What do you listen to while you work?
Radio.

How do you listen?
Speakers.

Do you have any favorite music websites/providers?
YouTube.

Does music influence your work?
I like live music in local bars and I enjoy going to singer/songwriter nights. Their creativity sometimes inspires me to do more creative design in architecture.

Where do you find music recommendations? Who influences your musical taste?
Radio. One of my friends, who plays in a band, influences my tastes.

What song or artist best represents the work you create?
Johnny Cash.

Ideal place to sit and listen to your playlist:
The ideal place (for others) to sit and listen to my playiist is the Eames Molded Plastic Rocker, preferably with a white seat.

Chongzi’s Playlist:
1. Price Tag, Jessie J
2. In the Air Tonight, Phil Collins
3. No Woman No Cry, Bob Marley
4. Tears in Heaven, Eric Clapton
5. All I Want for Christmas Is You, Mariah Carey, Love Actually Soundtrack
6. Take Me Home, Country Roads, John Denver
7. Hey Jude, The Beatles
8. Let It Be, The Beatles
9. Empire State of Mind, Jay Z  & Alicia Keys
10. Ain’t No Sunshine, Bill Withers

Photos: Chongzi Chen

Each hybrid synthesizes essential traits from two “parents” of differing typologies; for example, a set of bookshelves combined with the stepped form of an arena results in the book-arena, which doubly functions as storage and seating for office-wide meetings. Other hybrids include the tree-chair, mountain-offices, house-table, and sky-cave …. This conceptual intertwining of interior office and exterior world expands the experiential possibilities of inhabitation. To sit in a chair as if inside a tree, or occupy a table as one would a house, is to prompt a rethinking of how we exist with objects and environments. One’s fundamental notions of dwelling and working are consequently upended, yet simultaneously clarified.

This larger idea of merging solutions within the office space has already won Ogosta the AIA Los Angeles Next LA Honor Award 2012 as well as recognition in several publications. But the details also got our attention: the project’s light, airy setting incorporates several designs by Charles and Ray Eames, such as Eames Aluminum Group Management Chairs, Eames Molded Plastic Chairs, and Eames Molded Plastic Armchairs with Rocker Bases — all in white. We asked Ogosta why he selected these styles and color. “It was important that the seating be compatible with the limited palette of wood and white materials for the project,” he stated. “The various Eames chairs seemed to complement the project’s furniture hybrid-objects, as they have a simplicity which does not distract from the overall space.”

Also considered? Charles and Ray’s California connection. Explained Ogosta, “The project also aims to internalize and clarify the surrounding areas of Los Angeles — its natural forms, its urban character, and its cultural openness — so including Eames chairs seemed appropriate given that they are indigenous creations of Southern California.”

See more of Hybrid Office here and at edwardogosta.com.

Images: edwardogosta.com

Give us a look into your background, then tell us what you’re passionate about now, what inspires you, and where you’re going.

Growing up in Iowa offered me an appreciation of the important balance between the landscape and how we inhabit it and use it. I have a great love of the farmlands with their big skies and beautiful barns. I guess I am an architectural romantic that way. This background, mixed with graduate school at Princeton and studying with architecture greats like Liz Diller and Michael Graves, and then working for Frank Gehry, helped show me that there are non-traditional models for the practice and work that can be as innovative as the work itself. Both Graves and Gehry were some of the first world-known architects to get into mass-produced products (for companies such as Target and Tiffanys). It got me interested in thinking about an entire building as product.

It was also during the (very painful) process of looking for a home for my husband and I that I realized how difficult it is for most people to obtain a thoughtful, sustainable home. Now that it is no longer a question if people want a green home or not (they do — they want lower energy bills, lower water bills, and a healthy environment for their family), but it can’t cost any more or take any more than a non-green home. And it needs to be easy. I began in my quest for making thoughtful, sustainable homes accessible by looking at models to address those three aspects: time, cost, and ease.

Originally I did it with my previous company that was focused 100% on modular design and construction. I am proud of the work our team did to create over 56 green homes to date and do proof of concept on a very different model for architecturally designed homes.

However, now I am looking at a much larger scale. Proof of concept is no longer adequate. As we look to population projections over the next 40 years, we are going to have to provide shelter for 10 billion people by 2050. At the same time, those buildings are going to have to use dramatically less energy, water, and create much less carbon. Buildings are one of our biggest problems — but this is exciting for architects and designers because it means that through innovation, buildings can be our biggest solution.

