Synthesis Design + Architecture.

"As a design research practice we leverage technology as an avenue to challenge convention and imagine alternatives" says Alvin Huang, founder of the firm Synthesis Design + Architecture. Started in 2011, Huang began his practice after gaining significant experience working for prestigious firms such as Zaha Hadid Architects and AL_A. Blending applied research with exploratory practice, the young practice has completed commissions ranging from a huge shopping centre in Bangkok to a rapidly deployable solar-powered charging station for a new, alternative-fuel Volvo.

Here, Huang talks about taking the gamble to start his own practice, shares some advice from his mentors, and spills some strategy on how to maximize the size of the firm. 

How many people are in your practice?

We are currently a team of five—this includes two full-time staff (myself and former student and recent USC Architecture graduate John Vincent Hernandez) along with three full-time interns (Ian Beals / University of Texas, Aleksandra “Sasha” Belitskaja / University of Applied Arts Vienna, and Henry Wang / SCI-Arc).  We also have a network of trusted collaborators and contributors we rely on for contract work. As a small firm we do tend to fluctuate with our workload (as well as academic schedules) and in the past seven years since our founding in 2011 have ranged anywhere from our largest at 9 to just myself at times.

Why were you originally motivated to start your own practice?

As with most designers, I’ve always wanted to have my own practice and jumped at it when presented with the opportunity. At the time, I was a Director at AL_A in London, the practice that Amanda Levete founded as a spin-off of Future Systems following their professional split and his unfortunate passing. Because of that experience with both helping Amanda establish her practice and directing it, I had gained some experience and insights into what it took to both start a firm and run a firm. 

I was also fortunate enough to have been recruited to a number of teaching positions and leveraged the opportunities of academia as a way to support the practice. I was, and remain to this day, motivated by the combination of personal, professional, intellectual and creative independence that is enabled by having my own practice. It has enabled me to merge my interests in architectural discourse, technology, research and design into a synthetic practice that engages the entire spectrum of these interests.

How did the office start and what were the first 2 years like?

The office started off as a huge gamble, basically betting on myself (I still can’t tell you if I won that bet or not). I guess the office to this day, remains a huge gamble. We were officially incorporated in December 2010 in a small shared studio space in Shoreditch, East London which we shared with our friends and colleagues at Seam Design (led by good friend and fantastically talented lighting designer Marci Song). I had just left my position as a Director at AL_A. I had spent a combined 4 years working for AL_A/Future Systems after 3 years at Zaha Hadid Architects, and was being recruited to a number of teaching positions. 

I had always had an interest in both academia as well as starting my own practice. My wife and I had been saving to buy a house in London, and after the financial crisis of 2008 it was clear that dream was becoming impossible. So instead, I convinced her that I would quit my job and  apply to teaching positions, and start an office. In the period between I was able to spend a solid 8 months of working full time on establishing the office, defining the name, brand, agenda, etc. and entering design competitions. 

My first employee was a recent graduate of the Architectural Association (David O. Wolthers) whom I had met at as a juror on his final review. He emailed me out of the blue after his review and said that he enjoyed my comments, and that he had heard through the grapevine that I had started an office. Due to the economy at that time, he was unable to find a job, and asked if he could work for me for free rather than sit around doing nothing. I interviewed him, and told him I would hire him, but did not believe in free labor. However, since I was unable to pay him, I offered to buy him lunch and dinner every day until I was able to pay him. After about two months I was able to land my first commission, and with my first paycheck from a client I back-paid him for the first two months. That was a great feeling. 

Subsequently, (and luckily), I was offered a position at USC School of Architecture in Los Angeles, and relocated the office and my family to LA. I even brought David with us and sponsored his US Visa. David stayed with the office in LA for two years before heading back to London where I was able to connect him with a job at Zaha Hadid Architects. Those first two years were full of excitement and opportunity, but also trepidation and anxiety. I would say all of those things continue to exist today.

What hurdles have you come across?

The two major recent hurdles we have come across recently as a practice have been issues of “hunting” aka business development, and “currency” aka reputation. In both cases, I’ve been fortunate enough to be in LA with a thriving design scene full of respected mentors that have been there before as once emerging small firm practitioners who were able to successfully expand their practices and have been able to help put things into perspective for me.

