Contemporary Curatorial Practice of Architecture and Design

by Merith Bennett

In 1932, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York hosted The International Style: Architecture Since 1922, marking a pivotal moment in the architectural history of and practice in the United States.  The exhibit showcased the works of numerous architects, primarily from Western Europe, introducing Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe to an American audience.  Today’s urban landscape indicates the widespread influence of the show, but the exhibit also reflected expanding ideologies concerning architecture and design within the art community, as The International Style was the opening exhibit for the world's first curatorial department devoted to architecture and design. 

Institutions such as the MoMA are important in that they not only help to record the history of architecture and design, but they also help to support the larger design community.  Successful collections and exhibitions raise questions and indicate what is considered relevant and worthy of exploration within the fields of architecture and design.

Presence

Since 1932, numerous museums and galleries within the United States and the larger global community have adopted departments for architecture and design related fields.  Following New York’s MoMA, museums with such departments include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), and the Denver Art Museum (DAM).  Some museums are completely dedicated to the area of design, including Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt - National Design Museum, Architecture and Design Museum - Los Angeles, the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, and London’s Design Museum.  In either case, often the museum itself is an icon to architecture and design and part of the larger collection, such as Daniel Libeskind’s addition to the DAM.

Nevertheless, architecture and design departments and museums are largely nascent, as most were formed in the 1980s.  Regions of the country lack architecture and design collections, including the South and the Pacific Northwest, while the Midwest and Southeast must depend on one city or one museum, such as Chicago or the Museum of Design Atlanta, respectively, to house and display such a collection.  Boston, a city with the largest number of architects per capita, is home to only one architecture and design collection in the MIT Museum. Seattle closely follows Boston in the number of designers per capita, yet lacks any museum or collection dedicated to one of the city’s greatest strengths. 

Furthermore, the collections that do exist, though often sizable, tend to lack breadth outside of western tradition.  The MoMA, once a revolutionary force, remains entrenched in its original canon nearly 80 years in the making, often favoring exhibits and acquisitions of work by architects of the Modern Movement, as illustrated by a recent exhibit on the work of Mies van der Rohe.  New York Times writer Nicolai Ouroussoff notes:

Traditionally, the department's collecting strategy has been to pick up what it considers to be the best examples of drawings or models by major architects, a strategy that favors a drawing by Le Corbusier or a collage by Koolhaas over a collection of material that allows deeper exploration of an architect's life's work. As a result, the museum has stood by and watched rival institutions snap up important archives. The Canadian Center for Architecture, for instance, has purchased the archives of major figures like Aldo Rossi, James Sterling, Cedric Price and, recently, Peter Eisenman. And Mr. Eisenman is negotiating with the Beinecke library at Yale over his substantial collection of rare architectural journals.

Additionally, as of June of 2009, the newly constructed 8,000 square foot gallery space for the Architecture and Design Department at the Art Institute of Chicago surpasses the MoMA’s exhibition space, and the AIC A&D collection holds 250,000 items, far exceeding MoMA’s 28,000 works of design.  The sheer volume and presence of the AIC A&D collection clearly indicates a growing interest in design within the museum world, pointing to a new institutional leader in architecture and design collections and savvy. 

A few institutions dedicate their energy to contemporary practice in architecture and design.  The Van Alen Institute in New York, begun as a school based on the Ecole des Beaux-Arts curriculum, continues to reach out to the design community by offering fellowships, design competitions, and exhibits on contemporary practice.  Though the institute holds a collection, mostly drawings and photographs from its earlier days, its exhibits focus on contemporary issues practitioners find relevant today.  In July, the Van Alen Institute hosted Aesthetics of Crossing: Land Ports of Entry / Citizenship by Design, a show addressing immigration and the built environment.  The institute also expands on the notion of how to exhibit architecture.  Many museums present models, drawings, and photographs by famous architects and of famous buildings.  As a center for contemporary design, the Van Alen Institute, instead, can afford more temporal installations, including The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation, an exhibit from 2006.  Zoë Ryan, former curator for the Van Alen Institute, elaborates on the exhibit:

