Metropolis March/April 2021

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN AT ALL SCALES March/April 2021

The Top A&D Students of 2021

ALEK TOMICH Columbia GSAPP

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FEATURES

The Top A&D Students of 2021

p. 136

p. 130

p. 104

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Rethinking the Commons 98 Guillermo Hevia 104 Communal Goods 106 Pandemic Portfolios 108 Tingxin Zheng 110 Green Theses 112 Soundscapes 114 Chenyang Yu 116 Studies in Solace 118 On the Surface 120 Alek Tomich 122 Aging Well 124 Accommodating Neurodiversity 126 Learning at All Scales 128 María José Fuentes 130 Guest Work 132 On-the-Boards Approvals 134 Fangming Cai 136 Beyond Brick and Mortar 138 Object Creativity 140 Eric Kyle Cheung 142 Frontiers in Visualization 144

TOP TO BOTTOM: COURTESY FANGMING CAI; COURTESY MARÍA JOSÉ FUENTES; COURTESY GUILLERMO HEVIA

The students featured in this issue represent the cream of the crop graduating this year from North America’s architecture and design schools.

Meet our inaugural Metropolis Future100.

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DEPARTMENTS

p. 74

CONTRIBUTORS 16 IN THIS ISSUE 18 THINK TANK The Changing Perceptions of Work 20

p. 42

The Value of Place 22 Looking Back, Looking Forward 24 SPECTRUM 28 SOURCED Show Business 40 INVENTORY Table Lamps 42

ALTERNATIVES Ceramics 46 PRODUCTS Vaguely Familiar 48 SUSTAINABLE Order in the Court 52

p. 78

HOSPITALITY Women Welcome 60 ARCHITECTURE Modern Integration 66 LIVING Live/Work/Play Space 74 NEW TALENT Material Minded 78

INSIGHT Virtual Shift 84 FUTURE100 REPORT 86

On the cover: Columbia GSAPP student Alek Tomich’s Reclaiming the Common is an exploration in reclaiming underutilized public space.

NOTEWORTHY Virginia San Fratello 152

MARCH/APRIL 2021, Volume 41, Number 2. METROPOLIS® (ISSN 0279-4977) is published six times a year, bimonthly. Periodical postage is paid in New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post International Publications Mail Product (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No. 0861642. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40028983. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to circulation department or DPGM, 4960-2 Walker Rd., Windsor, ON N9A 6J3. Postmaster: Send address changes to Metropolis, PO Box 8552, Big Sandy, TX 75755. Subscription department: (800) 344-3046. Subscriptions: Six issues for $32.95 U.S.A., $52.95 Canada, $69.95 airmail all other countries. Domestic single copies $9.95; back issues $14.95.

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Despite its irreverent, sometimes feather-ruffling approach, the Toronto practice is scaling up at an impressive speed.

The complex has recently been completed after Ankara-based architecture firm Uygur Mimarlık was selected to design the government-funded project in 1992.

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CONTRIBUTORS GIOVANNA DUNMALL London-based Giovanna Dunmall is a freelance design and culture journalist who focuses on how sustainable and social practices are changing cities.

She also does editorial work for various architecture firms and cultural organizations, working on catalogs, websites, and books. For this issue, Dunmall wrote about a new dementia-friendly design toolkit created by Lekker Architects and Lanzavecchia + Wai (p. 38).

ROBERT PRACEK A graduate of the University of North Florida, Robert Pracek is a graphic designer and digital media artist based in Florida. Currently a designer for SANDOW, he draws inspiration from the world around him—whether he’s putting together digital pixels or crafting his next project in his garage.

Pracek helped design this issue, including the Living (p. 74) and Sustainable (p. 52) columns.

LIZ STINSON Liz Stinson is a writer living in Brooklyn.

She’s currently the executive editor of AIGA’s Eye on Design, a website and magazine about graphic design.

Stinson was formerly a staff writer at Wired and has contributed pieces to Fast Company, Curbed, Allure, Architectural Digest, and Dwell, among other publications. Stinson wrote this issue’s Living column (p. 74) on the Dime, a new Brooklyn mixed-use tower.

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Lauren Volker is an Atlanta-based writer, editor, and project manager.

She’s currently the editorial project manager for Metropolis, where she coordinates special brand initiatives as well as print magazine content.

Volker was previously a managing editor of Contract, and prior to that she held editorial positions at Impressions and design:retail magazines. Volker managed this issue’s Future100 content, organizing the program report (p. 86) and coverage of the student winners (p. 97).

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COURTESY THE CONTRIBUTORS

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IN THIS ISSUE Welcome to the Future

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University of Pennsylvania graduate student Paul McCoy’s expressive visual strategy allows views of his proposal for the Socrates Park Culture Center from multiple scales and sets of orthography.

COURTESY PAUL McCOY

“We just can’t afford to lose another generation,” SANDOW Design Group’s executive vice president and design futurist AJ Paron told me last September, as the graduating class of 2021 was starting the fall semester.

Paron was a teacher during the last economic cataclysm in 2008 and remembers seeing her best and brightest students struggling to gain a foothold in our industry.

Many of them switched tracks to marketing, business, technology, and other fields. They no doubt flourished in those careers, but the brain drain in the A&D industry was palpable. Now, as graduates face a similarly challenging professional landscape, how can we help?

The issue you hold is the result of a six-month-long search for North America’s top architecture and interior design students from the class of 2021. We are proud to present our inaugural Metropolis Future100.

Students are often described as idealistic (sometimes a kinder way of saying “naive”). But in reviewing 260 portfolios from the United States and Canada, I was struck instead by their pragmatism. Whether in reimagining the public sphere (“Rethinking the Commons,” p. 98), designing spaces for children on the autism spectrum (“Accommodating Neurodiversity,” p. 126), or developing new symbioses between structure and environment (“Green Theses,” p. 112), these students have acutely diagnosed the broken relationships in society and nature. Their ambition is expressed both in their goals and in their craft. Guided by their instructors, they provide well-considered prescriptions for the ills of our world, helping us imagine a better built environment through fresh visualizations (“Frontiers in Visualization,” p. 144) and innovative design details (“On the Surface,” p. 120).

No less encouraging are the demographics of the Future100, which closely mirror those of North America at large. While we encouraged applications from students who identify with groups that are underrepresented in the A&D professions, the portfolios were judged on their creativity, rigor, and professionalism.

Once Paron and I had made the final selections, we were thrilled to discover that a third of our honorees identify as BIPOC, and a fifth of them as LGBTQIA+.

You can find other analyses of this year’s cohort in our Future100 report (p. 86).

More content, including videos from many of our honorees, can be found at metropolismag.com/future100.

By showcasing the next generation of architects and designers, we encourage you to hire them, collaborate with them, or simply reach out to them with a word of support. We need their brilliance to tackle the challenges that lie ahead! —Avinash Rajagopal, editor in chief

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The Changing Perceptions of Work How will remote work affect offices, cities, and the people who live and work in them?

By James McCown An office designed by AECOM for a confidential technology client in Santa Monica, California, features ample common areas to collaborate, socialize, or just relax.

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flexibility became a permanent option.”

Indeed, COVID-19 has completely upended the search for talent. Kelly Bacon, principal and national leader, workplace strategy, AECOM, offered an example. “Traditionally, if you were a New York employer you drew from the Tri-State area [downstate New York, northern New Jersey, and southwestern Connecticut].” But with the digital work revolution, she said, “organizations are no longer tied to a particular geography.”

Not every employee is able to work efficiently from home or particularly wants to. “Some people work on their dining room tables, while some have a fully dedicated home office,” said Sitzes. There is the digital divide, with not all employees having the latest technology at home. “I’m seeing organizations developing a kit of potential equipment and technology” to meet this need, he said. Tinebra took it a step further: “Organizations have made bigger investments in technology over the past six months than ever before.”

There are generational tensions at work as well, with younger workers wanting face time with senior managers. “We asked our younger generation—Gen Z and millennials— and they want to get back to the office because that’s where their career grows. But

boomers are not in a hurry to get back because of their family situations,” said Sitzes.

Collaboration among HR, real estate departments, and IT is crucial, the panel concluded. There have been recent meetings, Sitzes averred, “when it was the first time these groups have been in the same room together.”

In the end it’s all about people, as Coriolanus observed. Ledford said: “Our cities need people to return. Look at the downstream effect [on restaurants, stores, and the like] of the closures. There has to be a partnership between government and employers to bring workers back.”

Hosted virtually by AECOM in Los Angeles, panelists included Mary Tinebra, HR and digital transformation business leader, senior partner, Mercer; Laurie Ledford, senior vice president, chief human resources officer, Marsh & McLennan Companies; Kelly Bacon, principal and national leader, workplace strategy, AECOM; and Doug Sitzes, regional leader, workplace design and workplace strategy, AECOM. The discussion was moderated by Avinash Rajagopal, editor in chief of Metropolis.

The Think Tank discussions were held on December 3, 10, and 17. The conversations were presented in partnership with Material Bank, GROHE, Versteel, Knoll Textiles, Etc., Loftwall, and GKD.

COURTESY TERRANCE WILLIAMS, WUNDR STUDIO

“What is the city but the people?” asked Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. The future of cities, workplaces, and the people who occupy them was the subject of a Metropolis Think Tank on December 10, titled “The Changing Perception of Work.” The wide-ranging discussion, hosted by AECOM, covered the post-COVID-19 work landscape and the profound impact of the pandemic on the very notions of urban life, work, and the office.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment when everything has changed,” said Doug Sitzes, regional leader, workplace design and strategy, AECOM. Flexibility and remote work are here to stay, the panel agreed, but that won’t change the human need for connection and affirmation.

“I’m an eternal optimist,” said Laurie Ledford, senior vice president, chief human resources officer, Marsh & McLennan Companies. “People are people and they do want to be together.” But what form will the work/home balance take?

Mary Tinebra, HR and digital transformation business leader, senior partner, Mercer, quoted some interesting statistics: “Sixty-six percent of employees surveyed would consider switching employers if flexibility were not an option. And 51 percent would consider relocating if

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The Value of Place A recent panel discussed how optimizing the human experience of a place might be the most powerful branding exercise there is.

By James McCown

Do what you do “so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do” was purported to have been Walt Disney’s take on brand loyalty.

A recent Think Tank panel explored “The Value of Place: Brand and the Human Experience.” Taking a cue from Disney, Steve Dumas, principal at PairD Consulting, said: “The idea is to get the customer to come back—to health clinics, shopping malls, and even airports.”

Joining Dumas on the panel was Paige Terrell, vice president and director of branded environments at Corgan, which hosted the event. Her colleague Sean Kim, vice president and interior design studio leader at Corgan, rounded out the group.

The conversation was moderated by Avinash Rajagopal, editor in chief of Metropolis.

The panel discussed the branding of three disparate environments: the nonprofit health consortium Kaiser Permanente, shopping centers, and airports. Kim stated: “The most important thing for Kaiser is creating memorable experiences. This includes creating a cohesive nationwide brand while allowing regional offices to have their own local identities.” Dumas, whose development and design solutions consultancy collaborated on the Kaiser project, urged branding to the point of consumer quasi-ownership: “We seek to create a product that resonates with customers so they’ll consider it their medical facility, their mall, or their airport.”

As business and personal transactions grow increasingly digital, Terrell said, “I need the virtual experience to align with the physical experience.” She offered an example: “The first user experience of the

brand is often on a phone, website, or virtual tour.” But these must translate into a reason for a compelling in-person visit: “It’s in our nature that there’s always going to be a physical place we want to go to. There have to be sounds, smells, textures—things that excite the senses.”

Dumas turned the conversation to his own specialties. At malls, it’s all about “knowing your customers: Where do they park? How do they walk into the mall? Where do they go to the bathroom?” At Los Angeles International Airport, he said, the challenge is “How do we get them to stay longer?”

Rajagopal pushed the panelists to “convert what you believe to be the uniqueness of the brand into something that will connect to customers and bring them back.”

Terrell asserted that getting customers used to technical support that is available can make the difference: “At a Kaiser clinic, you can make your appointment via an app. You arrive in Parking Garage A and you are tracked along the way, while you are told places for buying coffee or even where you can shop while you’re waiting to see your doctor.”

Dumas summed up the session: “Design matters. If it looks cool, if the customer is excited about it, it will strengthen your brand.”

Hosted virtually by Corgan in Los Angeles, panelists included Patricia A. Betzhold, executive director, facilities strategy, planning and design, Kaiser Permanente; Sean Kim, vice president, interior design studio leader, Corgan; Steve Dumas, principal, PairD Consulting; and Paige Terrell, vice president, director, branded environments, Corgan.

The discussion was moderated by Avinash Rajagopal, editor in chief of Metropolis.

The Think Tank discussions were held on December 3, 10, and 17. The conversations were presented in partnership with Material Bank, GROHE, Versteel, Knoll Textiles, Etc., Loftwall, and GKD.

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COURTESY KURT GRIESBACH

VariSpace, one of Corgan’s clients, reimagines corporate real estate as a turnkey solution with maximum flexibility in mind.

An open area offers a variety of seating options for group meetings, individual work, or a casual chat over coffee.

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Looking Back, Looking Forward How can the hard-learned workforce lessons of 2020 prepare us for 2021 and beyond?

By James McCown

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A grand staircase forms the nucleus of Happy Money’s office in Tustin, California (above). Offering casual seating and a place to bump into colleagues, it helps create a sense of office community. Skylights in the Copenhagen office of Unity Technologies (left) bring in ample natural light, supporting wellness.

of the organization itself is changing.” Galullo chimed in with a retail example: “If you think about retailers that have both brick-andmortar and e-commerce, they both must feel the same. With brick-and-mortar there are things you can’t get with digital, and vice versa.” Goop’s Brown put in a word for the tactile experience that has always distinguished in-person retailing. “If one of our buyers wants to show a piece of fabric to an editor, there’s nothing like ‘touch and feel.’”

Returning to the people-centric theme, Galullo said: “Hopefully, a year from now we will have a very different take on group health than we had a year ago. It’s not about putting plastic between people; it’s about building a place that is meaningful and brings people together.”

All panelists agreed that warm human interaction has been missing in the pandemic, and that they can’t wait to get back

to it. Senior said, “I’m looking forward to hugging my colleague’s newborn.” Goop’s Brown offered that she misses “the camaraderie of celebrating a win.” Finally, Galullo pleaded for a more humanist pedagogy for architects. “We need to be creating more well-rounded, more curious, and more empathetic designers.”

Hosted virtually by Rapt Studio in Los Angeles, panelists included David Galullo, CEO and chief creative officer, Rapt Studio; Lisa Hennessey, chief people officer, Happy Money; Nicole Senior, director of workplace experience, Tinder; and Noora Raj Brown, SVP of communications and brand marketing, goop.

The discussion was moderated by Avinash Rajagopal, editor in chief of Metropolis.

The Think Tank discussions were held on December 3, 10, and 17. The conversations were presented in partnership with Material Bank, GROHE, Versteel, Knoll Textiles, Etc., Loftwall, and GKD.

TOP: COURTESY MADELINE TOLLE; BOTTOM: COURTESY ERIC LAIGNEL

“Change drives innovation. We must continually evolve into what a successful workplace looks like,” said Nicole Senior, director of workplace experience at Tinder. Change, innovation, and human connection were prominent topics in a December 17 Think Tank hosted by Rapt Studio and titled “Looking Back, Looking Forward: Workforce Lessons for 2021.”

An overriding theme was employee happiness after many difficult months of remote working. “We’re slowing down and focusing on mental health,” said Lisa Hennessey, chief people officer at Happy Money, which has seen massive growth in 2021. “How do we make people not feel isolated? How do we create moments of delight?”

“It’s not about workplace, it’s about workforce,” concurred David Galullo, CEO and chief creative officer, Rapt Studio. “If you start with the people, you may or may not need a workplace. Or you may need different kinds of workplaces, but it has to come from the workforce.” In this spirit, he added: “The workplace is a vessel for meaningful connection, making people think they are part of something larger than themselves.”

Noora Raj Brown, SVP of communications at goop, founded by Gwyneth Paltrow, said that despite the high profile of the company’s founder, “culture can’t just start from the top. It has to be built from the middle and the bottom. Employees are responsible for culture.”

Beyond people, there is the sheer transformation of the very meaning of “office.” Moderator Avinash Rajagopal, editor in chief of Metropolis, called it “a physical-to-digital evolution while the nature

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At All Scales

COURTESY JOHNNY KORKMAN

The 140th anniversary of Iittala, the iconic Finnish glassworks, is celebrated with a comprehensive exhibition at Helsinki’s Design Museum that sees the brand as a node in the development and circulation of Modernism.

Pictured: an earthenware panel from 1958 by designer Oiva Toikka.

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EXHIBITION Glass from the North Country A lightly populated expanse of forests and lakes, Finland may be a curious place for the inception of a Modern design nucleus that wove together some of the 20th century’s most lauded designers. But that’s what happened with the founding of glassworks company Iittala 140 years ago. The anniversary is now being marked with a sprawling, multifaceted exhibition at Helsinki’s Design Museum that demonstrates how the company’s trajectory mirrors the Nordic nation’s emergence as a crucible of aesthetic functionalism and commercial design.

“Iittala is approached simultaneously as a brand and glassworks, and also as a concept which remains linked to the 20th-century Nordic ideal of ‘beauty for everyday life,’ ” say curators Ville Kokkonen and Florencia Colombo. Beyond key glass and ceramic pieces, the exhibition, titled Iittala—Kaleidoscope: From Nature to Culture, also includes a host of accompanying content such as molds, prototypes, photographs, texts, and tools. The curators approached the project less as a chronological narrative of the brand and more as a “cultural index,” which arranges Iittala artifacts to convey its epoch- and nation-defining personality. —Akiva Blander 28

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Through September, an exhibition at Helsinki’s Design Museum presents Iittala glassware and materials representing many well-known postwar Finnish designers.

