TsAO & McKOWN Architects

From their first commission in 1985, a high-rise residential building in Shanghai, partners Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown have challenged themselves and their associates with the widest possible range of project types and scales, across a global span of cultures and locales, knowing that each diverse experience informs the next and provides unique insights. Whether the project is a table, a room, a high-rise, or an urban plan, attention to the points of intimate, tactile engagement between the individual and the larger built environment is critical to their approach. With the additional realization that there are no natural discontinuities between inside and out, the firm delights in exterior forms emerging from within, and interior spaces forming externally.