OH.NO.SUMO.

OH.NO.SUMO. is Kather­ine O’Shaughnessy, Sarosh Mulla, Patrick Loo & james Pearce

OH.NO.SUMO. is a col­lab­o­ra­tive design stu­dio that I jointly run with Patrick Loo, James Pearce and Kather­ine O’Shaughnessy. We have worked together for a num­ber of years on projects that are out­side the bounds of con­ven­tional archi­tec­tural practice.

Projects are usu­ally selected on their abil­ity to chal­lenge our exisit­ing skill set, expand our knowl­edge, the oppor­tu­ni­ties to include the pub­lic, the social impact pos­si­ble and the oppor­tu­nity to col­lab­o­rate with others.

OH.NO.SUMO. works as a non-hierarchial col­lec­tive. All mem­bers of the col­lec­tive are involved in indi­vid­ual research and prac­tice. These research is dis­parate and when col­lected allows OH.NO.SUMO. to respond to diverse design challenges.

The col­lec­tive is, above all, a way to make design a com­mu­nal, enjoy­able pur­suit. This often means that we set our own frame­work for projects. This can include a way of design­ing, a way of pro­duc­ing the design and a way of eval­u­at­ing the design which all incor­po­rate a com­mu­nity based approach. The frame­work often extends to being our own client, that is doing self ini­ti­ated design and con­struc­tion work.

OH.NO.SUMO. has now won sev­eral awards, been pub­lished in var­i­ous design and archi­tec­ture jour­nals, pre­sented at con­fer­ences and other events in Auck­land, Welling­ton, Dunedin, Christchurch and Brisbane.