In the fall issue of aspire design and home we delve into the world of DESIGN DUOS, examining their synergy, successful collaborations and the unique dynamics that make their (personal and professional) partnerships thrive.
Citizen Artist | Design
Founding Partners: Joshua Rose & Rafael Kalichstein
Est. 2007
How and when did you meet?
Rafi: We met in April of 2006; we were set up on a blind date by a Vedic astrologer and a dear friend of Josh’s. Within the first six months of our relationship, we bought a house, renovated it, adopted a dog, and took on our first design project. I guess you could say we were ambitious.
How long have you been in business together?
Josh: We incorporated in the spring of 2007. We came to design from successful careers in other fields with a great deal of adjacent experience, an openness to learn, and a blissful ignorance, which — together — released us from traditional notions of how we were meant to go about doing things. In the beginning, we considered ourselves rogue designers, guided by our scrappy natures, big ideas, fascination with all things beautiful and, mostly, our curiosity.
This or that…
Are you a morning person or nocturnal?
Josh: I am most definitely an early riser. Mornings are my favorite time of day: it’s quiet. I feel more in sync with the world and I can be with my own thoughts — it’s just me, the birds, an espresso, and my book.
Rafi: I have the reputation among my family of being a late riser, but the truth is I used to be a late riser — now I’m generally up between 6:30 and 7:00. However, unlike Josh, who seems to pop out of bed, I awaken with a little reluctance…
Do you prefer phone calls or Zoom/video?
Josh: Zoom/video. So much is communicated non-verbally and a video forum gives me the opportunity to glean much more information than is available from only a phone call.
Rafi: For presentations, collaborations, project coordination, and client meetings — Zoom, by far. For everything else, I would prefer Morse code or a tin can on a string, but I’ll settle for the phone.
Is your office neat and organized or messy/creatively cluttered?
Josh: That depends on whose area of the office you’re asking after and when you catch us. The office is usually fairly neat and organized, but when work gets particularly harried, you might catch us with a good deal of our library out and about — even on the floor. When we’re working through big creative decisions that are material-based, we’ll lay a whole project out across the office to see it all working together. As storytellers, we want to see the arc of the thing to really be sure of ourselves.
Rafi: I freely admit I’m the least tidy of the whole team. I scribble notes for everything and then pile those notes — grouped by category — so I suppose you could say that I have somewhat of an organized chaos in my sphere. I do, though, always know where I put things. It’s a system I must have inherited from my parents. Works for me!
Are you a social butterfly or do you prefer the comforts of home?
Josh: I enjoy a rich social life, but there is really nothing like the quiet of being home in some very soft “stretchy pants.” Travel has always been immensely important to me — as a creative, as a thinker, as a designer, and as a citizen and there is an inherent social interaction built into that endeavor, so I don’t feel short on socializing. Having said that, too much of a great thing can make a person yearn for routine and rest — generally, I could use a little more of that. Our home in Yucca Valley is where my heart is most at peace.
Rafi: While I imagine my peers see me as an endlessly social being — and I am, in many ways — I need as much stillness, quiet, and time at home as our schedules will afford us to help reinvigorate myself. The business of design requires one to fire on all pistons at all times; one might describe the demands much as the Bard does: “The readiness is all.” To that end, a hearty dose of being a homebody helps one prepare for what might come. In the words of the immortal Quentin Crisp, in an interview he gave with Mavis Nicholson in 1975, “I give myself utterly to everybody all the time. I get exhausted; happily exhausted;” but, he continues, “You can’t be on stage all day of every day; only nearly all day of every day.”
My favorite period in design is…
Josh: I have a real love of both the Brutalist and Bauhaus periods. As much as I admire many of the great movements in architecture and design throughout history, these two periods particularly speak to me. However, as Citizen Artist addresses style across our projects, we look through a temporal lens that brings our work into the context of now.
Rafi: I tend to develop a temporary obsession with whatever style in which we are fortunate enough to be working. That’s one of the reasons I am drawn to this profession: every project comes with the possibility to expand my perspective, challenge myself to think among varied parameters and fall in love with something new.
I am creatively inspired by…
Josh: Travel. It’s always travel. While I find inspiration in all kinds of stories, I connect best with those narratives by physically treading the same paths as those who came before me in as many new places as I can reach. There is something so deeply moving about that.
Rafi: I agree entirely. There is an unlocking of the imagination that drives creativity when one can imagine another life at another time in another place. It’s very powerful. We are so fortunate to be able to have those experiences and to enrich our own creativity in that way.
The best part of working together is…
Josh: The best part of working together is that I never lose faith in the potential of our creativity. It feels boundless to me, and that boundlessness creates a deep sense of security. King Solomon said that “iron sharpens iron”; working together is nothing if not that. As partners in life and business, we constantly challenge each other (as well as our team) to make the best choices, revisiting those choices as we need, until the gestalt resolves to our satisfaction. The result of this process — this consistent refining — is that we are confident in our work, our design, and the quality of our commissions.
Rafi: Josh is an incredible partner and support — in more ways than I can articulate — but most of all, he makes me laugh. We laugh a lot.
Photography courtesy of Citizen Artist.
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