PhD in engineering from Georgia Tech. He moved into his current role last year. Grover says he’s been a “foodie” from way back, however. “If you go back to Renaissance times,” he told me, “being technical doesn’t prevent one from having other interests that range quite widely,”

Here’s an edited version of our conversation:

Q: With Chicago, the guide will be in three cities in the U.S. What’s the plan for expanding further?

A: Globally, this will be our 26th city. And in the U.S. there are some large cities we’re looking at. You could imagine they’d be in the vein of the ones we’ve already done.

Q: Do you see adding another city in 2012?

A: I can’t comment on that right now.

Q: How has American cuisine changed in the last several years?

A: I think changes in American cuisine represent the changes in our society. If you look at the diversity of the country, it has increased over the last two decades. As a result, there is a lot of fusion cuisine.

But I think we may be onto another important trend, which is using a lot more natural ingredients, locally sourced ingredients. I see this even in Greenville, S.C., where my family is based.

Q: Michelin is doing things the way it’s done for more than a century, sending in trained reviewers anonymously. Aren’t you behind the times now that everybody is doing crowdsourcing?

A: In terms of the wisdom of the crowds, we respect it. But I think what we bring is another perspective that nobody else has. We are using professionals who know cuisine very, very well. What we have developed over the last 100 years is a process that’s worked very well. When we say it’s one star or two stars, whether it’s in London or Tokyo or New York or one day somewhere in Africa, it means the same thing.

Q: So that’s your advantage—you can get consistency because you know who your raters are?

A: Exactly. We are a company of engineers, so we have a process that is followed rigorously. And we never compromise.

Q: Is there any built-in bias in that training, however, that would favor a traditional French restaurant over another?

A: Not at all. I go back to something in the DNA of our company. We have five values, and I haven’t seen too many companies with this fifth value, which is respect for facts. When we go in to rate a restaurant or award the stars, it’s purely objective, based on what is in that plate, what has been cooked that day.

Q: How many times is each restaurant visited?

Ten times sometimes. And it’s not the same person. We have many different people that go, and all of the information is put into a data base and analysis is done.

Q: Your employees have been out eating in Chicago restaurants how long to get prepared for the new guide?

A: It’s been two years now. We take this very seriously.

Q: So I take it you’ve got employees in other cities that we don’t know about doing the same sort of covert operations.

A: That is correct. And what’s funny is that some of the families don’t know either what they’re doing. They need to maintain their anonymity. We are very serious about the confidentiality of it, which is the key to staying objective.

Even at Michelin, everybody has never met these people. My first impression was that they would all be rather heavy-set men. But that’s not true. We have men, and we have women, and they seem to be normal. You wouldn’t be able to guess what they really do.

Meet Google's $700 Million MIT Math Whiz

As my Bloomberg colleague Brian Womack reported yesterday, Google paid $700 million for ITA Software, a 16-year-old company that has provided the flight-booking software for Orbitz since it opened for business in 2001. The acquisition brought back memories for me. I profiled ITA’s founder and CEO, Jeremy Wertheimer, in 2000 for BusinessWeek.com. The MIT PhD was brilliant back then, if still cash-strapped—he came up with the $100,000 to start his Cambridge, Mass., company by maxxing out his credit cards and borrowing from his parents. Today, he’s undoubtedly still brilliant and rich, too.

Click here for the full profile.

Gen Y Unplugs Cable TV

Generation Y has already upset plenty of media businesses with its unconventional consuming habits. Another sector may be about to get smacked—cable and satellite television. Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC, made that call in his dinner speech for a group of chief marketing officers last night. The dinner was part of a conference in Chicago sponsored by Bloomberg Businessweek.

People in their 20s and younger no longer buy print newspapers, music CDs, land-line phones or watches, Cole noted. (I don’t think they listen to over-the-air radio, either.) Now, Cole said his research has detected that they’re not signing up for cable or satellite TV like prior generations. Instead, they’re watching video on laptops or even their cell phones.

Cole also predicted that most newspapers have just five more years before they’re killed by the Internet. (Cue up Ziggy Stardust.) A handful will survive: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Washington Post. Women’s magazines will live on, too, since readers buy them as much for the ads as the editorial content. He didn’t give odds for us.