Approach
Start with curiosity
Every project begins with questions. We ask who a place serves, what an organization hopes to become, and how architecture can help it get there, and we let what we learn shape the design.
Design for collectivity
We design places where people come together and share resources, space, and responsibility. Our campuses, housing, and cultural buildings support collective life, from a home for LGBTQ youth and seniors in Los Angeles to affordable housing for New York neighborhoods.
Design in relation
We see every project as one part of a larger system of land, water, people, and the communities that care for them. The Hale Piʻo in Waipiʻo, a reciprocal frame holds itself up because each beam supports the next, and the structure expresses the reciprocal relationship between people and ʻāina (land). At Sky High Farm, we mapped how land, history, programs, staff, and resources connect so the organization can plan its next chapter across 560 acres in Pine Plains, New York.
Build from context
We start from what is already there: a site’s history, its climate, its materials, and the rules that shape it. At Teatro Agua y Luz in Santo Domingo, we restore a historic open-air theater and frame it with a civic canopy that reconnects the site to the city and the ocean. For Prototypes for a Land-Based Creative Commune, timber harvested from the region shapes a network of structures across 830 acres in upstate New York. At Hancock Park House in Los Angeles, preservation guidelines limited the renovation to half of the original house, so a single new wall reorganizes the entry and opens the home to a series of outdoor rooms.
Experiment with materials
We treat materials as a place to experiment. At the 3.1 Phillip Lim flagship in Seoul, a 40-foot facade of pillow-like concrete tiles opens onto rooms lined in leather, brass, mirror, and oak. Kīpuka turns textile into a soft, modular system that can hang like a tapestry, lie on the floor, or form an enclosure. We test ideas like these in objects and installations, from a cork pavilion in Lisbon to a float tank in Bilbao, then carry what we learn into buildings.
