In 2007, Harvard GSD students Nancy Hou and Josh de Sousa decided to take their three-year relationship to the next level. The couple enjoyed supporting one another during their undergraduate coursework at Cornell and their first jobs, but they had not designed together until a Bjarke Ingels–led class challenged them to invent a new building type for Dubai. If Hou and de Sousa today—both 34 and married for the past year—remember that proposal (a hybridized resort, desalinization plant, and farm) with a chuckle, they remain grateful for the lesson in collaboration. “What we produced as a team was better than what we could do separately,” de Sousa says.

So there was no hesitation in 2010 to launch a studio in Ecuador, where Hou’s restaurateur parents requested creative direction for a new spot called Dim Sum Bar. Although stably employed in recession-era New York—de Sousa at Joel Sanders Architect and Hou at Stephanie Goto—they packed their bags for Quito.