I began to be very interested in this idea of how our spaces are being reinvented to meet our 21st-century leisure needs, like learning and fun, not just socializing. A lot of other issues were boiling in the air at the time, such as the idea that recreational spaces create links between neighborhoods, that they become our nodes of transportation. Also, there’s this idea of getaway destinations: For those who can’t leave the city, we need to provide spaces and places for people to come to relax and enjoy moments of repose...  Instead of differentiating projects by, say, scale, exploring different themes around recreation allowed us to show that something temporary has as big an impact as something permanent. It also offers a more global perspective. The themes aren’t exhaustive, but they give a snapshot of inspirational case studies for New York... I think that after 9/11, the level of dialogue about architecture and design was elevated. People really wanted to take part and be informed, and really understood architecture’s impact on daily city life. It’s not just the streets, but the street furniture, the lighting. People have really become engaged.

Contemporary architecture and design has also achieved global recognition.  Since 1980, the Venice Biennale has rotated between art and architecture and next year will mark the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Biennale.  Numerous countries fill their respective pavilions with installations ranging from the practical to the utterly conceptual, allowing a global audience to view the achievements of individual countries beyond photographs and film, thus providing additional material for a global dialogue on the conditions, directions, and concerns of architecture and design.

Practice

As noted, curatorial practice in architecture and design is a relatively new field, previously left to art historians and curators to present to the public.  However, architecture and design are not off-shoots of art, and the academic and museum worlds are beginning to take notice.  An architectural education prepares the curator not only on the history of architecture and design, but also helps the curator to understand spatial relationships between works of art. 

New academic programs have recently been formed to respond to this nascent field of museology.  Previously, a curator would need a degree in art history, preferably with an emphasis in architecture, but now master and Ph.D. programs in architectural history and theory are beginning to be offered in a number of universities, providing a more straightforward academic approach for the eventual curator of architecture and design. 

Most specifically, Columbia University recently unveiled a new program offering a Master of Science in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture. 

The CCCPArch program's emphasis is on forging new critical, theoretical, and historical tools, and producing new concepts and strategies for researching, displaying, and disseminating modern and contemporary architecture and closely related fields. The program is aimed at those with a background in architecture who wish to advance and expand their critical and research skills in order to pursue professional and leadership careers as architectural critics, theorists, journalists, historians, editors, publishers, curators, gallerists, teachers, and research-based practitioners.

The program offers a tailored curriculum that addresses specific skills and knowledge necessary for a curator of architecture and design.  Likely other universities will follow suit.

Clearly the field of curatorial practice in architecture and design is growing, yet it too has not faired well in the recent economic recession.  Most museums have had to let go much of their staff, some museums have even had to sell portions of their collection.  In June of 2009, Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art laid off their curator of architecture and design, reflecting attitudes about the field’s importance within the art community, as well as economic hardship.  However, most museums did not go to such drastic measures and the field will likely continue to grow after this economic setback, necessitating curatorial positions in architecture and design.

And now for dessert:

A Cool Way to Make Architecture Pay: Ice Cream!...some humor amidst the serious articles on this site.

Architects and Mass-Market Housing

Peter Johnson

Mentioning “mass-market housing” and “architecture” in the same sentence is usually enough to induce a gag reflex from most architects. In the academic and professional world, mass-produced, suburban tract homes have come to symbolize everything that is wrong with the built environment today. From an architect’s point of view, their failings are obvious: their contrived, faux-style, their obliviousness to place, their cheap construction, not to mention the countless social and environmental problems that result from a land use pattern of sprawling, oversized houses. But however much we hate it, we can’t deny that no single building type has had a bigger impact on the built environment in America than mass-market suburban housing. So while we scoff at the misproportioned windows and plastic imitation-stone siding, we ought to stop and ask: if this is such bad architecture, why do we see it everywhere? Where does it come from? And, most importantly, what can architects do about it?

It’s easy to write off the typical suburban house as “un-designed,” and assume that whoever was responsible for it didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t care. In short, no one could have possibly wanted this to happen. But in reality such houses and their communities are as intentional as any work of architecture, and the people who create them are as serious about their business as architects are. Most suburban houses today are produced by merchant home builders – vertically integrated companies which control the development, financing, design, construction and marketing of their projects. Builders can vary significantly in size and may conduct all phases of the project in-house or may contract portions the work to outside consultants or sub-contractors. In a typical project, the builder will acquire a large piece of property, subdivide it into individual lots, and build the streets, utilities and other infrastructure to serve each home site. A buyer will choose from a small selection of standard house plans, purchase a lot, and the builder will construct the house. The builder will also typically guide the buyer through the financing and purchasing process. This organizational structure and building process is designed to allow the builder to build and sell houses as efficiently and cheaply as possible and, in turn, maximize their profit from the development.

