Interview
Please, introduce yourself and your office…
TOMAS was founded by us – Sofia Ceylan, Katharina Neubauer and Annabelle von Reutern – in 2024. We all met in 2007 while studying in Aachen, where we were in the same studio. Right after our Masters we considered founding a business together. Instead we decided to gather some experience working for various offices. In late 2023 we were all in an in-between-job situation and realized that we had somehow forgotten about original idea. The question was, what do we actually want to do? Generally speaking, architecture offices are service providers for investors. This was a strong motivation for us to determine which role we want to take on in that process and how our work can be defined. It took only a minute to agree on the idea of being a socially responsible project developer. We wanted to transform the idea of who invests in real estate and how it is done.
What problem do you want to solve with your company?
If 80 percent of the world’s land is owned by men, then they also decide what happens to it. The construction industry is responsible for 40 percent of energy consumption worldwide, 50 percent of waste generation and 60 percent of resource consumption.
We want to address this unacceptable situation by taking on responsibility. We call this the new TOMAS cycle: invest, transform and activate. We identify underrated, empty buildings and draw up new concepts for their use that were perhaps previously considered unusual. In other words, we operate as project developers but also work to preserve or maintain real estate. Additionally, because we like sharing our expertise, we also offer the transformation process for underrated buildings and circular construction as a service for others. We want to make it easier to invest in real estate by using crowd-investing as the method of choice. In the long term, we would like to set up a female-focused fund in which we place properties that have been (mainly) financed by women and accommodate uses that are “female-focused”.
What are your experiences founding your own office and being self-employed? Why did you decide working as a group together?
We wanted more independence and now we are figuring out how we can finance ourselves and create a viable business. It's a rollercoaster ride of emotions. There are so many different things happening every day, the weeks are full and the learning curve is steep. The best thing really is the opportunity to build a company that fits us and our values. It is incredibly uplifting to see how something is created and grows out of nothing through our actions.
One of the best experiences was certainly the recognition we received for our competition entry in Celle. It was about the transformation of an empty Karstadt department store, which we conceptualised into a data center.
We are also overwhelmed by the positive and supportive response to our idea of socially responsible project development. There is already a community of people who want to be part of this journey. That makes us very happy.
How do you remember your time as an architectural employee/worker? (What changed when you transitioned from employee to employer?
Some of us had worked within fairly rigid structures, something which in Katharina’s case was interrupted by her taking parental leave. She had a six-month-old child and was sure she didn’t want to return to those male-dominated office structures again. Our motivation was to increase our self-efficacy. As an employee, you have your fixed area in which you are allowed to move and create. If you move outside this area, it is often not rewarded or others receive praise for your work instead. Additionally, it is easier to work according to your values independently and to prioritize sustainability.
Please describe the working culture and working conditions in your office?
We very quickly worked out in workshops and coaching sessions how we wanted to work together and what our core values were that we were committed to. We also contractually regulated our collaboration. Even though we are friends first and foremost, it's a different thing to set up an office together. We divided up roles according to skills and inclinations. In addition to the content-related work, we also spent a lot of time on the internal organizational structure in this first year. We currently have the support of a student employee. We definitely want to increase the team size.
What does your desk/working space/office look like at the moment?
We have had a small office at Mollstraße 1 in Berlin, in the former ADN (Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst) building. The high-rise building stood empty for a few weeks and is now being used temporarily by the Projekt Interim. That suited TOMAS very well. However, as Katharina lives in Switzerland, we have also created a digital space where we can exchange ideas. Annabelle wrote an article about our office area for G+L magazine and Sofia contributed a column about the interim use of the building for the online magazine bricks dont lie.
Image Credits: © TOMAS © Magdalena Gruber
Publication Date: 06/2025
Website: materialandspace.de
Instagram: @tomas.materialandspace
LinkedIn: @tomas-transformation-of-material-and-space