When MOS was founded, its name was !@#?, which they quickly found too difficult to use because 1. you couldn't pronounce it and 2. you couldn't get a web address. So eventually they drifted towards MOS - an acronym of their names and a shared desire to be horizontal and fuzzy, as opposed to tall and shiny.

MOS began their makeshift office around a large table and began working through a range of design experiments, a make-believe of architectural fantasies, problems, and thoughts about what they would be building if they could only get the work. Today, as they've grown, they continue to operate around one large table as a design office that works closely on each project through playful experimentation and serious research.

MOS engage architecture as an open system of interrelated issues ranging from architectural typology, digital methodologies, building performance, structure, fabrication, materiality, tactility, and use, as well as larger networks of the social, cultural, and environmental. Their inclusive process allows MOS to operate at a multiplicity of scales.

MOS was founded in 2003 by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, both of whom teach at Harvard University and Yale University.