Clockwise from top left: Tirri (Little Tern), by Oiva Toikka, best known for his “Birds

by Toikka” Iittala collection; mouth-blown glass Tuonelan virta (Stream of Tuonela), by Tapio Wirkkala; Marcel 2370 set of glass bowls, by master glassblower Timo Sarpaneva.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COURTESY IITTALA; COURTESY JOHNNY KORKMAN; COURTESY RAUNO TRÄSKELIN

SPECTRUM An essential survey of architecture and design today

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Design for Discovery

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EDUCATION Research Assistant At the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, which has emerged as a leader in global health data during the pandemic, the new Hans Rosling Center for Population Health is poised to become an epicenter of lifesaving research.

“This project was about planting a flag in the sand, announcing Seattle as the center of gravity for research and innovation around population health,” says Ruth Baleiko, partner at the Miller Hull Partnership, which designed the 290,000-square-foot building.

The firm’s design for the center was driven by the belief that interdisciplinary collaboration is key to solving global health challenges, bringing together several departments and institutes that focus on health issues.

“UW has broad expertise across disciplines, as well as strong external partnerships with community groups and government entities,” says Derek Fulwiler, director of strategy for UW’s Population Health Initiative, which commissioned the project.

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The building announces its ethos of collaboration through a parti of interlocking rectangular volumes that contain seven stories of research offices hovering above a ground floor of public gathering spaces and classrooms. Envisioned as a series of neighborhoods where various office types intermix with shared meeting spaces, the floors are arranged around a central convening stairway meant to encourage movement and advance cross-pollination among occupants and visiting partners.

The architects addressed the site’s challenging 30-foot grade by creating three “ground floors” at different elevations, each with its own entrance. A massive

covered porch along the north facade is a welcoming refuge in Seattle’s rainy climate.

Along the west elevation, three-foot-deep fins create a dramatic rippling effect visible from the nearby interstate. Each fin was carefully oriented to mitigate glare and solar heat gain without sacrificing views, a move that will help the building attain LEED Gold certification.

Although the Hans Rosling Center currently sits empty because of the very population health challenges it was built to address, UW’s Fulwiler remains optimistic: “Once it’s safe to gather again, the sky’s the limit as to what we can achieve together.”

—Lauren Gallow

KEVIN SCOTT

In Seattle, the Miller Hull Partnership has established a global hub for population research, a series of interlocking volumes. Three-foot-deep fins regulate daylight and solar gain, while ample common spaces encourage collaboration and link to the surrounding campus and landscaping.

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Taking care of light Marset USA Inc. 20 West 22nd Street – Suite 903 New York, NY 10010 T +1 646 727 4250 I F +1 646 304 6959 marsetusa@marset.com

BOOK Cloudy Forecast

THE NEW NORMAL Edited by Benjamin H. Bratton, Nicolay Boyadjiev, and Nick Axel Published by Park Books and distributed by the University of Chicago Press, 548 pages, $65 Research projects from the Strelka team and The New Normal researchers. Left: Common Task reimagines a tech-embracive Russian history. Right (2): Sculptures in Possibility Space emphasizes the function of cities to commingle individuals and condense potentialities.

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“Something has shifted,” writes Benjamin H. Bratton in the introduction to The New Normal, a yearbook-like collation of work completed under the eponymous research agenda at Moscow’s Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture, and Design between 2017 and 2019. He’s referring to the reign of data and algorithms, which has generated spatial and political arrangements at a pace and scale that have overwhelmed our capacity to meaningfully conceptualize or assess them. In short, technologies and data—distilled most instructively in the cloud—have supplanted many traditional governing structures, as cities splinter into ever-more-atomized but persistently entangled micro-entities.

Every three years, Strelka initiates a research theme for an imported program director and a

cadre of postgrads and affiliates to explore. (Bratton affectionately calls these a “little cosmopolitan sect of speculative urbanists.”) As a Strelka research rubric, The New Normal is as abstruse and encompassing as any other, and though the term deliberately evades explicit definition, there is a lot of conceptual table setting: It investigates the impact of planetary-scale computation on the urban future. (Bratton fans will sense overlap with his 2016 book The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty.)

It maps the tension between globalization’s destruction of borders and the hard realities of administrative boundaries.

It sees data as an extractive resource to which we, like past commodities, are subject.

The dozens of projects included are wide-ranging, serving not as typical design

suggestions but rather as “fungible platforms,” per Bratton. There are, however, manifest forms and processes associated with his “new normal,” such as cloud urbanism, robot cities, algorithmic governance, “zoning machines,” and global logistical processes that benefit from climate catastrophe. Taken as a whole, the book lands as a manifesto for design that is critical of convention and responsive to emergences. Adapting a Big Lebowski-ism, Bratton prescribes that design’s reaction should be “reconfiguring what norms will be based on the new shit that has come to light.”

The think tank’s output may not be as practical as Bratton and his sect aver, but it’s a welcome plea for a sense of humility in urban investigation, intervention, and speculation. —Akiva Blander

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COMMON TASK © THE NEW NORMAL RESEARCHERS & STRELKA TEAM; SCULPTURES IN POSSIBILITY SPACE, IMAGE FROM AI URBANISM MODULE © THE NEW NORMAL RESEARCHERS & STRELKA TEAM; SCULPTURES IN POSSIBILITY SPACE, IMAGE FROM AI URBANISM MODULE © THE NEW NORMAL RESEARCHERS & STRELKA TEAM

SPECTRUM

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SPECTRUM

FLOORING Good Under Foot Flooring covers a huge surface area in commercial interiors, so it’s one specification designers should ensure has low-VOC and low-carbon ingredients.

New options from Tarkett carry an Environmental Product Declaration and eligibility for ReStart, the company’s reclamation and recycling program.

Additions to the Fabric + Form Collection—two carpet patterns, Aida Cloth (shown) and Suede Tones, and a new style of luxury vinyl tile called Entwine—are designed to work together.

That makes it easier for designers to match carpets and hard surfacing in environments where the materials underfoot must shift to suit the programming. tarkettna.com —Kelly Beamon

Plane Easy

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COURTESY THE MANUFACTURERS

In an extension of its Durapalm line, manufacturer Smith & Fong is offering a wider, longer version of Deco Palm flooring planks, which are composed of a sustainable veneer of India black palm on a bamboo substrate.

The chunkier 6-by-72-inch planks enable faster installation because of the heftier profile. They are also low-VOC and formaldehydefree, which helps contribute to a project’s LEED credits. durapalm.com —K.B.

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Typology Connecting Sky & Earth, Light & Shadow Immersive, sculptural elements bridge the vertical and horizontal realms, playing with light and shadow to draw the eyes skyward then back to the earth. Discover the Typology Collection, an innovative seating and lighting system and holistic urban design experience created in collaboration with Designworks, a BMW Group company.

Find us at landscapeforms.com or contact us toll free at 800.430.6205.

SPECTRUM

TEXTILE Precious Threads

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COURTESY KYOGO

In Kyoto, Japan, a four-year-old company is reimagining a 1,200-year-old weaving technique. KYOGO textiles were launched in 2017 by parent company Nishijin Textile Manufacture. Nishijin textiles are formed by weaving dyed silk threads with gold and silver and were historically used in the Imperial Court and Buddhist monks’ robes.

KYOGO applies this craft, which has been passed down through generations, to create interior fabrics with layered designs that exhibit dramatic depth and lighting effects depending on the angle of viewing.

KYOGO also interprets Japanese tradition in patterns—most notably in its COIKI collection, a series of 27 distinct fabrics that vary in tone and texture. COIKI008’s hemp leaf motif was once found on Buddhist statues or Kabuki costumes, COIKI013’s Saaya first appeared over 400 years ago in the interiors of the Imperial Family, and COIKI014’s Scale patterns adorned the walls of tombstones and mortuary statuettes from the 3rd to 6th century. The textiles can now be found in wine bars, candy shops, and even the interiors of vehicles.

Making use of a loom wider than the traditional Nishijin loom, KYOGO’s artisans weave large-scale fabrics (without repeats) through a rigorous ten-step design and production process that involves an art director, a designer, a weaver, and an upholsterer. COIKI, along with the manufacturer’s other three collections, is suitable for interior wallcoverings, furniture, clothing, and accessories. KYOGO also fulfills custom orders. —Leilah Stone MARCH/APRIL 2021

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LV T I N N O VAT I O N S

E N R IO CA T A TH C L IL U A ED HE ETA ILY ATE R AM OR ITY -F RP AL I T O IT L U C SP M HO

avaflor.com / 877-861-8592 With worldwide sales offices and distribution partners, AVA® is a leader in the design and manufacturing of a diverse range of innovative and sustainable resilient flooring products.

SPECTRUM

TOOLKIT Clarifying Care

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brand,” says Wai. “We wanted to re-create that same tone, that same accessibility, and even the aspirational aspects.”

People living with dementia find basic activities increasingly challenging as their perception gradually deteriorates and visual associations become confused, continues Wai. Hack Care recommends clarifying domestic surroundings by camouflaging unnecessary or dangerous items—such as certain doors, handles, or light switches— and clearly demarcating walls and floors with contrasting trimwork and steps with bright yellow strips.

Dementia is not a linear disease, say the designers, and objects or modifications that are calming one day can cause confusion the next. The beauty of these hacks, however, is that they are as easy to undo as they are to implement. To any furniture designers or manufacturers that may be inspired by Hack Care to create a dementiaspecific design collection, Lanzavecchia and Wai have a simple message: “This is a completely altruistic project, so go for it, run with it, make it better.” —Giovanna Dunmall

COURTESY LIEN FOUNDATION

“Dementia literature is often quite academic and opaque,” says Hunn Wai, cofounder of Singaporean-Italian design studio Lanzavecchia + Wai. An antidote to that problem? Hack Care, a colorful, accessible, and freely downloadable compendium of more than 50 practical tips designed to help caregivers make homes dementia-friendly.

Commissioned by Singapore-based charity Lien Foundation and authored by research and design agency Lekker Architects with Lanzavecchia + Wai, the toolkit is styled like an IKEA catalog and includes essays, interviews with caregivers and specialists, and a series of online instruction manuals.

Adapting furniture and other interior elements is already a common practice in the dementia care community, explains cofounder Francesca Lanzavecchia, “but we wanted to use our design skills and lenses to formalize those hacks so that they could be replicated in a more integrated, pleasing, and understandable way.” Using IKEA furniture and its catalog format was about recognition and associations. “There are a lot of emotional qualities linked to the

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MOHAWKGROUP.COM

Next stop: Smart City — a carbon neutral carpet plank collection of two styles that finds inspiration in the urban environment of the future. The texture and tempo of actual metropolitan mapscapes have been translated into a Living Product flooring system of linear color networks with coordinating motifs.

Scan below to learn more about Smart City and watch a video about the collection.

MOHAWKGROUP.COM/CARPET/COLLECTIONS/SMART-CITY

STYLES SHOWN: Urban Model 949 Midtown, Urban Mobility 949 Grey Line

SOURCED Show Business

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“Designing office space is similar to working on a permanent or pop-up retail space. We are literally bringing the brand to life.”

Gala Magriñá

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Magriñá’s four-year-old Queens, New York–based practice reflects her eclectic background as an NYU film student and a pop-up retail event producer.

The firm’s interiors combine tenets of feng shui, biophilia, sustainability, and set design.

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01 Level LED chandelier “This fixture is architectural in shape and can be lined up, creating geometry in the air.” waclighting.com 02 Custom wallpaper “Creating our own wallcovering is another way to give clients original design that is on-brand.” eacgs.com

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04 Tate coffee table “Circular meeting and coffee tables are inviting and suggest community.” eq3.com 05 Ojai dining table “Wood represents growth and, due to its hardness, a solid foundation.

We used a series of these to create a 24-foot communal desk, which forms the foundation of the office.” apt2b.com

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06 House Pet carpet tile “These match the [client’s] brand colors and are commercially suited without looking commercial.” flor.com 07 Custom neon “Our love for neon goes back to my event design and production days. It’s fun, flashy, and relatively inexpensive.” lettherebeneon.com

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08 VEDBO armchair “Since upholstered goods typically take so long [to specify], this IKEA chair is a home run. It warms up the space.” ikea.com

PORTRAIT COURTESY GALA MAGRIÑÁ; PRODUCTS COURTESY THE MANUFACTURERS AND DESIGNERS

03 Custom artwork “It’s hard to find traditional art that feels on-brand in an office, so we design our own.”

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LIFE OUTSIDE IS A LIFE WELL LIVED.

T U U C I E Q U I N OX W I T H AU T O M AT E D L O U V E R E D R O O F, L I G H T I N G A N D H E AT I N G

TUUCI.COM

INVENTORY Table Lamps Whether perched on desks to illuminate tasks and reduce reliance on ambient lighting, or placed bedside to emit a warm glow at the right height for reclined reading, lamps are one of the most versatile fixtures in a designer’s toolkit.

Here are a few, which also contribute great style.

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COURTESY THE DESIGNERS AND MANUFACTURERS

By Kelly Beamon

01 FULCRUM table lamp by Alison Berger for RH Modern, rh.com 02 PANTHELLA 320 by Verner Panton for Louis Poulsen, louispoulsen.com 03 LIGHTCYCLE MORPH desk light by Dyson, dyson.com 04 OBLIQUE desk lamp by Vincent Van Duysen for Flos, usa.flos.com 05 EASY PEASY by Luca Nichetto for Lodes, lodes.com 06 MARELLA medium table lamp by AERIN, aerin.com 07 BIRDIE EASY table lamp

by Ludovica + Roberto Palomba for Foscarini, foscarini.com 08 TOLOMEO MICRO BICOLOR table lamp by Michele De Lucchi and Giancarlo Fassina for Artemide, artemide.net 09 DISC low table lamp with shade from Urban Glass by In Common With, incommonwith.com 42

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Together or apart, it’s the human spirit that binds us.

For our latest collection, this very spirit lives at the heart of every fabric, connecting human creativity with industrially-driven design to help us reimagine our relationship with our world and one another.

Introducing Collective Conscious, our latest collection designed by Suzanne Tick.

luumtextiles.com

TRANSPARENCY Protective Layer Farrow & Ball expands its inventory of low-VOC coatings with a new interior paint collection that’s as contemporary as it is green.

By Kelly Beamon

01 NONTOXIC

The water-based formula helps the paint qualify as minimal to low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which pollute indoor air. It also eliminates the need for chemical solvents to clean brushes and rollers following application.

02 CHILD-SAFE

The chemistry is thirdparty certified as safe for children and babies, in line with the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) guidelines on “Safety of Toys Part 3: Migration of certain elements.”

03 WATERCONSERVING

The manufacturer treats and recycles 97 percent of its wastewater for reuse on-site.

04 RECYCLABLE

Cardboard packaging is made using 75 percent recycled content. The paint tins can be infinitely recycled after use because of their high-grade metal.

05 WASTE-REDUCING

06 FSC-CERTIFIED

CALIFORNIA COLLECTION Continuing to build on its environmental commitment 11 years ago to shift all of its paint formulas to water-based chemistry, Farrow & Ball is producing eight new hues mixed using its award-winning, third-partyaudited, energy-saving factory methods. The California Collection was developed in collaboration with designer Kelly Wearstler. Here’s some background on what goes into those familiar recyclable paint cans.

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All paper elements from brochures and labels to the company’s letters are certified forest-friendly by the U.S. Forest Stewardship Council.

07 ENERGY-SAVING

Production is audited by the U.K.’s environmental agency to ensure that it complies with the country’s Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme.

TREVOR TONDRO; SWATCHES COURTESY FARROW & BALL

100 percent of the factory’s dry waste is diverted from landfills for recycling or conversion to biofuel.

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IMAGINE | RENEW | DISCOVER THE WORLD’S LEADING BRANDS WHERE LUXURY DESIGN DEFIES EXPECTATIONS ARTISTIC TILE • B&B ITALIA | MAXALTO • BAUTEAM GERMAN KITCHEN TAILORS • BILOTTA KITCHENS OF NY • BOSCH DESIGN CENTER • CARLISLE WIDE PLANK FLOORS • COSENTINO SURFACES • DACOR KITCHEN THEATER • DRUMMONDS BATHROOMS • EDWARD FIELDS CARPET MAKERS • EGGERSMANN KITCHENS | HOME LIVING • FANTINI USA • FERGUSON BATH, KITCHEN & LIGHTING GALLERY • FISHER & PAYKEL | DCS EXPERIENCE CENTER • FLORENSE KITCHENS | SYSTEMS | FURNITURE • GAGGENAU DESIGN STUDIO • HANS KRUG FINE EUROPEAN CABINETRY • HASTINGS TILE & BATH COLLECTION • HOLLY HUNT NEW YORK • JENNAIR NEW LUXE APPLIANCES • J GEIGER SHADING • LEFROY BROOKS | COOPER & GRAHAM • LISTONE GIORDANO WOOD FLOORS | 3L & COMPANY • MIDDLEBY RESIDENTIAL | VIKING | LA CORNUE • MIELE EXPERIENCE CENTER • NOLTE KÜCHEN • ORNARE KITCHENS | CLOSETS | BATHROOMS • PARIS CERAMICS • POGGENPOHL • POLIFORM • SCAVOLINI USA • SIEMATIC • SMEG • SNAIDERO USA • ST. CHARLES NEW YORK • SUB-ZERO | WOLF | COVE • THERMADOR DESIGN CENTER • WEST | WOOD ARCHITECTURAL SURFACES

VISIT US NOW | m-f 9-5 | ADBUILDING.COM

ALTERNATIVES Ceramics Capable of enduring for thousands of years, ceramic products and materials present ecological challenges when discarded.

