Adam Charlap Hyman and Andre Herrero met as students at the Rhode Island School of Design, but it wasn’t until years later, when the duo found themselves working on the same home on New York’s Upper West Side—Herrero for an architecture firm and Charlap Hyman on the design side—that they went into business together. “Suddenly, Andre and I found ourselves in the same meetings about this house because [my client] wanted me to help her decorate it. I was moonlighting, doing it at night,” Charlap Hyman tells host Dennis Scully on the latest episode of The Business of Home Podcast. “That was how Andre and I reconnected.”

The pair started their architecture and design firm in 2014, and they grew by saying yes to every project that came their way. Over time their practice has expanded to a team of 35, with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City. This year Charlap Hyman & Herrero won the National Design Award for interior design from the Cooper Hewitt museum.

The firm is known for its breadth: Alongside residential projects, it has taken on commercial work ranging from a redesign of the Upper East Side restaurant E.A.T. to cultural ventures like the set design for the production Robeson on Little Island and the installation “Vintage20: Design for Living” at Tina Kim Gallery in Chelsea. Having a wide range of projects helps the team attract a vast array of clients. “That’s probably one of the most challenging aspects of marketing ourselves, because we’re doing so many different types of work,” says Herrero. “I find that when I’m speaking to someone, if they know about our work, it’s usually one or two things, [not the] entire gamut of things we’re working on. When we know what type of work [a prospective client] wants to do, we’ll generally create a portfolio that’s very specific to that type of work and that client, because we do have so many types of projects.”

Elsewhere, the design duo share how receiving their recent award validated their design practice and gave them new confidence, what their dream project is, and their best advice for designers just entering the industry.

Crucial insight: Charlap Hyman & Herrero has been getting its work published since the early days, and have used this exposure as a tool to win over clients. “We’ve always seen press as an affirmation to people that already know us. Usually there’s some way that we’ve come into contact with this person, but then they see an article and they’re reminded of us, or they’re given the confidence in our abilities because they read the article,” says Charlap Hyman. “The article enforces the thought that they could work with us and that it would be successful.” Those experiences have emboldened the partners to take more risks. “We started our practice so young, so we didn’t have 15 years at a previous firm,” says Herrero. “The scale of work that we started at and where we’re at now, it’s come very gradually. So each new project is a bit larger, a bit more complicated, and it usually does involve a client taking a bit of a risk. The articles have been extremely validating for that reason, because we continue to work with clients that take risks, but then are very happy that they did so and proud at the end of the day.”

Key quote: “We had a lot of small projects at the beginning,” says Charlap Hyman. “Very, very little projects. I mean, people would pay us $5,000 to do something, such small amounts to do a room or a living room or something, and we tried our hardest every time we had a project to make it count. There are very few projects that we ever did that did not become, at the very least, a single really amazing photograph for us.”

This episode is sponsored by Loloi and Kohler. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The Thursday Show

Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world, including a major housing bill, Kips Bay’s big move, and why GEO is the new SEO. Later, designer Tiffany Duggan of London’s Studio Duggan joins the show.

This episode is sponsored by Joon Loloi. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.