Firm name: First Office
Location: Los Angeles
Year founded: 2011
Firm leadership: Anna Neimark and Andrew Atwood
Education: Neimark: B.Arch., Princeton University; M.Arch., Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD); Atwood: B.A., University of Richmond; M.Arch., Harvard GSD
Experience: We both worked for firms before founding First Office. Those firms include OMA, MOS Architects, and Belzberg Architects. Currently Anna teaches at Southern California Institute of Architecture and Andrew teaches at University of California, Berkeley.
How founders met: We were in the same class in grad school but we became friends (and eventually business partners) when we both found ourselves in Los Angeles.
Firm size: Four
Mission:
To bring architecture (and sometimes art) into a closer, more meaningful relationship with a—or the—public.
left: courtesy First Office
Naho Kubota
First commission:
Pinterest HQ, with All of the Above and executive architect Schwartz and Architecture
Favorite project:
Shotgun House was a rehabilitation proposal for a vernacular building type to accommodate a workshop and gallery for an artist in one very small house. We proposed an enfilade plan with eight rooms separated only by doors set into double-frames. As a door closed one room, it inadvertently opened another. This conundrum offered endless possibilities for molding that folded in and out of every corner of the doorjamb.
Barling Photography
Barling Photography
Second favorite project:
Completed this year, Studio for Art is our first built work that exemplifies how abstract ideas about materials and material interactions in models and installation works can translate to a building scale. We especially enjoyed working on the cladding finish, flashing details, and the gutters.
Origin of firm name:
This was meant to be our first office—and not our last—so the name fit.
courtesy First Office
Architecture hero:
Denise Scott Brown, Hon. FAIA, who taught in Los Angeles in the 1960s and described the city as “even” and “open-ended.” We take similar pleasure in the everyday and the banal. We also appreciate the early built work of Frank Gehry, FAIA, that’s sprinkled throughout the city. Projects such as the Frances Howard Goldwyn, Hollywood Regional Library, and the Wells Fargo bank in Toluca Lake offer a sort of non-monumentality or art presence in the city with their blank façades and deadpan details.
courtesy First Office
The designers were asked to reimagine the basic architectural feature of a window for an exhibition called "Bust" held at the Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles in 2015.
Modern-day architecture hero:
Our students: they are f-ing amazing, smart, talented, and hard-working.
Special items in your studio space:
Additional electrical outlets, extension cords, and surge protectors. And a Staubli robotic arm.
courtesy First Office
courtesy First Office
Design tool of choice:
Foamcore. And a Staubli robotic arm.
Design aggravation:
The use of the word “arbitrary” as a negative judgment.
courtesy First Office
courtesy First Office
Memorable learning experience:
Check your line weights and line types. In a recent project we did not select the proper line weight and line type for the centerline on a foundation plan and the line was built as a contraction joint in the (exposed) concrete slab of the building.
When we’re not working in architecture, we:
Go to the beach or climb mountains. We like to be outside when we aren’t working or teaching.
courtesy First Office
The best advice you have ever gotten:
First, never be too specific. Second, surround yourself with smart people.
We are sometimes bad at the first one.
Any superstitions?
None
courtesy First Office
Morning person or night owl?
We are morning people.
Social media platform of choice:
Instagram
Vice:
Poker?
