Greg Corso (left) and Molly Hunker (right), co-founders of SPORTS.

Meet Greg Corso and Molly Hunker. Together, the two form the Syracuse-based SPORTS—an award-winning design and architecture collaboration. They've recently been named as one of the winners of the 2017 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects+Designers, have received a glowing review from architecture critic Blair Kamin, were recipients of a "Best of Design" Award from Architect's Newspaper, and have been highlighted as a "Firm to Watch" by Architectural Record. 

How many people are in your practice?

2 people and a rotation of great students. And 2 cats.

Why were you originally motivated to start your own practice?

We don’t know; What we mean is that we didn't really make the decision, it just kind of happened. I think it was a combination of things: in part because we graduated during the crash when opportunities were limited, partly because it was pretty common for young creative people to go about things independently on the west coast, and partly because we had collaborated on a project in school and wanted to keep doing more. We were always working on SPORTS projects even when working for other offices full time after school.

How did you guys settle on the name "SPORTS"?

Sports felt accessible. The notion of sports seemed to resonate because it evoked ideas of fun and creativity on one hand and rigor and rules on the other. This is perhaps our relationship with design. 

What hurdles have you come across?

One challenge we often come across is how to talk about the work, or how others label it, or want to label it. Defining it one specific way seems limiting, as cliché as that sounds. There is an obvious overlap between architecture, art, and design in our work and people often outside of architecture can sometimes label the work as something other than architectural. The work is simply what the specific opportunity/problem of each project provoked in us. The design process is fluid and starts with an architectural ambition but has a variety of points of reference. We think that is a good thing.

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

We are certainly interested in doing more projects, and larger scale projects, and this would likely necessitate a larger studio. On the other hand, we like being involved with every aspect of the project. The smallness keeps short, productive collaborations more likely, which we both enjoy. We haven’t really had to delegate too much of the design process to a staff of any type so it's difficult to know how fun or easy that would be.

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

Of course the creative freedom is terrific, we love being able to define our own trajectory and select the design direction of each project and the studio at large. The smallness also allows us to be nimble both in the studio’s design ambitions as well as its day to day operations. This also allows us to teach (both teach at Syracuse), which is really important to us since we learn so much from working in that environment.