By Andrew Dent

RECYCLING Ceramics can’t be easily melted, and while it is possible to pulverize fired parts and add them into new tiles and slabs, the color, consistency, surface quality, and overall strength of these pieces with recycled content mean they have a lower value in the marketplace.

If recycled, most tiles end up as road fill or stormwater drainage, though some companies such as Alusid, StoneCycling, and Seramic are creating higher-value construction and design materials. Most major tile suppliers claim some “recycled” content in their products; however, LEED and other sustainability certification systems may not allow credits or points for these products if the recycled material is unfired clay. Crossville has taken recycling a step further with its Tile Take-Back Program, becoming a “net consumer” of ceramics with the amount of postconsumer and postindustrial material it receives.

Above: WASP’s 3D-printed terra-cotta homes are a revolution in ceramic structures. Left: Crossville’s new Green Squared– certified Story Teller tile collection comes in 6-by-48-inch planks. The company’s Tile Take-Back Program offers an end-of-life solution for ceramics.

REUSE Although there has been some beautiful repurposing of tiles, these reused materials are usually roofing slates and terra-cotta that are not secured in any permanent way and thus can be easily removed intact. Cleaning and reusing floor and wall tiles is a somewhat fruitless task, requiring many steps and never quite resulting in a defect-free, flat surface on the back of the tile. One reusable solution for flat subfloors is the DryTile from Agrob Buchtal that simply uses a cork sheet as a base with no need for any adhesive or grout.

REDUCTION Thinner tiles that contain less material and ship lighter have been on the market for a while, with glass fiber–backed slabs being produced as thin as three millimeters. The most slender are generally recommended for walls rather than floors.

3D PRINTING As with all other material classes, ceramics have now been successfully 3D-printed. Kwambio is one company that offers toughened, no-firing-needed home products. On a much larger scale, WASP is printing habitat-size structures in terra-cotta—a far cry from the plates, tile, and sanitary ware that most of us associate with the term “ceramics.”

Andrew Dent is the EVP of materials research at Material ConneXion and chief material scientist at Material Bank.

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COURTESY THE MANUFACTURERS

Truly ancient yet fully modern, ceramics continue to provide incredible durability, beauty, and creative possibilities, even though the basic chemistries haven’t changed in thousands of years (a mixture of quartz, feldspar, and kaolin in different proportions). In terms of sustainability, ceramics tend to fare relatively well compared with other surfaces in architectural applications. As floor tiles, these materials are more environmentally friendly than carpet, linoleum, or composite marble tile, but worse than some of the natural materials like cork, wood, and bamboo. This rating may change, however, if specific concerns like end-of-life strategies or safety during production are prioritized over other factors.

Ceramic products require significant energy to manufacture, but they can last as long as you care for them—thousands of years in some cases. However, given our desire to change the look of a space in a much shorter time span, the end of life for tiles and other interior and exterior ceramics remains a challenge.

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PRODUCTS Vaguely Familiar To keep things flexible in the “work from anywhere” era, manufacturers strive for fluid functions and loose applications.

By Kelly Beamon

One year after the nationwide shutdown, the United States is officially a “working-from-home economy” with 42 percent of its labor force punching a clock remotely on a full-time basis, according to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. As that becomes the norm, items once marketed as either for home or for office are melding into a hybrid that’s blurrier than anything previously labeled “resimercial” (residential looks with commercial performance). Some products even defy categorization by function. An example is London- and Milan-based Supernovas’ Afterlife Collection, a line of multipurpose benches and crates designed by Rotterdam-based studio Odd Matter.

Crates (shown) can serve as storage, planters, ice buckets, or waste receptacles; the Afterlife Bench can be stacked to function as shelving instead of a seat.

Metropolis came across other similarly versatile pieces.

Nearly all work—and look—at home anywhere.

COURTESY STUDIO PIM TOP

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01 AFTERLIFE CRATE Made of postconsumer recycled plastic, Afterlife Crate is part of an inaugural collection of items eligible for Supernovas’ Streaming program, which lets its customers sell items back or trade up for something new. Either way, it diverts the company’s furniture from landfills. Measuring roughly 22" by 18" by 16", Crate is made using rotomolding, pressing, and 3D printing.

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DELIVER THE “WOW” From playful visuals to sophisticated designs, choose metal ceilings for sleek style with a smooth finish.

Allow us to help bring it to life.

CertainTeed Architectural, new home of the Hunter Douglas Metal and HeartFelt® lines, delivers more than mere solutions. We offer inspiration.

Classic designs. Bespoke creations. Unique installations.

FEED YOUR IMAGINATION AT CertainTeed.com/Architectural

Photography: Accenture Atlanta, ©Studio, 66 LLC; One Campus Maritus, ©Jason Keen; HUB Lexington, ©Kevin Kaminski

PRODUCTS Vaguely Familiar

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02 COPENHAGEN To suit any area of the home, Room & Board’s new Copenhagen desk is available with any of 11 finishes, ten ceramic or quartz worktops, two leg bases, and two hardware options.

ROOM & BOARD roomandboard.com

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03 GUISE The warm 3000K glow of these aluminum and glass pendants helps create a cozy zone. The LED is hidden in a streamlined profile that enables an extra layer of illumination even in a tight space.

VIBIA vibia.com

04 SPOT TABLE Part of Samuelson Furniture’s Phorm Collection, the 20-inch-tall Spot features a retro style with a functional opening that can be used as storage or, with an optional stainless-steel insert, a planter.

SAMUELSON FURNITURE samuelsonfurniture.com

05 GEOMETRIX Versteel developed this system of modular tables as a “solution that can conform to any space.”

Offered in five heights, four shapes, 12 colors, and with optional wireless chargers, power ports, or Bluetooth speakers, the products are clad in Corian and are LEED- and WELL Building Standard–compatible.

VERSTEEL versteel.com

06 LINEAR STEEL ARMCHAIR Part of a café furniture collection by Copenhagenbased designer Thomas Bentzen, this armchair incorporates an ergonomic backrest and durable weather-resistant design.

It’s available in four powder-coated colors.

MUUTO muuto.com

COURTESY THE MANUFACTURERS AND DESIGNERS

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07 ZOOM The versatile design of this LED downlight blends in with commercial or domestic settings. What appears to be an industrial ceramic mount is actually made of plastic and is available in three colors.

SONNEMAN—A WAY OF LIGHT sonnemanawayoflight.com

08 FRACTALS NOOK An extension of the Fractals seating line, these pieces add privacy in spaces not usually intended for focused work. In addition to the high-back desk and seat configurations, work surfaces come with bag hooks and openings for power cords.

STUDIO TK studiotk.com

09 1801 KIDS GRABEN TABLE AND 2801 PIPER BENCH For remote learners, Model No. offers tables finished with a non-VOC, water-based varnish and simple bench-style seats made of 3D-printed plant-based resin.

MODEL NO. model-no.com

10 KAM COFFEE TABLE This slatted table measures 41 by 33 inches and sits 13 inches high. Designed by Chris Liljenberg Halstrøm for the Sunday-S Gallery in Copenhagen, the pared-down profile adds a generous yet simple surface to any setting.

Available in oak or walnut.

DESIGN WITHIN REACH dwr.com

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SUSTAINABLE Order in the Court In a Massachusetts gateway city, a courthouse pursues the lofty goals of community sensitivity and energy efficiency.

By Ken Shulman

COURTESY © ANTON GRASSL

SOLAR SYSTEM Located at the northern edge of the Hamilton Canal Innovation District in Lowell, Massachusetts, the city’s new Justice Center courthouse is oriented to reduce solar heat gain and uses ample glazing to maximize daylighting.

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SUSTAINABLE Order in the Court

BUILDING MASSING Building positioned to optimize solar orientation. Compact massing has highest impact on energy savings.

HEAT ISLAND EFFECT Reduced by reflective roofing and PV arrays shading roof and over parking.

PHOTOVOLTAIC ARRAYS Offset 20–25% of annual electrical usage.

ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION Bike racks, public transportation, and EV charging stations provide alternative options.

RAIN GARDEN Mitigates and filters rainwater runoff. No potable water is used for on-site irrigation.

REDEVELOPED BROWNFIELD SITE Over 40% open space with native species incorporated in landscaping.

Several years ago, Maurice “Mo” Finegold stepped into the waiting room of a courthouse in Fall River, Massachusetts. He had designed that building in the late 1990s by adapting an abandoned school. “It was a nice space and we’d preserved the original materials,” says Finegold, senior principal at Finegold Alexander Architects, a Bostonbased architecture firm specializing in courthouses and other public buildings. “But there was little natural light. I saw a family waiting there, clutching each other and looking terrified. I remember thinking we need spaces that give people a sense of hope.”

Finegold Alexander’s latest courthouse, the Lowell Justice Center in Lowell, Massachusetts, emits both light and hope— for the community and the environment surrounding it. Completed in February 2020, the 265,000-square-foot, seven-story structure is the first state courthouse in the United States to be certified LEED Platinum.

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including an HVAC system with energy recovery wheels, energy-efficient chilledbeam air-distribution devices, and photovoltaic panels on the roof and above the judges’ parking lots. Nearby, a new pollutantfiltering rain garden is built on a redeveloped brownfield site.

Located on a steep hill blocks from a commuter rail link and a bus depot, Lowell Justice Center is also equipped with bike racks and ample ramps that make the 25-foot change in grade more universally accessible. A sloping external walkway absorbs the incline without steps. “It was a difficult site,” admits Finegold. “It’s tight and there’s an extraordinary drop-off on one side. But it’s also a splendid site with lines of sight in all four directions.”

Staff and visitors access the building’s 17 courtrooms through a sun-filled, two-story lobby decorated with a glassed-in mural that evokes Lowell’s history as a textile manufacturing center. Walls feature quotations about justice written in four languages—English,

CLOSE QUARTERS Owing to security considerations, windows are mostly inoperable in the structure, a factor that made for a tight building envelope, which helps regulate interior temperatures.

TOP TO BOTTOM: COURTESY FINEGOLD ALEXANDER ARCHITECTS; COURTESY © ANTON GRASSL

SITE PLAN

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Expormim —— (212) 204-8572 usa@expormim.com www.expormim.com

Lapala. Hand-woven dining chair. Lievore Altherr Molina —— Photographer: Meritxell Arjalaguer ©

SUSTAINABLE Order in the Court

Khmer, Spanish, and Portuguese—reflecting the city’s diverse communities.

“We deliberately wanted to address issues of race and implicit bias in this project,” says Jeffrey Garriga, principal, treasurer, and director of IT/BIM at Finegold Alexander. “For many people, coming to a courthouse is very stressful. We focused on creating a well-lit, multilingual, inviting space that everyone could navigate with ease.”

The project began in 2001, when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance commissioned Finegold Alexander to perform a certifiable building study to determine whether to consolidate Lowell’s three separate courthouses into a single existing building or build a new structure to house them. When the study was completed in 2017, the architects recommended a new, purpose-built facility in the city’s Hamilton Canal Innovation District. “We originally wanted to create a net-zero building,” says Tony Hsiao, principal 56

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COURTESY © ANTON GRASSL

GRAND ENTRANCE The chief design elements in the two-story lobby are generous glazing for maximum natural light and a mural by British architectural glass artist Martin Donlin, which evokes Lowell’s history as a textile manufacturing hub as well as themes of justice.

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SUSTAINABLE Order in the Court

and director of design at the firm. “We looked at every option—we even thought of using the canal waters to drive electricity.

When that proved unviable, we decided to aim for LEED Platinum.”

The long interval between the study and the groundbreaking, while frustrating, also had its benefits. “Courts are generally very conservative as clients,” observes Garriga. “They know they will need to fund maintenance for many years and will only use technologies that are tried and tested.

Elements like chilled beams and displacement air systems were mostly new when we started the study. By the time we started building, they were part of our everyday vocabulary.”

In early 2020, a few weeks before construction was complete, Finegold returned to Lowell to tour the Justice Center. Unlike the waiting room he’d visited in Fall River years before, Lowell’s lobbies and courtrooms were airy and aglow with natural light. “When I stepped into the jury deliberation room I almost started to laugh,” Finegold recalls. “I was thinking we’d made such a nice space there that no jury will ever vote to convict.” M

WAIT AND SEE Public areas line the perimeter of the “modified cube” structure, while courtrooms are roughly concentrated at its core.

A system relying on chilled beams and displacement ventilation reduces energy use by heating and cooling only the usable parts of the volumes.

COURTESY © ANTON GRASSL

SMART LIGHT LED fixtures, occupancy sensors, and dimming systems further reduce energy consumption.

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HOSPITALITY Women Welcome The renovation of a historic building acknowledges the past while signaling a more inclusive future.

By Sara Fernández Cendón

COURTESY RW2 PRODUCTIONS / MICHAEL ROBINSON

Hyatt enlisted Simeone Deary Design Group to renovate the Kansas City Club Building, originally designed in 1922 (below). The update of the 144-room Hotel Kansas City allows the building’s historic architecture to shine alongside new details such as a 43-by-8-foot lighting-fixture-meets-artinstallation in the lobby (opposite).

It’s probably a sign of the times that, in 2020, the task of renovating a former men’s social club would fall to a women-owned firm. That’s what happened when Hyatt commissioned Chicago-based Simeone Deary Design Group to update the Kansas City Club Building, originally built in 1922, into the 144-room Hotel Kansas City.

The Kansas City Club was established by 42 founding members to connect the leading men of the city. Digging into the property’s history, the design team led by Gina Deary learned that the club found the dilemma of its first female applicant so baffling that the aspiring member, Bertha Goodwin, was left in limbo until “some later date when the plans for lady members are perfected.” Not one to miss significant details, Deary was taken with the story and immediately understood this project as an opportunity to explore the evolution of attitudes toward inclusion.

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While the hotel’s history as a prominent club informs its social spaces with sitting rooms, restaurants, and bars that retain charming, cozy details (left), striking modern design elements root guests in the present (below).

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The renovation concept formed around the idea of a strong, confident woman sweeping through the space in a beautiful dress, playfully thumbing her nose at norms that a century ago would’ve kept her out of this building. That scheme softens the rigidity of the existing architecture, a pristine Gothic Revival structure with so many well-crafted details that Deary describes the design process as “an act of restraint.”

“When you repurpose a building, you have to look at what you want to highlight,” says Deary. In the lobby area, for example, the walls were painted in a gradation—from deep gray at the bottom to silky cream toward the coffered plaster ceilings—directing the eye toward the delicate. And once rediscovered, some of the ceiling details provided the language for new design elements, such as a 43-by-8-foot lighting fixture in the lobby.

Featuring a design based on patterns found within the friezes surrounding it, the piece wraps around existing chandeliers, doubling as a massive art installation.

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Flindt Garden Design by Christian Flindt

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The hotel rooms and suites harken back to the 1920s era, juxtaposing vintageinspired custom furnishings with contemporary amenities and views of the modern cityscape.

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Because the original building was already a “social incubator,” as Deary puts it, the renovated hotel maintains a lot of the gathering spaces and their charming features. There’s the President Room with its marble fireplace, or the imposing two-story Tudor room, with its stained-glass windows depicting scenes from Kansas City’s mercantile history.

Yet in other spaces, serious attention to vintage details is balanced with playful reinvention. An original key check-in wall now sits behind the reception area, but inside the cubbyholes once meant for keys sit tiny replicas of the city’s many fountains.

In every room a print by local artist Amy

Abshier welcomes guests with the image of a bold, slightly mischievous-looking young woman. Following the overall concept, the print was inspired by Bertha Goodwin, whose name is also the 43rd signature in another art piece on display in the lobby—a ceramic installation by Stephanie Lanter showing the signatures of all Kansas City Club founding members.

“So she’s a member in the end,” says Deary about Goodwin’s inclusion. The statement rings true for a space that welcomes guests thoughtfully and beautifully, but it also sums up a renovation that recognizes the past while also reflecting a more inclusive future. M

COURTESY RW2 PRODUCTIONS / MICHAEL ROBINSON

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ARCHITECTURE Modern Integration BCJ’s ANSYS Hall weaves advanced technology into a historic campus.

By Deane Madsen

COURTESY NIC LEHOUX

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed ANSYS Hall, a 36,000-square-foot hive for teaching, prototyping, and implementation for Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering (this page and opposite).

Along the western edge of Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Pittsburgh, a parking lot and loading dock were converted into a new innovation hub: ANSYS Hall, designed

by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (BCJ). Named for software company Ansys, which specializes in engineering simulation and flow visualization tools, the hall needed to join adjacent engineering school buildings within the university’s maker ecosystem. While CMU already had nanotech and microscale facilities, ANSYS now offers a high-bay workshop capable of accommodating the next scale up for fabrication, a final stage for macroscale prototype development along a connected pathway.

Yet while the 36,000-square-foot building was meant to be a connector, it was also at a point of conflict: A major east-west pedestrian thoroughfare—part of a campus walkway—began at the site; however, future users of the new space insisted on being able to transport models from adjacent Hamerschlag Hall, which would create an unwieldy cross-flow of people and objects. BCJ’s solution was to elevate the walkway, bridging over the engineering path and beneath a Henry Hornbostel–designed archway—which

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principal Kent Suhrbier likened to threading a needle: “The solution teased out was what if we put them at different levels, and tuck one underneath? If we have nowhere to go laterally, we have to go vertically,” he explains. “We measured, remeasured, checked it four times, and we had a couple inches to spare.”

That level of precision is one that BCJ has honed over decades of practice—both on campus for CMU and for exacting tech clients such as Apple—and is evident in the glazed cut-through bridge, suspended above the high-bay space, allowing passersby to pause and observe activity below.

Within the building, an accompanying simulation lab, which naturally runs the full Ansys suite (Ansys funded the project and has a corporate suite within the building), also overlooks the fabrication bay. This direct visual link between the production space and the simulation lab allows iterative prototyping augmented by what’s shown in the software visualizations, so that students can simply head downstairs to begin tweaking built prototypes according to digital feedback, while visitors get a peek at the engineering on display.

