- They have become familiar pastures by now. In the evaluation of the market and the way in which we act within the market, there are hardly any differences between, for instance, the Czech Republic and Austria. Cultural differences do remain of course. However, from the point of view of solidarity and risk evaluation we feel ourselves just as much at home there as here. We have also consolidated our market position in Croatia. As for Slovenia, it may be a small country and Ljubljana a small capital city, but we have some good projects there. Where it really begins for us is in Romania, above all in Bucharest, and in Serbia. In Belgrade we are still in the acquisition phase. I would estimate that in the course of the next year we will have more to report about that.

- On the shortlist for designing an apartment house complex in Sofia there were two Austrians and an office from Sofia, and the latter eventually won the contract. Particularly in the case of residential housing, we always also invite local architects.
For every project that we embark on, we always consider whom we will invite afresh. Even in the case of the competition for the ERSTE Campus (ed. note: headquarters of Erste Bank in Vienna) we thought it important to include architects from our target countries. However, from a total of 300 interested architects’ offices, there were only fifteen from the East, of which unfortunately none managed to get through to the second round.

- Yes, I believe there will. Our development is progressing in a very evolutionary way. For me, this gradual entry into countries by way of manageable projects, or joint projects with partners who come from that particular country, is really important for technical reasons of risk management. A project lasts for between three and seven years. In addition, during that time one gains experience. Therefore, in the first two or three years, the volume develops in a very restrained way, but after the fourth or fifth year it makes an upturn. That can be seen very clearly at the present time in Romania. We have now been there for four years: at the end of last year, we bought a huge property together with Romanian partners and that will be clearly discernible in the development of our volume from now on. I was recently in Bucharest for four days, because we had a first jury meeting, together with our Romanian partners, to select architects for a 300 million Euro project.

- It is a mixed project, for example 50,000 m² net floor area for an office building, complete with an office tower, and some 100,000 m² net floor area for residential development, i.e. some 1,000 apartments on a site that is in a very good urban development location. If you drive through it now, you feel a bit afraid, because it is an industrial area, but since it lies in the axis between the airport and the city, we are sitting in the middle of an upcoming area. A lot of things will be happening there. We play the role of location developers there. Many things can happen all around it.

- I would not put it in such severe terms. “Dictate” does not reflect our mentality. As Austrians, we get on better in this country than, for example, the German developers, precisely because we do not dictate. Nevertheless, we also notice this in relation to our Romanian partners (ed. note: the Rompetrol Group and the Patriciu family), who are very professional and who brought us there because we have thirty or forty years of experience in the property business. That is experience which has been gained over many years of business, and however good a manager one may be, it is still good to be able to refer back to the experience within one’s own company. That is one of the reasons why professional Romanian partners have chosen us. There was a kind of “beauty contest”, in which we made it onto the shortlist, together with a Spanish company, and in the end we won. With our Romanian partners we are working together with the local authorities. Naturally, they are waiting for our proposals. In Bucharest there is not really a master plan – something which is taken for granted in Austria. In Vienna, one can orient oneself very well according development plans, to zoning and use regulations, to spatial and regional planning. In those countries that have changed so radically in the last fifteen years, many of these things do not exist.

- It varies. If we are alone, then we look for the designers ourselves. Then there is a group of proposals from which a shortlist is chosen. Depending on the size of the project, the most reasonable solution in my opinion is to invite between five and ten architects’ offices for briefings and workshops and to discuss the idea with them. On this basis, the architects then elaborate their proposals, which are then judged by the jury. To take Bucharest as an example, I can say that the leading light of our partners is himself a trained architect and has a good feeling for architecture: so in this case, we proposed four architects and our partners did the same. In fact, our Romanian partners decided not to propose any Romanian architects’ offices, because they did not want to lay themselves open to the accusation of favouring one or two Romanian architects. It was therefore a diplomatic decision because they did not want to spoil relations with the others and so it was a very international group: two Spaniards, one American, a British office, a French one, two Austrians.
If one compares this procedure with the openly advertised competitions that we had, for example, for the ERSTE Campus in Vienna, the result is practically the same as when one chooses from 300 applications, of which only a small percentage proceeds to the next round. In all probability, of the eight architects’ offices that you end up discussing, you would have invited seven of them anyway.

- I also look at this question that from an economic point of view and I can’t find any justification for making people work when one has a pretty good idea that they won’t make the grade anyway, because their office is too small. From the side of the Chamber of Architects, one could of course argue that it provides more chance of getting a variety of different ideas, but that becomes an almost philosophical discussion.

- In the case of this project, our Romanian partners tended more towards the stars and so brought into the equation names such as Norman Foster or Estudio Lamela and Rafael de La-Hoz from Spain. Our proposals included, for example, Behnisch Architects from Stuttgart, Neumann and Partner, as well as Baumschlager & Eberle from Austria We discussed all the proposals. There were eight in all, and three of them Foster, de La-Hoz and Neumann have gone through to the next round, which will be decided in mid-October.

- The composition of the jury was also very international, including of course people from Immorent, our partner Dinu Patriciu, Dan Hanganu, an architect from Romania who runs a successful office in Canada, and S˛tefan Scafa-Udris˛te, the dean of the Faculty of Architecture in Bucharest, while the chairman of the jury was George Iacobescu, the CEO of Canary Wharf. A very interesting discussion developed, in which it became evident that people’s approaches varied in accordance with the different cultures and professions that they came from. It really was fun. It is extremely important for us that coherent stories are told. One has to consider one’s partners, as well as the local authorities. It is no good for the project if we are always saying that we are right.
It is important to include everyone and to listen to a range of arguments. That is also why I sometimes have problems with the way the Chamber of Architects proposes the composition of juries, namely that the majority of them should be architects. It is of course good to hear the advice of architects, but in the final analysis the choice should be left up to those people who will later have to live with it. Why do architects have to dominate the jury? That is certainly an interesting topic for discussion.
Of course, it is not only a matter of architecture alone. Whether a building works, or even whether its future users will accept it, is a question that is all too rarely considered in jury discussions involving architects. We have to address that question even if we are then seen as the bad boys because of our low-brow ideas. I myself am also an architecture enthusiast and of course it is important for me. We have a well-established interest to make the right choice, because we are working with values and I would not like to hear that a real estate fund which has bought a building from us could not sell it after ten years because the building is no longer suitable.

- We do tell our partners that it is a matter of their office building, of their identity. I regard the clients in the jury as being in the driving seat and see myself as the advisor. That means that we would definitely intervene if we found that a partner was moving in the wrong direction. We do the same in the leasing business, where we develop all-round packages for clients who need, for example, a factory hall with adjoining offices. There we might very easily say that it would be important to take into consideration the image of the location, for instance, and in such cases our advice is usually well received. We allow a certain sense of mission and at any rate feel that we do have cultural obligations. That is how wide-ranging our thinking is, and our hope is that, as often as possible, we find ourselves on the right road and that what comes out at the end is what had been hoped for.