Kristen Sidell and Rudabeh Pakravan met during their graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Following graduation, they headed to locations as diverse as Paris, Denver, and Los Angeles, where they worked on civic, commercial, and residential architecture. When they found themselves both back in the Bay Area and working in academia, they were excited to found a design-oriented firm focused on critical thinking intrinsic to academia and real-world building. Since 2014, Sidell Pakravan has continued to explore critical ideas in architecture through speculative projects and test these ideas in buildings across Northern California. In 2021 they were named an Architectural Record Design Vanguard.