Married architects Adam Frampton and Karolina Czeczek met while working at OMA’s Rotterdam headquarters in 2010. Frampton had migrated there in the aughts after completing his M.Arch at Princeton and found the firm’s methodical approach a refreshing contrast to academia. Czeczek, who grew up in Krosno, Poland, found freedom at the Dutch firm for the opposite reason—OMA’s commitment to a conceptual foundation for each project was in contrast to her very “pragmatic” education at Cracow University of Technology.
When Frampton moved to Hong Kong in 2009 to work on OMA’s Taipei Performing Arts Center, he convinced Czeczek to join him. Then, in 2013, when Czeczek decided to pursue her M.Arch at Yale, they moved to New York and established their office, Only If. Frampton had just conceived and written Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook, with coauthors Jonathan D. Solomon and Clara Wong, and it was a confidence boost; he realized he could pursue projects independently. Though the couple had no commissions, an e-mail to hundreds of former mentors, clients, and colleagues announcing the launch of Only If resulted in unexpected opportunities, from a Bryant Park coffee bar to an office shared by three different companies united by black floors and white walls and ceilings, punctuated by islands of furniture and accessories in felt, stone, wood, and mirrored storage modules.
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