design partners
salmela architect
David Salmela (FAIA) practices in Duluth, Minnesota. His projects have won over 50 regional & national architectural design awards. Salmela’s work has been published internationally in journals such as I.D., Monocle and Architectural Review. Dean of the University of Minnesota College of Design has written two books on his work,”Salmela Architect” & “The Invisible Element of Place”.
ralph rapson
Ralph Rapson was part of an exhilarating era in American Modernist architecture and design. He began his formal architectural training in the early 1930s at the University of Michigan and then attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art, led by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen. At age thirty-one he participated in Arts and Architecture magazine’s Case Study program for postwar housing. Rapson’s “Greenbelt House” entry drew wide and favorable critical attention. The building for which Rapson is perhaps best known, Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater, was completed in 1963. With his renowned drawing skills he produced hundreds of furniture designs including his own successful line for K G. Knoll Associates in the 1940s. The sketches he produced to convey his furniture designs were often cited for their remarkable perspective, which demonstrated not only what a particular piece of furniture would look like but also how it might feel. The Rapson® Rapid Rocker was first introduced in 1939 at MoMA. (Rapson Inc)
pfeiffer lab
Led by award winning product designer Eric Pfeiffer, Pfeiffer Lab was founded with the goal of addressing the design and future of the everyday objects that surround us. His philosophy: Simplicity and sustainability guides a process that creates useful and essential forms for the objects in our lives. Pfeiffer’s reductive approach relies on beauty, material honesty and necessity. It is this pure design ethos, coupled with a casual west coast sensibility that results in timeless objects rooted in a deep understanding of usability and manufacturing.
studio murmur
Studio Murmur is a Chicago-based industrial design firm led by designer and founder, T.J. Thomas. Working with a variety of clients and independently, the studio conceives and develops inspired, diligently considered products that emphasize simplicity, minimize complexity, and celebrate everyday living and working. Rather than generating desire around trend-driven objects they focus on the qualities and values that truly define great brands and great design.
brendan ravenhill
During childhood years in Cote d’Ivoire and summers in coastal Maine, Brendan Ravenhill fell in love with the functional beauty of working tools and wooden boats. Brendan received a Sculpture degree from Oberlin College in 2001 and a Masters in Industrial Design from RISD in 2009. He loves taking tours of factories and the smell of cedar shavings. He lives with his wife on a hill in Los Angeles.
ive haugeland
Ive Haugeland is a licensed landscape architect and the principal of Shades of Green, an award winning landscape architecture firm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Originally from Norway, Ive has embraced the Californian landscape while honoring her Scandinavian background. Her mission is to bring people and nature together by designing distinctive and sustainable private and public landscapes. Her design approach blends unique geometries with regionally sensitive materials. She carefully selects plants and hardscape that showcase artful compositions of form, color, and texture.
