Success Redefined - An Interview with Cristina Lanz Azcarate

Cristina Lanz Azcarate is a RIBA Chartered Member and the Director of atelier EURA, a design studio specialised in architecture that she co-founded in 2012. Cristina believes in the power that strategic design can bring to the built environment in order to create a positive impact on individuals, communities and businesses.

When you were a child, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be Prime Minister of Spain because I felt that they should have enough power to be able to make a difference in the world. Then at 14, and as a direct consequence of the political climate of the region, I decided that architecture would be my path and that shaping of the built environment was the way in which I would contribute positively to the lives of others and to the world.

Did you have an idea, growing up, of what the word success meant?

This is a tricky question and maybe I can start by explaining, for context, that the idea of individual success is a very Anglo-Saxon one and very particular to this culture. It is not so rooted in many other cultures, including many European ones where collective success has historically been prioritised above individual one. In fact, when I was growing up, those prioritising their individual achievement above all were seen as selfish. 

As a child I was always reminded that there will always be someone more skilled (and someone less skilled) than me at any one area of expertise and that since learning never stops, it is better to seek environments that challenge me and encourage me to grow rather than environments to shine. My father used to sum it up by saying that it is better to be the tail of the lion rather than the head of a mouse. 

At the same time, I grew up in a highly politically charged and conflictive part of the world and I come from a very socially conscious family where I was discouraged from taking anything for granted. And hence, unsurprisingly, the kind of people that inspired me were the likes of Mandela, Doctor King and Gandhi whose work aimed at creating better opportunities for their communities. To me, having that kind of impact felt like success.

Have your views on success changed over the years?

My views have not changed, I still think of impact as my top priority. I have always been very aware that we are on this earth only for a minute, and I want to make it count.

This said, I also choose to think of my personal and professional growth as a journey where there is always room to develop and because of this, I’ve always felt at an early stage of a long journey.  I hope I never feel otherwise because I enjoy learning and growing as a person, and I feel I would miss out in life should I ever feel I made it. Instead, I think that when you feel like you have learned as much as you can somewhere, it’s time to move elsewhere, to the next room, and learn more.

Although, to me, this is a healthy way of looking at things, I appreciate that because of the way the world around us works, and the standards of success that others have forced upon the collective “us”, it can sound like hard work. Nevertheless, if you are mindful that there is always something else you can learn to better yourself, you will neutralise the external pressure that comes from feeling that you are meant to have “achieved” something or that you should have all the answers in order to move forward.

Have you got a proudest moment that you've had in your life?

I do but I will keep the details to myself. I do feel we live in a clout chasing world where people who do something that has a positive impact, automatically share it on social media and in doing so the intent of it becomes questionable.

What’s been your biggest challenge as you try to create an impact in the world?

When I decided to become an architect, I knew I wanted to support my clients through my work and yet the more I was progressing my career, in the corporate sense, the further I was from working with the people who would live in the buildings we were shaping.

Furthermore, although having my own studio was something I had planned from the start, working in a corporate environment gave me the opportunity to have urban scale impact and was much easier than running a business. Even despite office politics and working as many hours as I did, the clients and projects were brought to me, the admin was handled by others, the scopes and fees were negotiated by others, the office was prepared, cleaned, and equipped for me… it was comfortable.

This is why the biggest challenge for me was to find the time to ask myself whether the impact I was having was the kind of impact I wanted to have. As soon as I did, I readjusted, moved on with my career and never had to worry about the career ladder anymore.

Do you think there are different challenges facing women in your industry versus men?

I've been thinking about this question a lot. I think that possibly the biggest challenge for all women is that we are treated as a single Archetype. When people think about women, they think about a certain type of woman. Generally speaking, someone who will want to have a profession and a family, who more often than not is white and doesn't have a disability for example. And hence when companies think about the challenges facing women in the workplace, they focus on “her “and they provide solutions that don’t meet the requirements of the 51% of the population.

