What is the secret sauce?
Christian Giordano is the president and co-owner of the New York design firm Mancini Duffy, and the host of the popular podcast - The Anti-Architect. We hosted Christian Giordano right here on Imagine a Place in June of 2021. We brought Christian back on the show because after our first interview with him, we felt like he had a “secret sauce” at his firm… and we wanted to figure out what it was.
It will be up to you to decide what that “secret sauce” really is - but if we had to break it down, it’s these three things:
- Thankfulness
- Vision
- A critical eye for your own profession
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Design leadership
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Developing a strong workplace culture
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Building a career in design
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Architecture and design trends
Watch the conversation with Doug Shapiro and Christian Giordano:
More about Christian Giordano of Mancini Duffy:
Christian Giordano is the most innovative person in the architecture field today. A visionary who is radically changing the industry through tech-first innovation, he has been highlighted as one of Building Design + Construction’s “40 Under 40” Class of 2013.
To redefine Mancini as a top design firm, Christian has sparked industry-wide change drawing inspiration from some of the tech-forward companies Mancini works with—like Google, Peloton, Disney, and Soho House —focusing on technology that can propel the world of design forward. Christian saw a unique opportunity to recalibrate Mancini’s approach — emphasizing technology to transform the way designers across disciplines work.
He also launched a research & development incubator – dubbed the Design Lab – which brings together designers, technologists, and clients to leverage technologies like Virtual Reality, 3D Printing, Drones, Generative Design, and Artificial Intelligence to break barriers limiting design capabilities. What began as an internal incubator, it has quickly grown to disrupt the way the design process is facilitated.
Christian resides in Monmouth County, New Jersey with his family. He owns over 500 bootleg CDs of Bruce Springsteen concerts and is a skilled extreme cake decorator. He is also the host of The Anti-Architect Podcast.
