These emerging firms use their platforms to shape sensitive spaces

To complete built work as a young architecture firm is impressive. To make sensitive, thoughtful impacts with these projects is even more laudable. Four firms rise to the occasion, using their small yet mighty platform to make waves in their cities. Whether it’s by incorporating a wide range of team capabilities, specializing in historic renovations, or building programs that to engage the public, these practices go above and beyond simply delivering a final design. These rising studios may be small, boutique-sized offices, but with resourcefulness and intention, make a big impact.

Studio Anand Sheth

Based in San Francisco, Studio Anand Sheth works across residential, hospitality, workplace, and exhibitions as well as furniture and curatorial projects in California and New York. What balances the studio’s diverse scales is a careful reading of context, resourcefulness in materials and construction, and attention to community. Established in 2021, the studio has a reach that extends beyond client work: Founder Anand Sheth opened Storefront Anand Sheth, a platform for exhibitions, furniture, and public programming. Located in the city’s Mission neighborhood, the space was constructed in under a month, and it features repurposed retail gondola shelving salvaged from a liquidated Rite Aid. The initiative is now evolving into Salon Anand, an experimental, public-facing practice that will curate events, installations, and collaborations with an emphasis on emerging local voices and architecture as cultural work.

Social Studies Projects

Founded in 2019 by Mary Casper, Social Studies Projects builds on her background working at firms like Johnston Marklee and WW Architecture, as well as The Archers, where Casper was the director of architecture. Her Los Angeles–based practice works across architecture and interiors, rooted in California’s culture of experimentation. The studio draws on historic precedents across disciplines to make detail-driven spaces that prioritize warmth, simplicity, craft, and a sense of wit. Current projects include two Altadena rebuilds; a hilltop property neighboring Schindler’s Oliver House; and a new ocean-view residence in the shadow of Gropius’s Murchison House in Provincetown, Massachusetts. When it comes to ground-up and renovation projects, the team of six approach history with sensitivity while maintaining a pragmatism for the needs of modern living.

Nicholas Potts Studio

Nicholas Potts established his eponymous studio in 2020 after stints at SHoP Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group, where he worked on projects like the Spiral at Hudson Yards. Within its six years, the studio, based in Washington, D.C., and New York City, has spearheaded buzzy renovations with an emphasis on history. In D.C., the office updated a pied-à-terre in the Watergate Complex, synthesizing its distorted design history with a rich material palette. Then in New York, the studio reworked an apartment in Wallace Harrison’s 1936 Rockefeller Apartments, restoring the International Style–era approach to residential planning and interweaving an aura of decadence and moody ambience. Anchored by a team of three, the small but mighty studio looks to turn the rich well of historical references into something contemporary, sometimes surprising, and always irreverent.

Future Simple Studio

Run by founder Christine Djerrahian and partner Ernst van ter Beek, Future Simple Studio maintains a small, dedicated team of architects, industrial designers, and interior designers with backgrounds in visual arts, graphics, math, and marketing. The projects the Montreal-based office takes on are wide-ranging, from commercial and residential architecture to installation, furniture, and digital works. All are united by an effort to evoke joy and comfort while maintaining a visual dedication to simplicity. The studio’s latest work includes a circular, social-oriented sauna in Montreal called Recess Sauna, and a raw yet grounded coffee shop made of common construction materials, dubbed Even Coffee. The six-year-old office has been recognized for its careful attention to detail, inventive space planning, and harmonious use of materials.