Suhrbier likens the fabrication facility to an armature that the engineering school can continue to grow into: It’s more of a framework than a set space, with mounting points and powered connections everywhere, which should allow adaptability as technology—and along with it, the school’s focus—advances. One commitment from the university that helped reduce some of the complexities of a prototyping space was for the curriculum to focus on electric projects. Without a reliance upon combustion, BCJ could then eliminate specific automotive exhaust systems—or, put more 68

COURTESY CHUCK CHO

ARCHITECTURE Modern Integration

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© CREDITS GO HERE

The adaptive design includes a modern makerspace with an open high-bay space for full-scale prototype assembly. The workshop features mounting points and powered connections everywhere, allowing for flexibility as technology advances.

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The building completes the College of Engineering’s “maker ecosystem” that includes nano-, micro-, and macro-fabrication, bringing together undergraduate and graduate students from multiple disciplines in a collaborative environment.

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simply, people and electric vehicles could safely occupy the same space.

Despite the advanced technology within the building, its architecture also exhibits a deferential relationship to the Hornbostel building beside it. “Our approach for how to touch his work was first, only to touch it where we had to,” Suhrbier says. “The best way to respect it was not to mimic it or copy it but to understand his initial intent. We tried not to ignore the clues. We used them as part of the piece but looked more toward what he was intending to do, and strove to do even pieces of that in what we were doing.”

In Hornbostel’s brickwork, for example, he would begin to pull pieces outward from the wall, creating texture. So BCJ’s response was to inspect the detailing and evolve it, thinking of patterns of void and solid, of MARCH/APRIL 2021

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ARCHITECTURE Modern Integration

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson elevated an existing pedestrian walkway, bridging it over a groundlevel path for engineering students to transport models from an adjacent hall (right). The glazed cut-through bridge allows passersby to observe activity in the workshops and collaboration areas below (below, right).

Patterns of void and solid generate an interplay of surfaces on the building’s facade (below).

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relief and niche, that would begin to generate an interplay of surfaces not only within the ANSYS facade but also in dialogue with its neighbors. For the hall’s upper-level lounges, BCJ opted for a straightforward glass facade, which borrows the historic copper-clad window walls of the building next door to form the fourth walls of the lounges.

Hornbostel’s fascination with terra-cotta finds new interpretation on a west-facing glass prow at ANSYS Hall, which is faced in terra-cotta baguettes to provide sun shading.

By studying some of Hornbostel’s own research into materiality, BCJ was able to understand his intent and iterate on it.

“Our goal as a practice is to place ourselves within an ever-evolving continuum of work,” Suhrbier says. “So you’re looking forward, but also looking to understand where you’ve come from.” M MARCH/APRIL 2021

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LIVING Live/Work/Play Space A glassy mixed-use tower in Brooklyn takes inspiration from its classical neighbors but caters to a distinctly future-oriented lifestyle.

At the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, local firm Fogarty Finger has led the design of a new tower that stacks commercial and residential zones. Black tiles line the retail- and commercialfocused base, while white terra-cotta predominates in the residential tower above (opposite).

The Dime is a new visual landmark for the endlessly dynamic Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. Sitting at the base of the Williamsburg Bridge, the glass-and-terracotta tower stretches 23 stories above its surroundings of mostly low-rise buildings.

When New York City architecture firm Fogarty Finger began working on the mixed-use project in 2016, it viewed the building as a bridge between old and new. “We started with a big-picture question,” says cofounder Chris Fogarty. “What is Williamsburg today and what is it going to be in the future?”

Today, the neighborhood is a maturing hub of creativity—a place where people are as likely to work during the week as they are to play on the weekends. The Dime straddles those worlds with a tiered layout designed so residents can spend their entire day in the 74

building if they so choose. Fifty thousand square feet of retail space fill the ground level, while 105,000 square feet of office space sit above it. The building is topped by a 17-story tower of luxury rental units that capture views of the bridge and Manhattan.

The Dime occupies most of a block, but zoning regulations required that it offset its large footprint with nearly half an acre of terraces and green space, which is divided throughout to give residents and office tenants access to the outdoors. “We’re using this old-fashioned zoning to create this modern-looking building,” Fogarty explains.

Black scalloped terra-cotta tiles line the base of the building, while white terra-cotta clads the residential tower. The material is a subtle nod to the Dime’s neighbor and namesake the Williamsburg Dime Savings

Bank, a classical building constructed in 1908. “We wanted to respect the bank, not mimic it,” Fogarty says. Despite that affiliation, the Dime is thoroughly contemporary, with rounded edges and large spans of glass windows and black mullions that reference the area’s industrial legacy.

Every commercial level has its own outdoor terrace, but the building’s primary amenity space is on the fifth floor, where residents can use a fitness center with a half basketball court. Two bright lounges bookend the floor and feature kitchenettes, minimalist furnishings, and plenty of electrical outlets for coworking. The south lounge leads to a terrace with an outdoor yoga studio, while its northern counterpart is extensively landscaped and outfitted with grills, lawn furniture, and an herb garden.

COURTESY © ALEXANDER SEVERIN

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A full floor is given over to amenities, including lounges for coworking that suit the rise of remote work (top left).

A residents-only bar with walnut details offers panoramic views from the 22nd floor (top right). The curved white terra-cotta from the exterior also shows up in the art-filled residential lobby (above).

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“You walk past [other buildings’] amenity spaces at night and you never see these glossy gyms or cold lobbies being used,” says Candace Rimes, an associate director at Fogarty Finger in charge of interiors.

“We really wanted to avoid that as much as possible and create a warm environment.”

Fogarty Finger designed the lounges before the pandemic, but the spaces presciently cater to people whose commute requires

only riding an elevator down a few floors.

“We wanted to give people time back through these amenity spaces,” Rimes adds.

In the structure’s residential volume, the 177 rental units—including studios, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, and two penthouses—feature washed oak flooring and cabinetry, and clean-lined bathrooms with glassy walk-in showers. Eight-foot-tall windows bring natural light into each apartment’s living room and kitchen, and 97 corner units benefit further from the building’s rounded edges, making their views semi-panoramic. “The main feature in these residences are the views and the windows,” Rimes says. “The lighting is just exquisite, and all the finishes really support that.”

While there’s no bad view at the Dime, the best is by far on the 22nd floor, where a residents-only speakeasy and terrace looks out toward the East River and Manhattan.

Painted in high-gloss green and featuring walnut furniture, warm library lighting, and custom millwork, the vintage-inspired bar is a nighttime respite where people will be able to relax with a glass of wine.

The bar is the last stop of the day in an all-encompassing building for people who are looking for an integrated lifestyle as much as an apartment. M

COURTESY © ALEXANDER SEVERIN

LIVING Live/Work/Play Space

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Rounding out the fitness center are a yoga studio and half basketball court decorated with a guilloche pattern borrowed from currency—a nod to the nearby savings bank for which the Dime is named.

Selected Sources PROJECT CREDITS • Design architect and interiors: Fogarty Finger • Landscaping: Grain Collective • Developers: Charney Companies, Tavros Holdings INTERIORS • Kitchen surfaces: Corian, Wilsonart Laminate • Kitchen products: Blomberg Appliances • Bath surfaces: Nemo Tile, Artistic Tile, Wilsonart Laminate • Bath fittings: American Standard, Gatco • Wall finishes: BM Paint • Flooring: Interface Carpet, AquaSense Luxury Vinyl, Ferno Hardwood, Sport Floor Rubber • Accessories: MENU • Furniture: TRNK, Article, Restoration Hardware, West Elm, Crate and Barrel, Room and Board, Industry West, Custom Furniture

by Fogarty Finger (Fabricated by Matt Eastvold) • Lighting: FLOS Lighting • Textiles and upholsteries: Maharam EXTERIOR • Cladding: Boston Valley Terra Cotta, Parex EIFS, Sobotec ACM • Windows and doors: Pioneer

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NEW TALENT Material Minded Elise McMahon of Hudson, New York–based studio LikeMindedObjects uses recycled waste to create sustainable products with personality.

After graduating with degrees in furniture and industrial design from Rhode Island School of Design and Parsons School of Design, Elise McMahon roots her practice in research into waste streams and recycled materials.

In addition to running the creative studio and storefront LikeMindedObjects, she serves as a resourceful home goods design director and storytelling partner of the Kokrobitey Institute in Ghana.

By Leilah Stone

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Elise McMahon’s Hudson, New York–based studio and storefront LikeMindedObjects (left and opposite) is characterized by the use of bold colors, face motifs, and recycled materials. In a commission for ecofriendly cleaning products company Blueland, McMahon designed a collection of blue tables (below) in addition to a recycled denim accent wall for their office space. When prototyping how to achieve wide tube legs, she opted for recycled compressed paper to avoid using PVC.

COURTESY HANNA GRANKVIST

We often think about the objects we surround ourselves with as possessions rather than companions. But objects also reflect ideas about ourselves, our values, and our intentions. These qualities echo below the ethos of LikeMindedObjects, a Hudson, New York–based studio and storefront founded by artist and designer Elise McMahon. “To me, everything we purchase we’re relating to the worlds that we’re making in our home space but also our mental space,” McMahon says.

Her playful lighting, furniture, and interiors certainly have bold personalities, but they also have a strong underlying mission: to divert waste while creating new standards for sustainable design.

A few years after graduating with a BFA in furniture design from Rhode Island School of Design, McMahon launched LikeMindedObjects in 2014 as an extension of the performative installations she was focused on at the time. She says: “People started [commissioning] me to create things based on what I was doing in galleries, but for everyday life. I was like, ‘Oh, people are actually accepting these wild things.’ ” In 2018, she opened a brick-and-mortar shop in Hudson with her friend, clothing designer Enky Bayarsaikhan. Entering the checkerboard-painted storefront, visitors find themselves immersed in McMahon’s funky world of squiggly floor lamps made using car brake rotors, seating upholstered in blue jeans or dyed with turmeric, and face-shaped METROPOLIS

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McMahon has worked with Artsy, an online marketplace for buying and selling fine art, for over four years, designing custom seating and lighting for various nooks throughout its New York City headquarters.

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NEW TALENT Material Minded

McMahon credits her initial interest in recycled materials and sustainable design practices to her long-term partnership with the Kokrobitey Institute in Accra, Ghana, founded by Renee C Neblett. In addition to aiding in the development of education programs and product collections, McMahon helped design the institute’s Design Center, which features an artist residency, coworking, and manufacturing space.

mirrors and tables that return a gaze. But underneath the studio’s Pop art-style colors and DIY aesthetic lies rigorous research into recycled content and material health.

McMahon’s interest in waste diversion was fostered in part by her long-standing role as a resourceful home goods design director and storytelling partner for the Kokrobitey Institute in Ghana, an educational organization that promotes health and literacy through sustainable development, art, and design. “There is this global waste stream that really floods [Ghana’s] market. It’s basically fast-fashion waste from the U.S. and U.K.—things we don’t

want because our consumer culture is overproducing and over-disposing,” she explains. “Being there really opened my eyes to this intensely overflowing river of materials that is ending up in other people’s landfills, beaches, and incinerators.” At the institute, she helped design and develop a center for education, coworking, and manufacturing as well as a furniture collection. Once the pandemic subsides, she plans to go back and launch an annual program for design students to learn more about waste streams with an aim of “designing to keep materials in your home country.”

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McMahon’s plush seating is a product of recycled textiles and natural dyes.

The Turmeric Softy Staple chair is stuffed with shredded fast-fashion waste and dyed bright yellow with turmeric (opposite).

One of her first designs for LikeMindedObjects that recall the studio’s name are her Profile Pleat Table Lamps and Profile tables, both available to purchase in her online or brickand-mortar store (above).

Her latest endeavor, CRCL EARTH, is a line of pillow inserts and covers made using similar methods (right).

As if operating a small business during a global pandemic weren’t taxing enough, McMahon last year also completed an MFA in industrial design from Parsons School of Design—a program she enrolled in with a commitment to learning more about life cycle analysis as she grows her business. Her most recent endeavor, CRCL EARTH, is a line of pillow inserts made from recycled fast-fashion textiles and cotton denim covers. The brand launched last fall and McMahon plans on scaling up production in order to supply interior and textile designers with healthier alternatives to industrystandard, petroleum-based foam. Like her products designed for LikeMindedObjects, all CRCL EARTH collections are manufactured in collaboration with producers and suppliers local to the Hudson Valley.

In May, LikeMindedObjects will be moving to a larger storefront in Hudson, and McMahon has a few other projects in the works, including an exhibition of material experiments at Manhattan’s Entrance Gallery and a collaboration with a local farm, Tivoli Mushrooms, on growing mushrooms in textile and electronic waste.

Believing we shouldn’t just accept our objects as backdrop but rather see them as “personalities,” McMahon pursues work that considers the “conversations” products have with both our domestic and global environments. M MARCH/APRIL 2021

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INSIGHT Virtual Shift How will continuing education units evolve in 2021 and beyond?

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout is under way, and with it come murmurs of plans to return to physical offices. Most experts agree that we won’t see widespread return-to-work policies in place until late spring or this summer at the earliest. But there is hope of returning to some sense of normalcy. And that hope is prompting questions within the interiors industry.

Throughout the pandemic, ThinkLab has been studying the intricacies of remote work to understand its evolution and, perhaps more importantly, to digest how it might affect the ways work will be done in the future. Just as critical, ThinkLab’s research explores the industry’s interest in and ability to connect digitally.

While designers are eager for many things to return to normal, we’ve identified one outlier in our research: Architects and designers increasingly rate continuing education units (CEUs) as “better virtually.”

As of December 2020, 45 percent of designers surveyed said they’re still increasing their consumption of CEUs. ThinkLab research also suggests that 47 percent of participants want CEUs to remain virtual moving forward, while only 24 percent want them to return to an in-person platform. (The remaining percentage either didn’t attend CEUs or were unsure of their preference.)

So as we prepare to return to the office, what does that mean for CEU participants, and the manufacturers and dealers who present to them? We sat down with ThinkLab’s resident CEU expert Giselle Walsh to discuss the advantages and expectations of digital CEUs, and to develop a list of tips for presenters.

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CONTENT DEMANDS IN A VIRTUAL ERA In today’s digital world, information can be easily sourced and compared, elevating the expectations of CEUs from a content and delivery perspective. With so many online courses today, architects and designers have more options than ever, which puts a greater weight on topic selection. “We all know today’s hottest issue, but increased consumption means increased pressure to avoid what can become an echo chamber of repeat information to a designer sitting in on multiple virtual CEUs,” says Walsh.

“What’s more, in a digital CEU, it’s easier for participants to multitask, meaning participants are seeking next-level content to keep them engaged.”

DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT IS KEY Even more than in-person events, digital CEUs necessitate a knowledgeable, compelling presenter and new types of engagement. Remember, just as content is compared, the quality of delivery will be too, and may have an even bigger effect on the “staying power” of a CEU. “Technology has to be a flawless experience, and presenters must be confident, knowledgeable, and engaging through a screen, which we all know is more difficult to many presenters accustomed to engaging and reading social cues in person,” Walsh notes. It is easy for a digital presentation to feel like one-way communication, with little reaction from the audience.

COURTESY FREDDIE MARRIAGE ON UNSPLASH

By Amanda Schneider

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Virtual continuing education units (CEUs) have become increasingly popular throughout the pandemic, with many architects and designers indicating they prefer them over in-person events—a sign that this digital shift is here to stay.

WHAT MAKES DIGITAL SEMINARS GREAT? If the future of CEUs is digital, what allows these events, originally created as a connection point between manufacturers and A&D, to remain a solid opportunity for engagement and interaction? Here are some tips for manufacturers:

the presentation chat. This not only provides feedback to the presenter but also creates a new digital community experience that helps participants interact with peers in a way that isn’t possible in person. (It’s generally considered impolite to talk to your neighbor during an in-person presentation.)

• Keep content to 45 minutes. (This is the International Continuing Education Design Council’s minimum requirement for one credit.) Everyone is feeling Zoom fatigued, so it’s more important now than ever to end on time.

• Elevate your follow-up. With digital CEUs, you have more reach per presentation but make fewer personal connections. Make sure your follow-up involves a familiar face and finds a shared reason to engage. (If you use the chat interaction above, it will give you clues as to mutual interests.)

While in-person CEUs will most likely never go away completely, ThinkLab

• Leverage the “limits” of technology.

Have a team member engage CEU takers in

anticipates that the future of CEUs will remain digital in 2021 and beyond. “We’re taking these insights to heart and researching new delivery methodology—think podcast CEUs, perhaps—to see what resonates most with both presenters and participants,” says Walsh. “It’s an exciting time for CEUs, and we’re proud to be at the forefront of understanding the changes.”

Amanda Schneider is founder and president of ThinkLab, the research division of SANDOW. Join in to explore what’s next at thinklab.design/join-in.

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REPORT

COURTESY SCAD

Students in the Future100 represent 49 of the best architecture and interior design schools across North America, including The Savannah College of Art and Design.

This year, Metropolis set out to designate the top 100 graduating architecture and interior design students in the United States and Canada. The program, sponsored by Nelson, CannonDesign, and Interface, invited the most talented students from the class of 2021 to apply. Those selected—our inaugural Future100— are featured in this issue.

Nominated by their instructors and mentors, these 50 interior design and 50 architecture students were chosen by Metropolis editor in chief Avinash Rajagopal and SANDOW Design Group EVP and design futurist AJ Paron. They hail from some of the best architecture and interior design schools in North America, from Harvard University to California College of the Arts, and call everywhere from Atlanta to Toronto home.

They are a diverse group—with many identifying as BIPOC or LGBTQIA+—who advocate for openness, equity, and inclusion through their work and extracurriculars. They are leaders on their campuses and are sure to be forces in the industry.

