You see it in how people communicate when things are going well, but especially when they are not. In the decisions made when nobody is watching. In how someone new is welcomed, how knowledge is shared and what happens when a colleague needs help. At Managing Composites our culture has grown alongside the company: across teams, locations, engineering disciplines and increasingly ambitious projects. We wanted a simple way to explain what holds all of that together. And because we are an engineering company and apparently cannot resist building things, we turned it into a house. We call it OUR CULTURE HOUSE. 

MC Culture House

Built from the ground up.
Like any structure worth building, our Culture House needs more than a good-looking design. The MC Culture House is a simple model for explaining what our company is built on: our values, our mission and vision, the way we work and the ambition we share.

Foundations are our values.
they may not always be visible, but they support everything that comes afterwards. They guide the choices we make and help the house stay standing through pressure, change and growth.

Floors are our mission and vision. They give us common ground and help us understand what we are building together, where we want to take it and why it matters.

Columns represent how we work. How we communicate, collaborate, challenge ideas, ask for support, share knowledge and respond when things get difficult. They are the behaviours that turn good intentions into something real… And the roof is our dream, the company we want MC to become and the ambition that keeps us looking ahead.

It is a useful image, but the drawing is not the important part. Because  culture is not built by HR, it is built by all of us, every day. Culture is what happens when nobody calls it culture.Talking about company culture is easy. Making it visible in how a company actually behaves is much harder. No policy can create genuine care between people. HR can provide tools, design processes, listen and support. But the most important part of culture is created in the relationships we build with one another.

Managing Composites team members during the annual Casa Rural.

Why the Casa Rural matters

Most of our collaboration happens remotely. That allows us to work across different locations, bring together people with different experiences and give our teams more flexibility in how they organise their working lives.  It also means that many of our daily interactions have a clear purpose. We join a call to discuss a project, solve a problem, make a decision or agree on the next steps. Then the call finishes and everyone returns to their own corner of MC. Efficient? Absolutely. Soulless?  No Thanks! 

That is one of the reasons behind our annual Casa Rural. It gives us space to step away from our usual routines and spend time with people from different teams, offices and parts of the business. Colleagues who normally meet through scheduled calls or email threads can have conversations without an agenda and discover more about the person behind the role.

For those who have recently joined, it is a chance to understand MC beyond an onboarding presentation.
For those who have been part of the journey for longer, it is an opportunity to reconnect, meet the people who are shaping the next chapter and see how the company is evolving.
And for everyone, it is a reminder that we are not working on separate islands. Different roles, projects and locations are all contributing to the same thing.
 

Astronomy class during the MC Casa Rural retreat

Connection matters. Context does too.

Being together matters, but the Casa Rural IS NOT ONLY about creating personal connections. If we want people to feel genuinely part of MC, we need to understand the bigger picture: where the company stands, what challenges we are facing, what decisions are being made and what we are trying to achieve next.

That means talking honestly about progress, priorities and uncertainty. And it means making space for questions, including the uncomfortable ones. This is another essential part of our Culture House.

Trust cannot be announced or added to a list of values. It grows when people have access to real context, feel able to speak openly and know their questions will be taken seriously. Not every answer will be simple. Sometimes we will not have the answer yet. But building something together requires the confidence to talk about the parts that are still unfinished.

Managing Composites team together at the annual Casa Rural

Growing without becoming ordinary

MC is growing, and growth inevitably brings change. The goal is not to protect the past or expect everything to remain exactly as it was. Growth should change us. New colleagues bring different experiences, perspectives and ideas that can make MC better. The challenge is to grow without becoming ordinary, predictable or beige.

OUR CULTURE HOUSE IS THEREFORE NOT A FINISHED BUILDING. There will always be something that needs attention. Some parts will have to change as the company does. New rooms will be needed; old assumptions will be challenged. We want to keep growing. We want to take on more ambitious challenges; build things we are proud of and keep proving what our teams can do. And we also want MC to remain a place where people know they matter, understand what they are contributing to and feel that the project belongs, at least partly, to them. 

The house is not finished. Good.
Finished would mean standing still… And that has never really been our thing.  
We do cool sh*t, together.

The post We build more than engineering: How culture takes shape at MC appeared first on Managing Composites.

