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
Ferréol Babin dedicates half of his time collaborating with various furniture and lighting editors where he can incorporate his singular vision and approach of design. The other half is spent on making unique pieces, with an obvious brutalist yet delicate approach.
The passion for objects meant as industrial products is the glue of the professional partnership between Alfredo Chiaramonte and Marco Marin, promoting partners of the homonymous Designstudio.
Under label NO-MADE Cleo Maxime and Linde Freya, who met at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2008, collaborate on creating objects that combine their interest in materials and cultural dialogue. Working ‘apart together’ they aim to combine their forces and views on aesthetics to create tactile, elegant and sturdy objects.
Earned his degree in Industrial Design in 1986 in Barcelona, he moves to New York to joint the Vignellis Studio. After four years, he was engaged at Ralph Lauren focusing his work in both furniture and interior design. Return to Barcelona in 1998 and began to collaborate with Grupo Inditex (Zara Group) as a creative
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.
Harry Thaler is a product designer whose work reinterprets fundamental design typologies by combining high-quality and traditional craftsmanship with clever and innovative forms.
