interface studio architects
philadelphia
www.cargocollective.com/isaphila
In practice for less than eight years, Interface Studio has racked up an impressive list of accolades, including a 2011 AIA National Housing Award for its urban, green, and economical 100K House. Partners Brian Phillips, AIA, LEED AP, and Daryn Edwards, AIA, LEED AP, also have established an unusually ambitious reach for their firm. Their design practice focuses on urban residential and mixed-use projects. “But it’s not just about designing buildings,” Phillips says. “It’s curating exhibits, teaching, doing research, getting grants.” In 2011, the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage awarded Phillips a fellowship, which has allowed Interface to enter a number of design competitions “that let us work on different building types and in different ways than we’d be able to do with client work.”
While the firm’s existing body of work shows a precocious confidence with both form and method, its competition entries—including a mid-rise housing project for New Orleans, a flamboyant mixed-use parking garage for Hong Kong, and an urban precinct design for Croatia—offer glimpses of even greater things to come. And the partners’ expansive definition of practice promises to lend stability to the firm while spreading the wealth of their talent within the profession and the community.
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years in practice: 7 / projects completed in 2011: 4 / firm size: 5 / areas of interest: single-family, multifamily, mixed-use / portrait: Colin Lenton