EXTENTS co-founders Cyrus Peñarroyo and McLain Clutter enjoying the thrill of the unknown. Image courtesy of EXTENTS

How do you re-image a city? How would you re-tell this narrative? The Ann Arbor-based duo Cyrus Peñarroyo and McLain Clutter use their passions in digital media, urbanism, and visualization to help answer this very question. Heavily invested in reshaping and reworking architectural practice and academia, both are faculty at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and also, co-founders of EXTENTS, their architectural practice. Keen on finding new ways to "see the city," the duo creates digital and spatial practices for experiencing and understanding contemporary urbanism. 

According to Peñarroyo and Clutter, "if we're able to see the city differently, maybe we can get other people to see it differently, too."

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect had a chance to connect with Peñarroyo and Clutter. Together, they share their goals for running a practice as well as the role academia plays in their work. They also share their values when collaborating with others and the importance of being earnest in the profession. According to the duo, their goal is "to combine things that academic and disciplinary pieties would prefer to keep separate."

How many people are in your practice?

Anywhere from just the two of us to five or six total employees. Since we’re both professors and a lot of our work is funded through grants, the size of the practice tends to increase during the summer when we have fewer teaching obligations and students are available for summer work. 

We’re also deeply invested in collaboration. The two of us are involved in everything that we do—to different degrees—but we’ve structured the practice as a kind of “open relationship.” We’ve partnered with other faculty across the University of Michigan in schools such as our School for the Environment, non-profit organizations like Materials & Applications, and other designers like stock-a-studio.

What prompted you to start your own practice, and how did you two meet? 

We met at Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning back in 2015 when Cyrus joined the faculty as the William Muschenheim Fellow. In getting to know each other, we realized that we share interests in the relationship between architecture, urbanism, and media culture. The collaboration really started with a grant to produce our project Image Matters, which is about the materiality of images. In the course of producing the project, we took a lot of detours to work on competitions and other short exercises. So, the practice really grew out of an ease of working together and our ability to be really productive in collaboration. While we have really similar sensibilities, we also each have unique and complementary strengths that make collaboration feel productive. We manage to avoid that “too many chefs in the kitchen” feel that can sometimes develop because we play different roles in the practice. 

Is scaling up a goal?

Eventually, but it isn’t an immediate priority. In the big picture, we’d like to move towards more professional clients and commissions and less academic and grant-funded work. We’re particularly interested in working with non-profit clients, community organizations, and cultural institutions—especially those that might not typically be able to afford architectural services. Since we imagine that our personal incomes will always be partially provided through academic appointments, this seems like a real possibility. With that move, we would presumably also take on larger-scaled work, and more employees. But for the time being, we’re enjoying the luxury of establishing our combined voice through academic work and the occasional residential commission. We’re really interested in developing a robust intellectual disposition, and a unique way of working and office organization before scaling up too much—not that this is really an option at the moment. It isn’t as if we’re sending clients away. 

What are the benefits of having your own practice? Staying small?

Staying small means that we can change our minds, change direction, and each of us can have a hand in everything that we do. For us, this is tied to our positions as academics and the unique opportunities that come with that context. Because so much of our work is grant-funded, and all of our employees have been project-based, we can be very calculated about the work that we take on and what it might mean for the intellectual and aesthetic complexion of our practice as a whole. 

Because so much of our work is grant-funded, and all of our employees have been project-based, we can be very calculated about the work that we take on. [...] Most of our employees are University of Michigan students that are looking for a summer job or a short-term gig. We pay all of our employees. 

By working with us, employees get what we think is interesting, fun, and unique experience, but our practice isn’t burdened by thinking about how we’re going to make payroll indefinitely. Importantly, this aligns well with the needs of our local labor pool: most of our employees are University of Michigan students who are looking for a summer job or a short-term gig. We pay all of our employees. 

What have been the biggest hurdles of having your own practice?

Keeping up. Especially when it’s just the two of us, we have to do everything. On any given day, we might be doing any combination of grant writing, working on a rendering, assembling an installation, working on a permit set, writing a studio brief, working on accounting, etc. In a two-month period, the two of us probably spent about 200 hours together in an enormous camera making Image Matters—because there just wasn’t anyone else who could. With conflicting demands on our time, it can be hard to focus on those aspects of the work that require extended concentration. 

What do you want your studio to be known for? Where do you see your firm in 5 years?

We would like to be resiliently out-of-category. In both the professional world and in academia there is a huge impulse to specialize. In contrast, we would like to bring a consistent orientation to a broad range of work across scales. We like to combine things that academic and disciplinary pieties would prefer to keep separate. We’re a very yes/and operation. But we’re resolutely against the rise of fetishized austerity aesthetics, casual indifference, or anyone who doesn’t earnestly believe that design has a real role in our social and political realities. We want to bring earnestness back and try really hard. 

We like to combine things that academic and disciplinary pieties would prefer to keep separate. [...] But we’re resolutely against the rise of fetishized austerity aesthetics, casual indifference, or anyone who doesn’t earnestly believe that design has a real role in our social and political realities. We want to bring earnestness back and try really hard. 

Do you have a favorite project? Completed or in progress. 

It’s hard to choose, but our favorite project is probably Lossy/Lossless, an installation that was commissioned by the Los Angeles-based non-profit cultural organization Materials & Applications for their new storefront off Sunset Boulevard. Sited in Echo Park, a neighborhood on the cusp of change, this project was an opportunity to make a space for discussion around the complexities of gentrification and the role that arts organizations like M&A play in community development. In addition to the design, it’s our favorite project because we had a lot of fun collaborating with M&A—it was a pleasure working Jia Gu (Executive Director & Curator) and her crew. 

As educators, how do you see the future of architecture changing? What advice do you give to your students at Taubman?

We tell students that they need to be prepared for an ever-changing professional and disciplinary context. Architecture is a generalist’s profession. There is too much to know, and it can seem like you’re always an amateur. Our advice to students is to get comfortable with change. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.

What does urbanism mean to you? Has living in the city of Ann Arbor changed this perspective for you both?

Urbanism is the complex interplay between the material, cultural, political, and social factors that constitute life within highly developed built environments. Urbanism isn’t only in cities, though that is its most familiar form. The countryside can be urbanized; suburbs and exurbs are definitely urbanized space. The highway is a kind of urbanism. We’ve been thinking a lot recently about the need to theorize the urbanity of the internet. 

Ann Arbor is less of a city than an overgrown town. 

Both you focus on an intriguing blend of contemporary urbanism and image culture. How do you think cities and communities can better understand the built environment through your work? 

Through different visualization methods and technologies, we’re constantly exploring ways to see the city anew. In doing so, we hope to identify latent opportunities for design and to cultivate other urban imaginaries. If we’re able to see the city differently, maybe we can get other people to see it differently, too.

What is the best advice you’ve been given during your career? 

If everybody likes your work, you’re probably not up to something interesting.

Lastly, if you could describe your work/practice in three words, what would they be?

Meticulously considered excess.