The studio
Nineteen people across two studios: architects, interior designers, a model maker, and a development lead who has run four builds on our own account.
How we started
Maren Linnet and Theo Coe met on a hotel job in Kona in 2011, she as project architect and he as the owner's representative. They opened a two-desk office in Oakland in 2014 with one commission, a cabin on the Mendocino coast.
The development arm came later, almost by accident: a client walked away from a Denver lot in 2019 and we bought it. Building on our own account taught us what a change order costs the person paying for it, and we have priced our drawings differently ever since.
Four habits we keep
Visit twice before drawing once
Morning and late afternoon, ideally in different seasons. Light and noise decide more plans than budgets do.
Models over renderings
Clients lift the roof off, builders count the corners. A rendering only shows what we want you to see.
Price the junctions
Every joint a builder has to guess at becomes a contingency line. We draw them so nobody has to guess.
Stay until the keys, then come back
Weekly on site through construction, and a return visit a year after handover to fix what we got wrong.
Who you would work with
Eight of nineteen: the people most clients meet first. We list names, not headshots.
Oakland
Maren Linnet
Founding partner, architect
Ayesha Brandt-Liu
Associate, interiors lead
Joaquín Sorrel
Project architect
Calum Freyne
Construction administration
Signe Takahashi
Studio manager
Portland
Theo Coe
Founding partner, development
Ruth Okafor-Lind
Project architect
Hollis Mbeki
Model maker