DESIGNER’s STORY
PARTISANS is an award-winning architecture studio that specializes in the integration of design and programming, invention and activation, installations and creative services. Our diverse team of architects, artists, storytellers, cultural enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs produces work across mediums and scales, combining old-world craftsmanship, new-world technologies, and deft programming to subvert expectations and create meaningful built experiences.
The studio was founded on a conviction: Architecture is not just the act of designing a building; it’s a way of seeing, thinking, and making that expands and even revolutionizes our experience of the world. To that end, we believe that the relevance of our practice is inextricably linked to working across disciplines and forging public engagement through art, thought leadership, and cultural interventions that mobilize critical thinking, imagination, and community.
We aspire to be city builders building better cities by innovating on the front lines of ideas, culture, forms, materials, and typologies. Our cause: smart, high-performance design that strives to make the impossible probable.
Alex Josephson, Cofounder of PARTISANS
Alex Josephson cofounded PARTISANS in 2012 after studying architecture at the University of Waterloo, the University of Rome, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA). PARTISANS is comprised of architects, designers, thinkers, and cultural enthusiasts whose work across all scales is devoted to a cause: high-performance design that strives to make the improbable possible. The studio’s projects have been featured in Wallpaper, Dezeen, Frame, designboom, and The New York Times, and won numerous awards, including the R+D Award, Azure’s AZ Awards, and the Ontario Association of Architects’ Best Emerging Practice and Design Excellence awards. The only Canadian to have ever received the New York Prize Fellowship at the Van Alen Institute, Alex was named 2016 Best Emerging Designer by Canada’s Design Exchange. He currently lectures at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture.
READ MORE BRAND DESIGNER’s STORIES
Born in 1954, member of the Milanese tradition that generated designers such as Castiglioni, Zanuso, Magistretti and de Lucchi, graduated in architecture at the Politecnico of Milan in 1979. Since then, he has designed for most of the leading names in the furniture and lighting sectors. Minotti and Rodolfo Dordoni: the company started working with
Born in São Paulo, Kogan is the founding architect and professor of all the team at studio mk27. As the architects of the team, Kogan is a great admirer of the Brazilian modernism generation, seek to fulfill the task of rethinking and giving continuity to this iconic architectural movement. The projects of studio mk27 place
Vico Magistretti was born in 1920, in Milan. In the post-war period he was actively involved in the reconstruction, both on the theoretical side through the MSA (Movement for Architectural Studies) of which he was one of the founders, and on the practical side with projects for INA-Casa and QT8.
As the third generation of specialized wood craftsmen in cabinet making and restoration, in the seventies, Romeo Sozzi made his debut in interior decoration. Since 1988, he has managed his company, Promemoria, together with his three sons. In time, Promemoria has become not just a producer of internationally high profile furnishing, but a test bed
An authoritative presence on the contemporary French scene, Bruno Moinard has developed commercial and cultural projects for an international clientele, from Christie’s to Cartier, from Galerie Lafayette to the Musée des Arts Decoratif.
Since 2002 with Oki Sato providing direction to Nendo studio, it represents a refreshing, refined and cultured alternative to over-celebrated design. Meaning “clay” in Japanese the name Nendo implies the flexibility and malleability of that material their designs for the world of graphics, interior architecture and furniture.
