Architect David Campion: ‘My biggest pet peeve? Clients who lack ambition’

When David Campion was a child, his father gave him a present: a pop-up book depicting the New York skyline that allowed its young reader to imagine and design his own skyscraper. If not necessarily formative, it certainly proved to be prescient, given what was to come.

Fast-forward some 40 odd years and Campion, who turns 50 this year, is now the chief executive of international architecture firm Argo Design Studio. The firm has its headquarters in his adopted home, Barbados, but has offices across the Caribbean as well as in Dublin. The large-scale projects it has worked on include the $280 million (€258.9 million) Mandarin Oriental project in the Cayman Islands and the $500 million Apes Hill Golf Resort and Community development in Barbados, generating revenues of €3.3 million in its most recent financial year, he says. Campion has also just cut the ribbon on Argo’s new office on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

On an unseasonably bright and mild Dublin afternoon in February, Campion is describing how a self-described “dosser” from Beaumont in north Dublin built an award-winning design firm with a foot planted on either side of the Atlantic. The backdrop to the conversation is a near-panoramic view of the capital from the top floor of The Irish Times building on Tara Street. Peer out at it for even a few minutes and you can almost see the Dublin skyline changing amid the swarm of cranes that dot the landscape.

This ongoing transformation is a process that, it is fair to say, retains its share of detractors. Not only is the pace of change jarring, for some the aesthetics of the new generation of commercial and apartment buildings popping up around the city are of equal concern. “Bland”, “uninspired” and “generic” are just some of the words used by objectors to the redevelopment plans for St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre in their submissions to Dublin City Council recently.

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Campion does not necessarily agree. “Irish architecture – some of the contemporary buildings that you see going up along the quays and throughout the city – it’s up there with some of the most exciting in the world for its appropriate scale,” he says. “Obviously, we have scale restrictions, which is its own challenge. But I think when it comes to the quality of design, quality of build, the kind of spaces we’re creating, the respect that we give to the historic street frontage, Dublin is certainly up there with regards to the quality.”

[ Irish-owned architect Argo draws up plans to tap €12bn US market ]

Naturally, there have been missed opportunities over the years, says Campion.

“I would have seen, whether it be a Georgian streetscape, that parts of it were allowed to fall to ruin before it was rescued and redeveloped. That’s going back 20, 30 years. We have lost some of that, those historic references.”

But by and large, he says Dublin has done a better job than many other European cities at protecting its built heritage.

What are his biggest pet peeves from a design standpoint?

“I suppose clients that lack ambition,” he says. “When a client wants to fulfil a brief and they want to do it in as budget-friendly a manner as possible and they just want to conform to the norms. Those kinds of clients, those kinds of projects, can be a challenge, because you want to express yourself, you want to give the client a unique response to his brief and you want the client to be able to inhabit a building that he and his team, his staff are inspired by.”

With the emergency phase of the pandemic and employers still finding it difficult to tempt their workers back to the office, this latter point is a particularly important one for business to grasp, says Campion.

“Great architecture inspires people to do a better job, to want to be in a space,” he explains, “to want to share space. It shows their ambition they have for themselves the company growth, the respect they have for their employees: that they care enough to deliver a world-class facility or an office space that’s inspiring.”

In March 2010, I was at a site meeting in Buccament Bay, and the phone rang a couple of times and it was my wife. I suppose when your phone rings more than once, you worry a little bit

Ambition is certainly not something that Campion could be accused of lacking throughout his career. His father ran a construction company and, as youngsters, he and his brother were brought out to work on sites during their summer holidays, an experience he says gave him a profound respect for workmanship and the trades generally.

One particular project stands out. “I remember it like it was yesterday,” he says. “My dad was setting out a house in Dalkey, and he was meeting the architect and the surveyor. I was working on a different site for the summer months but I went back to the site on a Saturday and there was a house. So the connection between watching the architect with my father with the drawings, setting it out and then to come back and see it evolve, that’s when it sort of clicked with me that I wanted to design something.”

The only trouble was that his grades did not necessarily match his ambition. “I was an average student,” says Campion. “A bit of a dosser at times.” Given this reputation, it was no surprise that his classmates “broke out laughing” when, prompted by his English teacher – one Brendan O’Laoire – he set out his hopes of becoming an architect.

“Brendan told me to hang back after class for a chat, so I did,” says Campion. “So he asked me if I was serious about architecture, and I said, ‘Yeah, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’ ” By happy coincidence, O’Laoire told Campion that his brother ran a venerable architecture firm, Murray O’Laoire, in Dublin and offered to try to secure a placement for the budding designer. “So that connected me into getting the feeling of what it was like to be a professional in an office,” says Campion. “After a couple of days of that, I was hooked.”

I knew the project had to be delivered, and if Murray O’Laoire weren’t going to be around to deliver it, I would offer my services and freelance

Qualifications would follow, first from the Limerick Institute of Technology, and then Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ultimately, he ended up working at Murray O’Laoire for almost a decade, which is what brought him; his wife, Edel; and their three children to Barbados in the first instance.