When it comes to design, the suburban house is a highly refined product, intended to appeal to a carefully targeted range of buyers, but at the same time be cheap and easy to construct in large numbers. Marketing and cost become the primary drivers of design. The results are standardized houses that use a common material palette and standard construction details. Extra money for details and higher-quality materials is spent only in places where prospective buyers will notice it on their first walkthrough. Surprisingly, there are often architects involved, though they play a more limited role than they would in a traditional private practice. The builder may have architects on staff, or they may hire an outside architect who regularly contracts with homebuilders. In either case, the architect’s role is primarily as a design consultant, providing design ideas that will serve the builder’s market-driven vision and priorities. Builders are careful to hire architects that understand the priorities and processes of home building, so the builder will know exactly what they’re going to get. Architects that do this type of work tend to focus primarily on design and drafting, as technical issues will be delegated to engineers and the standardized construction process does not require the architect’s supervision.

If the builder does not use an architect directly, they may use a stock plan service. Plan services mass produce complete sets of house plans to which they sell to builders or to individuals who want to build them. Like those produced by builders, the houses produced by plan services are designed to be cheap to build and easily marketable, in addition to being able to be built anywhere. Plan services also employ architects, or people with architectural training, in purely design and drafting roles.

How did architects get pushed into the background of housing design? It wasn’t for lack of effort. During the first half of the twentieth century, as America experienced a rapid increase in its urban population, there were countless architects attempting to solve the problem of how to provide housing for the masses. The ideas they produced ranged from Buckminster Fuller’s pre-fabricated, one-size-fits-all Dymaxion House, to the 40,000-person towers of Le Corbusier’s Radiant City. While ideas like these attracted a lot of attention, neither saw wide-spread, long term application in the US. Instead it was William Levitt, a real estate developer and builder of the suburban community of Levittown that succeeded. Levittown was not the first suburb, but Levitt’s development strategy of mass producing standardized houses on cheap farmland became the model for suburban housing development that persists to the present day. Despite its success, architects were not impressed, and began to distance themselves from mass-market housing design for the sake of their professional stature. The result was a self-perpetuating cycle. As architects were less involved, housing design became increasing driven by builders and developers, which alienated architects even further.

If architects want to stop this cycle and become more involved in the design of housing, they will have to start by changing their attitude toward housing design and the people who practice it. They will have to lessen their attachment to completely unique, one-of-a-kind buildings and allow widely-applicable solutions to be considered valid architectural ideas. They will have stop viewing issues such as marketing and cost control as enemies of good architecture and learn to design with them. Architects will also have to be willing to change the way they practice and accept different roles in the building process. The profession tends to view anything other than the traditional private practice as a lesser form of architectural work, but there is no reason why architects working directly for a builder or for a plan service could not make equivalent contributions to the profession and the built environment.

This is not to say that architects must pander to builders and surrender their values just to be heard. Architects do have a great deal to offer in the design of mass-market housing, thought they must understand the context they are working in before their ideas can be put to use. Home builders today are facing an increasingly strict regulatory environment, where even the most mundane projects must comply with highly technical environmental and construction regulations. Furthermore, many communities are demanding higher quality design and forcing builders to deviate from their standardized practices. Architects are well equipped to deal with issues like these, and they can use their expertise in these areas to gain a higher standing with home builders and developers.

Where architects can’t appeal to builders, they can go straight to the consumer. The demand for mass-market housing is largely driven by marketing ideas perpetuated by home builders that have succeeded in convincing most people that they want to live in standardized, cheaply constructed homes. Architects, meanwhile, are seen as elite specialists whose skills are reserved for the wealthy and sophisticated. If they are willing to appeal to the mass market, architects can easily change this attitude. Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House, is an architect who has attempted to do so. While not terribly ground-breaking from an architectural perspective, her work has been very successful in challenging the conventions of home builders, and showing typical home-buyers how an architect-design house can work better for them.

