pouf! art + architecture – design philosophy

pouf! art + architecture was founded by Cynthia Imogen Hammond and Thomas D. Strickland in 2006. For pouf! buildings and spaces are not simply the work of an architect or urban planner. Rather, we see the built environment as part of larger cultural landscapes of gender, power and shared history. Given how architecture and design play a crucial role in the formation and negotiation of identity, pouf! takes the position that the built environment has a lot to tell us. Consequently, as historians we explore the pasts that have formed the typology or morphology of our sites; as artists we seek to intensify and make visible the spatial and cultural relationships that might otherwise remain latent in these sites, and as designers we look for ways to collaborate with existing architecture and urban design. What is paramount for pouf! is to find ways to foreground the user/client in our process, whether our ultimate product is a spatial design, an exhibition, or the creation of a relationship, through time and communityinteraction, with a particular place.