In 2009, Stefanie Brechbuehler, Robert Highsmith, and Rhode Island School of Design classmate Ryan Mahoney founded Workstead, a multi-hyphenate design studio in Brooklyn, New York, and catapulted to the forefront of the borough’s designer-maker scene. But in 2015 a major hotel project in the South reoriented their compass and they soon opened a Workstead outpost in Charleston, with Mahoney heading the main studio up North.