Our firm was founded on the belief that collaboration yields the most innovative, creative, forward-thinking design. Although we work on projects of varying scales, budgets and programs, our comprehensive approach to design remains constant: it depends on a simultaneous blurring and exploitation of distinctions between inside/outside, built form/landscape, site/urban context and theory/practice.
Innovation and experimentation guide our initial assessment of program, informing not only our design concept, but also our choice of materials, methods and feasibility of construction, integration of landscape and environmental issues. Whenever possible, we try to underscore connections with the surrounding landscape either by reinforcing an existing condition or creating a new one that allows the architecture and landscape to be experienced in unique ways.
Installations and theoretical projects provide us with opportunities to explore ideas without the constraints typically inherent in architect-client relationships. For example, our exhibition, "Keep Off the Grass!: Planar Landscape Phenomena," for SCI-Arc presented a critique on the use of water in Los Angeles (a veritable desert) and the negative impact that use has on our environment. The installation incorporated several layers of meaning; it encouraged the thoughtful participation of the viewer and served a didactic function. In all our work, the pursuit of infinite potentials is far more intriguing to us than the discovery of a single, fixed resolution.
