WRNS Studio staff. Image courtesy of WRNS Studio.

WRNS Studio partners Sam Nunes, Bryan Shiles, and Pauline Souza have run their 203-person firm since 2005, operating offices in San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, and Seattle. Over the last 15 years, the sprawling team has created an array of tech offices, university buildings, and other mixed-use projects that bring together bold architectural massing with delicate, thoughtful detailing and interior strategies. 

For the latest Studio Snapshot, Archinect connected with Nunes, Shiles, and Souza to discuss the firm's history, ethos, and evolving approach to design and how the practice is navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.

Where and when did your studio start?

Nunes: San Francisco. 2005

How did you come up with your name and company ethos?

Nunes: WRNS Studio is named for our four founding partners, Jeff Warner, John Ruffo, Sam Nunes, and Bryan Shiles. Since our founding in 2005, WRNS Studio has cultivated a design-forward practice amidst continued, sometimes rapid growth. To guide us through this growth, we identified three objectives to guide our work: beauty, sustainability, and a positive contribution to the public realm. The relentless pursuit of these objectives accounts, in large part, for our success. 

Shiles: WRNS Studio is called “studio” for a reason: through open, in-house critiques and roving tutors, we engage in an ongoing critical discussion about how the firm’s buildings can most powerfully evoke a sense of place, while avoiding the trivializing effects of mimicry.

We established our studio to provide a platform upon which we could freely explore our ideas and craft. We wanted to be a part of the community of architects seeking to redefine the relationship between the built and the natural environments and between the private and public realms.

How many people work at the company? 

Nunes: We currently employ 203 people, located across four offices: San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, and Seattle.

What made you make the decision to start an office?

Nunes: We established our studio to provide a platform upon which we could freely explore our ideas and craft. We wanted to be a part of the community of architects seeking to redefine the relationship between the built and the natural environments and between the private and public realms.

Shiles: We also started our office at time of practical necessity for the four of us. There may be some practical necessities we can respond to these days, too.

What are other offices that you look at for guidance and why?

Shiles: We look at Renzo Piano Building Workshop for their synthesis of invention, convention and craft and Álvaro Siza for a poetic interpretation of place and acceptance of the enigmatic.

Souza: We are continually inspired by many offices that boldly test the practice’s conventional mindsets. Firms like BNIM have always prodded us to do better with “what does good look like?”

We want our firm to be known for the ideals that guide our work: beauty, sustainability, and a positive contribution to the public realm. 

What would you want your firm to be known for? 

Nunes: The work. We want our firm to be known for the ideals that guide our work: beauty, sustainability, and a positive contribution to the public realm. Beauty, for us, is about bringing pleasure to the senses and conjuring emotion as one inhabits or moves through a space. With a bias for human-scale modernism, we approach design through the fundamentals of functionality, proportion, quality of light and space, and raw, honest materials. As long-time advocates for sustainable design—which we believe to be inextricably linked with beauty—we seek to advance the symbiotic relationship between the health of people and that of our natural environment. To develop a resonant sustainable design response, we uncover and make evident an organization’s core values.

Souza: We take seriously the opportunity for impact and contribution—designing sustainably means thinking beyond just today, recognizing that our decisions must be thoughtful, comprehensive, and humble, as we try to create more restorative, healthy, and resilient places.

Nunes: As urban designers and architects who have spent our careers working with public agencies, schools, universities, non-profit organizations, and developers, we think a lot about the public realm—how it might be enriched, and how it might inform one’s experience of the new places we craft.

