Prof. Dr. Alexander von Erdély joined CBRE in July 2007 and set up the business lines Building Consultancy and Public Advisory Services in Germany. Since 2011, he has also been responsible for Global Corporate Services (GCS). From 2014 until June 2016 he was member of the executive board of both subsidiaries PREUSS and VALTEQ and responsible for their integration process.
Prior to joining CBRE, Alexander was a Director at Ernst & Young from May 2001 to June 2007. Alexander has 20 years of experience in the management of teams for Strategic Advisory, CREM, Project Supervision and Management, Transactions, FM and Portfolio Services.
In April 2016, Alexander took over the role of Chief Executive Officer for CBRE Germany.
Stefanie Rummel joined IHG as Senior Director Design & Engineering for the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) in 2018. In her current position, she is responsible for franchised projects and oversees the launch of IHG’s new brand avidTM hotels.
Prior to her current position, Stefanie was responsible for feasibility design and planning for all brands at Marriott International, working closely with MI Development, owners and franchisees to ensure optimal solutions for early stage projects. In this capacity she was a key contributor to achieving Marriott International’s growth objectives for Continental Europe and realizing on-strategy hotels.
Before joining Marriott, Stefanie held the position of Vice President Architecture & Construction at Wyndham Hotel Group and was overseeing the opening of 220 hotels (approx. 35.000 guestrooms) in six years as well as the launch of the budget hotel brand Super 8.
Stefanie is no stranger to IHG, having worked as Development Architect for Northern, Central & Eastern Europe at the beginning of her career. In this position, she was responsible for maintaining relationships with external and internal property developers, owners and investors to deliver projects in line with brand standards across the entire brand portfolio. She also held positions as leading architect with German gas, power and water supplier Stadtwerke Mainz, and project manager with Star Alliance and Lufthansa.
Stefanie holds University Degrees in Architecture and Economics from the University of Mainz.
Alex started his career as a designer at the Opera & Ballet Theatre, he then moved on to create the stage designs at the Royal Shakespeare Company. A Hospitality design career followed naturally – the stage life is often compared to the life of Hotels where the guests become actors in their fantasy world of dream destinations and Grand Hotels. Every design therefore always has a narrative and a connection to the location and culture.
Alex has a deep understanding of the luxury market and takes an innovative approach to timeless elegance and chic dramatic interior architecture, incorporating the latest technology to satisfy the contemporary lifestyle of today.
Francesca is an architect and urban designer with a focus on sustainable design for places and cities. Trained between Italy and the UK, she has been working in London since 2011. Francesca has been exposed to working on local and international projects at different scales, feeding her interest into different cultures, needs and objectives. She has been compelled to provide successful interpretations to the most diverse clients and end-users, whether the latter were children with special-needs, or high-end developers. On a technical level, this translated into an established track record of involvement in each stage of the design and development cycle, from master planning to detailed and construction design. Francesca is a qualified LEED AP, with a speciality in Neighbourhood Development (ND), and a BREEAM Communities Assessor.
John Downes is the Head of Facades for Lend Lease in Europe. He has 30 years’ experience in the construction industry with 25 years being directly in the façade industry.
John holds an MSc Façade Engineering from the University of Bath and is a board director of the CWCT (Centre for Window and Cladding Technology). He also sits on the CWCT technical standards committee.
John leads the Lend Lease Europe Façade Specialism Unit that support all façade related aspects of the Lend Lease business. The façade unit strives to provide fully coordinated building envelope design and delivery input to enable Lend Lease to ‘Create Better Places’.
John has recently been involved in the Lend Lease bid successes on St John’s Wood and Google.
Dr. Christian Bergmann studied architecture at the University of Stuttgart and the ETH Zurich and graduated in 2006 with a diploma. He then worked as design and project manager at UNStudio, Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos in Amsterdam. Between 2009 and 2012 he researched and taught at the Institute for Lightweight Designing and Engineering at the University of Stuttgart. With his doctorate completed in 2013, there is a strategy that enables the development of innovation-promoting and sustainable design and construction processes in a holistic way. As a project manager at Werner Sobek Design, he was responsible, among other things, for the “Aktivhaus B10” – a Zukunftshaus in the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart. He has been Senior Architect at Hadi Teherani Architects in Hamburg since 2015, where he leads several major projects. An atmospheric aura, the emotional urgency and an ecologically sound sustainability, which is already created in the design, characterize the work of the office. The Dr. Christian Bergmann’s projects have been awarded prestigious architectural and design awards.