“The project we went over to service at the time was called Buccament Bay,” says Campion. “It was on the island of St Vincent, and Murray O’Laoire had designed a waterfront village and one of the hotel blocks and so I ended up there in January 2010.”

But their plan to “stay for a year and see how it goes”, as he puts it, was soon turned on its head. “After three months – of course things had started to take a turn in 2009 – Murray O’Laoire and other firms started to struggle,” says Campion. “It was only a couple of months later, March 2010, I was at a site meeting in Buccament Bay, and the phone rang a couple of times and it was my wife. I suppose when your phone rings more than once, you worry a little bit. So I excused myself and stepped outside the meeting and Edel said: ‘My friend just called me to say it was announced on the one o’clock news that Murray O’Laoire had gone into liquidation.’”

Campion reassured his wife that he had a plan B and, traumatic though the loss of his job was, he set about executing it. “I knew the project had to be delivered,” he says, “and if Murray O’Laoire weren’t going to be around to deliver it, I would offer my services and freelance.” This he did for about 18 months while contemplating his next move.

While we were growing Argo, we moved from rental to rental. And when things were good, we could afford to move closer to the sea, and when things were bad, we moved further away

“We reached a crossroads after that and things had started to bounce back,” he says. Other opportunities came up, including an offer to work elsewhere in the Caribbean and also in Malaysia. But with his wife and children beginning to settle into their new island lives, the temptation to stay in Barbados and give it a proper go was too strong.

Plus there was the Caribbean lifestyle to consider. “While we were growing Argo,” says Campion, laughing, “we moved from rental to rental. And when things were good, we could afford to move closer to the sea, and when things were bad, we moved further away.” After being “homeless in the Caribbean” for 12 years, the family finally bought their own home there last year. “Yes, it has a swimming pool,” he says. “It’s overlooking the ocean so it has a beautiful terrace and that’s my meditation space.”

But it was a talk with his father that really sealed the deal at the time.

“My dad and my mum were over on a holiday in Barbados,” he says. “I sort of knew what I wanted to do but I needed someone to back me, to substantiate my analysis.” Campion’s analysis was that construction was a little behind the curve in the Caribbean. “The idea of introducing digital construction and climate intelligence” – two pillars of Argo’s business to this day – would allow a business to “leapfrog the competition” in quick fashion.

Setting this out for his father, they shared a “poignant moment at a little swim-up bar in a hotel” in Barbados. “He said: ‘Listen, you’ve never failed at anything you’ve really thrown yourself into. So I’ll back you.’ And that was it. The decision was made.”

Not only did Campion get the moral support he needed, his father also provided some seed funding for the business that would become Argo Design Studio. “I said, ‘Here’s my life savings,’ ” says Campion. “He said: ‘You’ll need double that just to get you through the first year as a start-up. So I’ll back you. I’ll loan you the same amount so that you can throw yourself into this and not worry about having sufficient capital.’”

Campion’s analysis proved to be spot on. In the early days, the strategy was to focus on the small but powerful concentration of big multinationals operating in Barbados such as Virgin, Digicel and Canada Life. Although the opportunities were “modest in size”, working with those brands was “a big step for Argo”, establishing its reputation as a serious outfit. “That was a stepping stone that we used to launch Argo,” says Campion. “So you have digital construction, climate intelligence and now you have the big brands on board.”

Determined not to repeat the mistakes of the crash era, Campion’s first hire was an accountant. Since then, the company has scaled up dramatically, employing more than 44 staff across its six different time zones, offering its clients a 16-hour workday split as standard by taking advantage of the time differences.

New York is the latest step in that journey. By Campion’s analysis, there is an annual €12 billion pipeline of investment – €3.8 billion coming from the US into the Caribbean and more than €8 billion from the US to Ireland – just waiting to be tapped. “We wanted to intercept that investment on US soil,” he says. “It’s already starting to work. I just signed this morning our second US clients who are investing in an educational project in the Caribbean.”

New York and the Manhattan skyline continue to inspire Campion all these years later. “Whenever I visit,” he says, “I always treat myself to a visit to Grand Central Station. It does exactly what it’s been designed to do. It facilitates hundreds of thousands of people commuting in and out of New York. But the concourse there is spectacular, and there’s viewing areas on the upper levels where you can just sit and relax and take in the energy of the building.”

That is what continues to excite Campion more than anything. “We’ve been approached by developers, we’ve been approached by other architectural firms, interested in discussions around our plans for the future,” he says. “So, that’s all up for grabs in the future. It’s an exciting opportunity. It’s an exciting conversation to have but it’s never driven me. What drives me is still growing Argo, continuing to deliver award winning architecture, continuing to grow with a talented team and new ventures like the New York office.”

CV

Name David Campion.

Age 49.

Family Married to Edel Cullen. They have four children aged 11-22.

Lives In Christ Church, Barbados.

Hobbies “Golf would be my outlet if I do get four or five hours to tune out and escape.”

Something you might expect “I’ve been accused of having an insatiable appetite for Argo and that I don’t seem to relent.”

Something that might surprise His passion outside of business “was always soccer”. He played underage football at a high level for St Malachy’s FC before going on to earn his first FAI coaching badge.