I am spending most of my time now looking to the future role of the architect and how we can re-imagine our roles, maximize efficiencies with technology, and realize our full creative potential. I am super excited about the future and all the possibilities.

Tell us about your space. Were there any special considerations that influenced the studio’s design or set up?

Our office in San Francisco was set up with a few main goals: low budget, high comfort, a space where people can be creative, collaborate and thrive. So, we spent money on items we cared most about — mainly the workstation chairs (we chose SAYL chairs because of their comfort, individual controls, and beautiful design), a great espresso machine, and a pizza oven.

We were given various occasional tables, but I didn’t love how they looked, so I wrapped them with old architectural drawings and pages from one of my old Roman architecture bucks. It really transformed the tables into unique pieces. Other items were bought on Craigslist or were donated by friends. We also bought our kitchen counters and shelves used from a restaurant. They are all stainless steel, super functional, look great, and were low cost. We have a green wall by Woolly Pockets where we grow some herbs for the pizzas, as well as some air-filtering plants.

Knowing that people do their best work when they move frequently and sit in different situations throughout the day, we created plenty of working lounge spaces. We are all on laptops, so it is easy to work at our desk, or in one of the lounges depending on the task at hand and if we want a quiet moment or want to be working more collaboratively on a design problem. We also have a lot of books, writable walls, cork walls, and toys to keep our minds playing and encourage conversation and spark unplanned brainstorming sessions.

We bought the chairs before we did anything else – before we built out the office walls or bought any other furniture. So for the first month, we stacked the SAYL boxes to make a curved wall to define our meeting room. I’d say it worked pretty well…

Learn more about Michelle’s award-winning work and strives toward a more sustainable world at michellekaufmann.com.

Photos: Michelle Kaufmann; top portrait by Garret Curtis

What do you listen to while you work?
Typically it’s something fairly mellow and very eclectic, but always something that I can also sing along with — for example, “Best of” albums from Sade, Steely Dan, the Eagles, and Queen.

How do you listen?
I’m usually at my desktop, so I’m using my computer speaker system. It’s a nice DELL setup with a large sub-woofer.

Do you have any favorite music websites/providers?
I will go to Amazon.com and search their music section for singles. I haven’t been buying many albums lately.

Does music influence your work?
To quote Goethe, “Architecture is frozen music.”  Good architecture is about rhythm, scale, proportion, and composition — and so is good music.

Where do you find music recommendations? Who influences your musical taste?
Much of what I listen to is music from my youth or from a past era. I am also a fan of jazz, smooth jazz, and big band music. If I’m out and about today and hear something that peaks my interest, I’ll look it up online and listen to it.

What song or artist best represents the work you create?
I really enjoy enjoy Paul Hardcastle. His music is smooth and free-flowing and you can listen to it all day long. It’s comforting in a sense. Imagine being immersed in a building/space the same way.

Ideal place to sit and listen to your playlist:
A white leather Eames Soft Pad Lounge Chair with Ottoman – classic and timeless like my playlist.

Kathy Dixon’s Playlist:
1. Someone to Love, Queen
2. Smooth Operator, Sade
3. Never as Good as the First Time, Sade
4. Hotel California, Eagles
5. Desperado, Eagles
6. At Last, Etta James
7. Let’s Make Tonight the Night, Luter Vandross
8. Do It Again, Steely Dan
9. Somewhere in the World, Swing Out Sister
10. Lost Summer, Paul Hardcastle
11. Faithfully, Journey

Photos: Kathy Dixon

The Palo Alto Hill House has a beautiful home office (below). Are you finding home work spaces are much in demand these days? Absolutely. Is there anyone who doesn’t work at home, at least some of the time? The Palo Alto house is a project in which I learned a lot because one of the clients uses a wheelchair.  The house was on three inaccessible levels so the challenge was to tie it all together. I like to think that the solution not only solved a problem but made for a much more interesting house in the end.

With architectural projects that span the country and the globe and your work as creator of the City Secrets guides how do you strike a balance between work and the rest of your life? I spend a great deal of time with my family.  My wife is the managing editor of our publishing company, Fang Duff Kahn Publishers. My daughter often comes to the office in the afternoon to do her homework, and if I need to work late, I can work from home. I do have to travel but I am pretty efficient about it.

