“One thing just leads to the next,” says architect Brent Buck. “You can’t plan for an upward trajectory in your career.” It’s sound advice for any young practitioner looking to launch an office—though few have managed to follow it with quite the ease of Buck himself.

Since hanging out a shingle as Brent Buck Architects in 2018, the designer has moved with unaccustomed speed from modest renovations to increasingly complex residential and commercial projects for a remarkably mixed clientele—glamorous young Man­hattanites, an outer-borough commercial developer, upstate reclaimed-wood suppliers. The architect has carved out an unusual niche for an early-career professional, largely by avoiding any niche-y specialization. Com­bining intuitive space making, a rigorous sense of materials, and a subdued, seemingly unflappable bedside manner, Buck welcomes all comers. As he puts it, “Doing a little bit of everything is our ambition.”

Before establishing his practice, Buck, 46, apprenticed with Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, where he found himself dispatched to locations as far flung as Mumbai, India, and Peterborough, New Hampshire, to help oversee major projects. According to Buck, the experience gave him a solid grounding in the practical minutiae of construction, as well as adding some polish to his already impressive design education.

A prime example of his detail-oriented approach is his own office, a 3,150-square-foot former printshop on a quiet side street in Brooklyn. Purchased by the architect five years ago, the structure needed an extensive overhaul—one that Buck undertook in some measure by himself. “I was over here with the concrete-floor sander,” he says with a laugh. Besides installing a fully glazed southern front, and transforming the rear space into a double-height studio, the designer’s signature intervention was adding a second-story loft library, punctuated by a tiny window with a view of the foyer below.

Fenestration is also a focal point in an upcoming reinvention of a former industrial site near the Gowanus Canal, also in Brook­lyn. In a neighborhood fast undergoing conversion, Buck’s single-story spec project preserves a bit of grit with a rough brick envelope, heavy steel door, and a flexible program that can accommodate either retail or light manufacturing. In the uppermost register of the primary facade, tiny peekaboo windows—too small and high for any real purpose—lend a dash of compositional fun, what Buck calls “little moments of joy.”

More so than any visual motif, the central theme of Brent Buck Architects’ portfolio is a mastery of timber—the firm’s projects make consistent and sometimes unexpected use of upcycled lumber. Believing, the architect says, that employing “the same vendors is how you start developing trust,” the firm has regularly sourced its old-growth pine, oak, and maple from bicoastal wood specialists the Hudson Company (now also a client, with Buck set to start work on a new headquarters in rural Pine Plains, New York). For Buck, wood is a natural go-to, a sustainable building resource laden with opportunities for creativity yet adaptable to any circumstance. “We embrace it for all its imperfections,” he says. “That’s what gives it an element of surprise.”