Nicolas&Nicolas is a contemporary architecture and design studio founded in Quito in 2017 by architects Nicolás Vivas and Nicolás López Ayoub. Based between the Ecuadorian capital and Barcelona, the studio operates from a singular position: that of two professionals trained in Latin America and Europe who engage with their cultural heritage without being defined by it. Their practice spans architecture, interior design and object design, united by a consistent attitude: the dialogue between memory and innovation, between the local and the universal.

The studio pursues an integrated approach to design, working across scales from architecture to the object, through interiors, textile design and art. That breadth of scope is coherence, not eclecticism — a conviction that a well-resolved space is one that addresses all its layers at once. Their projects, developed primarily in Ecuador and Spain, reflect a commitment to material quality, environmental awareness and durability as a form of resistance to the ephemeral.

Nicolás Vivas

Nicolás Vivas graduated with honours in Architecture from Universidad San Francisco de Quito in 2012 and completed his training with a Master’s in Industrial Design for Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano between 2016 and 2017. Before founding Nicolas&Nicolas, he built a solid career in Ecuador and the United States: nearly eight years as a senior architect and project designer at Estudio A0 in Quito, a formative period at the acclaimed Californian practice Brooks + Scarpa Architects in Los Angeles, and a further stint at Contract Workplaces focused on workplace design. That accumulation of scales and geographies — the landscape-informed architecture of the American West Coast, the technical rigour of Milan, the specificity of the Ecuadorian context — defines a sensibility capable of moving between references without losing its own thread.

Nicolás López Ayoub

Nicolás López Ayoub studied Architecture at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, where he first met Vivas, and went on to complete a Master’s in Design and Product Innovation at IED Spain in Madrid in 2019. His professional path led him to Teresa Sapey + Partners in Madrid, a firm known for its chromatic and sensory approach to large-scale interiors, before joining Nicolas&Nicolas full-time from Barcelona in 2020. His independent work — which includes interior projects in Madrid, Valencia and Quito, among them the transformation of a colonial house into a boutique hotel in the historic centre of the Ecuadorian capital — reveals an architecture attentive to atmosphere and the narrative of place. Based in Barcelona, where he also collaborates with 118 Studio, López Ayoub serves as a bridge between the studio’s Latin American practice and its European context.