Recently featured on ShoutoutLA.com, meet the founders of Minarc, Erla Dögg Ingjaldsdottír and Tryggvi Thorsteinsson. Below is an excerpt of their interview with a focus on what it means to be a risktaker.

We’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
If you don’t make mistakes, you’re most likely not making decisions. An educated risk is necessary in both life and growth.. Life as a person, life as a person building a company.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Everything we do is art. Our art pieces are always a tribute to the natural wonders of the world and all the beauty it has to offer. Accent walls of obsidian rock and sand murals conceived by us pay homage to Sprengisandur, a forbidding inner desert plateau whose ancient road cuts a pass between the Hofsjökull and Vatnajökull glaciers, and complete the nature inspired Icelandic experience. The ION Hotel in Iceland emerges from the moss covered mountain base like an enormous post pile wrapped in a sheath of hardened lava. The vision for the ION Luxury Adventure Hotel was truly holistic, requiring a design that reflects the natural beauty of the region with clarity and simplicity, in a manner that is environmentally considerate. Our approach was to create a hotel experience as dramatic and otherworldly as the natural Icelandic surroundings, where the built and natural environments can coexist, integrate, even synergize. We don’t believe anything is ever easy. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be challenged. Without being challenged, we wouldn’t grow. We are endlessly striving to continue learning.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
You can not get far by yourself. We are never better than the people we surround ourselves with. We have been so fortunate to have been blessed with a beautiful family, an incredible team who we hope to inspire and those that inspire us, as well as our clients who consistently provide us with the opportunity to push boundaries, try new things, and allow us to execute our vision to create a space for them to enjoy for years to come. This is why we do what we do. We are both Icelandic, risk taking is a part of us. We were born into this and grew up taking risks. Something as simple as walking to school in a snowstorm was a challenge. These moments helped shape us into who we are today and allow us the freedom to take chances. Keep going.

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