The Hong Kong– and Shanghai-based Linehouse well represents a broader momentum in the culture of design and craftsmanship in China. Its founders, Briar Hickling, 39, and Alex Mok, 42, build their projects around knowledge of local materials and craft, while creating architecture that both engages with its immediate surroundings as well as with the discipline more broadly.
Paradoxically, neither grew up in the country. Mok grew up in Sweden and moved to China in 2009 to explore her ethnic heritage and find a less rigid way of practicing than what she had experienced in the UK. Hickling, a native of rural New Zealand, had never been to China before she moved to Shanghai to take a position with Neri & Hu, a 2009 Design Vanguard firm. It was in that office she and Mok met; in 2013 the women established Linehouse and assembled a diverse team that could work across many scales and design disciplines.
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