Well, the name obrARCHITECTURE was pretty simple, as it is just the partners Garrick Oliver, myself and Anney Rosenthal-Hall) first letter of the last name in an order that doesn’t spell something that would be recognizable as a word. However, how we represent that name is what was important to us. The reason we use the lowercase obr and the upper case for whatever follows it (obrARCHITECTURE, obrART, obrEVENT, etc.) is because we didn’t want to bring attention to us, the partners, but rather we wanted to bring attention to what we were doing.

I told my parents when I was 6 years old that I wanted to be an architect. It was absolutely lego inspired at the time, but it stuck with me and, well, here I am, owner of an architecture firm that I am extremely proud of. We’ve worked on all sorts of projects over the years, as we never wanted to specialize. If it sounds fun and we can make a little money at, we’re interested. That has led to some unique projects through the years. We designed the first shipping container home in San Diego County. We designed the first parklet in San Diego for Caffe Calabria. We also have been fortunate to have worked on some of the most iconic places in San Diego; Liberty Station, the Zoo, Hotel del Coronado to name a few.

Our clients have described us as being ‘user friendly’ and that is a big part of our success. We take our work seriously, but ourselves? Not so much. There is no reason that we can’t have fun working with our clients on their projects and we often develop personal friendships with our clients that last long after the projects are done.

And speaking of friendships, one of the things I am most proud of is the culture we’ve created at obr. We’re the island of misfit designers. We blur the line between work and play and give people the freedom to work the way they want to work and be themselves. We encourage them to explore all sorts of creative pursuits. We have painters, singers, poets, comedians, etc. We even have a marble maze builder. We love the diversity of our team.

My partners and I met while working for another architecture firm in San Diego. After 12 years there I had determined that I was going to open my own firm, and in a faded plastic orange corner booth in a small Mexican restaurant downtown I talked them in to joining me on my adventure.