Valentine's Day is upon us, and Archinect is celebrating this year by connecting with some of the industry's closest creative partnerships. To learn more about this special dynamic, we reached out to emerging and established practices founded by architects who are partners in both business and life. They share insights into how they both manage and balance these often competing itineraries.

From overcoming boundaries and challenges to setbacks and competing endeavors between love and art, their answers include time-tested messages about collaboration, the importance of communicating, and how the spark of inspiration is fostered within work and home.

We invited each pairing to respond to the following prompts:

1. How do you inspire each other not just in terms of your practice but also in your day-to-day lives? How does that inspiration feed into your own perception of this unique type of architectural partnership?
2. What have you gained in your home life as a product of your working together in the office and as professionals? How do you manage to find a balance between work and life when you are so close together all the time?

Waqas Jawaid and Andy Chen of Isometric Studio

One of the most precious things about working with Andy is that the two of us know each other intimately: We know about each other's values and dreams, both personal and professional. We also know each other's fears and worries as well as the challenges we may be facing outside the professional setting. Holding this knowledge is an incredible privilege and also a responsibility. We inspire each other (and our team) by devoting our full attention to a creative conversation, listening carefully, and finding ways to propel each other's ideas forward. We have a studio protocol to always start with the positive, even if it is only to thank the other person for their work. We are also honest when we feel something is not going to work, and we provide reasoning for our critique. Sometimes, we defer a design decision so everyone can take time to reflect and potentially gather more information. In our day-to-day lives, our biggest inspiration is food. Whether it's a chocolate croissant that Andy brings me after a stressful meeting or a special meal we plan at one of the restaurants we’ve collaborated with (our favorite is Rule of Thirds): Good food always, always makes us happy and fulfilled. We have learned and agreed that our first priority is our personal relationship and taking care of each other, which also requires a lot of self-care. And the studio, which we both care about a lot, comes second. We often say that there is no such thing as a design emergency. We encourage our team, as well, to prioritize their health and well-being above work.

...we know about each other's values and dreams, both personal and professional [...] we have also learned that it is crucial to carve out time just for the two of us outside of work.

During the pandemic, many people discovered the joy and fulfillment of spending more time with family and loved ones. We are incredibly fortunate to have always had that gift. However, we have also learned that it is crucial to carve out time just for the two of us outside of work. This includes planning our work schedule in a way that lets us take our evenings and weekends without a sense of urgency, and it also includes at least one vacation each year where we are not also working. The skills we have developed to become good collaborators at work are helpful in our personal lives as well. For example, when my mother moved to New York to get care for her heart, Andy and I both worked to support her with our emotional presence and also with thoughtful advice about her health decisions. Understanding that working together can be a great way to spend time together and bond, we started a food project named after my mom called Ruby's Kitchen, offering a Pakistani brunch tasting menu to our community in New York City. Through this project, we learned that my mom is also a creative spirit and perfectionist.

Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg and SO–IL

We come from very different cultural backgrounds. Our curiosity and interest in understanding a 'different' point of view help us expand our horizons on a daily basis. We share the stories that draw our interests and attention and discuss these between all the work — on our morning walk to the office, for instance. These kinds of observations continue to keep our practice fresh.

Our curiosity and interest in understanding a 'different' point of view help us expand our horizons on a daily basis.

Since we share both the burdens and joys of both home and office, it's quite easy to balance this. We find 'escape' in reading, playing the drums, exercising, and teaching. These are the things we do solo.

Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson of Caples Jefferson Architects

One of the things you discover about practicing together, 24/7, is that you really are two quite different people. We see things differently, a lot. The inspiration comes when a more interesting, new solution arises that resolve the objections of both partners. If we’re arguing and digging in on our positions, at some point, we realize that we’re both wrong. That’s when things open up and get more interesting. Another thing that can be weird, after over 40 years together, is that there can be these strange moments of shift when one of us takes the opposite position of what the other was expecting. Sara is the person who is usually advocating for a rich palette of colors and materials, like at the Weeksville museum building we designed in Brooklyn. But as we worked for the Africa Center, a new continental society in Manhattan, Sara became convinced that an all-white palette would provide the classic backdrop for changing installations. Everardo agreed with the overall approach but added strategic installations — where you first put your foot at a door or a handrail — of visibly African materials. Our home life is pretty harmonious, even after the lengthy confinements of the pandemic. Where we tend to get more excitable is in our professional work. In the past year, we’ve worked together, taught together, and written a book together. Each of these has required a lot of effort to try to view things freshly and to be real about what we think. To reach for that bar requires a lot of back-and-forths.

If we’re arguing and digging in on our positions, at some point, we realize that we’re both wrong. That’s when things open up and get more interesting.

The two have been very blended. When he was still a small baby, we started taking our son Esteban Jefferson to the office all day, every day. Now he’s a grown-up painter and works long hours in his studio — wonder where that came from? We’ve lived in the same small apartment since the late 70s. We’re working on the 4th renovation now. If we try to measure how we’ve changed, the apartment might be a reveal. This time it’s the most open and loft-like it’s ever been, with a greater effort at simplicity.

Bo Sundius and Hisako Ichiki of Bunch Design 

To love an architect as an architect and to work together means that you spend a great deal of time devising home remodel options for yourself with extremely romantic notions of how much the addition will cost. This we call pillow talk. It means that you spend a lot of time on vacation looking up at buildings and not knowing where you are going. Having kids with an architect means that they go on a lot of site visits and sometimes they drop balls and cars down open waste lines. When they are older, you set them up on a table next to your own, and they get to use the exact same supplies that you use on a daily basis: pencils, color markers, trace paper, scissors, paper, sticks, glue, foam blocks, and an endless supply of inspirational objects lying around the office shelves. They say something like, “Your job is not so different from preschool,” and it makes you warm with happiness.

It's not all roses, however. The critical thinking and roasting critiques of architecture school are now a review of two and may occur at any time. You have no idea when the review will end, there is no guest critic dinner to whisk them away to. It is best to be just really, really busy, which was the advice we got from the married couple running Atelier Bow-Wow who said when we aren't busy, we fight, but when we are busy, we just say to each other, “You are doing great! Keep going!” So we try to keep busy, inventing projects when we need to. We have found that we are our own best clients, and many of our best projects have been for each other, and that is reaffirming. We spend an outrageous amount of time together, and so we are always encouraging each other to go out with friends, explore LA alone, or take a vacation solo with one of the kids. This really works. It propels us as individuals to seek new things. And then we have something to talk about later. We become excited to see the individual in each other. This continually needs to be refreshed when you spend so much time together as I think most enduring couples will agree.

We have found that we are our own best clients and many of our best projects have been for each other and that is reaffirming. 

To answer your questions about work-life balance: There is none, none whatsoever. Work springs into our conversation at any time and is often churning in the back of our minds while chatting with the kids or watching a movie. It's not the boring stuff: The tax and regulatory conversations. Like a chore to be done, that kind of stuff we just take care of on our own. It needs to be done but not dwelled upon. We try to focus on the creative stuff when together. But there is a near-constant search for connectivity of logic amongst illogical things. I say illogical things because the linear narrative of life that many try to convince you exists…just doesn't. Life is very messy. Flux is built into our American way. And while we get older day by day in a very linear manner, our experiences and the challenges that life throws at us are very unpredictable and non-linear. 