On the following pages, we give you a broad look at this group of promising young designers: where they come from, what and where they study, and who mentors them. Then you can dive into their portfolios (p. 97) to see what the future of the A&D industry looks like.

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EXPLORE THE WORLD OF SUSTAINABILITY IN DESIGN AND SPECIFICATION Sustainability Next is a platform to stay up-todate on what's next in sustainable architecture, design, and products.

SUSTAINABILIT Y NEXT PARTNERS

Architects and Designers have the power to do good in the fight against climate change, but it can be challenging to know how to make a difference.

Metropolis and its partners want to help, making it easier for you to make informed decisions in design and specification.

As a community, we can further our commitment to the future of humanity and make a huge impact now. metropolismag.com/sustainability

SCHOOLS Where Do They Study?

METROPOLIS FUTURE100 REPORT

In 2020, Metropolis set out to help soon-to-graduate students who were about to set foot in the industry amid a pandemic and a challenging economic landscape.

Launching a search across the United States and Canada, we reached out to deans, professors, and advisers at architecture and interior design programs, looking to find the top students from the class of 2021. Enthusiastic responses and standout nominations came flooding in from leading schools throughout North America.

1 STUDENT

ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS

2 STUDENTS

3 STUDENTS

4 STUDENTS

5 STUDENTS

6 STUDENTS

INTERIOR DESIGN STUDENTS Algonquin College Auburn University Boston Architectural College Cal Poly Pomona California College of the Arts Columbia University Cornell University Drexel University Drury University Fashion Institute of Technology Ferris State University Florida International University Florida State University Harvard University Iowa State University Kansas State University Kent State University Kwantlen Polytechnic University Marymount University Mount Royal University New York Institute of Technology New York School of Interior Design NewSchool of Architecture and Design Northeastern University Pratt Institute Radford University Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rice University Rochester Institute of Technology Ryerson University Sheridan College Syracuse University Texas Tech University The City College of New York The George Washington University The New School The Savannah College of Art and Design The University of Oklahoma The University of Tennessee The University of Texas University at Buffalo University of Idaho University of Massachusetts Dartmouth University of Minnesota University of Pennsylvania University of Southern California University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee University of Wisconsin–Stout Virginia Tech

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SPONSORED CONTENT

Living-Centered Design for All CannonDesign rethinks the practice of design to meet contemporary challenges.

In order to have wide ranging positive outcomes on individuals, communities, society, and the environment, architecture requires a more diverse set of inputs, from community consultation to experts outside of the design field.

Living-Centered Design is helping CannonDesign codify and work towards these ideals.

It’s time we see the big challenges of our present moment: Public health, climate change, education, and even racial justice as design challenges.

That is the driving idea behind Living-Centered Design, CannonDesign’s framework for thinking holistically about their work and impact.

Developed from the conviction that architects and designers working today need to think at the intersection of multiple disciplines and realworld concerns to truly address our modern complex challenges, LivingCentered Design asks architects to consider not only how their projects will perform for clients, but how their impacts will ripple outwards.

“In the past, design has almost always been about a specific spatial need. We’re saying it’s necessary to essentially look at the impact we’re making at every scale, from the intimate human scale of experience all the way to: How is it affecting the community? How is it making societal change? How is it actually impacting the planet?” explains David Polzin, the firm’s executive director of design.

It is a way to codify or give name to the 104-year-old firm’s rapidly evolving approach to design. As the challenges we face grow in complexity, traditional architectural design, operating as a single channel

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of solution-making, is no longer enough. Designers need to ask themselves what else they can bring to the table. Living-Centered Design and similar initiatives springing up across the design field show the world of design is expanding in terms of project scope as well as the people involved.

For projects to have wide ranging and positive impacts, design teams need a diversity of perspectives and expertise. Often, inclusion means reaching outside of the architect–client relationship and getting input from end users and people with an on-the-ground view.

“For me it’s really about bringing as many voices to the table as you can, as early on as you can,” says Monica Pascatore, associate vice president at CannonDesign. “Anyone can solve a problem, she continues. “But if you dig deeper and ask more, ask the why and the why nots, you’ll get to another level, discovering the root of things and how to really make an impact at a much broader and sustainable scale.”

“We believe this is the direction the design world must go,” reflects Polzin, adding that Living-Centered Design is an open-source concept, one he hopes the next generation of architects and designers across the industry at large will continue to build on.

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METROPOLIS FUTURE100 REPORT

ACADEMICS What Do They Study?

DIVERSITY What Do They Say About the Future?

Pursuing undergrad or graduate degrees in architecture and interior design, some of the Future100 students will also graduate with specializations in lighting, interior architecture, or urban design.

These top students advocate equity and inclusion through their work and extracurriculars, and many identify with groups that are underrepresented in the A&D professions.

BIPOC 19

ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS

11

INTERIOR DESIGN STUDENTS

FEMALE 20% Undergraduate

30% Graduate

20% Graduate

9%

Nine out of 100 students were president of an AIAS, ASID, IIDA, or NOMAS campus chapter, or another architecture or interior design organization.

Judging Criteria The most talented students from the class of 2021 were invited to apply to be a part of the Future100 by submitting their academic accomplishments, a portfolio, and testimonials from an instructor or a professional mentor.

Applicants were required to be enrolled in an accredited architecture and interior design program at a public or private college in the United States or Canada, be working on studio-based or research-based projects, and be in good academic standing. Student submissions were reviewed by Metropolis editor in chief Avinash Rajagopal and SANDOW Design Group EVP AJ Paron, and were judged on their creativity, rigor, and professionalism.

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29

30% Undergraduate

46

LGBTQIA+ 11 7

ARCHITECTURE STUDENT INTERIOR DESIGN STUDENT

“Alek Tomich’s ambitions are not only architectural, but they are socially, politically, economically, and environmentally advanced, and provide hope that our profession can help individuals most marginalized by our country’s housing system.”

—Daisy Ames, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia University

“Xie Maggie Hill is an advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community, and through her human-centered design philosophy, she helps others combat their implicit biases to create more inclusive environments.”

—Tamie Glass, Associate Professor, Faculty Director of Design in Health, The University of Texas at Austin

“I value Conor Daly’s perspective, his commitment to diversity and identity, his wonderful comments and contributions to his peers and the evolving field of interior design. Conor represents the future, in that he embraces openness, equity, and inclusion.”

—Katherine Lambert, Professor of Architecture and Interior Design, California College of the Arts MARCH/APRIL 2021

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SPONSORED CONTENT

Preparing for the Hybrid Future Research shows young workers expect more. How can employers deliver?

There’s no doubt that when the COVID-19 pandemic eventually ends, the way we work will have been changed forever. Widespread remote work is here to stay, and the workplace of the future will need to be able to accommodate both physical and digital presences while supporting and engaging employees in new ways.

Research undertaken by Nelson Worldwide, an award-winning architecture and design firm with offices around the country, points to massive changes in what employees need and expect from their workplaces, showing only seven percent of survey participants wanted to return to the office five days a week. Young workers in particular want to maintain flexibility, but also want support from their employers and connection to their colleagues.

In a world that operates in both digital and physical realms, creating an equity of presence between employees who are in the room and those on the screen is paramount

to any employer seeking top talent. “We know from research that not only are more people going to be working from home but that those remote workers are looking for companywide support in that decision,” says Barb Riekse, workplace practice leader at Nelson.

She explains that in order to give workers the support they need, employers need to take action to break down barriers and provide a consistent work experience across platforms. That can mean an investment in new technology, like IWMS systems and smart cameras for teleconferencing, or changes to the physical environment like private, sound-proof Zoom suites with elevated lighting and curated backgrounds.

The firm’s studies have shown that younger employees expect more than a paycheck from their jobs: 82 percent of respondents to Nelson’s survey ages 21–34 years old said that “a company that fosters my growth and values my potential” was “very or extremely important” to them.

Accordingly, says Riekse, the tactics employers use to attract top talent are also going to have to change. “Prior to 2020 it was an amenities war, now we’re going to see the brand experience and workplace environment take center stage, and companies will need to differentiate their employee experience for the better. Things like wellness and career support will become the norm,” she predicts.

That will be especially important for young creatives entering the design industry. Nelson, for its part, has already begun offering professional development targeted at improving communication in a virtual workplace, providing teammates with technical and creative training in the digital world to increase team building and connect and communicate more effectively, no matter where they’re working.

Of course, in our hybrid future, workplace design will be more important than ever.

“Design is the facilitator,” opines Riekse. “If the design is not flexible to adjust and respond to a hybrid team, it won’t be utilized.”

A conceptual rendering of Nelson Worldwide’s workplace of the future shows that adaptability is key. In our hybrid future offices will be more than places to work, they will be places to connect digitally and in person.

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METROPOLIS FUTURE100 REPORT

TESTIMONIALS Who Mentors Them?

Students were nominated by distinguished professors and industry professionals from across North America— including a few familiar faces.

TOSHIKO MORI

Founder and Principal of Toshiko Mori Architects, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design

NOMINATED: Yaxuan Liu, Harvard University “I witnessed firsthand Yaxuan’s enormous leadership capacity and talent for entrepreneurship.

He prioritized helping others and promoting a greater cause over promoting himself. His ability to come up with a creative solution to a societal injustice and his selfless attitude and empathy impressed upon me that he is a true model of leadership for his generation.”

NOMINATED: Brayton Gregory, Harvard University “Brayton is a very thoughtful and careful designer who constantly challenges himself with new ideas to rethink his initial designs for complex, strong results. He epitomizes the rare combination of a talented designer, thoughtful researcher, and personable teacher who has the capacity to become a great educator and a leader for the international design community.”

LY N D O N N E R I

NOMINATED: Edward Han Myo Oo, Harvard University “Edward showed great sensitivity to his design approach and an aptitude for solving complex issues. More importantly, he was a great leader and a constant voice for the marginalized community. Ed’s work puts people and the human psyche front and center. As young designers become ever more removed from the physical into the digital, and as design focuses solely on form over content, Ed’s attitude provides a necessary counterpoint, reminding us why we do what we do, and why design matters.”

TROY SCHAUM

Partner at SCHAUM/SHIEH, Associate Professor at Rice Architecture

NOMINATED: Emma Scott, Rice University “Emma has the ability to synthesize research and aesthetics in ways that produce provocative results. During her time in graduate school over the last three years, I have been able to watch as she developed into a leader in her class. She has a knack for working with the tenacity and the meticulousness of a detective, uncovering the stories that make simple formal assertions untenable. She moves across fields of research in history, construction, labor relations and representation, and proposes new ways for architects to tell the stories that are embedded in the places we design and build.”

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TOPT TO BOTTOM: COURTESY RALPH GIBSON; COURTESY LYNDON NERI; COURTESY TROY SCHAUM

Partner at Neri&Hu, Fall 2019 John C. Portman Critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design

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From architecture to animation, furniture design to film and television, SCAD offers inspirational spaces that catapult your creative career.

* According to a recent study, 99% of Spring 2019 graduates were employed, pursuing further education, or both within 10 months of graduation.

Visit live or virtually scad.edu/visit

METROPOLIS FUTURE100 REPORT Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, British Columbia

Mount Royal University, Alberta, Canada

University of Wisconsin–Stout, Menomonie, Wisconsin

University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

California College of the Arts, Oakland, California

Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California

Drury University, Springfield, Missouri Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, California

The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma

NewSchool of Architecture & Design San Diego, California Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

The University of Texas, Austin, Texas NUMBER OF ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS

Rice University, Houston, Texas

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 NUMBER OF INTERIOR DESIGN STUDENTS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

GEOGRAPHY Where Are They From?

Boston Architectural College, Boston, Massachusetts Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

With wide-ranging geographic and cultural backgrounds, the Future100 study everywhere from Los Angeles to Toronto.

The City College of New York, New York, New York Columbia University, New York, New York

Algonquin College, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario

Ferris State University, Big Rapids, Michigan

Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York

New York Institute of Technology, New York, New York

Syracuse University, Rensselaer Syracuse, Polytechnic Institute, New York Troy, New York

Sheridan College, Oakville, Ontario

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, New York

New York School of Interior Design, New York, New York University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Dartmouth, Massachusetts

The New School, New York, New York Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York Radford University, Brooklyn, New York

Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Marymount University Arlington, Virginia

The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia

Where Do They Live?

The University of Tennessee, Konxville, Tennessee

Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama

The Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia

Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida

Florida International University, Miami, Florida

Alabama Alberta British Columbia California Connecticut D.C. Florida Georgia Hong Kong Idaho Iowa Kansas Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Missouri New Hampshire New Jersey New York North Carolina Ohio Oklahoma Ontario Pennsylvania Spain Texas Virginia Washington Wisconsin

ARCHITECTURE STUDENT INTERIOR DESIGN STUDENT

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I N PA RT N E R S H I P W I T H

Interface Congratulates the Inaugural Metropolis Future100 We’re proud to support the future of design—the architects and interior designers who will regenerate our spaces and our cities.

In 1994, inspired by our customers, Interface set out to eliminate our negative impact on the environment. Today, we’re proud to have delivered on our Mission Zero® commitment, in part by becoming the first global flooring manufacturer to sell all products as carbon neutral across their full life cycle. Up next: become a Carbon Negative enterprise by 2040.

Shoot for the Moon, Metropolis Future100!

We can’t wait to see where this journey takes you.

In Depth The 100 students listed below represent the cream of the crop graduating this year from North America’s architecture and design schools. Beyond familiarity with conventional typologies, they also probe vital areas of practice that aren’t always rewarded with commercial success, be it addressing the needs of neurodivergent people, designing spaces for contemplation, or protecting and revivifying the public sphere. With critical approaches, novel methodologies, and sensitivity to contexts and cultures, this cohort enters the design industry equipped to transform it.

Nora Alkeyat................................ pg. 140 Cale Ambuehl............................. pg. 128 Letícia Ávila................................ pg. 102 Monica Beckett.......................... pg. 109 Yasmin Ben Ltaifa....................... pg. 120 Kalie Brettmann......................... pg. 125 Megan Brown............................. pg. 135 Sarah Butt................................... pg. 135 Hadiya Bynoe-Seabron.............. pg. 115 Sophia Cabral............................. pg. 107 Fangming Cai.............................. pg. 136 Carolina Cardona....................... pg. 133 Belle Carroll................................ pg. 125 Kailey Carter............................... pg. 139 Wing Man Chan.......................... pg. 102 Yi-Chen Chang............................ pg. 109 Paul Charowsky.......................... pg. 125 Violette Chartock....................... pg. 139 Eric Kyle Cheung........................ pg. 143 Henry Chu................................... pg. 119 Michaela Cook............................ pg. 139 Chloe Cudney............................. pg. 119 Conor Daly.................................. pg. 133 Carla De Haro............................. pg. 113 Airene Dizon................................ pg. 147 Roe Draus.................................... pg. 127

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Ruina Du...................................... pg. 102 Tiffany England........................... pg. 135 Gabriella Feuillet........................ pg. 102 Adrianna Fransz.......................... pg. 109 Maria Jose Fuentes..................... pg. 130 Brayton Gregory......................... pg. 147 Caroline Gresh............................ pg. 135 Edward Han Myo Oo.................. pg. 119 Gwyneth Harris.......................... pg. 120 Guillermo Hevia.......................... pg. 104 Xie Maggie Hill............................ pg. 128 Nguyet Huynh............................. pg. 113 Ielyzaveta Ignatyeva................... pg. 139 Bethany Johnson........................ pg. 133 James Keunhyuk Jung................ pg. 113 Heather Kelly.............................. pg. 135 Hannah Koch.............................. pg. 140 Elizabeth Koenig......................... pg. 119 Guy Lafôret................................. pg. 102 Sophia Le.................................... pg. 103 Angélica Lebrón......................... pg. 125 Siyao Li........................................ pg. 135 Bifeng Lin.................................... pg. 133 Tian Liu........................................ pg. 147 Yaxuan Liu................................... pg. 147 Maria Alexandra Llerena............ pg. 103

Ariel Lorenzi................................ pg. 120 Shisira Nambiar Madathil Kuppadagathil............................ pg. 135 Paul McCoy................................. pg. 120 Kelli McGrath.............................. pg. 103 Vedyun Mishra............................ pg. 103 Adam Moqrane........................... pg. 103 Matthew Morgan........................ pg. 107 Yueer Niu..................................... pg. 103 Chinne Okoronkwo..................... pg. 119 Madelyn Orcutt.......................... pg. 133 Corrie Ostrander........................ pg. 135 Jacqueline Pileggi....................... pg. 103 Kathryn Platt............................... pg. 113 Maria Ramirez............................. pg. 109 Nicole Roberts............................ pg. 135 Dan Rothbart.............................. pg. 107 Julia Schettler............................. pg. 125 Ashley Schwartz......................... pg. 119 Emma Scott................................ pg. 103 Liudmila Sergeeva..................... pg. 113 Mira Shami.................................. pg. 120 Navya Sharad.............................. pg. 103 Sushmita Shekar........................ pg. 107 Christina Shin............................. pg. 120 Alessandra Shorten.................... pg. 103

Laura Shue.................................. pg. 128 Juyong Song................................ pg. 125 Julia Sorenson............................. pg. 135 Joana Sotomayor........................ pg. 119 Nicolas Swaner........................... pg. 133 Christopher Sweeney................ pg. 115 Kats Tamanaha........................... pg. 103 Alek Tomich................................. pg. 122 Caitlin Turner.............................. pg. 127 Victoria Vatne............................. pg. 139 Valeriya Velyka............................ pg. 103 Hoa Vo......................................... pg. 135 Alfred Wei................................... pg. 120 Nicole Wolert.............................. pg. 140 Karizma Woods........................... pg. 135 Amanda Wyman......................... pg. 109 Amy Yan....................................... pg. 140 Hanqing Yao................................ pg. 109 Megan York................................. pg. 120 Chenyang Yu............................... pg. 116 Aleksandra Zatorska.................. pg. 113 Tingxin Zheng............................. pg. 110 Jingyi Zhou.................................. pg. 120

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RETHINKING THE COMMONS In the wake of the pressures of the pandemic and a crisis of social cohesion, students draw up concepts for more permeable urban futures.

