It’s not the place, it’s the people.

Companies and entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. From fast pacing start-ups, to creative freelancers, impressive high rollers.. and then there’s us: the business-hippies. A term we adopted with love when one of the founding fathers of The Big Building community, Nick Stevens, called us as such.

We, SoundAppraisal, are a purpose-driven organisation on a mission to make sure the world around us does not only look beautiful, but also sounds nice. We humans are very focused on the visual domain, which makes us forget about the sounds in our environment. But all those sounds, whether you consciously hear them or not, have a huge impact on our physical and mental health. Therefore, it’s time we start designing for our ears.

We’ve learned this during the years we were (and some of us still are) active members of the academic community at the University of Groningen and Hanze University of Applied Sciences. So secretly, we’re just a bunch of geeks with lots of knowledge on auditory cognition, signal processing, and artificial intelligence. Nowadays, we aim to implement our knowledge in the real world and help, amongst others, governments and healthcare organisations to improve their soundscapes and as a result, improve the quality of life.

Improving the quality of life for people is our ultimate goal, doing business a means towards that goal. Hence, business-hippies (and not the Harold and Kumar kind). Luckily, The Big Building offers a warm welcome to all varieties of entrepreneurs, whether you’re small or big, clumsy or slick. And exactly that interesting mix of people, is at the heart of The Big Building community.

Being part of this community is downright incredible. You can just feel the creative energy resonating as soon as you enter the industrial building. Being amidst of all these entrepreneurs has helped us grow (not necessarily financially but professionally): it has given us a clearer identity, helped our business development, our understanding of entrepreneurship etc. Whether you have a question, are in need of advice or a helping hand, there’s always somebody there for you. And let’s not forget that affordable office space is essential for many smaller companies like us. Also, making use of vacant buildings is absolutely the way to go when considering the sustainability of our future.

I guess it’s safe to say that without The Big Building, we wouldn’t be who and where we are today. And boy, do we have a journey ahead of us!