Director at dMFK Julian de Metz on co-organising of SwiMIPIM, helping to raise over £10k for homelessness and championing greater inclusivity in the industry. Yet, says de Metz, there’s still work to do to ensure women are better represented.
Photo finish: Swimmers celebrate finishing SwiMIPIM.
How are you enjoying MIPIM?
It’s tiring but I’m enjoying it.
Years have trained me to keep a loose diary with enough fixed events so you can tell yourself there’s some method to it all.
dMFK and Elliott Wood have also been organising a sea swimming event called SwiMIPIM from the London Stand and this year was our best attended, most inclusive yet. I loved it.
What do you hope to achieve by coming here?
For me it’s about visibility, sowing seeds, catching up, and not about selling.
SwiMIPIM is now a thing and has a fresh energy. It’s important to Mark Goodbrand and I that the swim group looks the way MIPIM should look – ie half men / half women. We also use the opportunity to raise money for UK homeless charity Streets of London and are committed to raising as much as we can for them by building the event. With MIPIM being so commercial, raising money to help homelessness seems right.
And is it working out?
Mostly. Cannes is at its best in sharp sunshine but 2025 has been a wet one. This lessens those chance encounters, but it’s still been fruitful.
For the swim though, wetness is inevitable. Our swimmers raised over £10k and we had more than 35 per cent women taking part. We want to use the platform to set an example, that still needs to be better represented outside Bar Roma at 2am, which is still male heavy. But yes, it worked out well.
dMFK is currently working on the former Carreras Cigarette Factory, known locally as the ‘Black Cat Factory’ for the black cat sculptures that guard the 1920s building.
What’s been the highlight for you?
Definitely SwiMIPIM.
If you could change one thing about MIPIM what would it be?
Women in the industry being better represented. Things have improved but there’s a long way to go.
What are you working on at the moment?
Along with larger scale housing, dMFK have built quite a name for interesting cut / carve / interiors for flex office schemes, particularly in and around 20th Century Heritage buildings, including Seifert’s Tower 42, the iconic Art Deco Black Cat factory in Camden, and the former London Fashion Retail Academy for GPE.
What keeps you awake at night?
My broken bed in this Cannes B&B and the gentle rattling of my roommate breathing. I’m too old for this…
dMFK recently worked on Chancery House in central London, a retrofit project that placed emphasis on the importance of reimagining existing structures and letting new light into the building’s deep plans Watch de Metz present how his practice went about the project here. (Credit: Jack Hobhouse)
In a remarkable case of a building’s original tenants coming back, Sanderson Design Group returned to the CFA Voysey-designed wallpaper factory in west London which was restored by dMFK. Read more about the project here. (Credit: Jack Hobhouse)
