We were both drawn to architecture from a very young age. As kids, we would even imagine lifting the roof off our home and redesigning everything underneath. We still remember being in primary school, finishing homework after class, and spending the most enjoyable part of the day thinking about things like that.

So when it came time to choose our undergraduate major, we went straight into architecture without much hesitation, and continued all the way through graduate school. In the beginning, we did not overthink whether we would “become architects” in a formal sense. What kept holding our attention was always space, materials, and the relationships that can emerge between them.

The first thing we ask is always: who is this for? Who will come here? What kind of people are we designing for? Once we start there, many possible future scenes of use begin to appear in our minds.

We do not really work from a fixed formula. We like entering a project from any direction—sometimes intuitive, sometimes rational, often both. In an urban renewal project, we might begin with the daily habits of the surrounding residents and think about how the building can embrace the community. In a gallery renovation, the starting point might instead be the lush planting around the site, and how the architecture can quietly belong to that environment.

Rather than calling it a style in the conventional sense, we would probably describe our way of working through the idea of construction—not only as something physical, but as an ongoing dialogue between thinking and making.

For us, concept shapes the logic of spatial strategy, while creation turns that strategy into something atmospherically tangible. We care less about fitting a project into a recognizable stylistic category and more about how the design is generated and how it is ultimately realized. So even if the finished space does not carry an obvious formal label, we hope people can still sense our thinking in the way it is structured, and in the path through which its atmosphere is built.

One recurring thread might be the relationship between spatial construction and materiality. Looking back, we realized this partly through feedback from people using our spaces—many remembered the way the space was assembled, or the way materials were handled.

It was never something we consciously tried to overemphasize, but over time, we noticed that many projects do seem to share a kind of common DNA in the way space is constructed and materials are joined. We often try to give ordinary materials a less ordinary role, or perhaps more accurately, to find the most fitting way for a material to exist within a particular spatial context. That sense of what feels “right” may exist only within our own standards, but perhaps that is exactly where our character lies.

A good example is MOCUN RESORT, a hotel project we completed in China two years ago, with 52 guest rooms. It was a renovation, and each room differed in size and material conditions. The hotel sits in the mountains, far away from the city, and while working on it we kept feeling that the place already had its own personality. An overly refined language would have overwhelmed it, while branding that was too explicit would have gone against its nature. So we had to find materials that were not overly complex, but still had enough presence to sit naturally within the whole.

To understand that relationship more clearly, we actually removed a strip of old flooring from one of the garden rooms and kept it in our studio. We worked with it beside us the whole time. Whenever we felt stuck, we would compare our decisions back to that piece of floor. Sometimes you need something raw and original in front of you to know whether you are moving in the right direction. Materials became one of the most mentally demanding parts of the design process—but also one of the most fascinating.