It takes an extraordinary interest and enormous dedication to create an Identity for a firm, brand or individual. It’s far easier to sit down and just design something we like than it is to design something that is right for you.

Easier, but ultimately less satisfying.

There are at least two ways that actors approach the craft of acting; for lack of a better description they are the ‘Schtick’ school and the ‘Method’ school of acting.

Schtick is what the Marx Brothers did for 15 movies; they created each vehicle out of their established personalities and tropes. It produced some of the funniest and most lasting movies ever made. The movies never varied, consistently making them among the funniest movies ever made.

Method is what Brando did for most (well, quite a few) of his 44 movies; he inhabited the role to a point just shy of dangerous obsessiveness. It produced some of the most memorable performances ever filmed. It took work to find each of those characters within him, and the legacy of his work changed American cinema.

Both are great ways to create, and the dichotomy probably applies to architecture as well as it does to acting.

We take a “Method Architecture” approach to projects in which Identity is paramount. When a client, a firm, a brand or the significance of a project demands it, we take the Method approach.

Whether that means riding a Harley-Davidson to the legendary Sturgis bike rally; or listening to every single song Elvis Presley ever recorded; or spending a weekend in New Orleans tracing the invention of Southern Comfort; or following the manufacturing process of Corian in detail through its factory, we become intensely involved in researching projects. The research becomes the foundation on which we create an extension of the Identity.

We throw ourselves into projects because it makes better projects.