Gustavo van Staveren joins Benoy as Design Director of Newark studio
The appointment supports the studio’s expanding portfolio in India.
Benoy has welcomed Gustavo van Staveren as a Design Director in its Newark Studio. He joins with experience across China, the Netherlands and Middle East.
“Gustavo joins at a point when the studio is growing fast with clients who expect commercial rigour alongside design ambition,” said Tom Cartledge, Chief Executive. “He has spent his career on complex mixed-use projects across China, the Netherlands and the Middle East, and he understands that a scheme has to stand up as a business case as well as a piece of architecture. That is what our clients come to us for.”
Raised in Colombia with a painter mother and structural engineer father, van Staveren was brought up with both an artistic and logical understanding of the world around him. Passionate about architecture from a young age, he found it the natural pathway for synthesising these complementary ways of thinking.
During his studies, he became enamoured by human-centred design and to Giancarlo de Carlo’s agreement that “architecture has become too important to be left to architects”. He balances the varied responsibilities of the profession with a commitment to synthesising cultural, economic and social benefits through the built form.
Speaking about the profession, he says “it’s not only about dreaming, it’s also about building, and making buildings that are commercially viable. That doesn’t mean being less visionary, but being humble to the culture you’re designing in, humble to the architecture in terms of structural integrity, and humble to the client, their business case and what their ambitions are.”
Having worked at global practices UNStudio, MVRDV and MAD, he brings both practical design experience and commercial logic to his role.
“What drew me to Benoy is that it’s all about placemaking and understanding the culture that you’re designing in, then using that to create something forward-thinking and community-making,” he says.
He specialises in hyper-complex buildings and spaces, and his commercial clarity and design ambition meet Benoy’s own belief that the built environment should have longevity and adaptability, allowing cultures to shift how they use spaces over time.
“Whatever architecture we do, the human components and human experiences are key,” he says. “Instead of looking at buildings as these large intonations of power or representative of a culture, it’s really about the multiplicity of spaces that accumulate into a larger system. That’s the icon.”
