Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Occupation: Architects.
Instagram: @architecturefirm.
Home Town: Adam: Atlanta, Georgia. Danny: Richmond, Virginia.
Studio Location: Brooklyn, New York & Richmond, Virginia.
Describe what you make: We make simple, quiet, efficient buildings and spaces that bring people together with their specific place in the world.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: If it’s a building, it’s the Quirk Hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a project, it allowed us to get the firm off the ground. But it also allowed us to pull so many of our favorite levers, combining architecture, interior design, urban design, adaptive reuse, landscape architecture, and most importantly visual art into a cohesive project. It’s a public place where food and drink are shared, people are brought together in different formats and scales, and the appreciation of art underpins everything.
If it’s not a building, it’s our office. It’s the thing that draws on all our time spent as architects, parents, co-workers, mentors and mentees; it’s a living, breathing place that we care about deeply. What started as just the Partners taking on smaller projects has since gained traction and, with generous support from those around us, evolved into a team of twenty. Creating space for others to learn about themselves and grow as architects has been an incredibly special experience. While it’s not something we’ve designed per se, it is something we have gotten to craft over the years.
Describe the problem your work solves: Every project solves a different problem, so we don’t have a singular answer for that. We certainly bring a distinct perspective, but try not to push our own agenda too much. Each client and each site brings unique challenges and strengths to the table, so each solution needs to react to that. However, we’d like to think there is a common curiosity, rigor, and depth to our process. And that the solutions to the problems are simple, clear, and elegant.
Share the project you are working on now: We have a few projects under construction including a large, single-family camp in the Adirondacks, a beautiful estate home in the mountains of Virginia, and a house on Lake Austin in Texas. We are also in design on a 12-story historic building in North Carolina that we are repurposing into a restaurant and social club; a renovation and addition for the Science Museum of Virginia; and the planning for a residential community in the Turrubares province of Costa Rica. And a few small but meaningful art and memorial projects that do a lot for the spirit.
What you absolutely have to have in your studio: Music, greenery, natural light, and fizzy drinks. The New York office started in an old elevator shaft with a very small window and we’re never going back! The fridge in the Richmond office is stocked with Coors Lights for the late-afternoon ping pong ladder matches (Danny is currently 2nd and Adam is 3rd). And we also have a timer set to play Pino D’Angio at 4pm on Friday to end the week with a bang (start with Ma Quale Idea, trust us).
What you do when you’re not working: We both have multiple boys at home between 8 and 22 so they keep us active. But when we can get out, Adam is likely the best bowler you know (he is known in Sunset Park as “The Natural”) and Danny is trying to transition from basketball to tennis or padel to ensure that he’ll be able to walk in 5 years. Adam can always be found gorging on the history of literally anything, the more boring the better, and Danny is as likely to have a book of short stories or poetry as he is to have a Columbo re-run on the television.
Sources of creative envy (dead or alive): Charles and Ray Eames, Thomas Phifer, Ed Ford, John Quale, Gerhard Richter, Zak Pelaccio, Thom Jones, Outkast, Alain de Botton, Bjorn Borg, Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, Jeff MacNelly.
The distraction you want to eliminate: Too many. Devices (in your hand and on the wall), social media, negativity.
Concrete or marble? Marble, it’s so much more forgiving!
High-Rise Or Townhouse? Townhouse!
Remember Or Forget? Forget (because we can’t help it)
Aliens Or Ghosts? Aliens.
Dark Or Light? Light.
