Our Foundation
As a kid, my next door neighbor and best friend built a big sandbox in the tree line of our backyards… it was a huge square made of double-stacked 2x12s. A dump truck brought in a load of sand and my friend Mark and I carted the sand back one wheel barrel after another to fill it up. Then, we played for endless hours in the coming years … everything you could imagine. New worlds, relived moments in history, scenario after scenario unfolded within that wooden square as we planned, plotted, formed and dug. It’s how our summers were spent… in a box that offered the bare minimum support for creating unlimited imagination and outcomes.
In school, our curiosity was quickened by honing our ability ask the right questions, to not settle, to dive deeper into a client’s situation and uncover the root of their challenges and opportunities. With this approach as the foundation to my more than two decades as an architect, I’m proud of how I partner with clients for incredible and creative solutions. I’ve worked for several of the big architectural firms, and, sometimes, that patient innovation is constrained.
When I launched by own firm, I wanted to create a collaborative environment that was as open and conducive to creative thinking as possible – a place with the bare minimum support and structure that allowed for unlimited imagination and ideas to be generated. The SNDBX is a place where anything is possible… We think outside the box to offer our clients transformative, long-term solutions that create beauty. Thinking back to my childhood, and peering into the near-future, I knew we had to name it SNDBX.
WHY NO VOWELS? Because the consonants provide that bare minimum structure for the word. More structure creates more constraints. At some point, overly rigid processes become an impediment to creativity, where the process itself dictates the outcome rather than facilitating innovation. A focus on minimizing unnecessary steps and bureaucratic hurdles evokes a sense of being adaptable and flexible, within a defined framework. By incorporating Six Sigma and Kaizen principles, we look for continuous improvement and elimination of waste. It’s a reminder of the “sky’s the limit” kind of creativity I want to foster.
SNDBX is a place for collaboration and imaginative play where simple and direct solutions are created. A place where you can experiment with scenarios and test-fit solutions until you discover what works best. We’re not just designing buildings, we are making a positive impact on our clients’ lives, businesses, and the community.