Architects can also take advantage of the fact that home builders work almost exclusively in low-density suburbs, while more cities are focusing on higher density, mixed-use development. The scale and complexity of these projects goes beyond the capabilities of most builders, so architects, along with developers, have much more control over design. Architects have been leading the movement to bring housing back into cities for many years, and if they continue to do so they will have an increasing large influence over housing design and the shape of cities as a whole.

Architects have long been critical of mass-market housing, and should continue to be. As it exists today, it is unsustainable, increasingly unaffordable, and fails to meet the housing needs of many people. But architects need to do more than criticize. They need to understand the forces driving housing design and how they can influence them. If they can do that, architects will have the chance to put real solutions into action and have a profound impact on the quality of the built environment.

Sources:

Davis, Howard. The Culture of Building. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Gutman, Robert. The Design of American Housing. New York: Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, 1985.

Susanka, Sarah. The Not So Big House. The Taunton Press, 2001.

Learning from the past

Learning from the past:

How traditional Scandinavian design influences one Minnesota architect

Erin Anderson

Architects have, and always will be confronted with the problem of what role should history play in contemporary architecture, if any. Architects struggle with many complex issues in each building project they undertake, and it is often hard to discern which issues are most pressing, let alone deciding how a building will relate to the history of the site, culture, and architecture as a whole. According to David Salmela, “The three most crucial issues of architecture today are not about design direction but rather preservation and sensitive use of the natural environment, the preservation and sensitive use of our existing built environment, and the sensitivity of design within the context of the first two.” David Salmela is the principal of a small architecture firm in Duluth, Minnesota has taken a stance through his design on this very topic of history, tradition, and the role it has in architecture today.

Looking to the past can give an architect insight on where to begin tackling the issues that accompany a design project. What design solutions have worked well in the past? What solutions were unsuccessful? How can these solutions be applied in architectural design and practice today? How has the context of design changed today as opposed to fifty, one hundred, or two hundred years ago? What can be gleaned from the past and incorporated in a relevant way into architecture today? Salmela|Architect is a small architecture firm in Duluth, Minnesota whose practice is based upon this very attitude towards architecture, history, and design. The work done by David Salmela combines contemporary design thinking and aesthetics with traditional Scandinavian ideals and methods, reflecting the local history and genealogy of both Salmela and his native state of Minnesota.

Salmela uses three major connections to link his architectural practice today to the history and context of building in Minnesota, where the traditional building techniques and styles were brought to the region by various Scandinavian settlers. Salmela’s investigation of form, material, and performance in traditional Scandinavian architecture has allowed him to design relevant buildings that are both contemporary and traditional in their nature, while responding critically and thoughtfully to the existing built and natural environments.

FORM

The form of a building is perhaps the most formal gesture that one can make in the physical environment. The form of a building is often where the designer takes a stance on design, and is able to express it at the large scale. Salmela maintains simplicity in the development of his building forms, and as Tom Fisher notes, he often “gives a nod to history, but with the wink of an eye.” As an architect that practices in a small geographical area, Salmela utilizes a narrow range of forms in his design. Most of his buildings recall either the “simple gable-roofed forms of Scandinavian vernacular, or the plain, flat-roofed forms of modern architects who have worked at the geographical margins, such as Alvar Aalto.” This simplicity of form can be seen in his project at Brandenburg’s Ravenwood Studio, a collection of small buildings that consist of a main house, studio, and other accessory buildings. The roof forms dominate the visual landscape and are reminiscent of a Scandinavian village lost in the northwoods of Minnesota. Salmela has taken these familiar gabled roofs and pushed their utility further, using their historical relevance to the project while uniquely expressing them in a contemporary way. For example, the roof of the studio telescopes out and over the edge of the building to provide cover to the entry of the building. He also repeats and staggers the traditional gable rooflines in various locations to create and inform the hierarchy of space that is contained beneath them. In order to differentiate the roof forms on a secondary level, Salmela uses a variety of materials, some traditional roofing materials, and others not, to express the different portions of the house. In this way, his forms draw upon familiarity without replicating history.

