Another legitimate question.
The answer is no. The other Architypes and I are dead serious.
You might struggle with the way we are doing things, which is… uhm… how do I put it… slightly different from the conventional way of doing things.
But make no mistake: we are absolutely serious about reaching our goal. But what is the goal?
My dearest friend Karl Raats has been telling me for years to stop saying our goal is “to save people and planet.” Not because he disagrees with the intention, but because he says it’s too vague, too woolly. Everybody says that nowadays. According to him, if you really want to change something, you have to dare to become painfully specific.
So let me phrase it a bit more mildly:
Our goal is to help search for solutions to the problems this world is currently going through, while naively continuing to hope that together, we might still stand a chance.
Who’s Karl, YU say? Another good question. He’s one of my best friends and was once my ‘coach’.
Karl and I met in 02016 when, at the age of 39, I suddenly decided it would be a good idea to learn artistic roller skating. Which resulted in us crashing into each other at high speed.
You truly cannot make this stuff up. But the kindness he showed while I was trembling on my legs, pale as a ghost, as if the shock had dragged my entire core straight back into childhood… made us friends for life. I will never forget that moment.
A year later he needed a guinea pig for his ‘coaching’ lessons in London.
“Véronique, are you in?”
Now Véronique always says yes to free offers with an unknown outcome. Because… what could possibly go wrong, right?
Well.
Turns out he wasn’t only coaching me. Without realizing it, he was coaching the other Architypes too. The Inner Critic (aka The Saboteur). Captain Epcot. Little Nikki. Etcetera. All of them.
Poor Karl. He had absolutely no idea what he was dealing with.
He never became a coach after me. He went on to study stand-up comedy instead. I kid YU not.
But to be fair: he was talented. He then became Speaker of the Year 02016 in the Netherlands. (there is this strange thing about Belgium: we often fail to recognize our own talent. Successful Belgians are frequently discovered abroad first. Tragic.)
Anyway, about the coaching : we laughed a lot, but meanwhile we also went through a complete psychological rollercoaster. Questions like:
What actually makes you happy? What do you truly want from life? Why do you not feel worthy enough to stand up for yourself when people show no integrity? What do you really want? That kind of stuff.
Not long after that, I came back with a new name for our office.
Because honestly… who still names an architecture firm after themselves? It always felt egocentric to me. Without a team, we are nothing. Zaha Hadid would never have created those breathtaking projects without Patrick Schumacher standing beside her. Yet the world barely knows his name.
Anyway. I’m drifting again.
Shortly after, I changed our name to YUGENING, because it captured what I wanted to build: something holistic, all-encompassing, deeply respectful, and profoundly human.
Now honesty also forces me to admit that I originally came up with the name YUGEN.
But Karl looked at me and said: “You are not Japanese. You’ve never even been there yourself. And even if you stick chopsticks in your hair, I still won’t believe you.”
And then he added something important: “You cannot just take a word from another culture and claim it as your own. That is not respectful toward the cultural roots of that word.”
And he was right. So I had to do something with it.
But what?
Until one Sunday morning at 3:45 AM, I heard my intuition singing in my head:
YUGENINGENINGENINGENINGENING
“Nooooooooo… stop. I’m not doing that. No way. People are going to laugh at me so hard.”
YUGENINGENINGENINGENINGENINGENING
“No. This is ridiculous. Everybody is going to pronounce it wrong. And only a tiny handful of people will ever be able to spell it correctly.”
And then this inner voice said: First they laugh, then they copy.
Okay. Legit answer. Besides… I liked the whole “verb” thing.
But yes. People laughed. It was excruciating. If you think children can be cruel, try the real estate market. The bullies just wear tailored suits and smile more politely. Anyway, that’s another story.
But about your question, I can tell you this: What we stand for today is not a joke. Absolutely not. However… we are also not going to fight darkness with even more corporate professionalism.
Like I said in the other article: That story is over.
However, finding another way forward has been a real struggle. A real struggle. But we’re finally getting somewhere.
…
…
But honestly? I’m tired, guys.
I’m not even going to pretend otherwise anymore. After 10 years of working on this, I’m exhausted. I know what the next steps will be, I keep seeing the vision. Don’t worry, I won’t give up. (I just don’t have the energy left to deal with our website. So forgive me, I will let YU know when it’s finally finished.)
But what I want to say, is this : Seeing 433 people subscribing to my newsletter in a single day, genuinely hit me emotionally. And I didn’t even need to press the “share” button, YU all find me and not the other way around.
And not just random people either. One by one: next-level human beings.
I honestly thought I was only surrounded by only a handful of wonderful people. And that was it.
But then YU came. So many people. I had no idea. Didn’t see this coming. It gives me back the energy to keep going.
Thank YU.
*****
My name is Veronica.
I am one of Véronique Orens’ alter egos. Or as she prefers to call them: Architypes. These Architypes (with an “i”, because the ArchEtypes already belong to Carl Jung. But don’t ask me how the pronunciation is any different), were created from Architecture. Hence the ‘i’ in Architype.
There are 9 Architypes in total. YU will get to know them one by one. And yes, we know. It’s a lot to take in. An architect with 26 years of experience, once considered a highly respected professional, suddenly showing up with 9 alter egos after two years of isolation…
It does sound slightly insane.
That’s why we call it ; The Crazy Circus. Yes, we have gone bonkers and we love it. Maybe the world could use a little more beautiful madness right now.
I myself represent the Architype of Curiosity. I have always loved curious people. The nerds. The passionate misfits. Hence the red dress and the ‘sexy’ name ‘Veronica’, referring to Veronica Lake. Because she had a high IQ but didn’t look like the stereotypical “nerd.” And that’s exactly the point. There are countless brilliant women out there constantly being underestimated because of the way they look. Too beautiful to possibly be intelligent.
But the same thing happens to men who managed to keep a soft heart in a world that often rewards emotional distance. Somewhere along the way, vulnerability and empathy became mistaken for weakness. And seriousness for intelligence.
That story is getting old. It’s time for a new story.