What inspires you in your work? In our publishing business it is the desire to create curated content while lauding the overlooked or under-appreciated, whether they be sites, books or movies.  We have a remarkable list of contributors that include, among hundreds of others, eleven Pulitzer prize recipients, ten Oscar winners, one Nobel laureate, six MacArthur “Geniuses,” two poet laureates, one race car driver, Miss Manners, Mario Batali, Frank Stella, Martin Scorsese, Ed Koch, and Pete Seeger.

In architecture, I am inspired by trying to solve — in the most fluid and elegant way that I can — the intricacies of the project created by the reality of the program, the site, the budget and most importantly, those more ephemeral hopes and ideas that my clients often find hard to articulate.  I take it as a compliment when someone looks at the finished product and assumes that there was no other solution.  The architects that inspire me are Borromini, Stirling, and Corbusier.  As different as they may appear to be, they are the same in so many ways. Their influence has less to do with the style of their work and more to do with the way they so beautifully resolve all the pieces that make up a building.

In the last decade your firm has grown to over 30 architects, designers, technical and administrative staff. When you were starting out did you plan on heading up a firm such as this? When I started out, I did not imagine heading up a firm. I studied architecture out of a passion for architecture in itself. I did not have a vision for how I would practice in the future, although I am very happy with my practice and love working with everyone in the office.

Above, top and below: The 3,000 square foot Rabbit Hill Road house in Warren, CT forms a compound with a garage, pool and pool house.

How would you describe your work and do you see a common thread running through all your residential designs? The common thread in all our residential work is subtle elegance rooted in the site. We design houses that are comfortable, clean, and have a clear and distinctive style.

Above: The Miller House, commissioned by industrialist J. Irwin Miller and his wife Xenia Simons Miller in 1953, was opened to the public in May this year and Berke spoke at the inaugural symposium.

You recently spoke at a symposium celebrating the opening of Eero Saarinen’s Miller House to the public. The strongly horizontal buidling has a timeless quality and is still as striking today as it was in 1957. Can you share your impressions of that house? I love that house. It is a great work of architecture. It’s also an environment carefully calibrated for a large and happy family, and that is part of its success as a design.

Above: Berke (middle) at the Miller Symposium.

Above and below: The 3,400 square foot Darby Lane House in East Hampton, NY.

Managing a firm, speaking commitments and designing takes a lot of time and energy. How do you strike a balance between work and the rest of your life? I don’t strike a balance. I work hard and I play hard, and I don’t get very much sleep. However, I love everything I do.

What inspires you in your work? I love books and contemporary art. But my real inspiration is the endless variety of everyday life.

Above: The Tulip Avenue House in New Jersey.

Below Adjaye is interviewed in his office – you’ll get a fascinating view of his workspace and also a great insight into his take on design.

Design Miami runs from 30 November – 4 December 2011.

You opened your own Venice, CA-based design practice, DEX Studio in 1999 after you graduated from with a degree in architecture from USC. How do you think being based in California has influenced your work? Growing up in California has had a tremendous impact on my design approach.  My earliest memories are of my home life around a large patio, a pool, and a yard full of fruit trees.

This connection between interior and exterior spaces continued throughout grade and high school.  The school I attended had a campus designed in part by A. Quincy Jones. The grounds were a series of spaces that were centered around small courtyards.  The post and beam architecture included vast walls of glass and flat roofs nestled within eucalyptus trees. To this day, my designwork centers around connecting interior and exterior spaces.  This sensibility has developed into a philosophy of interacting with the environment through designed forms.  My schooling at USC focused on finding ways to define shelter and its interaction with the environment.  This includes using natural elements around a site to inform, animate, and provide comfort for the user.

The Redcliff Residence was designed for John Shields. a concept site planner for theme parks and his partner, artist/illustrator Nat Reed. The property is steeply sloping with Nat’s studio at street level and the more private sections of the house travelling up the hill. How did the sloping sight effect your design? The site offered an opportunity to maximize desirable views and bring in a better quality of light for the owner. The existing home had all of the elements of a modern design including a minimal geometry and extensive use of glass.  Unfortunately, the two buildings were originally sited to maximize the square footage, not to create the best space for the home-owner.  In addition, the existing windows let in too much heat, glaring light, and unattractive views of neighboring houses.  These factors made the program more complex and rich. It developed in a way to use the whole site to connect a series of outdoor spaces with the existing and remodeled architecture. We took advantage of the topography of the site to highlight the best city and neighborhood views, while screening less attractive areas.