Brandenburg Ravenwood Studio

MATERIALS

Historically, the materials used in a building project were often reflective of what was geographically available in the region, and what building technologies were customary for that specific location and time period. Wood was the predominant building material throughout much of Scandinavia as the area is heavily forested. The forested landscape and even the climate of Northern Minnesota are much like that of Scandinavian countries, and is perhaps why the state was heavily settled by Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes. Wood is not only used as a construction material for the structure and cladding of homes in Minnesota, and specifically the residential projects of David Salmela, but it is also used extensively as a finish. Wood floors, ceilings, and even walls are not uncommon to see in the interior of Salmela’s work, adding a level of warmth and natural beauty to each of his projects. The manner in which Salmela is able to compose not only the material palette, but also the pattern created by the wood as a building material elevates the humble material to a higher level of complexity and design in each of his projects. Salmela approaches wood in each of his projects differently, both inside and out. On the exterior of the building, he typically takes one of two approaches, by either leaving the wood in a relatively natural state, unstained or unpainted, or by incorporating the use of color quite liberally. Interestingly enough, and contrary to what one might believe offhand, it seems that the use of color has deeper roots in Scandinavian tradition, recalling the brightly painted barns and homes found throughout the region. In the Scott Kerze Sauna, the vertical board siding alternates between boards stained red, and boards that have been left unstained. This addition of color, while somewhat reminiscent of a circus tent, does not seem out of place on the lakeshore in Northern Minnesota. The pattern created by this alternation gives the appearance of depth to the flat wall; the red boards seem to leap forward towards the viewer, and the unstained boards step back. Through his careful manipulation and consideration of materials, as in the Kerze Sauna, Salmela is able to use traditional building materials in new and unique ways.

Kerze Sauna

PERFORMANCE

If there is one thing that is on the minds of architects and designers more today than in the recent past, it is sustainability and building performance. This is, however, by no means a new topic in building science and traditional building methods. Before the advent of air conditioning and other mechanical systems to control the indoor environment, buildings had to perform passively in the natural environment in order to maintain some semblance of comfort for the inhabitants of the space. Methods that have worked historically to heat, cool, light, and ventilate a building passively are now being resurrected as a response to global climate concerns and a push for sustainability. While heating and cooling a building passively can prove to be difficult in the harsh climates of both Scandinavian countries and Minnesota, Salmela has designed the Webster Residence in northern Minnesota in such a way that it responds to the weather while still affording protection and comfort for its inhabitants. The Webster house does not advertise an environmental agenda, but instead shows how architecture can more thoughtfully interact with the weather and surrounding natural environment, knowing when to resist the elements, and when to respond. Thomas Fisher writes about the Webster house and its connection to tradition:

Vernacular architecture, especially in cold climates, reflects that understanding [of climate and weather]; traditional Scandinavian log houses, for instance, had layers of space both inside and in the yard, whose use changed with the seasons. In the Webster house, Salmela shows how we can usefully learn from the past without mimicking its forms. By understanding the principles that generated those forms, we can achieve the same goals in a more modern way. He also demonstrates here that we can live sustainably, in even the most extreme weather, by layering space, graduating temperatures, and adjusting uses.

It is clear that these simple strategies are as relevant today as they were years ago when they were originally implemented. It is important that traditional and vernacular strategies are not forgotten, or ignored as being out of date. It is evident in David Salmela’s work that these same strategies can be employed in contemporary architecture.

Webster Residence

As architects are inundated with new building materials, methods, and technologies that encourage forward looking thought, it is important that they not forget to also look back, to traditional and vernacular techniques that have proven to be successful in the past. Through the work of David Salmela and Salmela|Architect, the value of this knowledge can clearly be seen. Salmela is able to successfully use and learn from traditional Scandinavian designs and translate them into relevant and engaging architecture that reflects his role as a contemporary designer. His understanding of form, materials, and performance - and the context in which they reside, both historically and contemporarily - contributes to the richness and success of his architecture. David Salmela has undoubtedly taken a stance on the role history should play in contemporary architectural practice today, and it can be seen that architecture and design can benefit greatly from the understanding of history and tradition.

Sources:

Fisher, Thomas. Salmela|Architect. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2005.

