Soheil Abedian

Soheil Abedian arrived in 1980 with an architecture degree, no English and a ruling that his qualifications didn't count in Queensland. Told he could design buildings as long as he never called himself an architect, he did the only thing that made sense: he built his own house. It looked like nothing else on the coast, and the city's biggest developers couldn't ignore it. From there he went on to shape skylines — including the world's first Versace hotel and the Q1 tower.
He never read "no" as the end. He read it as a light pointing somewhere better. Today Abedian spends most of his week mentoring young Gold Coasters and backing architecture students through university, with one piece of advice above the rest: don't copy anyone, just be yourself. It's the belief his father gave him — that a life, a city, anything, can be better.

“I asked, ‘Can I design for myself?’ And they said yes, as long as you never call yourself an architect. This changed everything for me. These turned out to be the biggest glad tidings. If my qualifications had been accepted in Queensland, I would have found a job. Instead, with money I had saved while working in university, and help from my family, I bought a block of land: number 27 Cabana Boulevard, and I built my first house.” 
It didn’t take long for the established development community to notice Soheil. Back then, houses on the Gold Coast were made of brick veneer. His was not. The biggest real estate developer at the time, Max Christmas, looked at what Soheil built. “He said, ‘That’s not a house. That is an office building.’ I told him brick veneer didn’t fit with the climate. He said Victorians buy these houses and they like brick veneer.” Soheil smiles. “I told him I would do it my way.” 
Doing things his way got Soheil thrown out of many offices in his early days on the Gold Coast, including the office of Max Christmas. But he was always invited back to those offices, as his reputation grew, as no turned into yes many times over. 
Sunland, the development company Soheil founded, built more than 45,000 places for people to live. There were offices on the Gold Coast, in Brisbane, Townsville, Melbourne, Sydney, and Dubai. Soheil was the first developer in history to brand a development with a fashion house. Like most of his pioneering successes, the first Versace hotel in the world began with a hard no, in a 30-minute meeting that ended up spanning a whole day. 
Even his signature project, the Q1, at one time the tallest residential building in the world, was a simple idea. They had approvals to build two 40-storey towers. Why not just stack them on top of one another, and create one 80-storey tower? 
This is Gold Coast thinking.

“When someone in business says no to you, you should not see it as a negative thing,” he says. “You must see it as a light that is shed on a new way, a better way. When something goes badly, something else opens. It is a crisis and a victory.”

Sunland, as a public company, returned billions of dollars in profit to its shareholders when it went private after Covid. Soheil continues to build, here on the Gold Coast and elsewhere, but when you look at his calendar most of the meetings are taken up by young people. 
Every week, 180 young Gold Coasters come to his mentoring classes, where he encourages them to hold on to the one thing that makes them special: their distinct personalities.  
“When I arrived here, a manager at Commonwealth Bank told me to change my name to Sam,” he says. “Soheil was too difficult. But I said there are 5,000 Sams and only one Soheil. Everybody wants to be Mark Zuckerberg and nobody wants to be themselves, even though that is how you mark yourself. Don’t copy anybody. Just be yourself.” 
Soheil has helped hundreds of Gold Coast architecture students through university. He is putting his time and his philanthropic efforts into the gift his father gave him, of education, and using his influence with political leaders not to help him but to instead invest in young people — in education, in a fairer housing market, and in a spirit of entrepreneurial generosity built on the Gold Coast.