"Why is our architecture not as diverse as our culture is progressive?" That's the question Toronto-based architect Alexander Josephson keeps asking. On this episode, he doesn't pull punches.

Alex is the co-founder and creative director of PARTISANS, the studio behind the Grotto Sauna, the masterplan to resurrect Toronto's gargantuan Hearn power plant into a cultural district, and The Orbit, a radial reinvention of the Garden City for a transit-oriented future. He's also founder and CEO of Cumulus, an immersive digital memorialisation platform born from his father's brush with death during COVID. Across two decades, Alex has staked out a position that's part critique, part call to arms: that the condo towers crashing into Toronto's skyline are "spreadsheets in the sky", that greenwashed sustainability mandates have made architects pawns of capital, and that buildings should be "thousand-year worthy".

In this conversation we trace Alex's nonlinear journey into architecture (the University of Waterloo, Rome with Massimiliano Fuksas, the AA in London which he dropped out of), the founding of PARTISANS in a Toronto storage locker, his master's thesis redesigning Mecca around a singularity, the Grotto Sauna's pre-fabricated arrival by barge, the disco ball that helped ignite the Hearn's cultural revival, and what it takes to design a "complete community" amid Canada's worst real estate downturn in a century. We also wrestle with AI in design ("it's just a tool, like a pencil"), the case for interfaith architecture as a path to peace, and how personal grief gave rise to Cumulus, his "digital tomb" for the family memories trapped on our devices. A spirited, irreverent and sometimes uncomfortable episode for anyone who builds, designs, or simply lives among buildings.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro, Toronto & Tim Hortons
3:59 "Spreadsheets in the Sky”
9:40 A radical redesign of Mecca
15:01 Interfaith architecture for peace
17:59 Origins of the "Rebel Archtiect”
31:49 PARTISANS - the "Apple" story of Architecture?
37:25 The Grotto Sauna
38:57 Urban Regeneration - The Hearn
50:37 Building on the Garden City - The Orbit
57:15 Receptivity to radical ideas from the client's side
1:01:41 Real issues with 'sustainability' in architecture
1:12:12 Reflecting back on the why of pursuing architecture
1:19:43 The impact of AI in Architecture
1:23:04 The story of Cumulus - digital memorialization
1:43:00 Q&A Start
1:43:22 What does innovation mean to you?
1:44:24 Key event, book, person
1:47:19 Time Management
1:49:55 Favourite childhood memory
1:50:47 Biggest challenge to date
1:53:33 Advice for young professionals
1:55:19 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:57:03 Where can people find you?
1:58:32 Final message
1:58:45 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

Why does profit feel a lot like breathing... necessary to stay alive, but never the actual reason you're here?

In Episode 63, entrepreneur and business expert Jean-Christian Rindoni argues that businesses, like human beings, need profit to live, but their purpose has to be more than just breathing. Recording from his new home on Portugal's Algarve coast, recently ranked among the world's best seaside destinations, Jean-Christian shares the story behind Symbiosis Infinity Group, a consultancy he founded after spending more than two decades doing business in 30+ countries. After a year of looking inwards instead of outwards, he made a career pivot in his late forties to combine his international expertise with somatic breathwork practice and a model he calls Conscious Business Growth.

We unpack his trademarked Symbiosis Infinity Loop, a four-stakeholder framework inspired by symbiotic ecosystems in nature, designed to move companies beyond ESG box-ticking into hands-on circular supply chains. The conversation goes deep on a working case study from Cameroon, where Jean-Christian and his partners are helping cocoa cooperatives turn discarded cocoa husks (roughly 70-75% of the plant's weight) into nutrient sources, sustainable packaging materials, and biofuel feedstock, opening new revenue streams for farmers stuck with unsold beans amid a market crisis.

Beyond the business, we explore the daily practices that keep Jean-Christian grounded: somatic breathwork, box breathing, Stoic philosophy, an unwavering morning routine that begins with making the bed, and the kind of stillness that lets imagination return. He shares why "innovation at source" gives companies a competitive edge no R&D lab can replicate, why scaling a purpose-driven business sometimes means saying no to clients who only want to make money, and why, as he puts it, "your inner world dictates your outer world, not the opposite."

