Archinect - Features

UpStarts: Christian Lahoude Studio

2015-09-19T13:24:00-04:00

When just starting out, firms often struggle to find clients, and beef up their portfolio with small projects for friends and family. It can be difficult to establish a client base strong enough to keep the work flowing and the referrals positive, especially if the firm is hoping to specialize in a specific market. With some luck though, and knowing when to harness some momentum, the leap into a strong client base can be made pretty quick out the gate, as Christian Lahoude Studio managed in 2012.

Upstarts: Design, Bitches

2015-07-22T13:34:00-04:00

As the name suggests, Design, Bitches is a synergy of creativity and earthiness. Combining a refined sense of order with playful humor, the Los Angeles-based firm founded by Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph distills the splendor of urban chaos in their graphic branding, art projects, and commercial and residential interiors.

UpStarts: Martha Read Architects

2015-02-20T09:48:00-05:00

Founded in 2012 by former literature student and obituary writer Martha Read, UK-based Martha Read Architects is the distillation of multiple cultural sensitivities, honed over decades of teaching, writing, and working globally.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts surveys the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

UpStarts: Four O Nine architecture and design

2015-01-12T09:30:00-05:00

In a country infamous for its one time zone and countless architectural knock-offs, Four O Nine's success is startling and original.

UpStarts: Paul Michael Davis Design

2014-12-08T16:07:00-05:00

When it comes to sustainable design, it seems like most firms skew either green but boring, or exciting but radically inefficient. Paul Michael Davis Design in Seattle, WA handily straddles this schism, creating visually compelling, sustainable designs at an affordable cost. Founded in 2009, in the midst of a recession which pushed many newly minted graduates out of the profession, PMDD has since expanded to include an associate and an intern, and occasionally collaborates with independent firms. Notably, PMDD is developing several low-cost prefab housing projects that look like places you'd actually want to live in.

UpStarts: FreelandBuck

2012-08-13T09:00:00-04:00

FreelandBuck is an architectural design practice based in New York and Los Angeles affiliated with Yale School of Architecture, Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) and Woodbury University. The office focuses on research and design, exploring the overlap between academia and practice.

This interview has been conducted via series of e-mail exchanges between Orhan Ayyüce, David Freeland and Brennan Buck on July 31 - August 6, 2012. After initial answers by David and Brennan, the responses were attributed to FreelandBuck.

UpStarts: 5468796 Architecture

2010-10-26T20:19:00-04:00

by William Galloway

Sometimes it is possible to catch a group of people who are literally taking their first steps towards something interesting. If luck is on your side you can find out what they are thinking about - before hindsight settles in and the interesting things have become normal, and the answers to questions are all pre-digested. If the timing is right it is possible to learn a bit about what it is like to be an up-start.

UpStarts: LAN Architecture

2010-01-07T11:04:00-05:00

Coordinating schedules with Benoit Jallon and Umberto Napolitano of LAN [Local Architecture Network] Architecture is hard. They’re busy. Which is just about the best adjective you can wish upon these founders of an (almost) eight-year-old practice. Well, that, and “happy” — specifically with the projects keeping them chained to the drawing board. Oh, but we’ll get to the topic of architectural hedonism yet, believe me.

UpStarts: MAPT

2009-10-27T13:16:00-04:00

MAPT, a Danish architecture practice several months shy of its fifth birthday, leaves an intricate trail of breadcrumbs behind its projects. It's not easy retracing the steps between a realized MAPT idea and its inception. The firm's works are often products of an ongoing "mad science," after all— years of lab experiments, workshops, lectures, installations, tests, and trial runs.

UpStarts: Ball-Nogues Studio

2009-09-25T14:45:00-04:00

I arrive at Ball-Nogues Studio in downtown Los Angeles ten minutes early. Benjamin Ball is still on the phone with a client, which I take as a green-light to snoop around the office — a spacious room decked with suspended shapes and colorful projects-in-progress. Against one wall, a small library points to the ‘reference medley’ Ball and partner Gaston Nogues bring to their practice. Art and architecture represent in the titles, of course, but no less so than, say, Constructivist theater. I find this fitting for a young design and fabrication firm whose varied projects give way to many hyphenations: “architecturally-integrated”; “digitally-hand-crafted”; “lightly-weighty.”

UpStarts: SUPERPOOL

2009-09-15T14:46:00-04:00

Selva Gürdoğan, Architect (born 1979, Turkey. 2003 graduate from Sci-Arc, USA) and Gregers Tang Thomsen, Architect (born 1974, Denmark. 2003 graduate from Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark) founded Superpool in Istanbul in 2006. They met at Rem Koolhaas’ studio Office for Metropolitan Architecture - OMA - in 2003, where they worked until establishing Superpool.

UpStarts: Lyn Rice Architects

2008-09-29T16:00:00-04:00

The one thing you will not find in school--or even on Architecture Registration Exams--is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don't have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be fortunate to make it past the first five years.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

UpStarts: WORKac

2007-09-18T18:30:00-04:00

UpStarts: Plasma Studio

2007-01-22T15:00:00-05:00

The one thing you will not find in school—or even on Architecture Registration Exams—is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don't have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be fortunate to make it past the first five years.

UpStarts are a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

UpStarts: MAD office

2006-11-15T21:30:00-05:00

The one thing you will not find in school--or even on Architecture Registration Exams--is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don't have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be fortunate to make it past the first five years.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

UpStarts: NIPpaysage

2006-05-01T03:01:00-04:00

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

UpStarts: Andrew Maynard

2005-10-25T00:19:00-04:00

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

UpStarts: 51N4E

2005-09-11T22:20:00-04:00

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.

UpStarts: Studio Sputnik

2005-08-29T12:00:00-04:00

The one thing you will not find in school-or even on Architecture Registration Exams-is a course on how to get work, yet it is one of the most basic needs of any design practice. In fact, if you don't have an equal ability to experiment in getting work as you do in doing work you would be fortunate to make it past the first five years.

UpStarts is a series of features on the foundations of contemporary practice. It will have a global reach in which practices from Europe, North America, Asia, and beyond will be asked to address the work behind getting the work, and the effect of cultural contexts. The focus will be on how a practice is initiated and maintained. In many ways, the critical years of a fledgling design partnership is within the initial five years, after the haze and daze of getting it off the ground. UpStarts will survey the first years of practice as a tool for tracking the tactics of the rapidly evolving methods for sustaining a practice.