By Timothy A. Schuler

The past 12 months have, for many of us, been a time of confinement and profound social isolation. The world shrank, and our routines became even more circumscribed, with little time, if any, spent in public or communal spaces.

In a time of such forced retreat, what constitutes a commons? Where is it located? What is its shape? These are questions today’s design students are contemplating. Despite being developed, with some exceptions, before the pandemic, the work presented here interrogates and subverts the notion of the “threshold,” the permeable barrier that separates indoors from outside, public from private, and that has taken on new meanings in the context of an airborne plague and an epidemic of police violence.

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COURTESY GUY LAFÔRET

An underground pavilion and Metro station, The Looking Glass links the subterranean and street levels by way of light wells and fritted glass that enables people in either realm to witness the other.

Guy Lafôret also designed the station to reflect its site at the intersection of Little Tokyo and the Arts District in Los Angeles.

this is equally true from a social perspective. In this moment, architecture students have a special understanding and appreciation of the role of permeability. Some design public libraries with atrium-like reading rooms, where transparency becomes a metaphor for universal accessibility and democratic ideals. Others conceive high-rise housing whose architecture is perforated not only by breezeblocks but by spaces dedicated to social programs. Still others envision “amphibious” science centers where site, surface, and program are all porous. Rainwater seeps into the ground, and the public seeps into the building.

The nature of this porosity is determined by the threshold. In The Looking Glass, Guy Lafôret, an undergraduate at the University of Southern California School of Architecture, was inspired by Japanese torii and the idea of a threshold “as a tether that connects the real world to the world of the nonphysical.” The concept visually connects the subterranean concourse of a Metro station serving Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo neighborhood to the streetscape above through light wells fitted with fritted glass. In The Super Super Block, a scheme for Barcelona’s largely industrial Marina del Prat Vermell, Lafôret proposes building within, on top of, and through existing warehouses to preserve elements of the industrial fabric.

That project takes its cues in part from Catalan sculptor Eduardo Chillida, whose concept of space, as Lafôret puts it, “revolves around the forced introduction of voids in a solid.”

Another meditation on connectivity, Valeriya Velyka’s design for a communal housing project in San Francisco’s HaightAshbury neighborhood, challenges traditional ideas about thresholds by dissolving the backyard fences between neighboring buildings. Multistory towers are instead arranged on a grid but rotated so that units look out onto communal courtyards. “There is a dialogue between the units, which gives the residents peace of mind in terms of the visual access created by the geometry,” says the California College of the Arts undergraduate architecture student.

Velyka carries this idea further in Backyard Nooks, which explores ways to create a temporary writers’ retreat in West Los Angeles. Two private residential lots separated by an alley are connected MARCH/APRIL 2021

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by a series of private pods, sleeping lofts, and communal spaces that serve four to six people at a time. Elevated and mostly open-air, the structures make use of a simple assembly of cross-laminated timber, steel, and plywood. “I was already working on the design and concept when the pandemic hit,” she says. “After a month of quarantine, I realized how relevant this idea was.”

Reciprocal Walls, whose origins also predate the pandemic, treads similar ground. Created by University at Buffalo graduate student Letícia Ávila, it is ostensibly a design for three houses and

three detached studio spaces. But Ávila treats the wall as a typology in and of itself. While private living spaces are set back from the street, the studios are semiprivate, visible through openings in an outer wall that surrounds the complex and serves as a locus of activity, with a “bookshelf wall” that functions as a community lending library and a “garden wall” that creates a semipublic garden.

The whole thing feels prescient. “Although the walls create a certain barrier, the openings still allow for distant human interaction,” Ávila says. “I see restaurants moving indoor dining spaces outdoors to

Presciently predicting the rise of at-home entertainment due to the pandemic, Valeriya Velyka’s 2019 Volume VR music venue (right) is a virtual reality space that takes into account scales, decibels, and circulation schemes in different venues so “you never have to miss a performance and avoid all the real-world negatives.”

COURTESY VALERIYA VELYKA

Linking two sides of Westchester Creek in the Bronx, New York, Jacqueline Pileggi’s A Bridge Is Brewing proposal (opposite) contains space for leisure, exhibitions, urban agriculture, and a brewery.

Pileggi also designed for different modes and speeds of transportation.

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Prior to 2020, the notion of “the commons” might have conjured up images of a public plaza or town square. But in quarantine, it seems to find its most potent expression in the small, intimate spaces of daily life: the backyard, the garden, the local tool library.

Permeability makes us vulnerable.

It is this vulnerability that we attempt to counter with our Plexiglas barriers and cloth masks. But permeability also connects us to the wider world, as these projects innately recognize. They may not use the word, but the future they imagine is nothing less than revolutionary. M

COURTESY JACQUELINE PILEGGI

comply with health and safety requirements or stores with curbside pickup, and I can see how the ‘garden wall’ and ‘library wall’ could fulfill the socialdistancing necessity as the public could just grab and go.” Ávila’s vision recalls other informal architectures born of the pandemic that blur the line between public and private, interior and exterior. Not just the sidewalk cafés and outdoor classrooms but the fleets of “book bikes” created by public libraries or the homemade candy chutes that safely delivered sweets to trick-or-treaters in Brooklyn, New York.

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COMMUNAL SPACES LETÍCIA ÁVILA University at Buffalo Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Miquel Guitart, Assistant Professor Ávila’s public institutional work translates ideals and themes into buildings, as in Poetry Square and Chimneys, which thoroughly conceive accessible institutions by exploring the ground level.

Reciprocal Walls creates new commons in in-between spaces.

WING MAN CHAN NewSchool of Architecture & Design Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Daniela Deutsch, Associate Professor, Fourth-Year-Level Coordinator From master plans to multifamily housing, Chan’s portfolio betrays a focus on questions of how we live relative to one another in the contemporary city. Model making, mass timber, and sight lines are other significant themes.

RUINA DU University of Idaho Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Bruce Haglund, Distinguished Professor Du utilizes local Idaho wood for market and housing projects, a consideration of sustainable factors that also shows up in a light-filled, biophilic design for a roundthe-clock fire station in Boise, Idaho.

GABRIELLA FEUILLET Rice University Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Viola Ago, Wortham Fellow Simple shapes are merged, stacked, and warped in Feuillet’s design for a farmers’ market, including green space, seating, and covered zones. Feuillet also designs at the product scale, experimenting with textiles, jewelry, and graphics.

NOMINATOR: Luciana Varkulja, Lecturer With a stark, eclectic style of representation, Lafôret focuses on some overlooked aspects of the urban environment, including transit stations and even a public pool.

Many projects respond to social issues like homelessness and ableist development.

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COURTESY WING MAN CHAN

GUY LAFÔRET University of Southern California Undergraduate Architecture

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To design Oblique Peak (opposite), a gondola tower in San Diego’s Children’s Park, Wing Man Chan began by skewing three structural elements in three different directions and then refined it structurally. The result is formally eclectic but structurally sound.

Alessandra Shorten’s studied design for the Phoenix Public Library takes inspiration from Arizona’s “hot spots,” where diverse flora and fauna concentrate near natural springs. Three atrium-like spaces (left) hold different native plant species near the reference and staff areas and the book stacks.

SOPHIA LE Cal Poly Pomona Undergraduate Architecture

VEDYUN MISHRA Syracuse University Graduate Architecture

JACQUELINE PILEGGI New York Institute of Technology Undergraduate Architecture

ALESSANDRA SHORTEN Virginia Tech Undergraduate Interior Design

NOMINATOR: Achille Michelizzi, Professor at the University of Florence, Founder of Achille Michelizzi Architects

NOMINATOR: Paul Crovella, Assistant Professor

NOMINATOR: Manuel Garza, Adjunct Instructor, Principal of Et Al. Collaborative

NOMINATOR: Lisa Tucker, Interior Design Program Chair

Many of Mishra’s projects explore modularity as a way of addressing pressing social challenges, such as in Recondition, a veteran support facility, and Jan Connect, which amalgamates public functions in shipping containers for underserved districts.

Pileggi advances an iterative style in devising mixed-use public spaces that combine ecological concerns and recreational needs.

Waterfront designs demonstrate a desire to grapple with storm surges, recycling flows, and water filtration.

Many of Shorten’s designs are based in a single point of inspiration that guides the entire project. Comprehensively developed projects include an attention to site and fine-grained consideration of materials, furnishings, and circulation.

EMMA SCOTT Rice University Graduate Architecture

KATS TAMANAHA Pratt Institute Graduate Interior Design

NOMINATOR: Troy Schaum, Associate Professor, Partner at Schaum/Shieh

NOMINATOR: Jack Travis, Adjunct Professor

Scott embraces complexity and dualities in her projects, exploring how difference can coexist within a single structure. Other projects delve into the potentialities of small-scale architecture, such as rooftop water tanks and bicycle parking systems.

Tamanaha’s detailed studies and drawings communicate solutions to local problems, especially related to the food chain. Corridor transforms the urban grid into a patchwork of agricultural corridors, leisure paths, and gathering nodes as part of an accessible and efficient streetscape.

Le uses a mix of meticulous drawings, blocky renderings, and models to represent projects focusing on preserving structures and framing views. The Alley examines the potential of Hollywood’s back alleys as a means of expanding density and connectivity and showcasing art.

MARIA ALEXANDRA LLERENA The New School Graduate Interior and Lighting Design NOMINATOR: William Watson, Visiting Assistant Professor Llerena intersperses shared functions with housing blocks in Perforated Solid, a mixed-use master plan. Celebrating Tradition takes advantage of a biodiverse Quito, Ecuador, neighborhood to elevate tradition, knowledge sharing, tourism, and economic development. Both projects reveal an attention to broader communal economic forces.

COURTESY ALESSANDRA SHORTEN

KELLI McGRATH Pratt Institute Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Keena Suh, Associate Professor Two projects by McGrath aim to revitalize bits of New York’s dense and unrelenting built environment: The Tool Shed transforms a closed park structure into a hub for material and information sharing, while a redesign of the Brooklyn Public Library’s Pacific Branch includes a textile recycling drop-off.

ADAM MOQRANE Harvard University Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Eric Höweler, Associate Professor, Academic Adviser, Cofounder of Höweler + Yoon Moqrane proposes three stations for a new Tube line in multicultural suburban London, which harness community context as well as local forms such as the roundabout. Other projects explore the unique housing settings and challenges in California, Japan, and Massachusetts.

YUEER NIU Cornell University Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Naomi Frangos, Professor, Internship Adviser Niu’s process includes painting, site studies, and clear-eyed renderings to explore the uses of buildings. Projects such as the Roman Floating Citywalk aim to help pedestrians discover and use underutilized space within a dense urban context.

NAVYA SHARAD California College of the Arts Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Antje Steinmuller, Associate Professor, Chair Sharad’s work encompasses many scales, from product to neighborhood, all with an attention to the experience of light.

A museum design maximizes light for different purposes, while several projects including a built parklet imagine a denser and more efficient San Francisco.

VALERIYA VELYKA California College of the Arts Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Antje Steinmuller, Associate Professor, Chair Velyka focuses on exploring the possibilities of warping, scaling up, and serializing simple geometric shapes, an emphasis that courses through furniture design to public space design. Simple design conceits produce novel castings of structures such as libraries and parks.

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GUILLERMO HEVIA

Seeking a better understanding of scale, Hevia’s work grapples with our relationship to the environment and other nonhuman entities.

By Adrian Madlener

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Chilean architect Guillermo Hevia practiced for seven years in his home country before enrolling at Columbia. “During my time at GSAPP, I discovered that architecture can be expanded to a broader understanding of scale,” he remarks. “I have become interested in the ‘device scale,’ which can shift our relationship with climate or the environment and can relate us to the nonhuman and the nonliving.” As an example of this approach, one part of Hevia’s Sound Strata project is a helmetlike acoustic device that maps a taxonomy of urban noise and provides the user with a different sensory experience of the city.

“I also discovered that architecture can expand to the network scale, meaning that buildings are not isolated entities,” he adds.

“Architecture can be unstable, ephemeral, and performative.” The speculative Hudson River Plug-in Floating Communities project is a system of modular podlike structures that could be deployed in response to changing political, economic, natural, and societal conditions. Initially proposed as a network extending between affluent and culturally rich communities and the Hudson River shoreline, the interlinked structures could form different compositions to facilitate various living, working, and leisure programs. This project challenges the notion that architecture is static and alludes to the influence that changing cultural norms can have on the discipline.

The design also explores this concept of fluidity through social programming that can expand beyond the urban context.

Introduced in any context, the plug-in system would emphasize locality and the vernacular rather than impose a set agenda or aesthetic.

When considering his native South America, Hevia is wary of designs that are too sterile and unreflective of context. “I see the risk that architecture is becoming a kind of registered trademark, a prescriptive, ambiguous, diffuse, and exotic concept,” he states. The deeply critical yet pragmatic architect hopes to continue his practice postgraduation by balancing the theoretical with the feasible. M

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GUILLERMO HEVIA Columbia University Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Bernard Tschumi, Professor of Architecture, Dean Emeritus at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation

In his project Deploying the Archive (this page), Hevia considers the traditional Spanish bullring as a typology loaded with historical, political, and social values. In this drawing, the architect reconfigures the bullring plan “in order to build a network of archives through ‘Empty Spain.’ ” For Hevia, the meaning of an archive isn’t defined by the information it stores but by the spaces of information that are deployed.

COURTESY GUILLERMO HEVIA

Guillermo Hevia practiced architecture at his eponymous Chile-based firm prior to studying at Columbia, where he has continued his research into bioclimatic technologies and development.

Sound Strata (opposite) is a proposal for a “performative tower” and “sound device” that “brings into discussion the idea that a city experience can be modified and transformed in relation to the sound and noise,” explains the architect in a design statement. The tower is composed of “bubbles” that make visible this taxonomy of sound levels of the city.

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COMMUNAL GOODS

Four architecture students try their hands at district planning and manage to imbue shared spaces with a sense of democracy, productivity, and history.

By Rebecca Greenwald

In Autonomous City (right), Matthew Morgan imagines a neighborhood that maximizes the productivity of every urban surface, looking at how waste streams and urban agriculture can satisfy a large city’s needs. He analyzes the surface area and productivity potential of different building forms and crop types in a bid toward a circular economy.

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TOP: COURTESY SUSHMITA SHEKAR; BOTTOM: COURTESY MATTHEW MORGAN

Sushmita Shekar’s design for a more integrated, bottom-up Retail Scape in a Hudson Valley town (above) includes retail co-ops, bakeries, galleries, and media centers interspersed with houses of worship, outdoor markets, and space for renewable energy infrastructure. An underlying aim is to enhance connectivity among streets and activate public space.

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PLANNING SOPHIA CABRAL Florida International University Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Shahin Vassigh, Professor, Program Director of Technology Research Development, Director of Robotics and Digital Fabrication Lab Cabral begins many of her projects by investigating a site’s historical and cultural context. For Overtown, Miami, she creates tele-tower structures that catalyze activity and dialogue.

MATTHEW MORGAN The City College of New York Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Shawn Rickenbacker, Associate Professor, Director of J. Max Bond Center for Urban Futures An attention to the built forms of abstract assets such as knowledge and security pervades Morgan’s work. A tectonic or metabolic approach is evident in projects such as the Autonomous City waste cycle and a reimagining of the New York Public Library’s distribution system.

DAN ROTHBART Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Undergraduate Architecture

What might the future of cities look like? If four recent and soon-to-be graduates have anything to say about it, it could include tele-tower structures that consolidate and deliver amenities throughout communities; universities that share a campus with a mall, an archive, and a cinema; an inside-out New York Public Library that turns Bryant Park into a “pneumatic book distribution center”; and cybersecurity in the form of an architectural Ctrl + Alt + Topia tower in Lower Manhattan. All of these inform visions of autonomous cities and communities.

The cohort apply a speculative futures lens to imagine cities as a series of microscale, self-sustaining, and circular economies. By knitting together historical research, data analysis, and design, they are attempting to address what they see as problematic urban planning of the past—where insensitive development, an overemphasis on capital, and an ignorance of ecology and community have “failed to address the social, cultural, economic, and environmental challenges of our cities,” says Sushmita Shekar. As Matthew Morgan explains in his work, “I’m trying to create conditions for direct democracy and communities having voice

and control over their environment.

There’s an opportunity for architecture to become regenerative and undo environmental problems.”

For Shekar and Sophia Cabral, planners must place social capital and community infrastructure at the heart of urban intervention. In her tele-tower proposal, Cabral distributes a set of cone-shaped towers that serve as physical markers of community amenities in Overtown, one of Miami’s most culturally storied neighborhoods. The towers are meant to amplify the district’s existing social fabric with Wi-Fi zones, workshop centers, public art, hydroponic urban farming, vertical agricultural gardens, a community archive and museum, and outdoor workstations.

“What are we going to do now in the aftermath of the pandemic to get people to go outside again? These tele-towers don’t represent essential services like groceries. Rather, they are places you choose to go—for enjoyment, for community, for recreation,” Cabral says.

Shekar’s redefinition of the retail landscape in New York’s Hudson Valley moves away from what she views as declining retail models like big-box

NOMINATOR: Michael Oatman, Associate Professor of Architecture Rothbart’s portfolio reflects an interest in institutional and infrastructural design, explored through models and material studies.

A design for Troy, New York, conceives a single communal space that combines transportation, coworking, and leisure functions.

