Heather is a silent but loudly helpful voice in the background of Josh Architects. Heather hears all of the tricky planning situations that Josh encounters, and she always offers sound advice. She is the wife of Josh, and she also came up with the idea to start the company.
Long ago, Josh ran his company as, International Studio, which started back in 2004. Josh has an interest in the “international style” due to its simplicity (and it actually has a lack of style). It works anywhere in the world and is timeless. By working with what you have, the solution is innately born without any added useless decoration. International Studio was named after this concept, but it was also a name that appeared to be a larger brand that could appeal nationally and beyond. This enabled Josh to focus on his interest in furniture design and appeal to manufacturers around the world. After a few years of chasing this dream, it was realized that there were more architecture commissions coming in than furniture ones, and designing furniture was not necessarily the goal. Josh really just liked furniture design because it was fast. You can design something and see it built in the same day if desired. What Josh really likes is designing, and furniture design was just a way of designing more frequently. As more and more architecture commissions came in, Josh also realized the furniture design industry was a broken system, and he found that he was actually getting his fair share of design opportunities with architecture alone.
This is where Heather stepped in. She is a brilliant advisor with a keen sense of marketing in our digital world. She studied journalism and mastered in digital marketing, she worked at Microsoft, Real Networks, and Disney/ABC, and she is now a prolific artist and respected photographer. She recognized that Josh’s work appealed to people in his community because they appreciate his personal interest in their design problems, he offers a high level of personal care in his service, and he is truly an expert in designing homes in the Pacific Northwest. She pitched the idea to him. She told him, “you are not a corporate architect. You are an artisan architect. You need to sell you - not some company.” That is where Josh Architects was born. The official business name is Josh PS. Architects are considered professional service providers like doctors, lawyers, and accountants, so we have to put PS after our business name instead of inc like other businesses. So technically, the business name is just “Josh”.
Heather played a pivotal role in helping Josh succeed since his brain is so buried in the craft of designing homes. She was thankfully able to see the bigger picture and put it into action. She setup the website, she crafted the story, she took all of the photographs of the work samples and headshots, and she curated the video on the website. We owe this whole image to Heather. It’s not really an image. It is real. It is who Josh really is. It is his passion, and he owes it to Heather for helping him see it.
-Written by Josh in the third person (since it sounded confusing to me in the first person). Thank you, Heather! Much love!
If you’d like to learn more about our design process, visit www.josharch.com/process, and if you’d like to get us started on your project with a feasibility report, please visit www.josharch.com/help