If you're interested in conscious business, the circular economy, breathwork, or finding your calling at any age, this one is worth your full attention.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro, The Algarve & Breathwork
13:38 Jean-Christian's early career
19:56 Symbiosis Inifnity Group
21:59 What is Conscious Business Growth?
23:29 The supply chain of cocoa
33:28 The symbiosis infinity loop concept
40:21 Challenges for circularity and symbiosis
47:17 Learning and walking with the big players
51:57 A precautionary tale about scaling
1:00:16 Upcoming exciting projects for Jean-Christian
1:03:44 Q&A Start
1:04:03 What does innovation mean to you?
1:08:11 Key moment, book, person
1:13:08 Time Management
1:20:32 Favourite childhood memory
1:24:59 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:26:41 Where can people find you?
1:28:30 Final Message
1:29:46 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/

What does a horror-game-loving Italian engineer have to do with cleaning your wastewater? More than you'd think... and the journey starts in a paddy rice field.

In Episode 62 of The Grand Challengers Podcast, host Peter Marcus Bach welcomes Dr Anacleto Rizzo, Partner at IRIDRA Srl in Florence, President of Global Wetland Technology, and one of Europe's most active voices on nature-based solutions (NBS) for the water sector. They begin where two self-confessed geeks should: David Lynch films, Resident Evil vs Silent Hill, and the perils of playing first-person horror games in bed next to a sleeping spouse.

From there, the conversation winds through Anacleto's serendipitous journey into engineering, a randomly chosen civil degree at Politecnico di Torino that ended, unexpectedly, in a PhD on methane emissions from paddy rice fields. He explains why Italy's rice country in Piedmont is a methane hotspot (with a vivid biological analogy you won't forget), and how a single review paper on treatment wetland modelling, read at the right moment, redirected his career toward nature-based wastewater treatment.

Treatment wetlands are the through-line of this episode: a quietly revolutionary technology that's been working for 30+ years, treats up to tens of thousands of population equivalent, and remains chronically misunderstood. We unpack what they actually are, why a few "Wild West" early failures in Italy still haunt the field.

The deeper thread is the academic-practitioner bridge. Treatment wetlands matured because practitioners went out and monitored real, full-scale systems, generating the unglamorous journal papers that lab-scale studies could never produce. He shares why "throwing your heart beyond the fence" (a wonderful Italian idiom for taking calculated risks) is the only way to escape the technological-readiness-level trap.

Recommended for anyone, whether engineer, researcher or nature enthusiast, curious about how nature does the dirty work better than concrete ever did.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:59 Guest Intro, Cult Movies & Horror Games
7:47 Why Civil Engineering?
10:16 A PhD on "rice flatulence”
14:48 Adding treatment wetlands to the mix
19:06 A 101 on Treatment Wetlands
37:17 The terminology discussion and IRIDRA
51:42 IRIDRA's Projects & Global Wetland Technology
56:46 General receptivity of NbS in Italy
1:03:08 Some exciting things Anacleto is embarking on
1:07:15 Q&A Start
1:07:26 What does innovation mean to you?
1:08:30 Key event, book, person
1:09:51 Time Management
1:12:46 Favourite childhood memory
1:13:45 Greatest challenge to date
1:15:25 Advice for young professionals
1:18:03 What would you most like to be remembered for?
1:20:11 Where can people find you?
1:20:58 Final message
1:21:19 Outro

Detailed shownotes over at: petermbach.com/podcast for more in-depth information about each episode.
Join the community over at: linkedin.com/company/tgcpodcast and let's connect across the world!

Subscribe and listen to the podcast (and do please leave a review/rating) on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Your subscription/follow will greatly help the show grow and reach a wider audience.

Hosted by Peter Marcus Bach (www.petermbach.com), follow me on:

• X (fomerly Twitter): @petermbach
• Instagram: @petermbach87
• Subscribe to my channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/PeterMarcusBach/