So close to their chests.

Here's an intriguing site from that indefatigable site-searcher, Eric Morehouse. It is the website of richard+bauer. Regular readers will know this column's predilection for the Miesian aphorism 'less is more' when applied to websites though not all-lower-case practice names. Here is the ultimate example of the former. Click on www.richard-bauer.com and up comes a grey home page with a white and grey graphic symbol, a quasi-rebus composed of the practice initials, with the full practice name in white below. As with our own arplus site you click on the graphic. Here, up comes another grey background this time with biggish photos in a single long strip down the single page which makes up the site. The names of the buildings are in a serif face, probably Times, at the bottom right-hand corner of each image. You sniff the faint odour of DIY but you scroll down seeking enlightenment and accidentally click on one of these titles--say 'meinel optical sciences', and up come one or two groups of terrific snapshots of the meinel optical sciences building where/whatever that might be. And, that's it. No explanations about the buildings, no practice contact address, no phone numbers. You look at the umlaut over the 'a' in Richard, note the plus sign, take a look at the rather good architecture and conclude this is an enigmatic German or Swiss practice. Then you do a Google and ... wrong. There it is. Richard + Bauer Architecture LLC is a Phoenix, Arizona born and bred practice which obviously everybody already admires and knows where to ring. Chutzpah? Or they've simply got more work than they can possibly manage.