Fabricating Income

FABRICATING INCOME

prospects and possibilities

By: Jeff Hudak

The architectural profession has suffered as a whole with the recent economic downturn. Developers are halting or completely scrapping projects that have been in the works for years. New home buyers are much more scarce than they were even four years ago. People are pinching pennies and skimping on design where they can. What does this mean for the Architectural profession?

Large corporate architectural firms, whose staff number in the hundreds, took action by promptly evaluating their staff and making sweeping layoffs. Interns and Senior staff alike were shown the door when work began to run low and economic numbers started to plummet. In December 2008, Crain's Chicago Business reported that some Chicago-area firms were laying off 10 percent to 30 percent of staff, with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) cutting more than 100 people from its Chicago office.

Architecture firms who regularly employ twenty to eighty staff and architects were also forced to take action. Some firms took the route of layoffs while others, intent on keeping their employees, asked employees to take pay cuts, shortened work weeks, and instituted mandatory furloughs. Some firms have been able to remain relatively busy by aggressively going after project types outside their office’s normal scope and experience.

The practice of design-fabricate takes the mentality of design-build and allows architects and designers to have full control over the final product. No change orders, bidding process, labor strikes, substituted materials, or any of the other issues that cause architects to pull at their hair. A weld was poorly finished on a railing? Take it to the shop and refinish the piece yourself. Decide that a room should be a few feet longer? Move the wall. This approach to architecture obviously lends itself to smaller projects, not likely larger than a residence or a small commercial building. A construction knowledgebase, skill in many trades, and the desire to construct is required for this venture. This fact alone tends to keep many people from taking this route. However, this does allow an office to provide design services that are more in-depth and personalized for specific situations. So what firms are taking this approach and succeeding? The following five firms are taking the leap and swinging the hammer.

SHoP

With the economic crunch the design-build office model has become an increasingly viable business option. Having the ability to manage costs more directly for clients has made design-build firms even more attractive in the recent years. Some firms such as SHoP Architects have embraced this approach since their more recent beginning. The staff of architects, designers, and construction management professionals allows SHoP to provide quality buildings with controlled costs while reducing, if not eliminating, the dreadful value engineering cutbacks. The office of SHoP includes both a professional office setting and a workspace for ful scale mock-ups and fabrication. The firm’s philosophy is obvious with a quick visit to their website where large text immediately announces that, “Building buildings is better than talking about buildings” and, “How it’s built doesn’t matter except when it’s the only thing that matters.” With a staff that has grown to more than sixty people in the recent years, this firm’s approach to design and building has afforded them many jobs even in the current market.

REPP Design + Construction

Repp design is a small architectural design firm located in Tucson, AZ. As a firm of seven people they have taken large steps towards becoming a design-fabricate office. Currently three carpenters and a mason work for the firm, some shifting between drafting and hammer swinging. Repp’s simplified material pallet on projects has allowed them to minimize the amount of subcontracting required on each job. A regionalistic approach is strictly adhered to in all projects that are undertaken by this firm. They commonly use industrial materials, with high thermal mass, to create a thermal buffer for the hot climate while providing a structure that will easily last the next 50 years.

El Dorado Architects

El Dorado Architects embodies large amounts of the fabrication that is required for many of their projects which regularly involve custom steel and wood fabrication. Based in Kansas City, MO the office of eleven employees spends half their time in the office and half of the time in the shop/field. With steel being the primary structural component in Kansas City much of El Dorado’s projects include hours spent at the welder and grinding stations fabricating primary components for their structures. Since they have their own fabrication shop projects of all sizes coexist regularly. The firm culture is one of adapting constantly and not being branded as a certain primary typology. According to their website they have no mission statement as they feel this would limit them. A diverse pallet of projects including residential, multi-family, studio additions, retail, professional offices, restaurants, public signage, and lighting exhibits are all projects that they have taken on. This willingness to be flexible, alert, and adaptive has proved to be a good way for an office to get through difficult economic times. While not adhering to a certain typology, a clean modern elegance can be seen in all projects designed and fabricated by El Dorado.

