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We're a Research and Placemaking studio.

We work at the intersection of community, the built environment, and architectural design.

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Our Services
Research & Collaboration for more resilient SYSTEMS, COMMUNITIES, PLACES and SERVICES

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Making services & systems visible

We work with teams to help them build better systems and cultures to deliver human-centric services. We partner with collectives of stakeholders to map journeys, systems, and environments through a collaborative approach. We see each project as an opportunity for shared learning, alignment and up-skilling. We believe the value in mapping services is in the “mapping, not the map.” (h/t Jim Klaback)

Service & System Design

Service & System Design

Service & System Design

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Resilient and Connected Cities

We need stronger, more resilient, and more connected communities and places, now more than ever. And we believe this has to start from within. We engage communities through co-creation and participatory research. We love to work with collectives bridging the public and private sectors who are interested in driving sustainable, systemic change. We also partner with developers, urban planners, residential clients, landscape designers and architects on design and planning projects, especially mixed-use projects.

Placemaking & Co-creation

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Separate Signal from the Noise

Most organizations already have a lot of data and information but lack bandwidth or expertise to integrate them into their decision-making processes. We can take your existing data, support tickets, interview transcripts, sales call notes, insights from previous research studies, and market analyses and help you make sense of what you know. We act as a sense-making partner to synthesize key themes as well as identify knowledge gaps.

Synthesis & Sense-making

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Evidence-based Decision-making

Are your teams missing clear frameworks, strategies, or bandwidth to understand the market, your customers, and partners? We collaborate with organizations to drive alignment, up-skill teams through learn-by-doing training and capability-building programs, and center priorities on community and customer needs. Our focus is on creating conditions in which evidence-based decision-making can happen. We believe that shared learning happens when we establish trust-based relationships, nurture safe spaces for learning (and unlearning), and build infrastructure that supports and incentivizes continuous learning.

Research, Strategy & Training

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Our Practice

Tough on systems, soft on people.

See the system. Then, make it
visible for everybody.

Find value in the liminal.

Resist rushing through the threshold toward the solution space. Linger in the unknown. 

Magic in the mundane.

Build a practice around play, anchored in habits and rhythm.

Wicked problems require wicked collaboration.

Problem-solving with, not for.
 

Action is information.

Process and practice are a closed loop system. They compliment and inform each other. 

When stuck, step out.

The most dangerous place from which to view the world, is from your desk.

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