Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic had just finished filing the legal paperwork when they decided to name their minutes-old architecture firm after its new corporate identification number. While 5468796 Architecture presents some branding problems in an age when most people don’t even commit their closest friends’ phone numbers to memory, it fit the partners’ desire to project a collective approach to design. “Instead of attaching our names to the firm or coming up with something cute, we wanted the name to show that we are working together as a group,” says Hurme.

Four years later, the firm’s 12 full-time staff members all work around a 40-foot-long table in their Winnipeg office. Their portfolio ranges from retail spaces and a public-art pavilion to houses and multifamily residential projects—thanks to a Canadian real-estate market that has largely avoided the meltdown that disrupted so many other economies. Even as it has grown, 5468796 has kept the ideas that informed its unusual name at the forefront of its practice. The firm’s work consistently considers how design reflects and shapes identity on a personal, urban, and even national scale.