Face Design + Fabrication

Face design is a small design build firm with six to eight employees in Brooklyn, NY. Their primarily focus is residential design elements including lighting fixtures, stairways, overall space design, and even a few homes. They also have worked in the public realm as they consulted for and fabricated Shephen Holl’s Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City. The project replaced the existing building facade with a series of twelve panels that pivot vertically or horizontally to open the entire length of the gallery directly onto the street. Remaining flexible is the key to the small fabrication/design facility. Taking on projects of all scales and end users has kept Face fresh and wanted in NYC.

Freecell

Freecell is a design and fabrication practice specializing in small-scale comissions in NYC and in select locations nationwide. Founded in 1999, have designed and built over 30 projects including private residences, office spaces, and retail stores. They offer services that include schematic design, construction drawings, project administration, and in-house fabrication. We are committed to providing innovative design on time and on budget. Principal Lauren Crahan, who has worked at Rafael Viioly Architects and Weiss/Manfredi, explained that “it makes the firm integrate it's thinking about structure, material, and form in a way that would otherwise be difficult: On big projects, the process was typically linearrfrom schematics to design development, then all right, time to detail it. This approach is more of a stew, in which you have to consider all the pieces at once.” “Fabricating also makes sense on a practical level. You can solve problems in a way that you just can't on a computer. Besides, at the end of the day AutoCad just can't satisfy your curiosity.” By considering themselves a “fabrication” practice Freecell has been commissioned projects that are not the typical project for architects. Moistscape is an example of their “outside architecture” projects which was installed at the Henry Urbach Gallery, New York NY in 2004. The project was designed “As an opportunity to explore the play of the natural within the artificial, we constructed a three-dimensional steel matrix inset with panels of living mosses and enclosed within by translucent volume.” Visitors are provided a space to explore where “the underside is as telling as the topside. Moistscape allows visitors to experience the play in scale from the miniature of the floating mossy landscape to the actual one of the installation as a whole.” By combining art, architecture, and fabrication Freecell has found a constant stream of work over the past few years and seems to only be gaining momentum.

Photography Credit: Ron Amstutz

One can imagine that some day some of these design / build / deliver firms may feel held back by their shop, forcing them to design only what they know they can fabricate. However, for the time being many of these young workshop-oriented design firms are raising expectations by deploying detail oriented one-off designs into the public and private realms. With each new project constructed, they are helping to rid us of the drab, catalog picked, building accessories that have taken over architecture.

global design incubators:

geographic mappings of young design talent and the factors that contribute

Cory Mattheis

Recent economic conditions have created a volatile stage for young architects to establish themselves. Globally, the design profession has witnessed some of its highest highs and lowest lows within the course of a decade. The 2008-2009 meltdown has certainly reached all corners of the earth, however certain locations seem to be fostering a creative design community that is pushing the borders of traditional architectural practice. The ambition of young, lightweight firms seem to be driving a migration towards these cities in an effort to draw upon the latent design opportunities within these specific social, cultural, and economic climates.

Media reports taken over the last decade concerning the locations of up and coming firms reinforce the relative centralization of young talent despite a decentralized clientele. The increasing connectivity of global systems seems to be producing design hubs capable of fostering young firms that work across traditional geographic and practice boundaries.

The combined recognition of young firms (practicing less than ten years) from 2000-2008 awarded by Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard Competition reveals that the 80 distinguished practices were spread between 31 cities. At first glance this may seem like a decent spread, however the specific numbers suggest a disproportionate concentration. Of the 80 firms, 42 were located in New York City, Los Angeles, London, or Tokyo. This trend is further reinforced by Europe’s 40 under 40: Emerging Young Architects and Designers which places over half of its recognitions within the last two years in the countries of Germany, Great Britain, and Italy. Significant concentrations of accomplished young designers also occurred in Spain, Denmark, and Poland.

Two major trends define the types of cities capable of fostering young designers- both are associated with a general willingness to take risks, the difference lies in the parties assuming that risk. Places like New York and Los Angeles exemplify cities containing private parties willing to invest in the arts, rather than development. This type of investment often encourages interdisciplinary work outside of typical architectural practice. Conversely, the European model often shifts investment risks to the government and general public. Competitions for public work are frequently open to all architects regardless of age and provide equal opportunities for all.

