As one might gather from the name, DAAM architects (a cheeky acronym for Design, Architecture, Art, and Making) aren’t afraid to have fun while defying convention. So far, the Chicago-based firm, led by Elyse Agnello, 36, and Alex Shelly, 37, has focused mainly on adaptive reuse and renovation projects. “In architecture school we’re trained to make tidy drawings and to value the autonomy and authorship of the architect,” Agnello says, “but we learned that everything can’t be ‘just so’—rich design comes from adjustments.”
At a young age, Agnello remembers marveling at the scale of the Manhattan skyline on her way to school in New Jersey. “I told people I wanted to be a doctor and an artist on the side,” she laughs. It seems only natural that she later discovered architecture, eventually earning her master’s from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where she met Shelly, in 2014.
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