Education.
Good institutions are designed. Bad ones just happen.
The systems that shape how people learn — teachers, schools, the institutions behind them — are some of the hardest to change and some of the most consequential to get right. The gravitational pull toward the familiar is constant and structural. Most reform efforts end up reinforcing the thing they were meant to replace.
Malpaux has worked on education at the institutional level, contributing to the kind of foundational thinking that determines what gets built before the architects, the procurement processes, and the committee structures arrive to make the decision permanent.
BLiQ:
Berlin's new teacher training institute
The State of Berlin commissioned BLiQ, a Berlin State Institute for Qualification and Quality Development in schools, as a ground-up rethinking of how thousands of current and future teachers learn, collaborate, and develop professionally.
We were brought in by Prof. Dr. Jörg Kayser at the earliest stage of the project, before it had been announced internally, to help shape what it could become. We contributed spatial and digital concept work that established the vision before it hardened into plans: how spaces could be configured for different modes of work, how the layout could support both structured training and informal exchange, and how digital infrastructure could be integrated as a core part of how the institute would function.
Part of the work was helping the project's internal champions communicate what BLiQ could be before most stakeholders had seen anything concrete. In public sector projects, that communication work frequently determines whether ambition survives the planning process.
BLiQ opened on January 29, 2025. A significant portion of the early thinking Malpaux contributed persisted into the final building, most visibly in an open, collaboration-oriented spatial layout that runs counter to the cellular office culture typical of Berlin's senate buildings.
Lessons.
The earliest stage is where influence is strongest and presence is lowest. In large public and institutional projects, the concepts established before formal planning begins have disproportionate staying power. Most operators engage too late, after the structure is already set. Getting in at the vision stage, when almost nothing is decided, grants tangible leverage.
The gravitational pull toward the familiar is constant and structural. The right idea, presented once, rarely survives a public sector planning process. The same idea, reintroduced at each stage, sometimes does. The skill is knowing which ideas matter enough to persist with and how to reintroduce them in a form that a new audience can hold.
Systems thinking applies to institutions, not just products. The work at BLiQ required the same kind of integrated thinking Malpaux brings to product and technology engagements: understanding how spatial design, digital infrastructure, organisational culture, and pedagogical philosophy interact as a system, and intervening at the level where those interactions are being decided.
Public sector work demands a different kind of communication. Ideas that would be self-evident to a founder team or product organisation need to be translated for a committee, a procurement process, and a political sponsor simultaneously. The ability to move between those registers, without diluting the ambition, is a distinct skill.
Vision documents are underrated as strategic tools. The work Malpaux contributed to BLiQ was a concrete, vivid picture of what the institute could become: specific enough to be buildable, ambitious enough to pull the project toward something genuinely new. That kind of artefact travels through organisations in ways that abstract recommendations don't.
We work in education when the problem is real, and the stakes extend beyond the organisation.
If you're trying to build something genuinely new, we're interested in the conversation.