Cercle de Composites Madrid invitation

That was the first Cercle de Composites Madrid, hosted by Managing Composites together with Catalysium and Dassault Systèmes. First edition outside Paris. First time we tried this format at home. Here is what actually happened, and why we think this is only the beginning. 

Ten years in the making, one first for Madrid 

The Cercle de Composites is not a new idea, and that is exactly the point. Ten years ago, Yannick Willemin and Ginger Gardiner started a small, curated gathering in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris: bring interesting people from across the composites world together, keep the format personal, and create the conditions for conversations that would not happen anywhere else. No stage full of logos. No hard sell. Just the right people in the same room.  

A decade later, the format finally left Paris for the first time, and it landed in Madrid, hosted by Managing Composites and co-organized with Dassault Systèmes as a founding partner. Same spirit, new postcode: composites, innovation and advanced manufacturing, in motion.  

Two parts, one day: Guest in Residence + The Cercle

We split the day in two, on purpose.  

• Guest in Residence (from 12:00): before the wider community arrived, a select group of travelling guests sat down for curated, pre-matched 1:1 meetings in private rooms at our HQ. Twenty minutes each. No hunting, no awkward hovering. Matches only happened when both sides said yes.  
• The Cercle (from 19:00): the room opened up for everyone. A handful of short talks designed to spark discussion, not deliver a keynote, followed by an apéro dînatoire that did the rest. Managing Composites talked about doing cool sh*t (and meaning it), Dassault Systèmes and Catalysium each brought their own angle on where the ecosystem is heading.

No exhibition booths. No sales pitches. That was the whole philosophy, and it is the reason the format has survived a decade unchanged: the right people, having the right conversations, in a room small enough that it actually works.

Óscar Puente from Dassault Systèmes , Lluc MartÍ CEO of Managing Composites & Yannick Willemin from Catalysium.

Who was actually in the room

This is where it got interesting. The guest list crossed sectors most events never quite manage to mix in one room: Aernnova Composites, Airbus, Acciona and Gonvarri sat next to founders like Reinforce3D, MOOEVO, Biofibix, Zyon Helmets and Prenso. Saertex and Astar, the people who actually make the material, next to Backfund and Inveready, the people who fund what gets built with it. Sports Dynamic Lab and Liux next to the Audi F1 Team’s Head of R&D. And, because the Cercle has never been just about composites on paper, we also welcomed Bjørn Dunkerbeck: 42-time windsurfing world champion, and living proof that lightweight materials and high performance are the same conversation, whichever industry you come from.  

Startups next to corporates. Investors next to the engineers building the thing they might fund. Spanish composites next to a genuinely international crowd. That mix was not an accident, it was the entire design brief.

Why we did it this way

Ahead of the event, every guest received a full breakdown of who else would be in the room, written honestly. Then a simple rule: pick who you want to meet, we only make the introduction if the interest is mutual. A wish, not a booking. 

But the real payoff showed up later, once the room opened up for everyone at 19:00. Half the 1:1s from the afternoon picked back up at the Cercle, only this time with reinforcements: a colleague, a supplier, an investor who’d been half-listening from across the room got pulled into the conversation. A technical question raised over coffee at noon turned into an introduction to a materials supplier by the bar that evening. A pitch one founder had rehearsed for a single investor ended up being told, informally, three more times before the night was over. 

That is the actual design: Guest in Residence sets the table, the Cercle is where the meal happens. One without the other is just a meeting, or just a party. Together, they are the only version of «networking» worth doing.

The room at Cercle de Composites Madrid 2026

What this means for the Madrid ecosystem

Hosting the first Cercle de Composites outside Paris in our own HQ was not just a nice afternoon. It signals something we have been saying for a while: Madrid, and Spain more broadly, has the density of composites talent, industrial demand and capital to hold its own high-level ecosystem gathering, not just attend one abroad. Bringing Dassault Systèmes and Catalysium along for a first edition on Spanish soil is the clearest vote of confidence we could ask for.

Conversations at Cercle de Composites Madrid 2026

Several conversations that started in that room on September 10 are already continuing. Some will likely turn into partnerships, investments or projects over the coming months, which is really the entire point of an ecosystem event like this one: not selling in the room, but building outside it.   

The right people. The right conversations. One evening. See you at the next Cercle! 

The post Cercle de Composites Madrid: First Edition, Zero Boring Moments appeared first on Managing Composites.