RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

How do transformations in the world around us influence future directions in architecture? This question lies at the core of PROTOinc’s office and research culture, with a focus on three key areas.

mobility

How we move fundamentally affects how we (should) build.
Informed by 15 years of experience in the automotive and transportation sectors, PROTOinc is constantly examining the future effects of mobility on the built environment, particularly given the transformative influence of electrification. Historically, advances in transportation technology have had unintended, widespread effects on the built enviroment. Through a better understanding of changing patterns of use, we seek a more symbiotic evolution for the rapid transformations currently underway: architecture that not only adapts to but also helps to shape the future of mobility. Our mission is to shape tomorrow’s spaces to seamlessly accommodate the ever-evolving landscape of mobility in all its forms.

WOrking Processes

Innovating workplaces beyond the office
While the local predominance of knowledge-based work has tended to place the emphasis on office design, our client base is more diverse: “workplace” for our audience covers a broad range of retail, R&D, recreation, industrial, maker-space, maintenance/utility, and yes, office activities. But we’re not just architects interested in spatial outcomes; we’re equally curious about the processes that make our society productive, and allow our clients to be innovators in their respective fields. We delve deeply into the intricacies of work processes and protocols, seeking to understand the unique dynamics of each industry — and each client — we serve. In turn, these processes may be borrowed and re-tooled in order to create new architectural opportunities. Ours is a rapidly evolving world where the definition of work itself is transforming, and we are continually seeking new methods for incorporating that change into architectural innovation.

ART & INDUSTRY

Transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary
Casting an artful eye towards the techniques and output of mass production, we seek new opportunities to enrich the most commonplace and overlooked corners of our built environment. At the heart of our approach is the belief that the ordinary can be a canvas for the remarkable. Embracing the techniques and off-the-shelf products of mass production in an experimental fashion, we reimagine their potential in architectural contexts. Based on experience, combining these two ways of making — of thinking — make for a potent and fertile source of new ideas, new methods, new prototypes. By marrying the efficiency of industry with the creativity of art, we create spaces that emerge from yet transcend the ordinary, reassuringly familiar yet strikingly fresh.