SUSHMITA SHEKAR Columbia University Graduate Architecture and Urban Design NOMINATOR: Geeta Mehta, President of Asia Initiatives New York, Founding Partner of Urbz: User Generated Cities With a research-driven approach, Shekar focuses on activating public space and enhancing livability and accessibility as a means of revitalizing areas from upstate New York to Scheveningen, the Netherlands.

outlets and malls. Instead, she rethinks local systems of manufacturing, distribution, and retail—places where you can find different functions layered and collocated along a single Main Street.

As Shekar puts it, “The future of practice is to use design as a tool to engage in a dialogue with communities, stakeholders, and context.” M MARCH/APRIL 2021

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PA N D E M I C PORTFOLIOS

For many students graduating this year, the public health crisis provided ample inspiration for design interventions at the architectural, interior, and urban scales. Some applied their skills to practical solutions such as COVID-19 testing centers, restaurants that adapt to the need for social distancing, and grocery stores designed for contactless shopping. Others saw the pandemic as a catalyst. With municipalities and employers more receptive than ever to big ideas, these scholars perceived opportunities to bring nature into the workplace, reshape commuter towns into livable work-from-home neighborhoods, and develop parks in green-space-strapped urban communities.

A module made up of forms commonly found in children’s playground equipment, Hanqing Yao’s Flipit (opposite, top) is actually a COVID-19 testing center. Large enough to accommodate one patient and one health-care worker (separated by a small window), it is designed to take some of the stress out of coronavirus testing.

Over the past year, thousands of restaurants around the world have had to scramble to move operations outdoors—most without the guidance of a designer. Amanda Wyman’s design for outdoor dining areas at a Michigan restaurant (opposite, bottom) conforms to social distancing standards.

Decisions to include biophilic elements and recyclable materials show the young designer’s attention to materials and atmosphere.

Monica Beckett completed this concept for a postCOVID grocery store while working with designers at Toronto’s Mason Studio.

Responding to the uncertain future of retail, the importance of social distancing, and the surge in home delivery, the design team imagined a grocery retail outlet as an indoor/ outdoor hybrid with lockers where customers can pick up preordered goods.

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COURTESY MONICA BECKETT

By Ethan Tucker

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RESPONSES TO COVID MONICA BECKETT Ryerson University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Jonathan Anderson, Associate Professor Beckett’s portfolio includes fully realized furniture, exhibition booths, public space for socializing outdoors, and a store that facilitates socially distanced shopping.

YI-CHEN CHANG George Washington University Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Erin Speck, Assistant Professor of Interior Design Careful consideration of user experience informs Chang’s designs for projects such as a high-end hotel in Florence and a biophilic workplace in response to the pandemic.

ADRIANNA FRANSZ University of Southern California Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Warren Techentin, Adjunct Professor Fransz’s passion for public space shines in a social justice center in Los Angeles, where she prevented the ten-story tower from casting shade on the surrounding neighborhood.

MARIA RAMIREZ California College of the Arts Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Antje Steinmuller, Associate Professor, Chair of Undergraduate Architecture Ramirez’s “work from home community” investigates how residential spaces can lessen the burden of childcare by facilitating communal parenting.

TOP: COURTESY HANQING YAO; BOTTOM: COURTESY AMANDA WYMAN

AMANDA WYMAN Ferris State University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Lee Davis, Professor With workplace, restaurant, and retail interiors, Wyman demonstrates a knack for material and product specification in addition to COVID-19 modifications.

HANQING YAO University of Pennsylvania Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Andrew Saunders, Associate Professor, M. Arch Program Director Across a variety of typologies, Yao creates playful geometries that express a curiosity about how to translate organic forms into buildings that serve people.

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TINGXIN ZHENG

This student uses empathy as a portal to arrive at authentic visions for disparate environments.

By Lila Allen

TINGXIN ZHENG Savannah College of Art and Design Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Sybil Barrido, Associate Chair of Interior Design Whether it’s a structure for a religious pilgrimage or a coworking concept that incorporates childcare, Zheng shows an amazing capacity for designing user-led environments.

To create spaces that support users physically and emotionally, designers must be able to put themselves in the shoes of the building occupants. In her interior design portfolio, Savannah College of Art and Design student Tingxin Zheng demonstrates that skill. In fact, her selection of work shows an impressive ability to imagine what users might want in a wide variety of settings. From temporary Tibetan shelters to multigenerational coworking spaces, Zheng’s work shows her keen attunement to these needs.

A native of Shenzhen, China, Zheng grew up in an environment of rapid urbanization. The hustle and bustle of her hometown inspired her to create a scheme 110

titled Tetris, named after the block-based video game, which accelerates as it progresses. “Shenzhen is a fast-growing city and lots of people are going there looking for jobs,” she explains. “I thought it might be good to give them a place to slow down.” Imagined as “breathing room” for low-income residents, Tetris features enclaves for varied levels of privacy and openness, along with versatile partitions that can be used to reconfigure space over the course of the day.

In another project titled Encamp, Zheng designed modular, temporary shelters for travelers to Mount Kailash in Tibet. These structures, which she conceived as transportable, sustainable,

and built from local materials, would allow both secular tourists and religious pilgrims to commingle or enjoy some exchange while maintaining autonomy.

Then Zheng appropriates the lens of an office worker and deftly imagines a coworking space in Savannah, Georgia.

For this concept, she demonstrates further sensitivity to the act of social exchange in the context of having adult coworking spaces and childcare under a single roof. “This space provides choice for parents,” she says. “Maybe you get a coffee and check on your children. Our culture is bad at such connections. That’s why I wanted this continuous feeling of wandering into spaces.” M

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COURTESY TINGXIN ZHENG

Encamp (above and left) is a way station made of temporary shelter modules, which Zheng conceived for travelers to Mount Kailash in Tibet.

Fusion (opposite), a coworking space imagined with play areas for workers’ children, toys with textures on the fifth plane.

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GREEN THESES

Six student portfolios show what the future of sustainable design should look like.

Architecture school is a time of possibility, the chance to push boundaries without concern for meddling clients or budget constraints. It’s when young designers, amid the pressures of harsh critiques, long studio hours, and heavy course commitments, persevere and test ideas to change the world. That’s precisely the mindset we need in this time of climate change—and the reason that these six students’ portfolios stand out.

They come from different universities around the nation, but share a collective interest in a variety of sustainable approaches. Perhaps the most common thread across their portfolios and projects is mass timber framing.

There’s enough interest to enable a new generation of tall wood buildings and reduce the carbon-intensive manufacturing impact of steel and concrete. This group also seems to think of mass timber as an inherently modular building system, and accepts the act of building as an energy-generating machine. In their concepts, photovoltaic panels exist amid broader alternative powergeneration strategies ranging from wind to geothermal systems.

Of course, it is telling that these scholars (now in their 20s) were born when the LEED rating system and other hallmarks of green building were already under way. Sustainability is so central to their ideas that the word is almost superfluous.

Many of the techniques and materials in these portfolios are fairly common in built projects, yet the students also use 112

green design as functional inspiration for making bold architectural moves.

Cornell University undergrad Carla De Haro’s con.duc.tion proposal lands a new building atop the local campus bookstore like a kind of spaceship extracting waste energy and water from its host. The University of Idaho’s Nguyet Huynh makes the ruins of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s iconic Glasgow School of Art the vessel for a regenerative sustainable design demonstration project with a biofuel generator

and wall panels made from locally harvested cork. Then there’s James Jung’s design for a pavilion on the moon.

Sometimes, however, the best ideas are the simplest and most time-tested, quiet and free of ego. This is exemplified in a project by Northeastern University’s Kathryn Platt. Designed with no single program in mind, it focuses instead on flexibility and durability. After all, the most sustainable structure is the one you don’t have to build. M

COURTESY CARLA DE HARO

By Brian Libby

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SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH

Carla De Haro’s con.duc.tion (opposite) plays with conventional requirements of thermal comfort; it’s built atop the campus bookstore, from which it extracts energy.

CARLA DE HARO Cornell University Undergraduate Architecture

KEUNHYUK “JAMES” JUNG Savannah College of Art and Design Graduate Architecture

LIUDMILA SERGEEVA University of Southern California Graduate Architecture

NOMINATOR: Henry Richardson, Academic Advisor, Core Design Studio Professor

NOMINATOR: Anthony Cissell, Chair of Architecture and Urban Design

In Carla De Haro’s portfolio, buildings don’t exist by themselves but instead respond boldly to their contexts. Her High Line Oasis project gives New York’s High Line users a view of the Hudson River by lifting and pulling apart a building, while an Ithaca concert hall displays a chameleonlike ability to transform its facade.

Schools play an outsize role in Jung’s portfolio, be it a Copenhagen institution with a rotating bridge or a Duluth middle school with operable glass walls. Yet Jung is equally captivated with high-density neighborhood buildings, restored natural landscapes, and even futuristic transit including a hyperloop and passenger drones.

NOMINATOR: Selwyn Ting, Associate Director, Graduate Architecture Programs, and National Architectural Accrediting Board Coordinator

NGUYET HUYNH University of Idaho Graduate Architecture

KATHRYN PLATT Northeastern University Graduate Architecture

ALEKSANDRA ZATORSKA New York Institute of Technology Graduate Architecture

NOMINATOR: Bruce Haglund, Distinguished Professor

NOMINATOR: David Fannon, Associate Professor

NOMINATOR: David Diamond, Director, Master of Architecture Program

Huynh’s portfolio begins with a page of beautifully crafted physical models, then features a wide spectrum of design scales. Besides an individual apartment, restaurant, and bank, there’s also a responsive housing project in Idaho.

The designs in Platt’s portfolio demonstrate an interest in structure and building materials. Her signature project, designed with no single program in mind, is an exercise in flexibility and durability over time, combining steel and timber framing.

Whether it’s an aquatic center or a mountain cabin, Zatorska displays a curious, creative mind. From hand-drawn studies to sophisticated virtual reality projects, numerous building designs display striking patterns through structure.

Design for public good underscores Sergeeva’s portfolio, including a communal coworking space that grows food for the neighborhood on-site, a reimagined parking garage with room to gather on top, and a K–12 youth center.

COURTESY NGUYET HUYNH

Nguyet Huynh reimagines the ruins of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art (below) with wall panels made from locally harvested cork.

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SOUNDSCAPES

A vocabulary of visual terms—sight lines, daylight, transparency— dominates descriptions of architecture, but spaces can also be experienced using other senses. In these two projects, for example, students combat the “tyranny of the visual” by creating designs defined by sound. One unifying characteristic is an attention to how smaller-scale materials and objects influence acoustic transmission: Christopher Sweeney examines the potential of terra-cotta (opposite) to “produce a gradient of sounds around campus,” while Hadiya Bynoe-Seabron imagines music from boom boxes intermingling with “stacked and layered hexagonal forms” (below).

COURTESY HADIYA BYNOE-SEABRON

By Akiva Blander

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COURTESY CHRISTOPHER SWEENEY

SOUND AND ACOUSTICS HADIYA BYNOE-SEABRON Drexel University Graduate Interior Architecture and Design

CHRISTOPHER SWEENEY University at Buffalo Graduate Architecture

NOMINATOR: William Mangold, Program Director

NOMINATOR: Elaine Chow, Studio Instructor, Professional Development Coordinator

Bynoe-Seabron creates her eclectic interiors by layering a mix of organic and synthetic materials and bringing aspects of the natural world into built environments.

Layered surfaces also appear in a design for Shapla Center, a community center for climate-displaced Bengali migrants.

Many of Sweeney’s projects reflect an attention to immediate context and circulation, evinced in a handful of installations and the open-ended community center Big Porch. Other projects rely on research to respond to broader economic issues, such as a three-tower housing prototype to address affordability.

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C H E N YA N G YU

Yu addresses issues such as labor imbalance and disaster relief through projects that are rooted in the natural world.

By Adrian Madlener

CHENYANG YU University of Pennsylvania Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Andrew Saunders, Associate Professor, M.Arch Program Director Yu’s portfolio derives inspiration from the natural world. In a design for an urban moss garden, Yu addresses the problem of illegal moss harvesting. In a proposal for a residential co-op and farm, she uses the lens of food to “explore the interdependence between nature and man.”

Chenyang Yu’s affinity for nature translates into speculative projects that address contemporary global issues and changing norms in the architecture industry. This source of inspiration shows up in everything from designs of urban farms and gardens to complex timber structures. Yu’s proposal for Cornell Art School on Roosevelt Island in New York City implements an interplay of wood and glass in a multifunctional building that evokes geographic disconnection.

Nature is also the star in Yu’s Tangled project, a series of drawings that address

the labor imbalance that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed throughout the country and across industries. An artificial ground layer, built of pipes and cables, props up organic dwellings that are connected by tree root–like transportation networks. The drawings show the varying abilities to work from home among different labor classes. The project also considers the role artificial intelligence might play in this scenario. The intertwined structures help to define a divide between a “techno-bourgeoisie and a techno-proletariat.” Throughout her work, Yu harnesses architecture and illustration to shed light on significant sociopolitical and environmental issues.

“Disaster relief is something I’ve always been interested in,” she explains.

“Although the quick construction of temporary physical housing is essential, I’m also interested in the work of reconstructing the collective mental health of local communities by providing comforting spaces that can collect their old memories, thereby making architecture perform beyond providing housing.” M

In a proposal for Cornell Art School (left) on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, Yu uses mass timber and glass to form a building for students to gather, learn, and communicate. The facade is composed of faceted wood panels with operable wood louvers that allow the occupants to control the amount of light entering the space.

Yu’s project Tangled (opposite), completed in partnership with fellow student Jinghan He, explores how the pandemic has intensified labor inequality. By considering the possibility of people working together with artificial intelligence, “the architecture becomes an artificial intelligence itself.”

With a ground made of cables, pipes, and neuron systems, “the building becomes a worker as well.”

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COURTESY CHENYANG YU

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STUDIES IN SOLACE

In designing places for worship, reflection, and ritual, students investigate the sacred and profane.

COURTESY HENRY CHU

By Ethan Tucker

A Zoroastrian fire temple, a Shinto worship center, a Christian chapel at the water’s edge, a desert retreat for a writer, a memorial to victims of gun violence, a hotel for being alone, and a church built to bring a community together. These student projects may span multiple faiths and interpretations of spirituality, but all achieve a striking intimacy and an emphasis on solitary reflection that make them sacred.

Chloe Cudney’s proposal for a monument to those killed in the Las Vegas massacre of October 1, 2017, uses interlocking volumes and a spiral circulation pattern to create a collection of intimate spaces for remembrance, reflection, and healing.

If Cudney’s memorial is a place to bring people together, Edward Han Myo Oo’s model of a Hotel To Be Alone is a place designed for isolation. Though it’s a four-story building, the rooms within,

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SACRED SPACES HENRY CHU Cal Poly Pomona Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Wendy Gilmartin, Lecturer Chu’s writers’ retreat in the Mojave Desert is a secular interpretation of sacred space.

Henry Chu’s design for a writers’ retreat (opposite) in the Mojave Desert proposes sculptural structures under the desert sun. A complex of shifting shadows invites visiting artists to wander, poetically losing track of time and space in the hopes of disconnecting from temporal concerns and finding inspiration.

A detail from Edward Han Myo Oo’s Hotel To Be Alone (left) shows the curved cement form that is the foundational building block of the design. These shapes are rendered in gray tones and rough surfaces; like a monk’s habit, they provide minimal distraction from self-reflection and meditation.

CHLOE CUDNEY Kansas State University Graduate Interior Architecture and Industrial Design NOMINATOR: Michelle Wempe, Professor of Practice Cudney’s Sacredness Among Scarcity honors those lost in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre.

EDWARD HAN MYO OO Harvard University Graduate Architecture NOMINATORS: Lyndon Neri & Rossana Hu, Partners, Neri&Hu, John C. Portman Design Critic in Architecture Myo Oo’s A Hotel To Be Alone flips the script on what we expect from a hotel.

ELIZABETH KOENIG Kent State University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Tina Patel, Assistant Professor

COURTESY EDWARD HAN MYO OO

In her Shinto shrine for Vancouver’s Japanese population, Koenig creates natural serenity.

and particularly the sleeping quarters are rendered in dark gray models and evoke a sense of tightness and solitude. The designer bills it as a meditation center, but one can’t help thinking of a prison.

While not explicitly religious, Henry Chu’s vision for a writers’ retreat in the Mojave Desert suggests that creating art can benefit from the same kind of timebending aloneness as meditation. Composed of multiple spiral forms that rise out of the sand, it’s a structure meant to inspire visitors to wander, find a nook, and lose track of time.

A collection of concepts centered on religion proved the importance of designing within a framework of natural forces for more traditional places of worship as well. A waterfront chapel designed

by Ashley Schwartz is based on an extensive sun study, so that the setting and rising sun illuminates the structure in different ways depending on the season.

Joana Sotomayor’s study for a Zoroastrian fire temple takes that ancient symbolism and brings it indoors, even accommodating a contemporary form of sky burial, a unique Zoroastrian funeral rite.

In a plan for a Shinto shrine in Vancouver, Canada, Elizabeth Koenig lays out a pathway to bring worshippers from the outside world into the sacred space of the shrine through a naturalistic garden that emphasizes the spirituality of nature.

A final project contends that the sacred and worldly need not be completely separated. A church community center designed by Chinne Okoronkwo is an insistent reminder that people worship not only to be alone but to come together, and that sacred spaces can provide the kinds of worldly amenities—places to play, eat, and socialize—that are foundational to a strong community of faith. M

CHINNE OKORONKWO Texas Tech University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Erin Hamilton, Assistant Professor Okoronkwo’s addition to Turning Point Community Church makes room for dining and recreation areas.

ASHLEY SCHWARTZ Kent State University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Tina Patel, Assistant Professor Schwartz’s The Roots Ecumenical Chapel is a minimalist waterfront chapel in Hawaii.

JOANA SOTOMAYOR Fashion Institute of Technology Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Joseph Goldstein, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Interior Design Sotomayor’s Zoroastrian fire temple creates a contemporary space for an ancient religion.

