Élan Design House grew from an unexpected professional crossroads. Kilian Camp and Alison Green had arrived at the same San Diego firm through very different paths, but when that firm closed, they found themselves considering what should come next. Along with Katie, whose experience brought another perspective to the partnership, they decided to take a chance on building a business together.
Five years later, Élan Design House is entering another period of change. Kilian and Alison are moving from individually led projects toward a more collaborative model, supported by assistants and the different strengths each designer brings to the studio. At the same time, they are becoming increasingly intentional about the projects they accept, the clients they work with, and how they want the business to grow.
Two Different Paths Into Design
Kilian entered design in her late twenties, attending the Miami International School of Art and Design at a time when Miami’s design scene was rapidly expanding. The city’s international influences, growing Design District, luxury market, and access to resources created an immersive introduction to the profession.
An internship through school became a job, beginning a career that eventually included high end residential work along with resorts, hotels, restaurants, and luxury condominium projects. When Kilian moved to San Diego about ten years ago while her husband completed his medical training, she continued working for her Miami firm for approximately three years, traveling between San Diego, Miami, and New York.
The work provided extraordinary opportunities, but the pace eventually became unsustainable. Kilian began looking for a position in San Diego and ultimately joined a smaller firm that offered the creative autonomy she had become accustomed to.
Alison knew much earlier that she wanted to pursue design. Growing up in Southern California, she became interested in interiors while helping her mother personalize their builder grade family home. Watching design shows, visiting paint stores, choosing colors, and working on furniture selections introduced her to the possibility that something she enjoyed could become a career.
She attended design school directly after high school and earned her BFA. Entering the profession around the 2008 recession made finding that first opportunity difficult, but Alison secured an assistant position with a design build firm and remained there for approximately ten years, progressing from assistant to junior designer and eventually senior designer.
Working within a team that included architects, contractors, project managers, and designers gave Alison a strong foundation in construction and architectural details. When she later joined the smaller firm where Kilian was working, she began developing more experience with furnishings, decorating, and soft goods.
The differences in their experience quickly became complementary.
“She had a ton of experience of furnishings and decorating and doing all the stuff and the soft goods, and I had the experience from construction,” Alison says. “So we really pulled each other together to make a good partnership here.”
Taking a Leap None of Them Planned
When the firm where Kilian and Alison worked announced it was closing, Kilian had already begun exploring other opportunities. What she found reminded her of the long hours and demanding environments she had spent years navigating.
“I had been working really hard for a really long time, and I just was like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, working for somebody else.’”
By then, Kilian, Alison, and Katie had already developed a strong working relationship. They liked one another, understood how to work together, and brought different strengths to the table. Kilian proposed continuing that relationship through a business of their own.
For Alison, the timing was an important part of the decision. None of the three had necessarily imagined becoming business owners individually, but opportunities were already appearing as former clients reached out about potential projects.
“If you asked us all individually, ‘Would you have been a business owner?’ We would all say no,” Alison says. “I think it lined up perfectly.”
Instead of turning the opportunities away, they decided to take the risk together.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Alison recalls. “If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, and we could always look for a job.”
Five years later, the leap of faith has become an established studio.
Creating a More Collaborative Studio
During Élan Design House’s first four years, Kilian and Alison largely managed their own projects while Katie served as business director. Katie handled leads, calls, networking, administration, purchasing, and many of the responsibilities connected to operating the business, allowing Kilian and Alison to concentrate more heavily on their individual projects.
As the workload increased, the studio hired assistants for each designer. That additional support led to another realization: although Kilian and Alison knew what the other was working on, they were not deeply involved in each other’s projects.
“We’re trying a new approach now to be more collaborative in every project instead of having everything split,” Alison says.
For Kilian, the shift also provides an opportunity to rethink how responsibilities are divided. Their professional backgrounds, personalities, and approaches are different, and certain parts of the design process naturally appeal more to one than the other.
“There are elements that I hate that she loves and vice versa,” Kilian says.
Instead of each designer handling every responsibility from drawings and schedules through project management and creative development, they are moving toward a more fluid system. Assistants can take on time intensive technical responsibilities while Kilian and Alison remain more connected to the creative work and contribute where their individual strengths are most useful.
The goal is to do less of what drains them and more of what originally attracted them to design.
Balancing the Client, the Architecture, and Their Own Perspective
Kilian and Alison approach design as a balance between professional guidance and respect for the person who will ultimately live in the home. They do not believe in forcing a predetermined aesthetic onto every project.
“We really want them to be happy. It’s their home,” Kilian says.
Their role is to listen to what clients want while introducing possibilities they may not have considered. Kilian describes the objective as giving clients what they want, but making it better than they imagined it could be.
Alison also looks closely at the architecture and style of the home itself. A traditional property may require a different response from a contemporary one, and the existing architecture helps establish what feels appropriate before their own aesthetic perspective is layered into the project.
“I think it’s just a good balance of listening to what they want, but also putting our aesthetic in there too,” Alison says.
That balance sometimes means encouraging clients to move slightly outside their comfort zones. The designers bring their knowledge and experience to the process, explain why they believe a particular direction will work, and allow the client to make the final decision.
Designing From the Ground Up
The studio’s ideal projects are new builds and whole home renovations that allow the designers to become involved as early as possible. For Alison, early collaboration with architects is particularly important because decisions made before an interior designer joins the project can affect everything that follows.
“We want to be involved in the very beginning as soon as we can,” she says.
From there, the goal is to remain involved throughout the entire process. Kilian describes the studio’s preferred scope as extending from the ground up through the final accessory on a shelf or even the trash can selected for a bathroom.
