Who wrote Desk Crits?

Hi! We’re Tess McNamara and Sam Zeif, and we’re so glad you’re here!! 

We are two young architects and A.R.E. survivors living in Brooklyn, New York. We met at the Yale School of Architecture, where we studied affordable housing, sustainable design and, most importantly, learned how to use Adobe Illustrator. Now that we have finished the A.R.E. (6 tests in 6 months!) we apparently write books on the side, just for fun. No but seriously we did have fun making Desk Crits, we really did, we promise. Nothing would make us happier than a few kindred spirits passing the A.R.E.! 

If you’re curious to hear more about why we wrote Desk Crits, our testing journey, and who we are, you can check out the beginning of this Q+A we did below with Black Spectacles! We introduce ourselves a bit at the beginning and then launch into our story before answering a bunch of great audience questions! 

Also in case this isn’t clear and you’re getting some confusing vibes between what you might have thought were platonic co-workers, we are, in fact, married! We’ve been together for 6 years, and only occasionally bicker about who will take Desk Crits books to the post office :)