BOND Custom 2024

One-on-one With America's Top Luxury Residential Architects
October 24-27, 2024
1-on-1 Meetings and Networking with America’s Top Luxury Custom Home Architects. Guaranteed.
This October, America’s most in-demand luxury residential architects will head to BOND Custom.
These are the people behind the most spectacular high-end custom home projects that you’d love to be a part of with the power to influence who gets specified and who doesn’t.
If you believe your products deserve a place in the most prestigious luxury custom home projects, these are the people you need to convince and this is your chance to sit down, one-on-one with them and have the conversations you’ve been waiting for.
3 days and nights away from projects and the office gives you the time and space you need to get to know each other properly. And, in a business built on relationships, that’s where the magic happens.
Want to come and say hello?
Save your place >
Who you’ll meet
America’s Top Luxury Residential Architects
America’s most difficult-to-meet luxury residential architects are giving us 3 days of their time to come and connect with manufacturers who have suitably high-end products to show them and ultimately help them to deliver what their exacting clients want.
If luxury custom home projects are important to your business, these are the people you need in your life and you simply won’t get this level of access to them anywhere else.
To make this more real, you need to see who comes:
BOND Custom regular attendees include:

Elizabeth Starr
Managing Director & Partner
STRANG

Eric Pettit
Co-Founder/Senior Associate
OpenSpace Architecture

David Pascu
Partner
Abramson Architects

Daryl Nourse
Principal
Reid Smith Architects

Rafael Amuchástegui
Principal
RAD Architecture

Victor Salas
Vice President
Richard Manion Architecture

Mike Wetzel
Partner
Swaback
The Projects
Custom Luxury Home Projects Throughout North America
BOND Custom is not like any other luxury custom home event: it’s how we qualify our ‘Buyers’ that sets us apart. Every single designer and architect that’s invited must:
- Be a Principal or above
- Work nationally in scope
- Evidence a portfolio of live, confirmed luxury custom home projects.
That’s how we deliver an unmatched event experience and ensure your best possible ROI.
Here are just a few of the incredible homes our architects have in their portfolio.

The best run architect-vendor event I’ve attended. Significantly more useful than conventional trade shows.


Brian J. Connolly
How it Works
This is not a trade show.
You know who’s going to be here before you arrive and you will have a guaranteed number of 1-to-1 meetings with the ‘buyers’ of your choice. And this is just the start:
You are all together for 3 days and 3 nights at a luxury resort, away from projects and offices, so there’s time and space to meet everybody and this opens up a whole new world of possibilities. Because there’s a real community feel here and everyone’s more relaxed and open and any number of conversations can light up the custom home project trail right in front of you – you’ll see!
> 18 pre-arranged 1:1 meetings
+ 72 hours of networking in a luxury resort
= a proven formula for success.
We will deliver America’s true luxury custom home project influencers with time and space to get to know each other properly.
You just need to show up!
Save your place >



