Hailing from Europe, North America, and Asia, this year’s roster of emerging firms represent diverse backgrounds and attitudes toward design and the profession.
It is about 450 miles from Quang Binh province in the middle of Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), the noisy, frenetic commercial capital in the south.
The first thing you notice about architect Yuko Nagayama is her youth. She looks far too young to have built a five-story commercial building in Tokyo's upscale Minamiaoyama area, a stunning boutique for Louis Vuitton in the heart of Kyoto, and shops for the handbag brand Anteprima all over Asia.
When approaching a design problem, Madrid-based architects Fernando Rodr'guez and Pablo Oriol of the firm FRPO try to find a method of attack rather than jumping right in with a solution.
Don't let the name fool you'Single Speed Design (SsD)'s architectural approach is more like a 10-speed bicycle than a fixed-gear model, with principals Jinhee Park, 40, and John Hong, 43, shifting their approach with each new project.
China is a big country, and Trace Architecture Office (TAO) is leaving its mark all over it. The Beijing-based firm's portfolio includes a teahouse overlooking the Yellow Sea in northeastern Shandong province, a museum in southwestern Yunnan province near the Myanmar border, and a factory in Fujian province 140 miles from the Taiwan Strait.
No matter what level of success Mexico City'based MMX Studio may someday attain, its name will always serve to remind its four partners of their humble beginnings.
Jorge Gracia, the 39-year-old founder of Gracia Studio, has quickly built a reputation for distinctive Modernist architecture in his hometown of Tijuana, Mexico.
A husband-and-wife team has gone back to basics, studying the material and structural innovations of centuries past to create new systems for building. Lonn Combs and Rona Easton, married in life as well as in practice, have spent the last year living and working in Rome. Combs won a Rome Prize in Architecture in 2011 and, with Easton, has been studying Italian architect and engineer Pier Luigi Nervi’s groundbreaking innovations with concrete. In a way, their time in Rome has been a mirror of their practice in recent years. Just as they are taking the time now to “slow down