Genuine Connections: Daria Pahhota on her Roles in Communications and Her Advice to Architects

By Julia Gamolina

Daria Pahhota is SOM’s new Global Communications Leader, charged with telling SOM’s story, which spans decades and includes some of the most exciting and unexpected buildings, master plans, structural systems, and spaces at all scales and types in cities around the world. Before SOM, Daria served as Chief Communications Officer for the global architecture practice Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). In her interview with Julia, Daria talks about the life experiences and developed principles that guide her work in communications, advising architects to read the news and those just starting their careers to form meaningful and genuine relationships.

JG: First, tell me about your background - I know you didn’t get into architecture right away.

DP: I was born at the brink of the Soviet Union collapse. Very early in my life, I witnessed a lot of conflict - the deterioration of social ideas, the economic decline, but also the very sudden feeling of openness, excitement, and opportunity. One of the major life-shapers for me has been moving around a lot – from St.Petersburg, Russia, where I was born, to Estonia, Denmark, Mexico and now the U.S.

Moving around early in life and not really feeling like I belong to any specific context has definitely shaped me in many ways, certainly from a communications point of view. I’ve had to constantly adapt and listen to my gut, and this has served me well. This would be a whole other article, but I was actually stateless for the first half of my life! It wasn’t until I moved to Denmark, and lived there for five years, that I got a passport and a citizenship.

Wow.

Yes! I’ve been thinking a lot about how it may have affected me and basically - things that were easy for most other people were quite difficult for me, and I think that made me tougher.

How did you make your way to architecture, and to working at BIG?

I thought I had enrolled into a journalism and business masters program, but realized pretty much on my first day that I had signed up for five years of social theory - I was reading Foucault, Luhmann, Bourdieu, Habermas. It was all very theoretical, which was crazy, because anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m a very pragmatic person [laughs]. Staying interested was hugely challenging for me, and I was definitely on the path to giving up many times – but I always finish what I start so to get through school, I decided to get a job that would allow me to apply some of this theory in real life!

I remembered a photo of two young guys sitting with their legs up on a messy table, in a Danish newspaper - this photo is burned into my memory forever! Somehow, I tracked it down, realized they were architects and called up a friend who knew many people in the city. He confirmed that they were very creative, architectural badasses, that they had just split up, and I should consider reaching out to Bjarke whom he thought I’d jive with. My boyfriend at the time, an incredible serial entrepreneur said to me, “You should walk up there, kick the door in, and say you are there to work.” That’s basically what I did [laughs] and that turned into eleven years of working for BIG.

Daria lecturing at the Argentina Biennale

Bjarke Ingels and Daria at the Time 100 Gala.

What a start. Walk me through your time there.

I joined the firm while they were going through a little bit of a chaotic time, with some financial difficulties. When I joined, Bjarke had built this entirely new, brilliant team, which included BIG’s now CEO Sheela, whom you interviewed last year, and Kai-Uwe who is still leading their Business Development, and a lot of other very cool people. I rolled up my sleeves, and did everything I possibly could, to help wherever I could, from very rudimentary tasks like creating a new library system, to more strategic efforts related to business development. One of my advantages was - and still is - that I never felt “too good” for anything. I did everything. I would scrub the floors before a client visit, if needed!

The three or four years right after I joined turned out to be seismic for the firm, and a lot changed in that time. I was probably clocking 70-80-hours a week at the job, and still finding time to focus on my studies. Working this way was really un-Danish [laughs], and kind of American. During those years, arriving at communications was also a pretty straightforward process for me – I felt incredibly connected to our buildings, understood the long and painful process through which a building materializes and the impact and longevity of our work. The way we’d talk about buildings and have others – media, clients, general public - talk about them, wasn’t a PR exercise. The way we talked about it would define that building from the moment the concept was unveiled and throughout its existence!

You took a year, in those eleven years, to work for Fernando Romero in Mexico. Why?

I thought Fernando’s Soumaya Museum was a very ballsy piece of architecture. We started talking casually and I decided to join him because it was a really interesting moment for his firm, and a really interesting moment for Mexico. The silver lining in my life is moving to places when something interesting is going on [laughs]. So I moved to Mexico and was there for about a year.

But then a year later, you came back to BIG! Why did you come back?

Very simple - I missed BIG, and BIG missed me [laughs]. At that point in time, they were like family, and still are. Whenever you work for a start-up, which BIG felt like when I joined them, you work alongside each other day and night, eat together, work together, party together, go on trips together - everything. I missed that.

“Moving around early in life and not really feeling like I belong to any specific context has definitely shaped me in many ways, certainly from a communications point of view. I’ve had to constantly adapt and listen to my gut, and this has served me well.”

You clearly made a mark at BIG. Tell me about that.