BOND Custom lets you get to know suppliers on a more personal level. They end up being some of the first people you consider when specifying products and the friendships are a real incentive in working with the suppliers on projects in the future.
Erin Fearins
Program
PLEASE NOTE: This is last year’s program. Check back soon for the 2024 schedule.
Seminar timings and/or content may be varied at our discretion.
- Day 1
- Day 2
- Day 3
- Day 4
Synopsis
Both during and after the pandemic, architects jumped on the task of assisting their clients in rethinking the physical and virtual work environments. But have these firms also adopted their own progressive approaches to how they work? With new modes of architectural practice available, some firms have evolved their practice model, others have reverted to traditional studio operations. This breadth of work modalities has disrupted the architectural labor market, shifted how we collaborate both internally and with clients, redefined staff expectations, and offered a variety of critiques on how we as architects work.
Hear from Diana Nicklaus, President & CEO of Saam Architecture on the successes and lessons learned of operating a hybrid firm since 2014. Since its founding, Saam has offered its staff remote/hybrid work, “radical” flexibility, and unlimited vacation. Initially an experimental way of practice, the Saam team has leveraged this culture and become a successful firm of 25 competing with some of Boston’s largest firms.
Biography
In 2014, Diana co-founded Saam Architecture with the mission of delivering design excellence while providing a progressive HR model to attract top talent to an equitable environment. In doing so, Diana began an intentional experiment. She understood that a level playing field for all team members was essential to designing the firm she had envisioned throughout her career. After working in large firms for 15 years and experiencing the limitations of traditional practice, Diana reconciled her past experience and vision of supportive firm culture through a progressive practice model that empowers all team members to balance their work and life commitments.
Saam’s practice model quickly drew attention as an innovative, equitable, and new approach to practice. Audiences are both eager to learn more and often skeptical about how “radical” flexibility works without compromising design collaboration. Frequently asked questions inspired Diana to develop a shareable proof of concept intended to embolden others to become change agents.
From conversations hosted by the Boston Society of Architecture to national conferences (#EQxDV Symposium; AIA Women’s Leadership Summit), multiple AIA components have engaged Diana to speak on practice, including her role nationally as an Advisory Board Member for the Center for Practice. Diana has shared Saam’s experiment, highlighting how this model has emerged as a practice that is 88% women and includes team members from 9 countries who speak 11 languages. Diana’s approach, rooted in supportive teams and radical flexibility, has overcome many of the industry career pinch points for staff — moments of inflection where many often leave the profession.
Diana holds a B.A.in Art History from Tufts University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin.
Synopsis
How a building responds to its location is a typical a goal of an Architect. The site that the building sits on should also be considered in detail to respond to the building achieving a sense of place. The refined goal is to create a beneficial relationship between the occupants, built structure, and natural environment to achieve a seamless designed transition in space and in perception.
The designed transition has an opportunity to respond to regional and local site issues unique to the site. This talk will address various site opportunities and solutions on how to embrace a site’s place in terms of its ecological community, natural resources through energy conservation, water reuse, and site stormwater management techniques – Together achieving a beautiful place.
Biography
Oona Johnsen, Principal of OJLA, is a licensed landscape architect in Florida and California with over 20 years of experience in the field of landscape architecture. She has lived an international life, growing up on both coasts of the United States, Taiwan, Philippines, Slovenia, and Italy. In 2004 she received a Fulbright Scholarship in Slovenia to develop a community plan addressing an influx of tourism to a small mountain town due to opening its boarders to the European Union.
A leader in promoting sustainable and ecological approaches to site and landscape design, her specialties include public projects, low impact development strategies, LEED projects, and projects that incorporate stakeholder and/or community input during the design process. Attention to the site’s environmental and cultural situation, how the space will be used and maintained is important research and leads to project success.
Current projects include 1) the public realm development of Water Street Tampa working with Strategic Property Partners, Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture, and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects; 2) Tampa Museum of Art Expansion with Weiss/Manfredi; and 3) the University of South Florida’s new football stadium development with Populous.
Biography
Since her first Motorola RAZR flip phone, Beth has made a verb out of the word "nerd." She's here to help you filter through thousands of apps, gadgets, widgets and doodads to find the perfect free and bargain technology tools for work and home. Although the only real trophy she ever won was for making perfect French fries at McDonald's in high school, Beth Z has been featured on Best Speaker lists by several organizations who write best speaker lists. She has written a whole shelf of books on apps and has spoken to more than 100 thousand audience members just like you. And if you're puzzling over why she goes by "Beth Z"... it's because she only finds about three people a year who can pronounce her last name.
Biography
Elliot Eisenberg, Ph.D. is an internationally acclaimed economist and public speaker specializing in making economics fun, relevant and educational. Dr. Eisenberg earned a B.A. in economics with first class honors from McGill University in Montreal, as well as a Master and Ph.D. in public administration from Syracuse University. Eisenberg is the Chief Economist for GraphsandLaughs, LLC, a Miami-based economic consultancy that serves a variety of clients across the United States. He writes a syndicated column and authors a daily 70-word commentary on the economy that is available at www.econ70.com.
Dr. Eisenberg has spoken to hundreds of business groups and associations, serving as keynote speaker on topics including economic forecasts, economic impact of industries such as homebuilding, consequences of government regulation, and other current economic issues. Dr. Eisenberg has been invited to testify before lawmakers and is often asked to comment on proposed legislation. His research and opinions have been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Bureau of National Affairs, Forbes, Fortune, and many other publications. He is a regularly featured guest on talk, and public radio.
Dr. Eisenberg was formerly a Senior Economist with the National Association of Home Builders in Washington, D.C. He is the creator of the multifamily stock index (the first nationally recognized index to track the total return of public firms principally involved in the ownership and management of apartments), the author of more than 100 articles, serves on the Expert Advisory Board of Mortgage Market Guide and is a regular consultant to several large real estate professional associations, financial institutions and investment advisory groups.
Elliot’s interests include walking at least five miles a day and reading as many newspapers as he can get his hands on. He loves ice hockey and talking economics with crowds large and small!
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