Young, fun and all female – we meet a dynamic new architectural firm.
April 14th, 2010
Based in London vPPR Architecture is made up of Tatiana von Preussen, Catherine Pease and Jessica Reynolds.
Indesignlive.com came across their work this February, when CookieBar popped-up in Manhattan for Valentine’s day, featuring an enticing window display constructed out of 200 reclaimed cookie-cutters.
Each cookie cutter was riveted together to form a glittering lattice structure, within which the merchandise was suspended. Some were then backed with red transparent plastic.
“The budget was very low,” explains Tatiana von Preussen, “since the store was to be open for such a short time and had to be something we could build ourselves.”
The design trio founded vPPR in June 2009, having been firm friends at Cambridge University.
vPPR boast enviable academic credentials. After Cambridge, the dynamic trio then studied separately at Columbia University, the Architectural Association and Princeton University.
They then followed this up with time at some of the biggest architectural firms in the industry, in both New York, where they cemented the idea of setting up on our their own.
“We were very immersed in the academic world on the East coast but there seemed to be limited scope for putting American ideas about Form into practice,” said Tatiana von Preussen.
“We thought that it would be interesting to import those ideas to Europe where everyone is so obsessed with Context and see if we could develop a new language by smashing those oppositions together.“
The collaborative process has been a smooth one, which each of them designing separately then deciding as a group from their London base.
“Compromise in design can really dilute the strength of an idea so we try to divide up the projects between us and use each other as critics.”
“We have a lot of fun together. We work crazy hours, but we also party pretty hard too.”
Each of them bring their varying experience from previous practices to the company, contributing to everything from the design and PR through to the accounts and fabrication.
“It would probably be more efficient to specialise but the spice of the practice is to have a go at everything.“
“Once we stop learning something new every day we’ll probably drop architecture and go make movies.”
vPPR Architecture
vppr.co.uk
Photography by Amy Barkow
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