What We Care About

Architecture is part of the world.

We care deeply about the places we make. But we also care about the world they belong to.

We have a soft spot for people and problems that don't always get enough attention — children who experience the world differently, parents trying to make things work, women and mothers building careers in architecture, communities that need housing, and people rebuilding lives and places after war.

Sometimes we contribute through architecture. Sometimes through research, competitions or mentoring. Sometimes by employing someone. Sometimes by giving money.

We help where we can.

We stand with Ukraine.

When the war began, we made a deliberate decision to continue working with architects living in Ukraine. Today, Ukrainian architects are part of the sparkSTUDIO team, working alongside us on projects in the United States.

We also support grassroots efforts delivering help directly to people on the ground and use our own work to imagine what rebuilding might look like — including design competitions focused on the future of Ukrainian communities.

For us, standing with Ukraine isn't a statement. It's an ongoing relationship.

Slava Ukraini.

Children see the world differently.

We have a soft spot for kids whose worlds don't quite fit the worlds adults designed for them.

Children notice things we learn to ignore. Sound can be enormous. Light can be exhausting. A quiet corner can change everything. A place to move, hide, gather or simply be can make the difference between enduring a place and belonging there.

Our curiosity about these differences has become part of how we think about architecture — and eventually helped lead us toward Sensory Design.

We care about the children. And we care about the parents trying every day to make the world work a little better for them.

Architecture needs mothers.

We love architecture. We don't believe it should require sacrificing everything else.

The profession has historically asked a lot of the people who practice it — long hours, constant deadlines and the expectation that architecture comes before almost everything else. That can make it particularly difficult for parents and caregivers to stay.

We've mentored women in architecture, shared what we've learned, and tried to create opportunities for people finding their own way through the profession.

We're also still figuring it out ourselves.

We want sparkSTUDIO to be a place where excellent work and a full life can exist together.

Architecture needs mothers. It needs caregivers. It needs different kinds of minds. It needs people with lives outside architecture.

Some questions are worth exploring even when nobody hired us to ask them.

How can California create more housing?

How do we rebuild after destruction without erasing what came before?

How much carbon can a building avoid?

How can homes use dramatically less energy?

How can architecture make everyday life better for more people?

Competitions, research and independent design work give us room to explore questions like these. Some of this work has received awards, recognition and support, including an Autodesk scholarship for our work advancing lower-carbon design.

But recognition isn't really the reason we do it.

We're curious about what architecture can contribute.

Small actions add up.

We don't have a foundation or an impact department. We're a small architecture studio.

But being small doesn't mean waiting until someday to care.

We can choose who we work with. We can mentor someone. We can keep someone's job when their country goes to war. We can give. We can enter the competition. We can investigate the better material. We can question how much needs to be built. We can make room for a parent. We can pay attention to someone whose experience is different from our own.

None of these things changes the world by itself.

But they're the kind of choices we want sparkSTUDIO to keep making.