Steph Larsen

Firm name: CO-G
Location: Boston
Year founded: 2018
Firm leadership: Elle Gerdeman, AIA, and Kyle Coburn, AIA
Education: Gerdeman: BFA, Miami University; M.Arch., Harvard Graduate School of Design; Coburn: B.Arch., Miami University; M.Arch., MIT
Experience: Gerdeman: Höweler + Yoon, OMA, teaching at MIT and currently teaching graduate and undergraduate studios at Harvard GSD; Coburn: Höweler + Yoon (currently a Senior Associate), OMA, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Morphosis, and currently teaching graduate studio at MIT.
How founders met: In a history of architecture class at Miami University
Firm size: Two to three

Origin of firm name:
It’s a collection of our names, but we also like how the prefix “co” is associated with collective, collaborative, co-conspirator, co-opt, even company. It is at once a classic dual-name architecture firm and an acronym that takes on more identifiers. We don’t see our office as being fully formed, but our names—unlike our ideas about architecture—won’t change in the future.

Mission:
CO-G is a collaboration. We like to test many variations of a thing. We produce architecture that is simultaneously familiar and unusual—even mischievous—through a typological drift, a material misreading, a primitive process, and imaginary origins. We’re also into mirages, furriness, and lore. We think architecture can wear many hats and be described by any number of adjectives, so we aren’t interested in being too absolute. We prefer to approach each project with a curious experimentation and let things develop from there.

First commission:
A biergarten in Ohio—ongoing and still exciting

CO-G’s reimagination of the 1940s catalog Brookline House includes introducing dark modern cladding and axial windows to define interior spaces.
courtesy CO-G CO-G’s reimagination of the 1940s catalog Brookline House includes introducing dark modern cladding and axial windows to define interior spaces.

Favorite project:
Brookline House is a reframing of contemporary domesticity via a surgical “hack” in the floor plan and circulation sequence, and a complete repositioning of the house’s massing and façade. The clients shared in ambitious design aspirations, making for a super collaboration.

Second favorite project:
Plum Island House has a simplicity to it that makes it seem like a found artifact. While it draws on one of the most conventional building techniques in Boston—wood-framed cedar shingle—it is averse to being categorically Bostonian. We were interested in the volumetric properties of the shingle, wrapping both orthogonal and curved perimeters, and seamlessly blending them to cause an uncanny sense of typological familiarity.

Living areas in the 1,280-square-foot Plum Island House in Newburyport, Mass., are defined by three curvilinear volumes clad in cedar shingles.
courtesy CO-G Living areas in the 1,280-square-foot Plum Island House in Newburyport, Mass., are defined by three curvilinear volumes clad in cedar shingles.
courtesy CO-G

Biggest design challenge you’ve overcome:
Acknowledging that we can’t do everything, or else risk doing nothing. We are trying to learn to manage schedules in a way that is reductive rather than additive, such that we have time to prioritize a conceptual pursuit.

courtesy CO-G The walls of this salon for cancer patients in Dublin, Ohio, are covered in ornamental polyurethane spray foam, which also serves as an acoustical finish.
courtesy CO-G

Modern-day architecture hero:
Lately, it is Amsterdam-based Studio Anne Holtrop for its use of molds, casting, or shaping to create forms that are impossible to draw or represent. In its work, we see a proposition for architecture to be less defined.

We also appreciate Swiss architects Christian Kerez’s almost gestural use of elements of architecture, where shear walls, egress stairs, and columns transcend their pragmatic origins.

Special item in your studio space:
We have a little box of odd materials that is filled with unspecifiable items like foamed metal, lava rock, squishy silicone, bismuth, glow-in-the dark sand, and reflective beads for highway paint. Construction always favors products that are easily specified and found in catalogs. This box is a reminder to search for things outside of what is readily known or available.

courtesy CO-G The Dimple Chair combines traditional handcraft with milling technology to create a seat with irregularly exposed grain.
courtesy CO-G

Favorite rule to break:
In an age of lawsuits and liability, we’re trying to figure out which rules we actually need to follow.

Design tool of choice:
Finding precedents inside and outside architecture

The Serriframe walkway canopy proposal uses laser-cut weathered steel to replicate the form of bricks with mortar joints.
courtesy CO-G The Serriframe walkway canopy proposal uses laser-cut weathered steel to replicate the form of bricks with mortar joints.

A tool you would love to invent:
We love it when artists and architects create a tool to execute an artifact. For instance: Anish Kapoor’s lumpy concrete wall extruder or Thomas Heatherwick’s rolling facade crinkler.

courtesy CO-G Each wall of this five-sided artist studio in Tesuque, N.M., features a cutaway that aligns with the roof, creating irregular window apertures.

A social media account everyone should follow:
On the one hand, we admire the broad quirkiness in form and material represented in the Patrick Parrish Gallery, and on the other, Ryan Smith is simultaneously ultra-conventional and mind-boggling in it’s revealing of joist geometries for compound gable roofs in suburban McMansions.

What design trend needs to come back:
Adolf Loos’s furry bedroom

The 2,140-square-foot Carr Residence in Johnstown, Ohio, features “discrete volumes, arranged around two triangular circulation nodes,” according to the firm.
courtesy CO-G The 2,140-square-foot Carr Residence in Johnstown, Ohio, features “discrete volumes, arranged around two triangular circulation nodes,” according to the firm.