Jennifer Carpenter

We met Jennifer Carpenter in a New York coffee shop to take a look at her designs for a new OFFI children's furniture collection. We loved the designs and more importantly, we loved that she was the mother of a 2 year old boy, Booker. At that point we knew that she was experiencing the same new parent desire that we were, to create and bring kids furniture with clever design to a market lacking such a combination. Thus, the Built-By-Me collection was born.

TRUCK Product Architecture designs products for the home's surfaces. Table, Floor, Wall, Ceiling. They view their work as product architecture: the structured assembly of common materials, sensitive to the intimate scale of furniture and objects. They want to bring pleasure to the home through design that is both straightforward and unexpected.

How TRUCK Product Architecture got started

One night at the Chateau Marmont, a grateful client gave her architects a gift with the following strings attached: use the money to explore, study, and produce. The client, a partner at Kate Spade, believed there was a place in the market for "product-based architecture". Rob Rogers and Jonathan Marvel, partners in Rogers Marvel Architects, set out to start a furniture and product design business. But with RMA more than occupying their time, the seed money lay untouched. Enter architect Jennifer Carpenter, who came to RMA in 1999 to design Kate Spade shops worldwide. Jennifer had experience in design and business; she started a small handbag company with her husband in 1998. Rob and Jonathan asked her to join them. In December 2000 TRUCK made its first prototypes. In October 2001, these pieces became available in New York stores.