How did you come to start your own firm?
Brennan Buck: We met as classmates at UCLA’s master of architecture program in 2002. We graduated and went off in different directions. David went to work for AGPS Architecture and Michael Maltzan Architecture in Los Angeles, and I went to teach in Greg Lynn’s studio at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Five years later, when I was in New York, we started working together, initially on competition projects, and then on a small restaurant called Earl’s Gourmet Grub in West LA in 2010.
Big break?
BB: Lots of small breaks: our first project (a small restaurant), our first ground-up building (a small house), and having a recent project installed at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.
Tell us about your design process.
BB: Despite the distance [Buck is based in New York and Freeland in LA], we work very closely together, exchanging ideas, sketches, and digital and physical models via video conference.
What are each other’s strengths and weaknesses?
David Freeland: Where I’m impatient, Brennan shows an unusual patience. Where Brennan may be hesitant to commit, I want to dive in.
A favorite project in your portfolio?
BB: Our installation in the lobby of Nike’s San Francisco flagship store is an array of reclaimed bleachers that cantilever out over the escalator. It was installed 36 hours before the store opened. Our B+F Open Flame Kitchen in Kuwait City is our first project in the Middle East. It started as a proposal for a restaurant for the same client in Los Angeles. When the lease agreement there collapsed, we were asked to translate some of the same concepts to a space in Kuwait, but build them with an entirely different palette of materials and construction techniques. An intricate ceiling of CNC-cut pinwheeling cement board panels planned for LA was carefully framed and plastered by hand in Kuwait.
What’s on the boards?
DF: Second House in Culver City, California is our second house project and also our first fully ground-up building.
Biggest obstacle of owning your own firm?
BB: Running a single firm with a cohesive design vision from two different cities. Our shared history has been crucial to developing that vision, and it has been informed by both cities and both schools where we teach (Yale School of Architecture and Southern California Institute of Architecture, respectively).
DF: Balancing the administrative and miscellaneous tasks necessary to keep the office going with design work. We both teach, which further siphons time away from the office. We’ve learned to be very time efficient.
Lessons learned from working together?
BB: The biggest lesson has been experiencing how we grow as individual designers linked by our partnership.
What’s one thing you know now that you wish you knew in the beginning?
DF: Choosing your clients is as important as clients choosing you.
Why is two better than one?
BB: You can’t help but get stuck as an individual designer and architect. Working as a pair means there is always a push available to get out of a rut, steer clear of a bad idea, or reinforce a great one.