And so what I think would make a bigger difference is if women were seen as individuals who have their own unique layers that they may or may not require support with. Once we think about women as equally diverse members of the workforce, not a minoritized section of it, companies will be able to learn from the differences and create policies that can be of help to the entire workforce.

Broadening the concepts and incorporating them into the bigger picture, instead of telling women what they should be like, they should think like and they should look like, would help us have more intelligent conversations rather than the historically tokenistic ones or the bigoted ones that we have been hearing lately.

As a business owner, what do you find is the biggest challenge balancing your work with the rest of your life?

I am an architect, and a business owner, I work from home, and I am married to my business partner, so there is no “live and work” balancing here! Furthermore, when you are an architect working with domestic clients who look at their drawings in your days off or out of hours, there is disruption.

I also think that the balance looks different at different stages of your life and career and as humans we need to adapt and find what works because we don't always need the same things, nobody does. When you are an employee at the start of your career, you will move in a different framework and will have different needs and expectations than when you become more experienced or become a parent or have a career break or retire.

For me, and this is (again) personal, balance means finding time to do things that interest me and enjoying time with people who matter to me but also making time to invest in the community that hosts me. I am not British and will forever be a foreigner, but even so, I think that it is important to make time to invest in your community and build some roots to see you through the difficult times.

How does well-being play a part in in your life?

To do what I need to do and have the impact I want to have with my work and enjoy it, I need my own kind of balance. This sometimes means going silent for days to concentrate or consider a proposal.

I know this may be something people find difficult to understand as we are living in a world that demands from us that we always have an opinion we should share. However, I find that because often people bombard me with requests without giving a thought to the impact those may have on my schedule or even whether I am interested in following through, this is the best way to handle the overload. A pause.

While I was studying architecture, which in Spain has a big engineering component, and to help me manage the pressure, my mum sent me to a 10-week meditation training where I learned to stop my thoughts taking over. This has been a very valuable skill, especially when I need to concentrate.

I don’t need to sleep as much as most but need activity built into my everyday and since I don't own a car, I cycle everywhere, which is really good to clear my head.

And of course, as any Basque person, cooking is part of my culture, and although my husband does the cooking these days, we are not people who rely on processed food, we don’t even own a microwave, and cooking allows us to think what we put in our bodies and this is a privilege.

Who has helped or influenced you most in your career?

I am not one to idolise people because they are human (like me) and have flaws (like I do). So rather than the individual people, I take an interest in the contributions people make to the world, the projects they build or ideas they explore. There are many that inspire me daily.

Regarding the help I have received along the way, I have had many people who have helped me. Too many to mention. I think everyone comes to your life to teach you something about a topic or about yourself. I have been helped as much by my mentors, sponsors or my parents, as I have been helped by the highly problematic individuals who I have come across throughout life. They taught me things about myself, about my priorities, my limits, and importantly, about the boundaries that I am not prepared to cross.

If you could give your 15 year old self some advice, what would it be?

If she was living at the time I lived, I would say “don't take life so seriously” and “don't feel pressurised to think that you have to pursue one goal and develop one expertise”, because that's nonsense. The wider range of subjects you are interested in, the more you will enjoy life and the more flexibility you will have to adapt to an ever-changing world.

If you had to share a secret to “success” what would it be?

I would say that to stay motivated in this journey I was talking about, one needs to embrace the good and the bad. Learn from the bad and enjoy the good because neither last but choosing to learn, even from negative experiences and challenges, allows you to develop critical thinking and to come up with ideas and solutions that can be replicated and bring value also to future projects. And this will have an impact on an even wider group of people. This continuous growth, we should not underestimate.

Also the collective approach is very underrated and often overshadowed by the individual one. And yet when people come together it's amazing what they can achieve and given that our responsibility for the future is shared anyway, coming together to find a way forward makes sense.

If you’d like to find out more about Cristina’s work please visit her website at Design with Atelier EURA | London or connect with her on LinkedIn.