Design and entrepreneurship were part of Emma Sims and Darcy Hanna’s DNA long before they started at UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. When Sims was a kid, she’d go down to Vancouver’s Point Grey neighbourhood to watch the fireworks from her carpenter father’s job sites. “He owned a construction company. He always smelled like sawdust,” recalls Sims. “Building was just a backdrop of my childhood.” (Dad was even a friend and collaborator of the late interior designer Robert Ledingham, the namesake of this award.)

At the same time, Hanna was growing up in Toronto, watching her parents run their computer services business. Though her father was a tech entrepreneur, he was also highly artistic, and cultivated a beautiful home for the family. “Subconsciously, design percolated into me at a young age,” Hanna says. When she got her driver’s licence, she’d drive around the suburbs just to look at houses. “There was something about it I was really interested in, but just didn’t know how to wedge my way in.”

Photo by Pooya Nabei

They both took a roundabout route to architecture school—Sims studied languages and history for her undergrad and moved to Paris after school; Hanna focused on political science and sociology and spent her free time on the ski hill before starting her masters in architecture. But once the two women arrived on campus and struck up a friendship, it became clear that they, too, were creative, clever entrepreneurs, like their parents before them.

The duo grew close through the semesters, co-founding a student design collective called Evenings and Weekends and enrolling in a design-build studio in Naramata under the instruction of architect Michael Green. Even as they both took gigs at other design studios in town, they each had it in somewhere in their mind that they’d make their way back together. “We really enjoyed working together and had developed a strong creative discourse, but felt like we needed to gain some experience at other offices first,” says Hanna.

So Hanna built up her residential skill set under Scott Posno (who won a Designer of the Year title in 2022), while Sims honed her skills doing restaurant design with Ste. Marie. Eventually, with just two clients of their own lined up, they left their steady gigs, and in 2017, &Daughters was born. “I don’t know how we made it all work,” laughs Sims. “But it was cool to come back together.”

READ MORE: Meet last year’s Robert Ledingham Memorial Award 2024, Brianna Hughes

The brand name alludes, of course, to their lineage as children of business owners, but it also takes a familiar small-business suffix—“& Sons”—and turns it on its head, a nod to the designers’ own practice of looking at traditional concepts with a fresh perspective. “It’s a simple shift that makes it radical,” says Sims. The ambiguousness is attractive, too: it doesn’t tie Sims and Hanna to one particular stream of design. “It allows us the freedom to grow and evolve as the office matures,” she explains.

The deep care and intention behind the studio name reflects the dedication the principals bring to the details in their varied projects—a dedication that earned the firm this year’s Robert Ledingham Memorial Award for an emerging interior designer. While their work covers a wide range of styles and scale—from a minimalist loft apartment for a work-from-home couple to Vancouver’s moody, sumptuous Ama Raw Bar—every project is rooted in what Sims calls “clarity of concept.” From an early point, everything gets a framework that guides each decision they make: the concept could be related to the siting or heritage of a building, or to an inspiring film. Constraints, whether they be budgetary, geographic or regulatory, often become the generative backbone of the studio’s projects. “There’s a narrative we focus in on that I think is discernable in each work,” says Sims.

It was certainly noticeable to judge Mitchell Freedland, principal of Vancouver’s Mitchell Freedland Design, who praises &Daughters’ “consistent thread of quality and resolution in each project.” Another judge, Nam Dang-Mitchell, principal of Calgary’s Nam Dang-Mitchell Design, describes &Daughters’ work as “confidant, considered and elegant,” adding that “they have a cinematic approach to interiors that is beguiling.”

The Loft Project. Photo by Tomasz Wagner

For a young couple (and their two cats), Hanna and Sims reinvigorated a circa-1996 loft with new interiors to bring calm and clarity to their work-live space. Most of the home is bright and airy, aside from a new studio area on a curved platform, clad in warm, welcoming maple plywood. It’s a cozy environment for client meetings and photo editing, separated from the light-filled, cream-and-wood living area by a concealed sliding door.

Lofty Ambitions
The Loft project—a renovated 938-square-foot double-height unit—was renovated with the help of Marino General Contracting and Ingrain Millwork. Pine elements add hits of warmth through the light-filled space. A built-in dining nook, deep storage cabinets and custom kitty litter conform to the underside of the stair, turning a space that had been difficult to use into one that serves multiple necessary functions. Photo by Tomasz Wagner

In total contrast, there’s the Sumac project, nestled at the base of Grouse Mountain near Vancouver. The split-level house had been stripped of its original character, but the designers dove deep into the history of local architects like Ron Thom and Fred Hollingsworth to reintegrate the spirit of West Coast Modernism into the home—with plenty of current-day touches, of course.

Time Warp
Emma Sims (left) and Darcy Hanna in their Sumac project. The original vaulted ceiling and stone fireplace were treated as anchor points in the mid-century renovation, with consistent details throughout like soapstone kitchen counters and brick quarry tile kitchen floors. The firm used Intempo Millwork and contractor Braybrook Projects for the project. Photo by Pooya Nabei

For their design of Vancouver’s Ama Raw Bar, Sims and Hanna took inspiration from the post-apocalyptic golden haze of Bladerunner 2049. There are no windows here: instead, light emanates from a recessed cove that runs over the perimeter of the room, creating what the design team calls “an infinite dusk.” Walls are cloaked in velvet curtains or warm, orange plaster.

Golden Hour
“Sexy” is the only way to describe the design of Ama Raw Bar, a moodily lit, velvet-lined treasure of a room on Fraser Street in Vancouver. Semi-transparent golden mirror lines the plaster walls and allows guests to catch glimpses of movement and activity around the room. Photo by Ema Peter

Whatever the project (upcoming: the completion of their third new-build house), the duo’s academic training has stayed with them, all these years after graduating. Residences, retail spaces and restaurants alike all receive an integrative, multidisciplinary approach. “We’re always working toward design that is thoughtful and not arbitrary,” says Sims.

Problems are solved practically, but there is also plenty of poetry in their work. For the friends and business partners, inspiration comes from a wide range of sources—the shaggy texture of the ceiling of a yoga studio, a colour combination spotted at a dentist office, water trickling down a mossy rock on a North Shore trail, vintage issues of this very magazine. It’s a magpie collection of textures and treasures, perfect for building a nest (or a cafe or a condo) on an unshakable foundation: the family craft.

Photo by Pooya Nabei

Q&A: Darcy and Emma on Design

What was your first design project?

ES: Our first project outside of school was to design elements for The Cheaper Show for its 10th edition the summer after our first year of architecture school. The show was an event in Vancouver created by Graeme Berglund that took place on a single day; it showcased the work of 200 artists and all artwork was sold for a uniform, affordable price, specifically $200. We designed a bar out of CMU blocks, an entry screen made of shipping pallets and some furniture for the space.

What do people often get wrong about design?

DH: I think that people often make the mistake of trying to do more than they can or should in one project. In my experience, design is most successful when a project is edited to a few key elements that are really well executed.

ES: It’s what people often get wrong in life in general, I think: just lacking the confidence to like what you like. A concern about what others think. It ends up resulting in spaces that feel sterile and lack personality and all look the same.

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