We implemented overhangs and operable glazing to reduce the heat load and glare on the interior space.  We then provided a passive cooling system to draw airflow up from the lower spaces of the house into the second floor, thereby cooling the entire house.  The owner’s landscape design softens the geometry of the architectural elements through animated movement of leaves, plants, and flowers.  Inside the home, no two rooms are alike in view, light quality, or orientation.  You are compelled to move from space to space throughout the day to take advantage of what each space has to offer.

Was there a conscious decision to separate the live and work spaces on the property? The accessory space on site helped the decision to keep the scale of the house modest and to separate the uses between work and live.  The distinction is made more clear when you leave the home and travel through a landscaped walkway to get to the work studio at a lower elevation.  It’s not a bad commute.

How does the use of texture in this home – with its detailed exterior screens, timber-lined internal walls connect to your larger body of work? I always work with texture.  We prefer working with natural materials that express an honesty and quality through their imperfect attributes.

We are designing for our clients who are unique and idiosyncratic.  Our designs take advantage of those idiosyncrasies by reaching all of our senses.  At the Shields residence, we used a lot of wood. The exterior wood screens were intended to animate and articulate the tall street façade.  As the sun casts its light on the surface, there is a shadow play that changes throughout the day.

For the stairs, we used walnut because of its distinctive grain and warm hue, which contrasts the steel and acrylic screen it abuts.

Even when we work on commercial spaces, we try to impart the same signature feel.  At our most recent restaurant, The Tripel, which opened in April in Playa del Rey, we created a feature wall, clad in reclaimed wood with excerpts from an ancient Sumerian hymn on beer-making routed out.  It runs the length of the restaurant and creates an element that is both graphic and textured.

Another example of our texture work is at the outdoor patio at Rose Café in Venice.  We designed the space around custom redwood benches, which are built into a screen of mangaris wood slats that wrap up a structural framework.  The interplay between the different materials as well as the positive and negative spaces between the wood slats creates a rhythmic pattern.

We have also been working with the team at SugarFISH on their sushi restaurants.  Our first restaurant with them was in Brentwood and it is still one of my favorites.  At that location, we designed a wall covering that includes over 3,000 individually cut 3-inch by 3-inch cubes of Douglas fir that subtly vary in depth. The wall extends over forty-five feet in length and creates a rippling effect that mimics a breeze passing over water. By using Douglas Fir for the cubes, the wood’s understated end grain becomes a form of natural ornamentation that reveals itself without requiring stain or paint.

Lastly, what inspires you in your work? I have always been inspired by other design disciplines.   Textiles for modern fashion or primitive arts influence the surfaces that wrap my spaces.  Williams and Tsien Architects build with strong elemental materials like concrete, bronze and steel while making apparent the more fluid qualities of the materials. (Their Long Island Residence pictured below).

Artist Robert Smithson’s use of the landscape as a large canvas of natural materials in a built form is also inspirational. Below is Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’ at Rozel Point in Utah.

Photo credits: Dex Studio work is photographed by Jill Stevens, LEED AP from Dex. The Long Island Residence via the TWBTA. Smithson’s Spiral Jetty via Robert Smithson.

McDonough designed Herman Miller’s award-winning GreenHouse. He also worked with us on the Mirra chair (below), which was the first office chair to meet McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) Cradle to Cradle Design Framework.

For tickets to tonight’s event click here.

1. An Accident of Hope Summer Pierre is an illustrator and author of The Artist in The Office: How to Creatively Survive and Thrive Seven Days a Week. Her blog is heartwarming, smart and packed with interesting interviews about people’s work lives. Where to start: The John Porcellino interview.

2. Contemporist Launched in 2007 this picture-driven site showcases great new design and contemporary architecture from around the globe. Where to start: Click on architecture for some great projects.

3. Blue Ant Studio If you like mid-century design you’ll love this blog. Where to start: The Art Studio. I love the Chair Exam poster.

4. The Office Stylist For everything you ever wanted to know about a home office. Where to start: A great post on hiding cables – the bane of every home office.

5. Arch Daily You will never need to buy another architecture magazine again. It’s all here. Where to start: Check out building of the year. There’s some incredible work here.