Hoang puts art and soul into architecture.

Mimi Hoang, co-founder of nArchitects, has had one of those magical careers where everything just seemed to fall into place.

Whether she was standing on cliffs in Lacoste, France gauging mistral winds to create an amorphous string sculpture for her award winning project, Windshape, crouched down tightening fog nozzles to create a simulated rainforest at the courtyard of PS-1 in Queens, or tilting a window to reveal a new slat of light for a condo in Soho, Hoang's work has transcended traditional boundaries of geography.

Perhaps it was Hoang's transient childhood, which sent her roaming from Vietnam when she was three-years-old and subsequently to Connecticut, Chicago and Boston, and her lack of exclusive connection to any to be a one town, that has inspired the free spirited fusion of materials.

"I have always been a little bit placeless. There isn't a single environment or memory of an environment I think that informs my work directly. I am inspired by looking at different cultures and different countries. Those experiences ultimately inform our work," Huoang said.

Hoaung found a partner with similar nomadic tendencies. Shortly after graduating from Harvard University with an Masters of Architecture, in 1986, she began working with former classmate, Eric Bunge. The two created nArchitects in 1999, with their first formal collaboration, a winning competition entry for an art house for the Hotel Pro Forma, a Danish theatrical group's venue in Copenhagen, Denmark.

While they did not ultimately win the competition in Denmark, their entry, an staggered series of lobbies and rooms, was part of the firm's winning entry into the young architects competition from the Architectural League of New York.

nArchitects started small, scoring commissions to help construct large-scale public arts projects for artists and landscape artists, and entering into every competition they felt qualified for. Winning the Museum of Modern Art/PS 1 Young Architects Program competition in 2004 for their project, Canopy, really grounded them in the soil of the industry.

PSI is a non-profit contemporary arts center affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art.

"We'd seen every single PSI installation since we arrived in New York. So we had been thinking about the r presume competition and dreaming about it for years," artist, Hoang said. "It is one of the most important commissions you can get as a young architect. You have the freedom to experiment and see things built. The panel gives you complete creative control."

The project transformed the gray concrete courtyard of PS 1 into a multi-use space integrating different ecosystems, including a pool pad, a fog pad, a simulated rainforest and a sand pad. The entire courtyard was draped with a green bamboo canopy that progressively dried out and turned tan over the course of the summer.

Canopy subsequently lead to a similar exhibition commission from the Savannah College of Art and Design for the Windshape Project in Lacoste, France which ultimately won the AIA award.

The project carved into the limestone hillside overlooking the sunflower and lavender fields a sculpture created entirely out of plastic tubing and thousands of yards of string that changed form according to the way it was hit by the wind.

Hoang thrived while discovering the challenges inherent in the project which included the transport of materials into a remote region, and seeing the project through in only five weeks. She was mesmerized throughout the project to see if their engineering would stand up under the spectral winds believed to be so potent crimes of passions they were traditionally pardoned when they blew.

"Windshape was a dream commission, one of those projects that walked the tightrope between design and practice. But we didn't know what would come out of it. We were pretty much building in the hypothetical. The winds were much stronger than we had imagined and we wound up having to find something to reinforce the pavilion. That was the exciting part. At first it was very abstract, but as the pieces began to fall into place and it began to get built, things became tangible," Huoang said.

nArchitects first residential project, the Switch Building, a seven story tower which includes two stories of art galleries and five stories of condos, caused them to sculpt their artistic style to blend within the constrained building codes of New York City. The light will constantly change form throughout the units, an effect which will be achieved by the staggering of shapes and angle of windows and terraces.

A recent commission to redesign a 100-acre medical center in Buffalo, has allowed them to jack up their staff from three full time employees to five, and to create a new home for themselves in a loft in DUMBO.

Ultimately, it is Hoang's struggle for definition, her resistance to having their work pigeonholed, that is helping her to carve a new niche for herself in the industry.

"Sometimes, it is confusing to people to try and explain what we do. I never presume to know what it is to be an artist, but some of the work that we do, does cross over," she said. "We are often invited to do work as artists and sometimes what we do straddles the border between art and landscape design and urban design."