While large residential projects are the priority, Élan Design House remains open to smaller opportunities when they make sense. The studio has completed some commercial work, often through existing clients, and will consider individual rooms, decorating projects, kitchens, bathrooms, or other smaller scopes.
The deciding factor is often less about size than the relationship.
“We don’t want to work with jerks,” Alison says. “We want to work with good, kind people.”
Kilian agrees. After years of experiencing difficult client relationships while working for other firms, having the ability to recognize warning signs and decline the wrong project has become one of the benefits of owning the business. Katie plays an important role in that process by vetting prospective clients before they reach the design team.
For Kilian and Alison, a respectful client who appreciates the work can make even a smaller project worthwhile.
Learning From Miami and San Diego
Kilian’s experience working in both Miami and San Diego has also shaped the studio’s perspective. She describes the difference between the two design cultures as substantial.
Miami introduced her to a fast paced, highly competitive luxury market filled with Italian contemporary furniture, silk wallcoverings, elaborate drapery, marble, custom pieces, and readily accessible international resources. Her work included luxury residences and commercial projects, as well as a project at 432 Park Avenue in New York.
The opportunities were significant, but so was the pressure. Kilian remembers navigating unexpected problems with custom furniture, wallcoverings, plumbing, vendors, and responsibility for expensive mistakes while coordinating work between cities. At the same time, she was traveling frequently and maintaining East Coast working hours from California.
“It seemed really glamorous on the outside, and it was. I got to travel all over and work on these amazing projects,” she says. “But eventually I just was like, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t keep this up.’”
San Diego presented almost the opposite environment. The pace was slower, communication was more relaxed, and clients placed greater emphasis on practicality. Even the terminology used within the industry could be different.
It took time for Kilian to adjust, but she believes the studio is increasingly finding opportunities that allow the designers to express more of their own perspective.
“In the recent years we’ve been able to lean in a bit more to our personal style,” she says.
Building a Business Without Giving Everything to It
Owning the studio has not eliminated the intensity of the profession. Construction continues moving, permits can interrupt momentum, projects overlap, and designers may have to return mentally to a project that has been quiet for months while simultaneously managing several others.
“It’s hardcore,” Kilian says. “It is really intense being a designer because it just never stops.”
Having three partners helps distribute that responsibility. Kilian and Alison credit Katie with taking the lead on many of the business responsibilities while keeping them involved in important decisions. They also rely on one another when projects become overwhelming or a decision feels difficult.
Their earlier careers have changed how they think about that pressure. Alison remembers working 60 or 70 hour weeks and wishes she had understood earlier that every design problem did not need to become a crisis.
“We’re not heart surgeons here,” she says. “It’s a curtain that maybe the fabric got discontinued.”
For Alison, perspective comes from recognizing that clients are human too. Delays happen, circumstances change, and most problems can be addressed without allowing them to consume everything else.
Kilian shares that perspective while acknowledging the complicated relationship they both have with their earlier careers. The work and long hours gave them the knowledge they needed to build Élan Design House, but they also arrived at business ownership already carrying years of exhaustion.
“I wish I had reserved much of that energy for now,” Kilian says. “But obviously, we wouldn’t be where we are if we hadn’t put that much effort into our past.”
Finding Perspective Beyond Design
Music is a constant for both designers, although they turn to it differently. Alison uses music to establish the tone of her day. When deadlines or stress begin building, worship music helps her feel grounded and centered, while on other days she may turn to rock.
Kilian’s connection to music goes even further. She earned a music degree before entering design and continues to draw inspiration from EDM and jazz. She also looks to artwork and museums, particularly unexpected combinations of color, as creative references.
Nature gives both designers another way to reset. Surfing provides that perspective for Kilian.
“You’re getting crushed by a wave and you’re like, ‘Oh, what I’m doing matters nothing,’” she says.
For Alison, hiking creates a similar feeling. Reaching a higher point and looking across the landscape reminds her of how small any individual problem can be.
Those moments outside the studio help put the pressures of design and business into a larger context.
Growing Through Relationships
When Kilian considers what makes her proudest about Élan Design House, she points first to the studio’s tenacity. Five years of maintaining and growing the business represent years of education, experience, commitment, and effort from the entire partnership.
“I’m proud of us for doing this,” she says.
She is equally proud of the professional community they have created. Kilian made a deliberate effort to build the kind of vendor relationships she had not always experienced earlier in her career. Today, the studio has representatives, builders, and other partners willing to step in when challenges arise.
Alison shares that appreciation for the people surrounding the studio, but her personal measure of success also extends beyond the business. As a working mother, she is proud that her daughter sees her maintaining a professional career while also being a parent.
“You could do anything,” Alison says of the example she wants to provide. “You don’t have to limit yourself.”
For her, owning the business has helped make that balance possible in a way her previous professional environment did not.
Entering the Studio’s Next Chapter
After years focused primarily on projects and building the business, Élan Design House is beginning to become more visible. The studio hired a public relations firm for the first time and has begun pursuing publications and other opportunities to bring greater recognition to its work.
Alison sees the process as a gradual build, with stories and larger projects beginning to move through the pipeline. Kilian also points to panel discussions and opportunities to participate more actively in the local design community.
“We’re really trying to make an effort to be a little bit more visible and also to give back and be more of a part of the community as educators,” Kilian says.
That next chapter builds naturally on what has already made the partnership work. Kilian and Alison arrived at Élan Design House with different experiences, different strengths, and no individual plan to become business owners. Five years later, those differences have become part of the studio’s foundation.
Now, their focus is not simply on growing larger. It is on becoming more collaborative, working with people they respect, staying connected to the creative parts of the profession, and continuing to build a studio where complementary perspectives make the work stronger.
