Omaha office. Photograph courtesy of Actual Architecture Co.

Back in 2003, Jeffrey L. Day and E.B. Min joined forces to start the split location firm, Min | Day. After a successful 15-year run completing a range of vivid, calculated and pristine projects, and garnering numerous awards for them—including the Architectural League of New York’s 2016 Emerging Voices—the team has reorganized into two. Min is staying in San Francisco to continue on as Min Design, while Jeffrey has restructured in Omaha under his new studio Actual Architecture Co. For this week's Small Studio Snapshot, we spoke with Jeffrey to talk about this new chapter of his architecture career. 

How many people are in your practice?

4 at this time.

Why were you originally motivated to start your own practice?

Starting in high school, I spent most of my early career working in small firms and came to enjoy the freedom that architects in those offices had to form their own vision of practice both in terms of the work and office culture. (One office in Maine had a group coffee break in the morning and a 2-hour lunch with swimming at a nearby lake at lunch after a round of site visits – every day!). It is hard to overstate the freedom to define our own destiny, to form a practice around our own values and aspirations, and to constantly refine our agenda on our own terms.

It is hard to overstate the freedom to define our own destiny

I also see great value in running a practice that is closely aligned with my other life as an academic. I am a professor at the University of Nebraska, where I led the school as Director of the Architecture Program from 2012 to 2017, and where I run the long-standing design\build and design\research studio FACT (Fabrication And Construction Team). Actual and FACT are allied practices that collaborate when appropriate and operate independently as needed. Running my own practice allows FACT to have a foothold outside of the university as well as within, and that can be a very valuable resource.

Prior, the practice was under the name of Min | Day, but you guys have since split the practice into two. What led you to making that decision?

We started Min | Day as young, ambitious, and slightly naive designers with one guiding principle, just say yes. Yes to running a practice in two regions (San Francisco and Omaha), yes to combining teaching and practice, yes to engaging pro-bono projects and speculative design as well as commissions, but mostly, just to say yes to opportunity and to approaching architecture with open minds and optimism. From the first days of designing through faxes and phone calls to living in the cloud, it has been an amazing experience to build a practice. With the growing office, the challenges of a split-location firm led us to re-structure as separate firms based in our respective cities. Now, E.B. Min runs Min Design in San Francisco, and I lead Actual Architectural Company, based in Omaha, but with work in other regions and overseas.

We are immensely proud of the work and achievements accomplished with our many talented partners, clients, staff and collaborators as Min | Day, it was a wonderful journey.

What about this next step are you looking forward to?

I am interested in building a practice based on open collaboration and agility

Forming a new office with the freedom to continue some things and change others—building on the legacy of Min | Day without being limited by it. One significant change is embedded in the name, Actual Architecture Co. I am interested in building a practice based on open collaboration and agility, and this requires de-centering architectural genius; therefore, the name of the firm does not include my own name. The name Actual Architecture implies a desire to focus again on the possibilities of buildings as spatial and material structures that engage culture and society, and help to form communities. While many progressive firms seek to expand the boundaries of architecture by exploring the edges of the discipline (by introducing mapping, new techniques, Landscape Urbanism, and so on), we believe that the design of buildings and their interiors is still a fertile ground for new ideas.

I am also enthusiastic about forming more strategic connections between the professional office, Actual and FACT, the non-profit, academic studio. I can’t wait to brand new certain projects “Actual FACTs”! 

Now, several months into this significant business transition, it is time to focus on resetting the agenda. This is an exciting time!

What hurdles have you come across?

Name recognition is a big one. Having built the name and reputation of Min | Day over the years through publications and honors such as Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard and the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices, it is daunting to file that name away. However, it is an interesting opportunity to inhabit a new practice (Actual) but to also carry a legacy (Min | Day). The Min | Day portfolio becomes part of Actual Architecture Co. so the new firm is more like a re-branding than a fresh start-up. The usual challenges of cashflow, workflow, attracting new clients is exacerbated in this new situation, but that is to be expected.

What do you think the benefits are of practicing in places like Omaha, Nebraska? Would you recommend more architects venture away from the coasts?

Being located away from the centers of culture means we can operate without the burden of certain expectations, but that freedom also comes with some isolation. I think this is a double-edged sword, and one has to be smart at how one positions a practice in this context. One the one hand, the magazines and promoters of architecture are always looking for work to showcase outside of places like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco. Just being in a place like Nebraska lends a certain novelty to a practice, but it takes more effort to get noticed. If one can negotiate these issues, there are many opportunities in places like Omaha, where the overhead is very low and there isn’t much competition for recognition.

There is a risk of being branded a “regionalist” simply by virtue of being away from the coastal centers

There is a risk of being branded a “regionalist” simply by virtue of being away from the coastal centers, but with active projects in Los Angeles, Canada, New Zealand as well as Omaha and various places in the Great Plains we don’t feel like a regional firm. I am not very interested in over curating the firm—I would rather focus on the work and let things play out as they will—but in I think it is important to position the firm as having a broad scope despite our unlikely base of operations. Thus, our firm description begins, “Actual Architecture Company is an internationally recognized architecture and design firm based in Omaha, Nebraska, but operating around the world with expansive vision.”

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

We want to stay small so we can be selective and focused, but still be able to work on large projects. We may grow somewhat, but office size is not our aspiration. Instead, we are optimistic and open to strategic collaborations as a way to build capacity without creating a beast that needs to be fed constantly. The downside is, certain clients feel more comfortable with a larger firm even if the project doesn’t demand one. 

Many have said that the future of practice favors the very large and the very small—we will never be bigger than BIG—so we opt to stay small and partner with other firms or consultancies with specific skill sets as needed for particular projects.

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

The greatest benefit is the ability to set the agenda and to guide the vision. Staying small affords one the opportunity to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and to stay engaged with the interests that brought one to architecture in the first place. Small practices enjoy the benefits of nimbleness, agility, hands-on service, and the ability to be selective about the projects they take on. I have always shied away from developing a “bread and butter” project stream, and instead, try to make the most of all opportunities. I find firms that rely on an unglamorous, but reliable workload to support the “special” projects they love end up spending most of their time on work that they don’t enjoy, and that doesn’t help put them on the map.

Small offices tend to have flattened hierarchies (one way of maintaining agility), and low overhead. In small firms, principals can be intimately involved in all aspects of the creative work that draws us to the field in the first place. In a typical day I could be meeting with a new client, designing a competition entry with the office, and then working out a window detail for a project in Construction Documents. I enjoy the fact that I can simultaneously consider the important critical and theoretical issues surrounding a project while also developing technical details that keep the water out. That is rare in large firms.

Smallness also helps us maintain loose boundaries between academic and professional practices. I teach, I run an office, and some of what I teach (through FACT) also connects to the office. This situation benefits the office of course, but it also provides the students with valuable experience they won’t find in a typical academic studio environment. Small is good.