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It seems that the architecture profession is and has been in a destructive identity crisis for some time now. Every summer students and recent graduates are left to navigate the field from the corporate giants to the lone designers, weighing the pros and cons of each. Within this spectrum it seems that the more ambitious a firm is, the less they’re willing to pay their employees, a concept that is somehow perversely prevalent in architecture school’s culture where the chance to work on interesting projects comes with the assumption of sacrificing more. The Architecture Lobby recently suggested “architecture has fallen between the cracks of art and profession, getting the worst of both.”1 This dilemma runs rampant throughout the profession where economic stability runs contrary to creativity. The pitfalls of apathy and debt lie on opposite ends of this tug-of-war as we seek to find alternative business models for this paralyzed profession. In this · we argue the conflicting desires of clients and designers with Paul Segal and ask FAMILY + PlayLab how and why they chose to work outside the traditional architectural hierarchies.