As Larry Scarpa of Brooks+Scarpa advised me, "You can't wait until you are hungry to go hunting for food." We were fortunate enough to go through a period where there was a steady stream of work, and I didn’t focus much attention on BD. However, when that work either completed or dried up (we had a few substantial projects in Thailand get put on hold), I ended up getting caught with my pants down so to speak, and spent a period of time being overstaffed, which is a quick road to financial trouble. I’ve learned that as a principal, you always have to be hunting, even when you have food on your table.

The same things that gave you that cache in the design and academic worlds of architecture, don’t necessarily have the same currency with clients

Another issue that has more recently developed is that as we have gained experience and reputation, we have found ourselves believing that we were ready to graduate to bigger more ambitious projects, but clients did not. 

Neil Denari once told me that this age (I’m in my early 40’s) can be a particularly difficult period for young architects. As you’ve gained enough cache and experience doing pavilions, installations, competitions, and smaller projects, you think you are ready to graduate to the next level of larger more ambitious projects. Yet, the same things that gave you that cache in the design and academic worlds of architecture, don’t necessarily have the same currency with clients. This has certainly been true for us, as we’ve been fortunate enough to get a little bit of recognition for the many small things we have done, which has resulted in us recently competing for projects with firms that we couldn’t actually compete with. 

We essentially had a number of potential projects that we lost to starchitects or large corporate giants—both of which could beat us hands down on reputation, experience, and somewhat surprisingly, fees. While it has been extremely flattering to find out we were on lists with those architects to begin with, it has been terribly frustrating to be on a list that you know you cannot compete on. Whereas larger offices can pull both experience and resources from a wider pool and can have staff resourced on multiple projects, as a small firm we are essentially hand to mouth. My fees directly correspond with the resourcing of the project, and my resourcing corresponds directly to the fees.

My fees directly correspond with the resourcing of the project, and my resourcing corresponds directly to the fees.

As a way of addressing both of these hurdles, I’m beginning to follow the advice of Thom Mayne, who told me to pursue partnerships and develop relationships with larger more established partners as a means of both winning more work and gaining valuable experience. This process allows us to leverage the proven delivery and resources of a larger firm, while they are able to capitalize on our design cache and design vision. However, in order for this strategy to work, it has to be a win/win situation, meaning it has to be a project they couldn’t get without us, and we couldn’t get without them. As a result, we were recently selected for an invited (and paid) design competition for a 150m tall office tower in Guangzhou, China where we partnered with SCUTD Architectural Design & Research Institute. SDA provided front-end design direction while SCUTD provided back-end production and technical support. We literally just found out that our submission was selected as 1 of 3 finalists and are developing the proposal further...fingers crossed!!

What other mediums of implementation does your office pursue?

We work in a range of typologies and scales including commercial buildings, hospitality projects, retail developments, interiors, specialty facades, branded environments, pavilions, public art installations, furniture, and design objects. We don't necessarily specialize in a project typology but prefer to think of ourselves as specialists in using design as the medium, and technology as the means, for challenging the status quo. By not being specialists in a particular type, I like to think that gives us the distance from a particular design problem to challenge the typical solution. In my experiences, those that specialize often times concede to their specialization resulting in formulaic design that is driven by rule of thumb or even worse, a library of solutions resulting in banal and repetitive designs. As a firm that values questions as much as answers, we believe firmly in the ability of design to change the world around us and view design as the bridge between possibility and actuality.

At the moment, we are working on a couple office tenant improvement projects here in Southern California, a public art installation in Seattle, and a performance hall/boutique hotel in China.

What is the thesis of your office, your work and how has it changed?

In its initial stages, I would say that the office was focused on a synthetic convergence between architectural research into the domains of emerging design technologies, computation, and digital fabrication; and their applications in practice. As the practice has evolved alongside the disciplinary discussions surrounding those technologies, there has certainly been less emphasis on the empirical exploration of design computation, and instead a focus on how these technologies can be appropriated by designers to inform a particular design sensibility that is enabled by their mastery. I just wrote a book chapter about this entitled Objects: Technology, Technique, Techné: Creation vs Contingency in Computational Design for the soon to be published book "Instabilities and Potentialities: Notes on the Nature of Knowledge in Digital Architecture", co-edited by Chandler Ahrens & Aaron Sprecher. In this essay, I discuss the evolution of computation from tool (technology), to method (technique), to techne (intuitive sensibility). I open the essay with two unrelated quotes.

