Jones, Partners: Architecture - Innovative Human-Machine Collaboration

Jones, Partners: Architecture - A Human and Machine Collaboration

Jones, Partners: Architecture (J,P:A) is an innovative architectural practice based in California. The studio emphasizes the collaboration between humans and machines to create technologically engaging spaces. J,P:A believes that the meat reality underlying digital fantasy is essential and should be emphasized in their designs. Technology is not just for the elite but is an everyday reality that demands architects to work in a language that is hospitable to its usefulness and critical intentions.

Designing for Legibility

J,P:A believes that legibility is critical in an environment skewed towards performance. To engage performers, they must understand their possibilities for engagement. J,P:A designs spaces that are programmatic, intentional, and unique to specific project requirements. They eschew signature designs to maintain a more generous authorial anonymity. J,P:A's work is free of gimmickry or pretension that typically characterizes the work of design personalities. As a result, each project is prototypical, and J,P:A takes the corresponding responsibility for it to be exemplary.

Research and Coherence

J,P:A maintains a continuing program of research in the academy and in the field to provide inspiration and judge its results. The resulting variety of designs may describe a "style" for those who think that way. The sense of coherence that marks the resulting variety of designs is as much a consequence of confidence and optimism in this research as of any formal similarity in its products. J,P:A believes strongly in the hopeful, open-minded attitude of the modernism tradition, seeking improvement and expecting progress.

Commitment to Exemplary Work

J,P:A has resisted the temptations to grow or dilute its project mix with work that offers less than an even chance to be exemplary. Each project is treated as if it were the next big thing, and each new employee is assumed to be a future partner. Despite a range of completed work typical for a much larger, profit-driven office, J,P:A continues to act like a small, obsessive design practice intent on changing the world by demonstrating the way things should be.