Why Architect Melissa Shin Adds Drawings of Smurfs to Her Project Plans

I’ve always been a little cheeky and playful. My architecture training was very heavy and serious, but I’ve just never been that person. When I started my own practice, Shin Shin, in Los Angeles, there was a big question of how I wanted to identify myself as a designer. I knew I wanted to produce rigorous work, but without always being so severe.

At MIT, where I studied mathematics and computer science, there’s a culture of hacking, which often includes pranks like hiding "Easter eggs" in math proofs or coding projects as a form of authorship. My office’s secret—and I haven’t told any of my clients this before—is that I make my stamp by hiding drawings of these trinkets and toys from my childhood in architectural plans that Shin Shin produces, like a watermark.

I keep the toys around my office as a reminder to have fun, but they also carry stories from my past growing up in Detroit in the ’80s. Sometimes it was hard, because it felt like we were the only Asian family there. Now I’m nostalgic for all these little things, like going to the same five restaurants, even though I grew up feeling like I did not really fit in there.

Today, narrative is a huge part of my creative process, whether I’m designing an ADU or a single-family residence or the headquarters for an electric motorcycle company. I always develop my own inner monologue about a project, which might be completely separate from the client’s. There’s a side of architecture that is a service profession, but there’s also a side of, What does this project mean to me?

The watermarks are a huge part of Shin Shin’s identity and playfulness. I love the idea of producing a very serious and rigorous project and obsessing over the floor plans and drawings, but then hiding a Smurf in there. It’s my own little tongue-in-cheek thing.

—

Head back to the November/December 2023 issue homepage