Next Gen of Atelier Ten – Environmental

by Mila Robins, Environmental Designer
Read time: 7 minutes

The culture of Atelier Ten has been shaped over the course of our history by a select few individuals who have been with the company since its founding (by Patrick Bellew in 1990). Several people around our offices in London, Singapore, New York, Bangkok, and beyond have been here for ten to twenty years and have – quite literally – grown with the company.

Our personalised and attentive culture is felt equally in our approach to managing people and in the delivery of our projects. We are known for being a great place to learn and start your career in the environmental design and engineering consultancy space and our culture is continuously shaped by everyone who joins us, with a significant contribution coming from the juniors, or the Next Generation of Atelier Ten.

Aptly titled, this series will focus on the ‘next gen’ demographic, featuring interviews from each discipline in the London office: environmental design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, public health, and our lighting and graphic designers.

These interviews emphasise culture, professional development, and personal perspectives. For readers who are less familiar with this industry, I will also try to provide short but effective introductions to each discipline in efforts for this series to be informative not only on Atelier Ten’s culture but also on the greater ecosystem behind healthy buildings.

What is an environmental designer?

As environmental designers at Atelier Ten our job is simple. We work to make the built environment better – for people and for the planet. How we go about this becomes much more difficult to succinctly impart and looks different for each of our projects.

When you think of the environment, a wide range of things might come to mind – from ‘climate change’, ‘global warming’, and ‘carbon footprints’ to ‘agriculture’, ‘nature’, and larger scale ‘renewable’ energy sources. Our work touches on these themes, but we start from a much more granular scale. We work with architects and designers, urban planners and developers to optimise how buildings work independently, as well as in networks together (what you might have heard referred to as master planning).

We address fundamentals that largely go unnoticed (especially if we do our job well!) such as light, air, and temperature. Starting from the basics we create designs to be constructed as well as less tangible but equally impactful strategies that aim to make sure spaces are comfortable and beautiful for occupants. We make sure buildings are not too hot, not too cold, and with adequate fresh air supply. They should also be connected to surroundings, with the right balance of lighting and views of the outdoors for health and well-being of occupants that extends beyond thermal comfort. We do this while restoring, enriching, and fostering regeneration in the environment (and the planet). For those that are more familiar with the industry the keywords such as materials, circular economy, energy, and green building certifications all fall into our scope on projects around the globe.

I hope this gives a bit more context to the environmental team. Although I won’t go into further detail in this piece, you can take a look at our environmental design work here. Our engineers (featured in the coming articles) and full design teams consisting of architects, structural engineers, landscapers and ecologists, consultants that design the façade, policy makers that guide us all with various requirements, clients who put their faith in us, and too many other stakeholders to name make this work possible. Without further ado, let’s hear from some other environmental designers.

Next gen of Atelier Ten – environmental representatives

For this edition, I recruited three members of the environmental design team for the interview: Shatanik, Agathe, and Dea.

Shatanik is originally from Bengal and first encountered Atelier Ten while studying at the Architectural Association in London. Some of our projects were presented as case studies in his seminars and he then developed a direct connection through a former employee who was lecturing and tutoring at his school, so he was quite familiar with the company by the time of his application. Many of the seniors on our team teach part time around London, so it is not uncommon to bump into Atelier Ten through academia.

Agathe studied at UCL, with a research-heavy academic background in design and architecture but was looking to apply her skills in industry. Drawn to the intersection of environment, materials, and all things data – even Excel! – she saw Atelier Ten as the ideal place to start and was encouraged by a contact from Singapore who spoke highly of their time at the company. She was convinced by the intensity of work balanced with the sharp, collaborative culture.

Dea has a classic background for the role of environmental designer at Atelier Ten. After studying architecture and environmental design, where Atelier Ten had been on her radar as one of our projects had featured as a university case study, she started her career first at a construction company. After a few years of experience, she took a chance and applied to Atelier Ten, seeing it as an opportunity to step into a practice she’d admired from afar for some time.

The interview

With the context on who these team members are and how they found Atelier Ten, here is our interview. It has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

So, first off, now that we know how everyone found their way to Atelier Ten, let’s discuss the culture. Do you feel the culture you observed from the outside matches your experience as an employee?

Agathe:
Yes! There are so many unique characters around here that it curates a great place to learn and exist – and that extends beyond the environmental team. There is a real cohort atmosphere with the engineers, and I think that’s quite unique in limiting the separation between our disciplines.

