Hello, we are HouMinn

The HouMinn project is material. We make things. Through assembly, we explore fabrication, material culture, performance, and ecology. We often work at full scale, constructing assemblies, prototypes, and installations while playing with relationships and ideas. Our work embraces mischief and challenges architectural norms. We’ve proposed architecture that performs like garments (Drape Wall), transforms through movement (Drift House) and chemistry (Aloha Evolution), and hides within its contexts (Cloak Wall). While we are often aligned with technology-driven innovations like 3D printing and digital fabrication, technology is not our focus. We embrace both cutting-edge and low-fidelity tools, seeking to decenter technology and shift the emphasis towards distributed authorship and collaborative processes.

Our goal is to build broad access to our work and ideas, reducing the barriers between our creations and their application. More collaborators equal more hands, which leads to more ideas. We use technology as a tool, but also to shift attention away from it, focusing instead on authorship, disorganization, and a relinquishment of control. From our inception, we’ve challenged conventional forms of authorship, with our name, HouMinn, reflecting this. It is a portmanteau of Houston and Minneapolis, the two cities where we began, symbolizing the mix of cultures and influences that shape our practice. We work to foster a flat, fluid exchange of ideas and are open to collaboration with designers, thinkers, and makers across disciplines and geographies.

Our collaborative nature has led to alliances with diverse groups like Minn_Lab, YAO+, and Hometta, and more recently, non-human authors. We explore biological systems, material behavior, and ecologies as active participants in our work. For example, VarVac Wall explored acoustic performance and material behavior through fabrication processes, while Zippered Wood reimagined light-frame construction. Each project, including Orbacles and BLIP, reflects our desire to give up control and work in partnership with the materials and systems around us. What we present here is the result of careful choreography, playful exploration, and broad collaboration—projects that are inherently more than just HouMinn.

We founded HouMinn Practice in 1998 in Houston, Texas. Since then, we’ve grown into an ever-expanding collaborative network of professionals, academics, and students, each bringing essential expertise in architecture, construction, fabrication, science, engineering, sociology, community, and craft to every project we undertake. This collective knowledge is the foundation of our work, driving our innovation and pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve. HouMinn stands not just on its own, but on the contributions of a dynamic and diverse group of collaborators who continuously shape and elevate our practice.