What keeps us on target is a goal. Goal setting is paramount. Set the goal, and then slowly, messily, move towards it using everything around you as small and large loci to get there. I don't know of anything more human than architecture and space. Literally, everything we do and think occurs in it, so everything is inspiration fodder. So there is no work/life balance, but there are places to go. And those places are the goals set. For instance, making small spaces feel large is a goal of ours. We search for this everywhere, and we don't mind working like magicians to cognitively trick our way to get there. We talk a lot between ourselves about the rules and techniques we can develop to do this. For this, we travel and study other cultures, we pay attention to artists, music, and fashion. Architecture is way too insular, wealthy, and academic. Los Angeles is full of amazingly creative people who are not wealthy but want to create like we do, and they want to live in spaces that inspire them to be and to make their best. 

Airi Isoda and Ryan Upton of wrk-shp

We started our company, wrk-shp, first as a clothing line, then home objects, and finally, architecture. While not the conventional way of starting a design firm, we wanted to stay true to who we are and to create whatever excited us both. Our job is our joy — and also our challenge — and understanding our purpose to create truly inspires us to keep going. We're also wired to feed our day-to-day back into our work, so we seek experiences that keep us engaged with our shared love of fashion, product design, art, and exploring our city. For us, our individual — and often opposite — strengths and interests have been a source of inspiration in our work. Of course, one of us is more of the analytical, grounded-in-reality person, while the other is the more emotional, head-in-the-clouds type. We share plenty of unfiltered ideas and dialogue, expanding and sharpening one another's design roles, and strengthening us as a unit. An example of our combined efforts is a design feature at Blue Bottle IFC in Hong Kong. We created a very long built-in that both acts as a partition and provides counter and bench seating, merchandise display, and lighting. We love moments like this where the function is multifold and the design serves to highlight each useful element. It's a true reflection of our strengths and eyes on the project as two.

For us, our individual—and often opposite—strengths and interests have been a source of inspiration in our work [...] Over 10 years of working and living together, constantly knowing what the other is going through, we've gained profound empathy and transparency.

We are in a unique partnership where our days and nights, stresses and accomplishments, studio time and home life all blend together. We have a lifestyle where there is little to no boundary between work and life. Over 10 years of working and living together, constantly knowing what the other is going through, we've gained profound empathy and transparency. Because we're together all the time, we've discovered it makes it easy for us to plan our schedules, or to share any and all ideas quickly and honestly. We push each other to meet our own high expectations and pull each other to places we might not have gone if we were only one. From the beginning, we never compartmentalized work and life. Work is life and life is work — they feed off of each other, which makes it (more or less) enjoyable, just like having each other.

Ali Jeevanjee and Poonam Sharma of LOC Architects 

Our Chinatown live-work remodel was our first project together, and it combined the design of our home with the design of our first office. It allowed us to draw inspiration from some of the issues that were important to us — light, transparency, human experience, and to consider the natures of our practice and our domestic lives within the same 1,200-square-foot space. It also allowed us to take inspiration from the at the time still nascent urban living ethos in Los Angeles. As long-time residents of Los Angeles, we knew that having outdoor space is a necessary amenity here but one that is at odds with living in a dense and walkable urban environment like Chinatown. Over drinks one night at the Bigfoot Lodge, we sketched out floor plans that subtracted 200 square feet from this plan in the form of a courtyard that introduced outdoor space, light, air, and magic into this tight urban living and working space. That work ethos began to inform our professional and personal life. Working together on this small project gave us not only the opportunity to test out our working relationship but to gain an understanding of how the other person worked as a designer. We found that we agreed on most things while being able to challenge each other in positive ways.

Working as a ‘total partnership’ allows us to juggle the responsibilities of home life and work life seamlessly, constantly trading responsibilities and filling in gaps for each other.

Our architectural practice and our domestic life are two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated into distinct spheres. As a result, our lives are a design project in their entirety, which is a process that depends on continually testing new ideas and approaches. Working as a ‘total partnership’ allows us to juggle the responsibilities of home life and work life seamlessly, constantly trading responsibilities and filling in gaps for each other. Our children are participants in this process. While neither would like to be an architect, both benefit from the ability to think as designers and the satisfaction of being hands-on builders and makers. They also love coming along on-site visits!