With interactive designers, Co and Pashenkov

“One thing about working at home — sometimes you can’t tell what’s a project, prototype, toy or piece of trash,” muses Elise Co, removing something spiky left on a chair to deter her cat from sleeping on it. “Sometimes I can’t tell myself.”

The creative universe is full of couples who have been brought together by their obsessions, but Co, an LA native, and Nikita Pashenkov, who grew up in Russia, have clocked up some serious air miles. The two met in a research group at the MIT Media Lab while doing their masters degrees. It was only when Pashenkov was working in Japan and Co in Switzerland that romance blossomed and they relocated to LA to live and work together.

They imagined their first big projects together would be interactive installations and exhibition design; what they ended up doing is research, design and prototyping for “super blue sky” products with release dates usually a couple of years in the future. Recent assignments – the ones they can talk about, anyway – include user-interface projects for home appliances, and an electronic prototype for wireless fitness tracking via iPhone.

Co cites the newly thriving Downtown arts scene as a part of the city’s renaissance of social and creative networks outside the dominating force of Hollywood. The two are also surrounded by a strong community of friends and colleagues involved in design and tech, many of them from MIT. “It’s a sign of how much creative energy is bubbling here. The city is big, so it’s a cultural capital, but it’s so spread out people have a real desire to find community.”

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