Souza: We also want to be known as a place where people can realize their highest potential as creatives. We believe that the most important thing we can do, as a business whose process and product is about innovation and creativity, is to attract, cultivate, and nurture talented people who share our values. The culture at WRNS is strong and distinct, with interests focused on craft, technology, education, and pro-bono work. We have a thriving scholarship program that promotes inspiration and critical thinking in design and architecture. With several career-long educators at the helm, our work is bracketed by a vigorous culture of education, linking academia with practice to advance architectural excellence. WRNS Studio is one of 40 architecture firms nationwide to achieve the International Living Futures Institute’s JUST Label. This “nutrition label” encourages companies to disclose their commitments to a range of equity indicators including diversity, equity, safety, worker benefit, local benefit, and stewardship. These indicators align closely with our values, and as we’ve grown, our commitment to them has amplified. We ask our manufacturers for material ingredient transparency, so it is only fitting that we do the same for our own organization. Engaging in the International Living Futures Institute’s voluntary disclosure platform JUST gives us markers in time to review and improve upon metrics. This “nutrition label” reports on a range of equity indicators including staff diversity, pay equity, safety, worker benefits, and community volunteering.

WRNS Studio is one of 40 architecture firms nationwide to achieve the International Living Futures Institute’s JUST Label. This “nutrition label” encourages companies to disclose their commitments to a range of equity indicators including diversity, equity, safety, worker benefit, local benefit, and stewardship.

What is your firm’s typical approach to work-life balance? How has that been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis?

Nunes: We offer a flexible work environment, with employees largely trusted to manage their own time within the context of project collaboration and deadlines. As a multi-generation workplace with employees in different phases of life, we provide staff with a supportive environment that accommodates the need for a variety of personal and familial needs and obligations. We transitioned seamlessly to remote work in response to the COVID-19 crisis and feel incredibly grateful to be able to work and service our clients in this manner, while so many others have been impacted negatively by this pandemic. While we are as productive as ever, many of us miss the camaraderie and culture of the workplace. Working from home within the context of the pandemic presents many of us with the challenge of work/life blur, wherein the structure of the typical former workday must be reestablished to understand what balance and wellness means.

What are you currently working on?

Souza: We are fortunate to have a diverse portfolio, and we work with clients who desire creative healthy spaces for education, workplace, community, transportation, residential, and healthcare that inspire the next generation of thought leaders. Recent and current projects include a net zero energy Induction kitchen and dining facility, a cross laminated timber workplace that recycles all its water on the campus, and a housing project that integrates community gardens into every level. 

We are fortunate to have a diverse portfolio, and we work with clients who desire creative healthy spaces for education, workplace, community, transportation, residential, and healthcare that inspire the next generation of thought leaders. 

What is the main thesis of your office and has it changed over time?

Shiles: The common thread of our work is a strong belief in the importance of design to enhance the quality of the human experience. Planning and design is a learning process for our clients and ourselves, one in which we question, explore, and develop options that allow us to see the project in different ways. We challenge assumptions of space, situating each project within its unique physical, cultural, and economic context, as well as its anticipated future. This culture of critical inquiry and our belief in using an iterative, analytical, and collaborative process to arrive at the best solution for each client has been a through-line in our work since 2005.

The common thread of our work is a strong belief in the importance of design to enhance the quality of the human experience. 

How do you look for talent for your office? 

Nunes: Our primary source of new talent is the people who already work at WRNS. To supplement word of mouth hires, we advertise on our web site and other digital media platforms, work with a recruiter, and conduct outreach to universities. We also have a thriving intern program that has resulted in several hires.

While it is too early to determine much of anything, many design professionals agree that the physical office will be more relevant than ever as the place where people come together in shared purpose and identity.

You have completed several tech company offices in recent years, how do you envision this line of work changing as more of these companies adopt permanent work-from-home models?

Shiles: During the past month, many architects, designers, and real estate professionals, including our own leaders at WRNS Studio, have speculated on the ways in which the COVID-19 crisis will alter workplace design—from more personal space within open office environments to fewer tethered workstations. While it is too early to determine much of anything, many design professionals agree that the physical office will be more relevant than ever as the place where people come together in shared purpose and identity. The future of work will depend on choice. The choice of home and office not home or office. Personal decisions regarding safety, human engagement, and commuting will dictate the world we come back to. As workers assume more mobile modes of work, we believe the need to connect with culture and brand in destination and collaborative spaces will become ascendant.