About
Stewart Hicks and Allison Newmeyer teach at the University of Illinois at Chicago and are cofounders of Design With Company (Dw/Co). Stewart holds an M. ARCH degree from Princeton University and Allison from the University of Michigan. The practice was recently featured in the Chicago Architecture Biennial and as Next Progressives by Architect Magazine, New Talents by Metropolis Magazine, and Chicago’s Next Generation by Architectural Record.
The work of Design With Company explores the territory between the architectural and the literary, real and unreal, mundane and fantastic. We think these qualities can coexist in a type of work we call fabulous architecture. We like buildings that have a story; that look like they might get up and start walking around. We want our constructions to be characters in the theater of everyday life, not just settings or passive containers of activity. Therefore, the architectural fabulous should be understood to include both the everyday sense of the term, as well how architecture might relate to fables: the genre of literature that makes characters of animals and plants through anthropomorphization. In our work, we borrow primordial, vegetal and bestial forms from nature for their mythic and narrative capacity. Our design interventions suggest hidden realms within the everyday world through textual and visual stories, speculative urban scenarios, installations and small-scale interactive constructions. We don’t limit ourselves to what the world should be, thus repeating what we already know. Instead, we produce what could be, exploring and expressing new potentials and opening up possibilities. Things built and things imagined go into rendering the world wondrous, and full of mystery and surprise by bringing spectators together in a seemingly endless and pleasurably indeterminate creative process. We set out to reveal the “construction” of reality while giving everyone a good show.
Company We Keep:
Joseph Altshuler, Katherine Bayer, Robert Becker, Nick Cassaletto, Alexander Culler, Julia DiCastri, Claire Gaspin, Jason Hamil (Lula Cafe), Andrew Jennings, Landon Bone Baker Architects, France La, Obed Lopez, Jimmy Luu, Sarah Rozman, Jeisler Salunga, Juan Suarez, Hugh Swiatek, Danny Travis, Valerie Wong, Jana Yeboah
