Placed adjacent to a local fire station, this cluster of single and double-family homes is scaled and patterned after the neighboring houses and integrates into the surrounding neighborhood.
ShagWall, our project for Dstillery Lab in Manhattan, has a tapering circular wall, the largest diameter that could fit in the space, covered with 4" shag carpeting, that absorbs sound and encloses a gathering space.
A Museum of Stored Art in Chelsea
An urban lot on a side street in Chelsea is the site of an art storage and display facility.
The need for this building type became evident to us as we began to design spaces for art collections of our clients. During our research, we visited a few art-storage facilities that house un-advertised but potentially significant collections of art. Such facilities made us wonder, what may be contained in them? And how wonderful it would be for the public to be able to see curated shows that cross-reference art-work between various private collections.
Working on a 50’ wide by 90’ deep lot, zoned C.6, close to the ‘Highline’, we explored the multiple design facets of such a building and the issues that straddle the boundary between private art collection and public art viewing.
The project studies the nuanced and often challenging needs of storage of significant works of art and the delicate but rewarding benefit of publicly displaying both the ‘art of storage’ and the stored art. As such, the storage components of the building are visibly integrated on each floor with gallery or display spaces. In particular, immediately upon entering the building at the top of the rotated ‘stoop’, the museum-goer will see a compact storage area, through secure glass. On upper levels, the boundary between the storage areas and the gallery areas can be both adjusted and manipulated to serve fluid programs and intents. The work of art is always in close and visible proximity to where its stored.
Urbanistically, the building makes accommodations to its street and neighborhood. Its facade is both slightly rotated away from the front property line, and slightly tilted down, creating a sliver of space that draws one in and transitions into a rotated ‘stoop. Upon entering the staircase, one notices its high vaulted ceiling: the staircase becomes a public space and a place of public activity. Ascending it, one slowly disconnects from the noisy urban realm to the quiet within. Right before entering, only ones feet are visible from the street.
Navigating into the building, the first three floors are open to the public and connected with a staircase and passenger elevator. The top of this public stair terminates with a coffee shop, a place to sit and view street activity, and semi-public office spaces. The basement and ground floor, no longer able to contain mechanical equipment due to hurricane Sandy, are now given to a publicly accessible auditorium. Both passenger and freight elevators are accessed separately and securely from the ground level, on either side of the auditorium.
Typical rectangular introverted ‘white-box’ gallery spaces are punctuated with slivered openings that infuse the rooms with filtered natural light and allow glimpses of the architecture of the neighborhood. The elevators in the rear are similarly bordered with windows that both frame ones location within the block and allow natural light to be brought in.
The building facade, ground level, and front public areas are made of raw, roughly finished, poured-in-place concrete.
The overlap of particular socio-economic tides — the rise of a shared economy that harnesses unattended markets, the proliferation of art collections, the lack of sufficient spaces of public and communal activity, and the general democratization of art-viewing— has foster an environment wherein our proposal, we hope, is necessary and timely.
A small park --parklet-- on 20th street in Chelsea, under the Highline.
More information will be available soon.
Rocks from NY Quarries.
Resin by Fusion Floors.
Plant selection by Jill Musnicki.
Plant installation by A Green Roof.
Rigging and Craning by Vergona Crane
Design Team:
Maziar Behrooz
Ali Soltani
Jee Won Kim
Renee Rust
Time lapse photography:
Hao-Tian Xu
Sponsors:
DOT, Underline Coffee, Chelsea Community
New Herrick Park, Empowering the Community — East Hampton Village
The Park as a Unifying Urban and Social Hub
Our analysis of current conditions at Herrick Park in East Hampton Village and our subsequent design proposal for its improvement -as a park and as urban tissue- are less suggestive of a finalized design solution and more an effort to empower the community to tackle a critical urban deficiency.
Living and working in the village, and experiencing first-hand the design stalemate that has prevented meaningful improvements, we took it upon ourselves to create this set of documents to help the village board and the community envision possibilities and demand productive outcomes. We hope to show that incremental changes, when focused on long-term urban solutions, can have a transformative and regenerative impact over time --restoring the village forward.
Technically speaking, Herrick Park is a segregated outdoor space. Both its various usages within, and its connection to urban adjacencies outside, are driven by mutually exclusive factors that often act in conflict. For example, a large portion of the park is used as athletic fields by the Middle School across the street; but participation of the general community in game-watching or use of those fields are unsupported -- therefore non-existent. Conversely, the recreational portion of the park, fronting Newtown Lane, is devoid of necessary amenities such as proper pathways, benches, support amenities and attractions for the general community; and is, therefore, mostly empty. And finally, while the park sits between two village hubs, its luxury retail core and a burgeoning light retail and affordable core, because of its poor infrastructure, the park fails to act as connective tissue between them, and fails to spread foot traffic and thus reduce congestion. Were it to succeed in overcoming these challenges, East Hampton Village would restore its sense of community, and retain its traditional role as a congenial and functionally active center of the larger Town of East Hampton.