“Technology is the answer, but what was the question?”—Cedric Price

 and

“Elegant, odd, and contrary desires matter in an increasingly pragmatic and performative world...Ideas are autonomous; they live a life of their own. I am motivated by a realization that architecture is one of the few places left that can imagine alternatives” —Florian Idenburg

I guess I would say that the thesis of the office lies at the intersection of those two quotes. Technology is not the end (solution), but rather the means (provocation), and as a design research practice we leverage technology as an avenue to challenge convention and imagine alternatives.

In the end, however, I would say that we are an office that does not believe that the agendas of a thoughtful, economical, and socially responsible architecture, and those of an innovative, iconic, and formally expressive architecture are mutually exclusive. By embracing a position of “form follows performance”, we attempt to both capitalize on the potential of form to shape and engage the world around us while simultaneously expanding the definition of performance beyond the scientific to include the experiential, fiscal, social, and cultural.

How do you balance theory and production in your office?

The connection to disciplinary discussion is what distinguishes Architecture with a capital A from building with a lowercase b

I guess I would say I believe in applied theory. To me, this means that even with our speculative work, just as much as with our commissioned work, any theoretical underpinnings within the work has to be embedded as some sort of Trojan Horse (no pun intended since I teach at USC) in a specific design problem, and specific design context. I don’t have a singular theoretical agenda that defines the agenda of the office as a whole, but rather look for theoretical opportunities within each given design problem. These ideas are discussed internally during the formation of ideas, and often times as measuring sticks to evaluate the projects but are rarely, if ever discussed with clients. 

The ivory tower of theory and academia, in general, is something that I simultaneously admire and despise. To me, the connection to disciplinary discussion is what distinguishes Architecture with a capital A from building with a lowercase b. However, I am firmly aware of the self-referential arrogance that often times comes with it. Oftentimes, I feel this arrogance is realized through the impositions of an intellectual agenda that is not necessarily relevant to a particular design problem. We prefer to do the opposite. Personally,  I am motivated and inspired by the writings of many but in particular, Stan Allen, Sanford Kwinter, Sylvia Lavin, and Patrik Schumacher, though I would be hesitant to consider any of their writings as gospel. What they do provide though, is an arsenal of perspectives from which to draw and position the work.

Is scaling up a goal or would you like to maintain the size of your practice?

Well, considering that at the current moment there are only two full-time people including myself, the answer is a resounding YES!  However, with that said, I do think I would like to retain the autonomy and dexterity of a small firm while having the resources and manpower to take on larger and more projects.

I would like to retain the autonomy and dexterity of a small firm while having the resources and manpower to take on larger and more projects

Perhaps more important to me than the size of the practice though is the culture of the practice. As a result of my unique connections to both London (where we were founded) and Los Angeles (where we are now based), two dynamic and diverse international cities with a rich history of importing talent and exporting ideas, our office has embraced a culture of both gender and global diversity as well as multi-disciplinary and geographical collaboration. In 8 years we have had staff from the US, UK, Denmark, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Estonia, Taiwan, China, Jordan, Mexico, India, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Iran, while projects, collaborations, and speaking opportunities have taken us throughout the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, India, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, and China. I even try to maintain an ideological/institutional diversity by never having more than one team member from a particular institution to help foster a diversity of ideological and pedagogical backgrounds.

Another strategy that helps us to feel bigger than we are, is to share studio space with other practices. We currently share space with FreelandBuck and Curious Minds Los Angeles—two other fantastically talented small practices. This enables us to expand the culture of the studio to include a wider network of colleagues that we can share information and experiences with. It is also a sneaky way of looking like a bigger practice when clients visit! If they don’t ask, we don’t tell.

What are the benefits of having your own practice? And staying small?

I would say the benefits of being both independent and small are freedom and agility. This allows us to set our own agendas based upon our own interests, and navigate issues much more like a speedboat than an ocean liner.