January News
Dear Friends,
As we begin 2022, we’d like to express how fortunate we feel to be working with such a talented group of architects who are continuously thinking about designing the world in new ways—examples of which you’ll see in recent press below.
We’re also excited to announce that we’ve begun working with CO Adaptive and Spiegel Aihara Workshop, and are looking forward to organizing design conversations and programming later in the year.
As always, please reach out with any questions or ideas for collaboration. Sending our best wishes for a peaceful and healthy start to 2022.
Honora + Danielle
Header image: Tribeca Pied-à-Terre by Young Projects. Photo by Alan Tansey.
Client Press
Alda Ly Architecture's Alda Ly and Tania Chau Talk with Tout
In Tout, from furniture brand Dims, ALA founder Alda Ly and the studio's Director of Interiors, Tania Chau, discuss the relationship between color perception, culture, and architecture. "There’s a certain strength in owning a color and changing the perception of it. It’s amazing how deeply perceptions can be ingrained in you," Chau explains. Read the full conversation here. Photos by Sean Davidson for Tout.
AUAR's First Permanent Dwelling Unit Featured in Fast Company
As Elissaveta M. Brandon writes in Fast Company, AUAR’s first permanent dwelling unit "was completed in three weeks (with only one week on site) and cost about 30% less to build than a traditional U.K. home. Just like other forms of technology, like 3D printing homes, AUAR’s system provides a blueprint for more streamlined and sustainable homebuilding." Read the full piece here. Photo by studio naaro.
Wallpaper* Covers Centered Home by Annie Barrett and Hye-Young Chung
Barrett tells Wallpaper*: "While inside the house, one is either within the cube, or living between it and the visually porous exterior envelope of the building, creating direct connections to nature and amplifying the sense of the cube as a volume within a volume—or, a home within a house." Barrett, of aalso architects, designed Centered Home with Chung, of HYCARCH, for a Los Angeles couple entering semi-retirement. Read more here. Photo by Brandon Shigeta.
CO Adaptive's Design for The Mercury Store in Fast Company, Wallpaper* and ICON
“Somebody else would’ve seen it as a pile of garbage and razed it to the ground. Our role as architects is an exercise of showing what’s already there and celebrating that,” Ruth Mandl, co-founder of CO Adaptive tells Fast Company of The Mercury Store, a new theater space adapted from a former metal foundry original built in 1901. Read more in Fast Company, Wallpaper*, and ICON. Photo by Naho Kubota.
Architectural Digest Highlights the Pro-Bono Work of Design Advocates
“A Year-Plus Into Outdoor Dining, What Have We Learned?,” Jessica Ritz asks in a recent piece for AD Pro. To help answer the question, she cites Design Advocates, whose work includes "pro-bono design services to restaurant owners in historically underserved communities, providing resources to interpret emergency order guidelines, and participating in drafting New York City’s evolving Open Restaurants program vision.” Read more here. Design Advocates for Kopitiam restaurant; Photo by Alan Tansey.
Florencia Pita and Cecilia Quezada Talk with Madame Architect
While Florencia Pita and Cecilia Quezada established their architecture practices independently, they still find space to collaborate—a partnership rooted in their relationship as cousins. In this interview with Madame Architect, they discuss shared history, the power of mentorship, and movement towards “a hybrid model of design, one where the reliance and belief in computation is challenged, as we aim for things that have more character, more texture, more stories, less math and more myth,” Pita explains. Read the full interview here. Portrait by Kate Albee.
Frederick Tang Architecture Weighs in for Dwell and Curbed
In a chat with Curbed, FTA founder Frederick Tang lets us in on his Zillow saves, like the late John Baldessari’s Santa Monica home, while in Dwell Fred reveals his 2022 design predictions, like an influx of tactile materials and “earthier finishes like plaster, clay, and lime washes.” Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photo: Gieves Anderson.
French 2D in ArchDaily, Bloomberg CityLab, and Design Milk
“Bay State Commons Cohousing, a condominium project designed by French 2D, offers a look at how care can be incorporated into multifamily housing today,” Alexandra Lange writes in Bloomberg CityLab. “As with most cohousing projects, design decisions were made by consensus, with the added challenge of fitting 30 apartments on three-quarters of an acre in a neighborhood of single-family houses. Building in child care was a priority, starting with a semi-enclosed courtyard overlooked by exterior walkways.”
French 2D’s work in collective housing was also featured in ArchDaily, while co-founder Anda French was interviewed for Design Milk’s Friday Five. Rendering of Bay State Commons Cohousing courtesy French 2D.
The Architect's Newspaper and Archinect feature LAA Office
"For Lulu Loquidis and Daniel Luis Martinez, the importance of bridging the gap between public space, community-driven design, and the built environment is essential," Katherine Guimapang writes in Archinect's recent profile of the Columbus, Indiana-based studio LAA Office. Recent public projects from LAA Office include Sixth Street Arts Alley, also highlighted in Archinect, and Heritage Park, featured in The Architect’s Newspaper. Photo of Sixth Street Arts Alley by Hadley Fruits.
MKCA in The New York Times and Interior + Design Russia
“When the architect Michael Chen couldn’t travel to be with his family last Christmas, he learned to make one of his mother’s recipes himself,” Jamie Feldmar writes in a recent edition of T Magazine’s One Good Meal column, featuring the founder of Michael K Chen Architecture. Photo by Kyoko Hamada for The New York Times, T Magazine.
Overlay Office in Dwell, Archinect, and Madame Architect
The Brooklyn-based studio’s first design-and-development project, House Offset, was featured in Archinect and Dwell, while Overlay Office founder Abigail Coover spoke with Madame Architect about balancing dedication, precision, and family. Photos courtesy Corcoran.
SAW's Wraparound House in Metropolis and Wallpaper*
"Rather than simply building upon the new ground, we saw the challenge as redistributing the ground vertically across the site, throughout the building," SAW’s Dan Spiegel tells Wallpaper* in a recent article on the studio’s Wraparound House. "While many buildings have terraces, or balconies, or things like that, we set out to maintain a complete continuity of a new ground across the entire house, ensuring that every roof was not so much the top of something, but the bottom of something—a new ground." The project was also featured in Metropolis. Photos by Paul Dyer.
Young Projects in New York Magazine, Surface, and Green Building & Design
"[Bryan] Young decided to make the small space as dramatic as possible, starting with the ceiling," Wendy Goodman writes in New York Magazine's Curbed on Young Projects' Tribeca Pied-à-Terre. In addition, the studio’s Six Square House was featured across ten pages in Issue 65 of Green Building & Design, while its 20,000-sf project Casa Las Olas was highlighted in Surface’s Design Dispatch. Photo of Tribeca Pied-à-Terre by Alan Tansey.