Architect Spotlight: AUX Architecture

Get to know AUX Architecture.

Founded in 2008, Los Angeles-based AUX Architecture designs the future for people, institutions, and communities. Led by Brian Wickersham, the practice brings craft and clarity to designs at every scale—from hearth to urban realm.

About AUX Architecture

Area of Focus:

Architectural design including projects in the civic, commercial, entertainment, sports, exhibit & gallery, hospitality, institutional, mixed-use development, and multi- and single-family residential sectors.

Could you tell us about your company’s history?

Founded in 2008, AUX Architecture designs the future for people, institutions, and communities. Led by Brian Wickersham, the Los Angeles-based practice brings craft and clarity to designs at every scale—from hearth to urban realm.

Collaboration is the soul of the studio. AUX’s 27-person team of architects and designers works closely with clients to produce sophisticated environments ranging from single and multi-family residential homes to commercial and cultural buildings. Functionality, sustainability, and beautiful materials are hallmarks of the practice’s skillful architecture. Each process-focused project combines passion with technical expertise.

AUX’s international portfolio has received multiple awards from the AIA Los Angeles and AIA San Fernando Valley, and has been featured in Metropolis, Dwell, Flaunt, Los Angeles Times, and The Plan.

What inspires you as a firm?

Fundamentally, our firm’s name relates to the auxiliary ports. These ports are designed to accept a wide variety of things. And we are, too. We are always ready to take advantage of opportunities, explore texture, beauty, perspectives, and truths. In the same way an auxiliary port is ready for anything thing, we are, too.

This way of thinking has allowed our firm to grow over time and in all the ways an architectural firm can – from the number of our team members, the scale and complexity of our projects, and who we work with.

Working with EXTECH

What do you look for in a building product?

If the product is featured primarily as an aesthetic component – like the EXTECH system – then design and application is inherently critical. Additional considerations include code compliance, performance/quality, cost/budget, schedule/lead time, installers, impact on the environment, and support/warranty. Of the list above, the ‘must-haves’ can be distilled to design, code, performance, sustainability, and cost (adherence to budget), while the other attributes factor into the final selection.

What is your experience working with EXTECH’s systems?

Clarity – the system provides soft, even daylighting throughout the building

Budget – the system helped reduce expenses around structural engineering

Sustainability benefits – the system is made from post-consumer recycled material and is 100% recyclable when its useful life is complete

Sustainable Focus

What are some of your favorite industry trends?

The focus on façade design and how important it is in the overall performance of the building and the building life cycle.

We are focusing more and more on the carbon footprint of our projects and care about the future potential for materials to be recycled, reused, or repurposed. If we work on a renovation project we attempt to save as many parts of the existing building/structure as possible to preserve the embodied carbon of those materials.

What is your outlook for building in the future?

Buildings will continue to become more “sustainable” as projects shift ever more to have less and less impact on the environment.