The narrow storefront office of Davies Toews in New York’s East Village doesn’t try to hide from passersby. Floor-to-ceiling windows expose its interior—with its warm, plywood finish and a central table covered in architectural models shaped like exploded origami—to a busy stretch of 13th Street infamous for dive bars. “People come in here all day long, wondering what we’re doing,” says Trattie Davies, one of the firm’s founding principals. “The other day, two kids walked in and said, ‘We wanna watch.’ ”
The work, like the office, founded in 2010 by Davies, 45, and her husband, Jonathan Toews, 41, invites a deeper look. For example, the 2015 project Hudson Linear Park unites two parts of Hudson, New York, previously separated by a steep slope. It was designed with PARC Foundation, a nonprofit seeking to enrich communities with public art and architecture projects. Together the designers threaded two narrow lots, bisected by an alley, with a ramp climbing the hill in sharp switchbacks. Its procession is interrupted by a staircase and punctuated by greenery. From the street below, the ramp’s zigzagging railings appear jumbled, like a labyrinthine scaffold inviting the kind of interaction you’d expect from a jungle gym.
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