What enables these vibes?

Shatanik:
For me, and I feel it’s similar for most people who join, you can read the vibe right off the bat. People are very approachable, I felt I could ask questions and there was a sense of loyalty and familiarity as opposed to being cold and straight down to business. We can all agree this is key to being comfortable to ask your doubts and learn things quicker, and of course relatability is very important and that’s something that is high here.

Agathe:
I feel like it’s the small things, simply the office and the kitchen. It’s an open plan, people are comfortable popping by desks to chat, and the fact that at lunch there are always people willing to cramp together around quite a tiny table in a familial way to share a meal shows these vibes are real.

Shatanik:
Common adversary of “corporate culture” makes for good friends.

Dea:
It’s mainly the willing and open people – they want to hang out after work! I hadn’t experienced a work environment as comfortable and open as Atelier Ten’s, which really forced me out of my shell in some ways. It’s a great feeling to know that if you suggest something some people are always going to be down and just open to do stuff.

I agree as well! If so much comes down to the people, how do we protect and grow this culture moving into the future?

Agathe:
One thing I remember even from my internship is Patrick [founder of Atelier Ten] says hello! He knows your name, regardless of who you are, and tries to connect and make people feel like equals. This is a big part of our culture.

Dea:
Agreed. Patrick was often walking around the office when I first started, but it took me weeks to realise it was him because I just never imagined he would be wandering around the office like the rest of us!

Shatanik:
The power difference and dynamics are felt less, which helps with comfort, positivity, and confidence. This also makes it easier to ask questions, improving both the quality of your work and your enjoyment, which in turn enhances overall quality of life.

What do you think Atelier Ten does best?

Shatanik:
I have heard from friends at Zaha [Hadid Architects] who looked at an Atelier Ten report, commended us for not only being thorough, but for distilling our complexity into comprehensive yet digestible words and graphics. It’s hard to fully appreciate this until you get the feedback externally.

Agathe:
Having gone through planning portals in my past life, I have seen a wide range of reporting and communication styles. I think we stand out at Atelier Ten in this way for many reasons. There’s probably a sweet spot, but we go into detail and analysis and there’s an answer to be found for every design or engineering decision and context to each project. It really imparts that we are not just doing the bare minimum for policy compliance.

Dea:
I think we have such a breadth of experience across the company. I realised this recently as I started to do some more business development work. This really helps when we are speaking to clients, architects, and the public because we are able, more often than not, to provide insight and input based on experience alone.

What are our strengths as Atelier Ten and what will we continue with moving forward?

Shatanik:
For sure we will continue with our strong graphics and all our studies. Volkan, for example, develops tools in Excel, Python, Grasshopper, and great data visualisations. This enables the client to best understand options and to associate them with Atelier Ten thanks to strong branding. They don’t have to be super techy, but it’s also important that our team stays up to date with Grasshopper scripting, potentially Python, of course at the end of the day Excel is the beast.

Agathe:
I am sure most people in industry will agree, there’s always a trade-off between developing a tool or just sitting down with your multiple tab Excel. Sometimes by the time a tool is developed it needs and update or more features, so we can continue our measured and practical approach without getting entirely carried away with the digitalised AI-powered wave. Keeping it simple, as we do, can sometimes be best because adoption can be hard and if not well-thought out, deployment of too many tools can be a set-back.

Dea:
I echo both and think it’s quite interesting as sustainability isn’t really a choice anymore like it was a few years back. Atelier Ten has the international experience to advise! We have amassed knowledge and continue to test and learn – we can influence more! Whether it’s technical modelling or policy advisories, or continuing to work on more holistic sustainability frameworks, even as a small services company we have the bandwidth to do it.

Thank you – we will wrap it up now, but finally, do you have any wish list work?

Shatanik:
Competitions are exciting and fast and of course look good!

Dea & Agathe:
Funnily enough, some of the workflows you think you’d hate you fall in love with, like IES [an energy modelling software commonly used in industry] has become strangely comforting.

End of article 01, next up: mechanical engineering

Thank you all for taking the time to read this first edition of the series, I hope it was a useful insight to environmental design more generally, but specifically more on the culture and inner workings from the perspective of juniors. If you have any questions at all – around the series, the work, the people, the company, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on LinkedIn.

Next time we will feature some fresh faces from our mechanical engineering team.