Dmitri Berdnikow

Dmitri Berdnikow runs an engineering practice in Gräfelfing, just outside Munich, and spends his time on the part of the work his industry finds dull: calculating what it costs to do nothing. A conversation about renovating a building almost always opens with the question of subsidies, and that is almost always the wrong order. First understand the building, then assemble the technically sound options, and only then look at what the state will support.

Getting his own name onto the work took him more than twenty years: technical draughtsman in the nineties, then technician, then engineer on large projects inside other people's firms. Only from 2017 did the commissions carry his name rather than an employer's. The practice covers design work in Munich and Bavaria, and energy audits across Germany.