I often get asked what my communications strategy was, since BIG accomplished so much in such a short amount of time. My answer to that is, we always had a really strong sense of where we wanted to go, and from a communications standpoint - I was the person to figure out how we got there. We were quite strategic in the sense that we figured out a number of principles that really mattered to us and guided our work in communications. The principles were very simple but very effective - one of them was that we didn’t want to just talk about something, we wanted to show it. And we didn’t want to show something until we had all the elements to share the story. We wanted to contribute to positive discourse, we wanted to speak to an audience outside of architecture, and all of these principles was something I was very much part of defining. This approach wouldn’t work for all firms but was perfect for BIG and its hypergrowth moment at the time!

Finally, BIG was early to adopt social media, video, and other tools into their communications strategy. I don’t really remember many firms doing that back in 2008. I also believe that this being done by a non-architect differentiated us. Architecture has a tendency to be very insular, and the fact that a non-architect was talking about buildings must have made a difference.

Oh, one-hundred percent! Your clients are not other architects. Having said this, what can architects do better with their communications? What have you noticed and what do you advise?

This seems banal, but one thing I can’t stress enough to architects is this: you have to read the news to know what’s going on so that you’re able to place and understand your work in a larger context. That’s the most important thing. That’s how you make your work relevant to a specific moment or situation in time. I’ve even met PR professionals who are so focused on the buildings they are promoting that they don’t really read the news which is a big no-no. PR ultimately is the marriage of the story you have to share and what is happening in the zeitgeist. You can’t separate the two.

Another no-no is thinking that you can control the media, which you can’t – and I say this not because most publications as a rule don’t send articles for editing or approval – but as a mindset. You should focus on what’s in your zone of control - make the right type of information and materials available, prioritize what is important to share, do your best to communicate clearly and always be nice and available. You can also control the timing unless it’s a major public project which gives you an opportunity to truly put together the best materials – but you can’t control or expect a certain outcome.

And finally, I’ve often witnessed a situation where an architect standing in front of a journalist immediately goes into pitching mode. I’m sure you experience this all the time, getting pitches for Madame Architect…

Daria on duty in Mexico during the royal visit while working with Fernando Romero.

BIG press team with photographer Iwan Baan.

All the time.

My other advice would be to think of an interaction with a journalist as a dinner party conversation! Would you get bored if you sat next to someone at dinner if they just talked about their work? Probably, so don’t just talk about yourself and your work. Make sure it’s a genuine conversation. Make it interesting and fun!

My third piece of advice would be that anytime you step into an interview, think about what you want the headline of the article to be. That is a great guiding light for any conversation.

An important realization from my time working with Bjarke was his completely unique ability to build consensus, which is absolutely key to getting anything done in architecture. I was always fascinated by this talent that he just seemed to have, where he says things in a certain way and everyone can’t help but agreeing [laughs]. I realized over the years though that it’s much more than a natural talent, and he has worked hard to train that skill, by asking the right questions, listening, and voicing his thoughts in a really conscious way. The fact that he was very young when he built his team and his company, and was forced to articulate from a very early age what he wanted to do and why to ensure a common vision, made him an even stronger communicator. So make sure to practice clarity in your words and change them if they don’t seem to click or resonate with your audiences! Every building is a mini-miracle, because creating consensus among a group of often-disparate stakeholders is not easy.

After eleven years with BIG, you are now at SOM. Tell me about your transition.

I heard about SOM when I was still new to architecture back in 2009. My close friend, John Patrick, who leads the architecture talent agency ABOVE THE FOLD, has this incredible sixth sense when it comes to architecture and design micro and macro trends, and he spoke highly of SOM, their rigor and detailing. Ever since then, I’ve always thought of SOM as the closest thing to a legacy brand in architecture. There are many consumer legacy brands out there, like Rolex or Hermes, but oddly not many in our field.

I thought SOM was a really fresh, relevant and global brand with projects from Bangalore to Buenos Aires, and most interestingly led by a group of super talented individuals who share a worldview and design sensibilities, as opposed to one individual calling the shots. The biggest thing for me though, is how SOM is able to combine creativity, craft and commerce - that’s really impressive!

On a more personal level, going back to what I was saying about BIG feeling like a family and articulating ideas…I suspect that because I had developed a lot of trust and strong relationships at BIG with leadership early on, I never really had to articulate or convince anyone about my ideas, and this is a skill that I wanted to develop more. At SOM, a lot of leadership and decision making is done by groups of partners – who collectively lead communications, talent development, business and operation, so I knew I’d have to communicate my ideas, and my experience. Coming to SOM, and learning how to work in a very different environment, felt like a really natural step for me.

“...one thing I can’t stress enough to architects is this: you have to read the news to know what’s going on so that you’re able to place and understand your work in a larger context. That’s the most important thing.”

