Employing what they call a "research-and-diagram-based process," David Leven and Stella Betts, of New York City'based Leven Betts Studio, have been creating environments that are inventive, spare, and elegant for the past decade. Their method involves scrutiny of site, program, and material, to create an organizational framework and physical structure. "The process is not always so legible in the final product," says Betts. However, it provides the basis for a project-specific "patterning system and a formal language," adds Leven.

Though such talk might sound like the stuff of paper architecture, the partners are well-grounded in the realities of construction. Leven's resume includes a stint in a metal fabrication shop, while Betts spent two years as a project manager at a construction firm. "Out of graduate school, my agenda was to understand how things were put together," she says.