We started this process by asking ourselves: “In what kind of town do we want to live?”
In these pages, we begin to imagine, and invite the community to envision with us, the place we would all like to live.
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A proposal for a Museum of Stored Art in Chelsea, Manhattan.
Four adjacent buildings are reconfigured and restored to house facilities for the storage of private and non-private art, with adjacent public and private spaces for display and sale of art.
The proliferation of private art collections, the lack of sufficient spaces of public and communal activity, and the democratization of art viewing have fostered an environment in which our proposal for a Museum of Stored Art is both timely and important.
Working with four contiguous under-developed buildings adjacent to the ‘Highline’ in Chelsea, we have explored the multiple design facets of a building that straddles the boundary between private art collection and public art viewing.
We have studied the nuanced and challenging needs of storage of significant works of art and the delicate but rewarding benefit of publicly displaying both the ‘art of storage’ and the stored art.
In one scoop, by providing a space for private art collections to be viewed publicly, we connect the philanthropic intents of individuals with a public need, benefitting a community and its individuals.
The need for this type of building became evident as we began to design spaces for the collections of our clients. At the same time, our Chelsea office is next to one of the premiere art-storage facilities in the USA. We began to wonder what is contained in this storage building? And how wonderful it would be for the public to be able to see curated shows cross-referencing various collections.
The following images are the result of our initial foray into understanding the needs of such a building, its complex security concerns, and its incredible art-viewing opportunities.
The Bard College Department of Experimental Humanities’ Lab is made from 4 recycled shipping containers, the same ones you pass on the highway. They were installed in half a day in the middle of the campus, close to a Frank Gehry concert hall, completely finished as shown, and fully operational in a couple of weeks. The double wide, double tall arrangement yields a 15’ wide, 17’ tall main space, and a second floor office. This same arrangement, retrofitted with a kitchen and two bathrooms is offered as a fully prefabricated house; add a 5th container to expand it into a 4 bedroom house — both of which will be installed in the Hamptons this spring. Sign up on our website for more info and availability in your area.
RDFU, Rapid Deployment Functional Unit, made from a recycled shipping container, was originally conceived as a deployable space for mediation. It has been shown at the Salomon Contemporary Gallery and the Parrish Museum Road Show.
Affordable housing for seniors in Amagansett, NY. Small two-story houses with private backyards, and roof gardens.
Our Vision Plan for East Hampton Village transforms the central core from a luxury shopping zone to a vibrant, eclectic, community-serving village complete with a cultural/educational core, infill micro-housing, ecological sewage treatment, and recreation.
We have envisioned both incremental and fundamental changes to the village infrastructure, housing, parking, waste treatment, and commercial outlets. These plans were presented to the Board of Trustees and Mayor of East Hampton Village and to the public at Parrish Art Museum. Please contact us if you are interested in discussing your interests and concerns about the village.
small private school for the Baha'i community of Islip, Long Island, this project adapted its shape to the sliver-shaped property.
Ninety affordable apartments are clustered together in a village like setting. Each grouping of apartments is designed as a farm-house and each apartment is given a parcel of land for private farming or gardening.
The clustering of density allows a large portion of the land to remain unbuilt and infused with diverse landscape features, such as gardens, farms, sand bars, play grounds, skateboard ramps, walking paths, outdoor picnic, pool, etc.
A 10,000 sf space is designed to be under perpetual construction. Floating platforms will replicate idealized versions of Living room, Kitchen, Bedroom, Office, and Bathroom.
Sacred Geometry: Proposal for a Baha'i Temple in PNG
with Caroline O'Donnell / CODA and help of JWK Architects
Baha'i Temples throughout the world are required to be nine-sided and to have a dome-like interior. This proposal for a Baha'i Temple in Papua New Guinea takes its cue from the historic lineage of Baha'i temples
and adapts the template set by these structures in order to respond to nature's cycles and the path of the sun across the sky; its forms touch on the gentle shapes of local architecture and their angular profiles --shapes that were developed through daily use and need over many years.
A set of nine steel-reinforced concrete ribs adjust in depth to provide shade to a transparent skin of glass. The glazing itself has an outer and an inner layer of screens that moderate and control light and shade At
each of the nine entries, operable windows allow air to circulate in and escape through the oculus. At times, sunlight penetrates directly through the oculus casting the shadow of the Baha'i symbol onto the floor (the ceiling symbol is a requirement of the temple).
The temple is shaped to be naturally ventilated and to maintain a moderate temperature within its inner sanctum. A lightly woven lattice, made from local materials and construction techniques, forms an inner dome over this space, lowering the ceiling height and providing for a more intimate enclosure. The temple's orientation follows the angle of the sun diffusing light in a carefully orchestrated manner.
Seating is generally arranged to focus on a single speaker, but can be re-arranged to correspond to different events and programs.
The view of the temple will be that of an undulating weave of form and light and a dome that has responded to nature.
This 140 bedroom, what we call, Living Lab is made of 140 recycled shipping containers raised on a steel structure. More images to be published soon.