Given all of this, where would you say you’re in your career today?

I’ve worked really hard to get to where I am, and I’m trying to enjoy my first year at SOM which has been unpredictable, exciting and challenging for the whole firm and especially my team – we’ve been managing our internal and external response to COVID-19, and we’ve spent the last two months on understanding, discussing and developing our approach to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion within SOM and the wider architecture industry which has been a very personal project for me.

I feel so fortunate to have the chance to work alongside our leaders as they guide our firm through this defining time…we’ve been around for 85 years and many of my colleagues have been with the firm for decades! I don’t know many PR people who can say they’re working alongside leaders and colleagues who’ve navigated a company through major historic events, recessions, through man-made and natural disasters - I’m learning so much. This is humbling and I do my best to support with my expertise and perspective – and make sure that in everything that the communications team does, we remain clear about our essence and mission.

What would you say have been some of the biggest challenges for you?

I feel like my challenges are similar to those of my colleagues and peers. I want to listen to my gut and intuition more, I want to be more creative, I want my team to feel good, I want to spend more time away from my screen, meet people more in person during non-COVID times, and do things that really matter long term. The challenge is always how to free up more time from the must-dos to the nice-to-dos.

Me too. Who are you admiring right now?

I’m deeply fascinated by people who create and make tangible things. Pentagram’s Paula Scher comes to mind - so funny that you just interviewed her - and all the architects and designers who work so hard and get too little credit. I love Stanley Kubrick and my own boyfriend’s films, visual artists who transcend boundaries like Olafur Elliason, and anyone else who makes things, rather than talks about them [laughs].

Daria, leading by example on her advice to read the news

SOM’s Global Leaders in Finance, People, and Communications - from left to right, Candace Carroll, Doryse Franco, and Daria Pahhot.

With that in mind, I want to ask this because I’d like to hear your response - people have said to me, “BIG is not an architecture firm, BIG is a marketing firm that does architecture.” What do you say to that?

I say that this couldn’t be further from the truth. I’d say that I witnessed firsthand all of the hard work that goes into their projects and their research work.

I recently had a conversation with someone who said, “I came up with an idea for a project in New York, and not much came from it. And here comes BIG, they do a similar idea, and walk away with all the attention.” To which I said, “Let me ask you this - did your company spend three months developing the design pro-bono and testing variations of it to make sure it was the right idea? Did you spend resources on ten different renderings? Did you spend time and money on creating a video and building a website to communicate the vision to a broader audience? Did you stand up in front of a thousand community members to explain the design and adapt it according to their feedback? Did your company proactively butt your way into meetings with city officials?”

The answer was “No” every time! But this is how you get the attention and buzz going - you consider all of these different aspects and activate your stakeholders and focus on the interests and desires of everyone – not on just pretty renderings and a press release. And of course, spend time to collect and illustrate real tangible data and ideas to help you communicate efficiently. So you tell me, is that a marketing exercise? I don’t think so, I think this is a really deep, thoughtful, and dedicated effort to make a case for why your design proposal is the right way to go. I get this question all the time Julia, and I just know the effort, and dedication, research, and passion that goes into this work… to get “all the attention.”

“...this is how you get the attention and buzz going - you consider all of these different aspects and activate your stakeholders and focus on the interests and desires of everyone – not on just pretty renderings and a press release.”

That’s a great answer. Final question - what is your advice to those just starting their careers?

Again - read the news!!! Read the news and know what’s happening around you. Many times, there are news out there about the economy or a major event in our industry and I talk to architects who are business owners, and they haven’t even heard about it! You need to read the news to know what’s going on in the world and place your project in a larger context.

The other thing that has always irritated me and that I feel very strongly about is the idea of “networking.” You should always network genuinely, meaning that yes, you should always have an idea of who you’re talking to and why, but don’t force the conversation!

I can’t tell you how much I agree. Like any relationship, be it a friendship or a romantic one, you have to have a genuine connection!

Yes! I cringe when I hear people go, “I’m going to an event and so-and-so will be there and I’ll be networking.” Like, what does that even mean? What will come of that? You’ll go to some event, pick up some business cards, and likely not have much real come out of it. I would rather go to an event and make one meaningful relationship that lasts.

Another advice I would give, and I don’t know if it’s an American thing or what, but I meet all these amazing people, with degrees from some of the world’s best institutions, working at some of the world-class architecture firms that are so hard to get into, and they are always talking about and anxious about their next move. And sometimes, it’s good to just stop and say, “Wow, I’ve worked hard and I’ve done a great job.” So many kids starting their careers are so worried about their next move, and their move after that, and I just want to say - relax!

Oftentimes it is when you relax, and appreciate where you are, that new and better things come into your life.

Exactly.