Interdisciplinary experimentation- film, art, fashion and Los Angeles

Much of the support that drives these young offices comes from the willingness of their social community to be risk takers. Los Angeles has been a haven for young designers for years due to its ability to produce clients with the money to support experimental and unproven firms. The film industry has likely had a large effect on all of the design professions in Los Angeles. It not only provides a precedent for risky investments, but may even serve to employ any number of designers in areas slightly outside of their intended focus. Given the current economic situation, the ability of architects branch into the fields of like fabrication, animation, set construction, installation art, product design, and even web design, proves to be a viable (and often times more lucrative) option.

Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich of Los Angeles based Patterns have built a career split between (but entirely dependant on) installations and buildings. Although the firm has realized only a few of its building projects, the business progresses due to the income from installations, product design, and graphic work. Similarly, Ball-Nouges Studio of Los Angeles was created by two designers who had been working in both the film and architectural fields, and saw an opportunity to become design generalist taking on spatial constructs of any kind. While these projects typically take the form of art installations, the firm depends on the social networks of both the architecture and film industry to generate work.

The academic scene in Los Angeles reinforces the interdependence of design fields by encouraging this sort of cross-pollination. Young graduates of the Sci-arc seem to be heading in a direction that considers the future of architecture in digital environments. Programs and buildings that exist exclusively in virtual space escape the economic obstacles of permitting and construction costs while proving to be in high demand. The film industry has become increasingly dependant on digitally constructed environments (both virtual and physical), creating the need for armies of young computer apt designers. The money and time associated with filming and travel may soon be outweighed by the ability to digitally reproduce the same scene. However depressing this may be for both the fields of film and architecture, it introduces an interesting opportunity for designers of all types to get involved.

Interdisciplinary connections prove to be a crucial link in the successful incubation of young LA design firms. The city supplies a highly developed fabrication industry driven by automotive and technological fields from which forward thinking designers are constantly being influenced. Industry overlaps are unique in every city and undoubtedly provide opportunities to any designer willing to step over the fence. Similar situations could be equated to the art scenes of New York or the fashion industry in Milan, Paris, and Tokyo. Cities capable of fostering creative professions provide a platform for architects to seek work in design of any kind.

Social Trust- competitions, public work and Denmark

Another type of city, possibly the polar opposite of Los Angeles, seems to foster young architects by means of an egalitarian design culture. Many European countries have developed a competition driven architectural industry. Essentially this levels the playing field and enables all architects to compete for the same public work regardless of age and experience. Architects are selected based on the quality of the proposal rather than the qualifications of the firm. In many ways this reflects a culture that genuinely values design and places a high degree of trust in the hands of architects.

Denmark is one of numerous countries that have adopted a policy requiring the design of all public buildings to be selected via competition. Young Danish firms like Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Julien De Smedt Architects (JDS) have used this opportunity as a platform to establish themselves both regionally and globally. In 2009 BIG was recognized by Europe’s 40 under 40: Emerging Young Architects and Designers and Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard.

The downfall of a system that places so much trust in the hands of inexperienced architects is the probability of actual construction. Many competitions remain inbuilt due to the impossibility to realize the ambitions of young designers. A simple look at the portfolios of both BIG and JDS indicates a disproportionate relationship between competitions won and those built. And although many of these projects never materialize the offices can survive to employ upwards of 50 people, with a history of only five built projects.

2009- locality vs. mobility

Global economic factors have produced a new paradigm for architectural practice placing emphasis on the versatility rather than establishment. The geographic and professional weight of a design firm may be tending towards the lighter. The most recent assessments of young practices (Vanguard 2009) reveal geographically diverse firms with multiple roots. These are collective firms with members from multi-national backgrounds, operating from multiple locations while remaining small in scale. The 2009 Young Architects Forum recently recognized Bureau E.A.S.T. for its contribution to research within the architectural field. The office is based in Los Angeles, Toronto, and Fez, Morocco and consists of three people.

The importance of geographic location to a young architect is undeniable. The opportunities offered are specific to each location, and a product of the variable social, cultural and economic conditions. However, given the current state of architectural practice and the continuing pressure of globalization, the most important factor in the success of a young designer may actually be his or her diversity of geographical experience. Versatility could allow designers to draw from the opportunities afforded by multiple locations from Los Angeles to Copenhagen.