Sam Nixon

Firm name: Only If
Location: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Year founded: 2013
Firm leadership: Adam Snow Frampton, AIA, and Karolina Czeczek
Education: Czeczek: M.Arch., Cracow University of Technology; M.Arch., Yale University; Frampton: B.EnvD., University of Colorado Boulder; M.Arch., Princeton University
Experience: Frampton: Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA); Czeczek: OMA
How founders met: In Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Firm size: Four

Mission:
Only If is engaged in design work at the intersection of architecture and urbanism. We focus on fundamental questions and potentials to create clarity and distill simplicity within often-complex circumstances and constraints. Rather than imposing additional regimes of complexity, we envision simple gestures and forms that impose structure, coherence, and identity.

Origin of firm name:
“Only if” is a condition rather than a definitive—it is optimistic and open-ended.

Only If exhibited a catalog of speculative housing prototypes for irregularly shaped and vacant lots throughout New York City as part of the 2017 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture in Shenzhen, China.
courtesy Only If Only If exhibited a catalog of speculative housing prototypes for irregularly shaped and vacant lots throughout New York City as part of the 2017 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture in Shenzhen, China.
courtesy Only If

First commission:
An Office for Three Companies was our first completed project, commissioned in 2014 and completed in 2015.

Favorite project:
Our favorite projects right now are interrelated. First exhibited in the Shenzhen Biennale in 2017, Irregular Development is an ongoing research project that catalogs around 3,600 existing, irregularly shaped, narrow, triangular, and small vacant lots in New York City. In parallel, the Narrow House, now under construction, is located on a 100-foot-by-13-foot lot. The Narrow House demonstrates the potential of one such lot, but is also a prototype for other sites; it will be Only If’s first completed ground-up project.

These two projects exemplify our interest and approach to design that engages multiple scales, including architecture, interiors, and urbanism. We’re very excited to continue designing affordable housing through the next phases of the Big Ideas for Small Lots competition in New York City, for which we were recently selected as a finalist.

The design for Voyager Espresso in New York City’s Financial District is inspired by the café’s spacecraft namesake, with a futuristic material palette of perforated aluminum, copper, and black marble. The space is centered around multiple circular elements including a counter for baristas and banquette seating for visitors.
Michael Vahrenwald/Esto The design for Voyager Espresso in New York City’s Financial District is inspired by the café’s spacecraft namesake, with a futuristic material palette of perforated aluminum, copper, and black marble. The space is centered around multiple circular elements including a counter for baristas and banquette seating for visitors.
Voyager Espresso, Only-If Architects
Micahel Vahrenwald/Esto Voyager Espresso, Only-If Architects

Second favorite project:
Voyager Espresso, completed in 2015. It was a very small project with a limited budget, but the client was very supportive of our work and the design. It was also our first experience working with details and materials at that scale, and therefore also an opportunity to learn.

Biggest career leap:
Both of us had the opportunity to work at OMA, in the Netherlands, after we finished our degrees. The intensity of that environment and the experience of working alongside talented people from different backgrounds were transformative. We both found that the rigor of the design process at OMA, in combination with the role that intuition also plays, was very liberating from our educational experiences.

The firm’s Brooklyn Senior Affordable Housing project is designed to accommodate 84 rental units with a double-height loggia “living room” to encourage socialization and a sense of community.
courtesy Only If The firm’s Brooklyn Senior Affordable Housing project is designed to accommodate 84 rental units with a double-height loggia “living room” to encourage socialization and a sense of community.
courtesy Only If

Greatest mentor:
Tatiana Bilbao, Karolina’s former professor at Yale, is an inspiring architect who recognizes power of creative collaborations and discussions between architects, policymakers, and ordinary people.

Special item in your studio space:
Nikita, our Siberian husky

The firm is contending with issues of limited daylight and a slim 13-foot-by-100-foot footprint in the design of the Narrow House, a 2,400-square-foot residence in Brooklyn, N.Y., which the firm views as “a low-cost prototype for how to infill otherwise overlooked parts of the city.”
courtesy Only If The firm is contending with issues of limited daylight and a slim 13-foot-by-100-foot footprint in the design of the Narrow House, a 2,400-square-foot residence in Brooklyn, N.Y., which the firm views as “a low-cost prototype for how to infill otherwise overlooked parts of the city.”

Design tool of choice:
The Pilot G-Tec-C4 black gel pen. Although the computer is crucial to our design process, we do spend a lot of time trying to be analog—i.e., working on paper and with physical models.

Inspiration in the past month:
Kosciuszko Pool in Brooklyn, N.Y., by Miami Modernist Morris Lapidus. Karolina has been researching pools as public space, and this public pool, near where we work, is an incredible artifact from the early 1970s.

Favorite travel destinations for architecture:
Tokyo and São Paulo

Located in New York City, this office accommodates three separate companies and features stark color blocking.
Midori Hasuike Located in New York City, this office accommodates three separate companies and features stark color blocking.
Michael Vahrenwald/Esto

Dream collaborator:
Avant-garde Polish sculptor Katarzyna Kobro (1898–1951)

Architects be discussing:
The contemporary housing crisis will be an ongoing problem this decade, but also an opportunity for the involvement of architects to speculate on new formats and forms of living. Under Modernism, housing was a central concern and territory for design innovation. We think it is now again for our generation. Adam’s teaching and research at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation also involves housing and the discussions surrounding it.

This master plan proposal for the Xi’an Technology Campus in China features a checkerboard of different building types that are connected by a network of elevated pedestrian bridges.
courtesy Only If This master plan proposal for the Xi’an Technology Campus in China features a checkerboard of different building types that are connected by a network of elevated pedestrian bridges.
courtesy Only If

What are you reading?
The Overstory (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018) by Richard Powers, Flights (Riverhead Books, 2018) by Olga Tokarczuk, and Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (University of California Press, 2009) by Reyner Banham