HOW SATISFIED should you be in your work?
100 per cent? 80-90 per cent? Is 20 per cent
good enough from time to time? Speaking with
Alex Michaelis of Michaelis Boyd, the
architecture and interior design practice he
runs with Tim Boyd, I am surprised to hear him
report such varying and sometimes low levels
of job satisfaction, especially when he follows it
up with: ‘I absolutely love every second of what
I do. I’m always ... amazed people want to pay
me to do this.’ Perhaps it is not so contradictory
- a generally high level of self-conviction and
satisfaction should make it easier to let some
things go. Michaelis holds his values dear, but
he is hardly spoiling for a fight.
I wonder if this is the tolerance of a man
who has seven kids, but it might also stem from
his early career when Michaelis worked for
Julyan Wickham in 1991. Wickham is known for
colour and curves, a ‘wild boy’ who came as a
shock to the architects of the previous era, and
was also someone Michaelis ‘loved, [but] who
was an absolute lunatic’. Wickham had a habit
of firing Michaelis and rehiring him the next
working day, and once had the audacity to keep
a client waiting eight hours for a meeting – and
a high-profile client at that: Dickson Poon, Hong
Kong businessman and owner of Harvey
Nichols. ‘The richest man in the world,’ says
Michaelis. He remembers that project because
it was a high-pressure environment that he was
in, designing and making the model of the
Harvey Nichols food hall and restaurant, and
all the individual items in it, right up until it was
finally presented at midnight. He loved these
intense times, but would not wish them on his
current employees; he feels that forcing matters
does not get the best results.
Michaelis’s father was an architect (his
speciality being solar energy) but, despite now
seemingly living and breathing architecture, it
didn’t seem the obvious choice for the young
Michaelis and it was not where he thought he
would end up. After realising he didn’t have the
scientific skills to pursue a career in medicine,
he spent some time in southern Italy, where he
discovered the works of Filippo Brunelleschi, a
‘maverick’ Florentine Renaissance architect.
(Perhaps unsurprisingly, a childhood holiday
with his father, where he was dragged to ‘10
churches a day’, did not inspire Michaelis in the
same way. As it is, he has no expectation that
his kids – a number of whom currently have
their sights set on science too – will follow in
his footsteps either.)
Michaelis was enamoured of Brunelleschi
for his belief that he could build an arch of
unprecedented size in a way that was
structurally sound. To his credit that arch in
Florence still stands today. The present-day
Michaelis is also keen to insert a curve where
others wouldn’t – ‘a literal curve ball of curved
walls and strange shapes,’ he says. While that
approach has echoes of Wickham, it is also
influenced by Le Corbusier, of whom Michaelis
is an ardent admirer. He believes in the
simplicity and curved forms, as well as Le
Corbusier’s idea that when you have a building,
you plant it. Michaelis notes, however, a little
disappointedly, that Le Corbusier didn’t quite
stick to his word on this front. I ask him if he
sticks to his word, and he answers positively:
many of his buildings do have planted roofs.
Such achievements are perhaps a matter of
picking your battles wisely and, coming back to
those percentages, it is clear that some projects
allow Michaelis more freedom than others, due
to an inevitable variance in project and client.
Some of his least favourite – as they tend to be
more restrictive – are those in New York. He
describes the city’s attitude, a propensity for
grids, glass and steel, as a ‘boring’ homogeneityAlex Michaelis
The co-founder of architecture and
interior design practice Michaelis Boyd
discusses the people and places that
provide inspiration, his preference for
working manually and achieving job
satisfaction
WORDS BY SOPHIE TOLHURST
PROFILEREPORTER 021