This post was originally published in November 2015.
Not long after Family New York?s Oana Stanescu and Dong-Ping Wong dialed into a recent Skype interview, it was clear why their partnership works. ?It?s a bit cheesy, but the firm is called ?Family? for a reason,? says Wong. It comes across. In answering questions on a wide range of topics?how they got their start, Kanye West (yes, the one and only), and what architects can do to step outside the bubbles of academia and the profession to engage with the wider world?they closed the loop on one another?s answers. For Family, which has set itself apart with inventive, ecologically minded projects that engage with their surroundings, Stanescu?s and Wong?s strong partnership has been key. The Californian-born Wong and Romanian-born Stanescu, who are in their early 30s, met as intern architects nearly ten years ago, at then-nascent REX, a New York City studio co-founded by a former partner at renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas?s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Working at REX was formative, Stanescu and Wong explain. ?The firm was run in a very democratic way,? says Stanescu. ?It didn?t matter where an idea came from, everyone was expected to be involved,? Wong adds, noting that as fresh-faced post-grads, the two were genuinely listened to. They?ve run their firm in a similar way, emphasizing a collaborative process that includes the entire studio and privileges holistic thinking about projects?from conceptio...