by: Gregory Haley AIA AICP LEED AP
Event: Young Architects Forum: Proof
Location: The Urban Center, 05.31.07
Speakers: Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch — Aranda/Lasch, NYC; Chaewon Kim & Beat Schenk, — uni, Cambridge, MA
Introduction: David Benjamin — Young Architects Committee
Organizers: The Architectural League of New York
(left): uni’s XS, S, M, and L prototype houses; (right): Brooklyn Pigeon Project by Aranda/Lasch.
uni; Aranda/Lasch
“Risk is the territory of proof,” according to David Benjamin of the Young Architects Committee. Aranda/Lasch takes risks on a conceptual level through an engagement with open-ended explorations of pattern, while design/build firm uni engages risk on a pragmatic level balancing design with construction and development.
From explorations of “forbidden symmetries” found in molecular structure, woven baskets, and infrastructural proposals, Aranda/Lasch argues for an architecture situated within the patterns of natural and urban phenomena — to “get into the dynamic” is their goal, stated Benjamin Aranda. In the Brooklyn Pigeon Project, for example, the patterns of flocking pigeons are recorded through tracking devices and cameras to reframe our understanding of the city. In the Baskets Project, a collaboration with Native American basket weaver Terrol Dew Johnson, systems of pattern making (cultural and mathematical) are again taken as a starting point in an exploration of form. The study of pattern in their work is primarily about “looking at the world around us and breaking it down into phenomena,” claimed Chris Lasch, thus revealing new relationships, and perhaps new means of practicing architecture.
The risks taken by uni, on the other hand, deal with the realization of architecture as building. Taking command of their own destiny, Chaewon Kim and Beat Schenk did not simply open an office; they bought and renovated property until they completed the equivalent of a showroom of residential architecture. Four houses — categorized by size as XS, S, M, and L — function as a laboratory for exploration of domestic functions and materials. Through their design/build efforts they have made a compelling argument for the compatibility of design, real estate development, and straightforward construction.
Gregory Haley, AIA, AICP, LEED AP, is a senior architect and urban planner at Studio V Architecture, and teaches at NYIT School of Architecture.