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ON THE SURFACE

As these young minds create formal boundaries, they push them figuratively.

From a facade concept for an arts center that selectively introduces daylight as a respite from gallery fatigue to a city park structure with a “crocheted wood” appearance that provides refuge for wildlife and human visitors, these facades and building details explore the dualities of light and dark, mass and void, and interior and exterior. Of these thoughtful explorations of materiality, pattern, and experience, some make imaginative, graphic statements while others add a delicate, whimsical touch to their surroundings.

By Lauren Volker

BUILDING DETAILS YASMIN BEN LTAIFA Columbia University Graduate Architecture

ARIEL LORENZI New York Institute of Technology Undergraduate Architecture

MIRA SHAMI University at Buffalo Graduate Architecture

ALFRED XUANYU WEI Rice University Graduate Architecture

NOMINATOR: Richard Plunz, Professor of Architecture, Chair of the Division of Architecture, Urban Design Program Director, Urban Design Lab (Earth Institute) Director

NOMINATOR: Giovanni Santamaria, Architecture Department Chair, Associate Professor

NOMINATOR: Joyce Hwang, Associate Chair

NOMINATOR: Andrew Colopy, Assistant Professor

09 Highly intricate, almost technical drawings accompanied by detailed site studies, iterative illustrations, and formal explorations help bring Ben Ltaifa’s projects and settings—from the Bronx to Beirut—to life. Model making, including by 3D printing, delves into projects’ context-informed patterns.

GWYNETH HARRIS University at Buffalo Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Annette LeCuyer, Professor of Architecture 04 Engaging concepts such as openness and porosity, Harris developed a facade that would introduce a spectrum of daylighting conditions to the galleries of a contemporary arts center in downtown Buffalo, New York.

01 Crochet Wood demonstrates Lorenzi’s passion for creating community through the built environment, as the structure offers refuge and activities for both aquatic and terrestrial species.

PAUL McCOY University of Pennsylvania Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Andrew Saunders, Associate Professor, M.Arch Program Director 08 In his portfolio, McCoy states that “drawings are the protagonists of architecture,” an emphasis that runs through his stark, future-oriented proposals. Living Continuity extends a circular housing development in Moscow, imagining new communal spaces and connections to its surroundings.

07 Shami’s project for a flexible Black hair salon in Buffalo, New York, combines urban infill, entrepreneurship, and cultural preservation: An existing house and adjacent purpose-built structure flex as the business grows. The project is conveyed with neat axonometrics, elevations, and playful yet clear renderings.

CHRISTINA SHIN University of Southern California Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Yo-Ichiro Hakomori, Associate Professor of Practice 06 Shin’s 99 Laps concept for a public pool housed under a long-span cantilevered structure exemplifies her playful approach while demonstrating an affinity for building technology.

02 Wei’s design sensitivity is apparent in Life in the Facade, in which a linear concept makes everyday life a highly visual and integral aspect of the micro-housing development’s exterior.

MEGAN YORK University of Pennsylvania Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Andrew Saunders, Associate Professor, M.Arch Program Director 03 For a housing design on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, York designed a facade by analyzing the site’s graffiti and extracting datum lines from the surrounding context.

JINGYI ZHOU University of Pennsylvania Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Andrew Saunders, Associate Professor, M.Arch Program Director 05 In the facade for Slanting Threshold, Jingyi Zhou used a polycarbonate screen with a cymatic water pattern to form “an analogy between informational data and running water.”

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LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM: COURTESY ARIEL LORENZI; ALFRED XUANYU WEI; MEGAN YORK; GWYNETH HARRIS; JINGYI ZHOU; CHRISTINA SHIN; MIRA SHAMI; PAUL McCOY; YASMIN BEN LTAIFA

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ALEK TOMICH

For this graduate student, architecture needs to be more accessible.

His mission is to bring that to fruition.

By Adrian Madlener

ALEK TOMICH Columbia University Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Daisy Ames, Adjunct Assistant Professor Tomich’s interests lie in materials, equity, and the environment. His portfolio addresses topics such as waste cycles, indoor air pollutants, and public green space.

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Inspired by the transformative events of 2020, Columbia University graduate student Alek Tomich shifted the focus of his studies to address equity across different scales of the built environment.

“I’m interested in analyzing the sociopolitical context of a building or site and the implications associated with deploying a new architectural program,” he explains.

“I have come to realize that the built environment has historically codified and

preserved inequities present at every level of American life.” For him, standard interventions such as building development cannot always rectify problems such as systemic urban disinvestment or remedying historical injustices. Tomich served as the codirector of Columbia University’s Queer Students of Planning, Architecture, and Preservation (QSAPP) association, where he was a member of the team that published Safe Space: Housing LGBTQ Youth Experiencing Homelessness in 2019. He’s currently working on a project that will include spaces that are absent from the canon of New York City’s queer history.

Tomich believes that the architecture field needs to be more broadly accessible.

“If we cannot control the cost of entry through higher education, we can start by regulating salaries,” he says. “There are still far too many firms offering unpaid internships or monthly stipends that equate to less than the minimum hourly wage. This system is classist and bars many from gaining valuable experience.” He hopes to own and operate his own practice that will combine design and research. M

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For the Loop project (opposite), Tomich and classmate Erin Biediger investigated the economic and cultural evolution of Newburgh, New York.

Their proposed redesign of Downing Park aims to improve circulation and, in turn, better facilitate social exchange within the city’s diverse population.

COURTESY ALEK TOMICH

With the Upper West Side’s Amsterdam Houses as a site, Tomich’s project Reclaiming the Common (above) aims to support the various communities living within the public housing project.

By redefining the edge of the property, reprogramming interior voids as public space, and improving vertical circulation, residents can “reclaim” the site as a unified community.

“Dream illiteracy can be understood as the inability to comprehend one’s own and the dreams of others,” Tomich writes in a designer’s statement.

His project Library for the Dream Illiterate (left) “embodies the moment when one recognizes that they are dreaming.”

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AGING WELL

Students envision senior living solutions that better support autonomy and mental health.

They call it the “silver tsunami”: After millennials, baby boomers make up the largest age group in the United States, and by 2030, all of them will be over 65.

Planning for this aging population will be a defining aspect of the next decade, which makes it a particularly urgent issue for current design students. As they enter the workforce, Gen Z designers will play a critical role in shaping senior care.

It comes as welcome news, then, that students in the Future100 are thinking outside the box for how we might better serve an aging population. One example lies in a scheme conceived by Angélica Lebrón, an undergraduate interior design student at Iowa State University. Lebrón’s proposal resolves two design challenges at once: senior housing and adaptive reuse.

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TOP: COURTESY JULIA SCHETTLER; BOTTOM: COURTESY BELLE CARROLL

By Lila Allen

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DESIGN FOR AGING KALIE BRETTMANN Texas Tech University Graduate Environmental Design NOMINATOR: Erin Hamilton, Professor Brettmann puts forward spaces that address human needs with research-based awareness.

Her concept for a senior living center considers occupants’ mental and physical health, with a focus on community.

BELLE CARROLL Rice University Undergraduate Architecture

Julia Schettler offers a new vision for hospice, breaking away from the traditional “homelike” model. Her proposal offers views of the outdoors and community spaces for an environment that creates feelings of hope and contentment.

Belle Carroll’s I Want to Hold Your Hand (opposite) is designed to respond to aging residents’ physical challenges. The senior dwelling project suggests updating spaces with architectural “prosthetics,” like grab bars, to help ensure autonomy and a high quality of life.

NOMINATOR: Nonya Grenader, Professor in Practice Carroll challenges traditional archetypes with concepts that emphasize flexibility and inclusivity. Her senior dwelling project demonstrates that quality of life and quality of care are not mutually exclusive.

PAUL CHAROWSKY Kwantlen Polytechnic University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Paola Gavilanez, Faculty of Interior Design Charowsky provides unconventional design, injecting personality with unexpected details.

His concept for a hallway in a dementia care home connects the building with streetlike “stops” or doorways, a nod to the Vancouver metro system.

ANGÉLICA LEBRÓN Iowa State University Undergraduate Interior Design

constructed just outside the mall; outdooraccessible apartments, memory care, and rehab units are incorporated into the building. At-risk patients reside on the first level, where they can be easily transported by medical staff in an emergency.

Another theme addressed by Future100 designers is the connection between physical well-being, mental health, and the built environment. Julia Schettler, another Iowa State student, foregrounds the natural world in her design for a hospice, with landscape views and natural light offering solace to end-of-life patients. Kalie Brettmann, who is pursuing a master’s in environmental design at Texas Tech University, also believes in the therapeutic powers of design. Brettmann’s concept for a senior living center carves out space for pets, gardening, socialization, and physical activity—all tools for fending off loneliness and depression in residents.

Rather than looking only at seniors, Rice University student Belle Carroll considers how buildings might better serve people of all ages and abilities. In her scheme, she proposes using architectural “prosthetics” to support occupants.

“This idea of prosthetics for the interior of a home, similar to the prosthetics of the body, would enable us to live, work, and play independently of caretakers,” she explains. Carroll suggests integrating a handrail—an object used by everyone, not just the elderly—into the entirety of the structure, including all walls and furniture. She also uses the turning radius of a wheelchair as the module for the architecture, creating a fluid, accessible, and visually striking residence.

As 2030 approaches, innovation and empathy won’t just be nice-to-haves: They’ll be central to solving some of our most pressing societal needs. In their projects, these six students demonstrate both. M

NOMINATOR: Julie Irish, Assistant Professor Sustainability is at the heart of Lebrón’s approach. Her design for a retirement facility prioritizes the health of building occupants while emphasizing green building practices.

JULIA SCHETTLER Iowa State University Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Jae Hwa Lee, Assistant Professor Schettler believes the built environment can have a powerful effect on an individual’s life.

She brings this perspective to her design for a hospice that uplifts patients by connecting them with nature.

JUYONG SONG Savannah College of Art and Design Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Challie Schafer, Professor Song creates spaces that reflect occupants’ values. Through an expressive annual ring structure, the senior residence featured in her portfolio embodies revival.

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ACCOMMODATING NEURODIVERSITY

Next-generation designers advocate for those who think differently.

To meet the needs of children with autism as well as their family members, Caitlin Turner developed a concept for a hybrid recreation center and retail space called The Nook (above). Her design for the auxiliary tea shop gives parents and guardians a space to connect and relax.

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Roe Draus’s Spatial Portrait (opposite) is designed for Alex, a fictitious six-year-old on the autism spectrum.

The design features adaptable spaces with pocket doors that allow Alex to easily adjust his environment in moments of stress or overstimulation.

COURTESY CAITLIN TURNER

By Lauren Volker

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DESIGN FOR AUTISM ROE DRAUS University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Trudy Watt, Assistant Professor Draus approaches his design for Spatial Portrait with clarity and creativity.

His desire to address broader societal challenges with solutions that meet the needs of vulnerable populations is evident in his person-centered approach.

CAITLIN TURNER University of Tennessee Undergraduate Interior Architecture NOMINATOR: Tim Dolan, Lecturer, Adjunct Assistant Professor

COURTESY ROE DRAUS

Passionate about the integration of design with human psychology, Turner thoughtfully considers the impact of projects on the physical and mental well-being of occupants, whether designing workplaces or retail spaces like the tea shop at The Nook.

About 1 in 54 children has autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An even broader segment of the population—about 14 percent— identify as neurodivergent, a term that also includes dyspraxia, dyslexia, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, among others, meaning a considerable part of the population functions, learns, and processes information differently. And as awareness of these variations increases, so does a call to address these differences as just that— differences, not deficits.

The A&D industry has responded, shifting away from designing for the “average” person and embracing a more universal approach that accommodates a greater range of thinking styles. This is the case in workplace design, in particular, with companies like Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and others

launching neurodiversity-at-work initiatives. The next generation of designers is looking to keep the momentum going, diving deeper into how the industry can be more neurologically inclusive.

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee architecture student Roe Draus’s concept Spatial Portrait, for example, was created for Alex, a fictitious six-year-old child on the autism spectrum who is also blind and nonverbal. The project caters to the tactile, proprioceptive, auditory, and olfactory systems, addressing Alex’s need for high- and low-stimulation areas.

Within the space, Alex can communicate and indicate positive and negative moods through an integrated button system, and adaptable rooms with pocket doors provide hidden areas for him to retreat and relax in times of distress.

Aiming to also address the needs of autistic individuals’ families, University of Tennessee undergraduate Caitlin Turner’s interior design for a tea shop takes a community-minded approach. The Nook—for which Turner conducted initial research and programmatic development with classmate Allie Bierman—provides a recreational space for children with ASD, supported by a tea, pottery, and garden retail space. While the ground-level store helps fund the upstairs recreation center— where children explore and engage via sensory experiences like gardening—its larger purpose is to foster social support.

With layers of privacy nooks, the auxiliary space invites the children’s parents and guardians to connect with others or find moments of respite.

“There must be an inclusive, interdisciplinary, and community approach within every level of design,” Draus says.

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LEARNING AT ALL SCALES

In design and representation, children are among the many segments of society who are overlooked in favor of more normative, ablebodied adult figures. These students have bucked that persistent oversight by conceiving studied, comprehensive designs for play and education spaces where children at different stages of development can feel at home. An open-ended, holistic understanding of child growth—physical, emotional, and social—pervades the cohort’s designs. A general appreciation for the importance of sheer delight is also apparent.

By Akiva Blander

DESIGN FOR CHILDREN CALE AMBUEHL Drury University Graduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Robert Weddle, Dean Along with his Acropolis of Play, Ambuehl’s CommunityMake community and exhibition center in Chicago follows a modular, tectonic approach that draws on LEGO pieces. Both projects are represented with plans, sections, and maps that communicate a rich sense of spatial context.

XIE MAGGIE HILL The University of Texas at Austin Undergraduate Interior Design

Two educational designs—a kindergarten and a Boys and Girls Club, both in Austin, Texas—aim to instill a sense of confidence, empowerment, and exploration among kids and teens. Hill’s Caldera Bath House uses ash and tiling as building blocks of a “volcanic, otherworldly experience.”

LAURA SHUE Boston Architectural College Graduate Interior Architecture NOMINATOR: Diane Kitchell, Adjunct Faculty Member A seasoned designer, Shue has led a handful of built and in-progress educational projects in the South. A project at Auburn University creates an informal learning space in a central atrium, while another for the University of Georgia in Athens includes dozens of labs, classrooms, and a large lecture hall.

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TOP: COURTESY LAURA SHUE; BOTTOM: COURTESY CALE AMBUEHL

NOMINATOR: Tamie Glass, Associate Professor, Faculty Director of Design in Health

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For her final thesis project, Laura Shue created a lengthy yet pointed toolkit of strategies for classroom design (opposite, top), organized into components such as furnishings, connections to nature, and acoustics. The document gathers specific evidence and precedents while maintaining generality to also allow broader applicability.

Xie Maggie Hill translated the hands-on pedagogical ideas of Friedrich Fröbel into a kindergarten design for Bryker Woods Elementary (this page) in Austin, Texas, which comprises desk and learning modules.

An Aquaponics Cluster is meant to teach kids about the ecology of food production.

COURTESY XIE MAGGIE HILL

A day-care center for the Greek town of Aegina, Cale Ambuehl’s Acropolis of Play patches together activity and common spaces via a “play corridor.”

The gridlike space morphs at points resulting in niches, climbing areas, and other surprising and delightful places.

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MARÍA JOSÉ FUENTES

With an interest in social equity and ecology, this architecture student evaluates power structures through color and speculation.

By Adrian Madlener

MARÍA JOSÉ FUENTES University of Pennsylvania Graduate Architecture

converting social housing into selfsustaining ecologies that would allow humans to harmoniously cohabitate with other living species. The adaptive reuse project transforms standard apartments into unconfined floor plans that facilitate fluid circulation and social interaction. Throughout, multistory conical shafts house vertical hydroponic vegetation and filter natural light down to a basement-level aquaponic basin.

Fuentes’s socially and ecologically minded approach extends to her views on the architecture and design industry as a whole. “The lack of ethics as a baseline for architectural practice has become increasingly frightening,” she reflects. “There’s a dark unrest of unhealthy studio cultures, hegemonic power structures, and antidiversity regimens. Moving forward in my career, I’d like to explore these issues further and establish intradisciplinary working structures.” Fuentes hopes to advance her ideas in a work setting that values continued education and transparency but also a similar appreciation for speculative ideation. M

NOMINATOR: Andrew Saunders, Associate Professor, M.Arch Program Director Fuentes’s portfolio expresses an interest in textile design at the scales of both the body and the city.

Discrete Drip reimagines three historical clothing techniques, while Queering Textiles is a design for a textile reuse plant and flea market.

María José Fuentes sees architecture as the distillation of experience and memory. For her, a project can result from pragmatic problem solving but also creative spontaneity. “Something that continuously surprises me about architecture is the range and diversity of topics that you are able to find in school,” says the University of Pennsylvania M.Arch student. “It’s fascinating to find yourself in a bustling atmosphere where the intersection of formal and political theory can coexist in one room.” Fuentes is particularly interested in community building, social equity, and the role color plays in defining structures.

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In her Queering Textiles project (opposite), María José Fuentes conceives a textile recycling flea market that explores a sustainable method for reusing clothing waste.

Using Aldo Rossi’s Architecture of the City as a framework, Fuentes focused on site and memory as key considerations of the project.

COURTESY MARÍA JOSÉ FUENTES

The Urban Canyon (this page) is a museum extension of what was previously the Met Breuer and is now the Frick Madison building. The project proposes to infiltrate the original gallery areas with space for art residencies and environmental placemaking rooms to create a hybrid typology for the 21st-century museum.

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GUEST WORK

Keeping in mind that the key to a successful hospitality project is creating an environment that is both relaxing and stimulating, these students investigated material textures, lighting design, and biophilic elements in a range of interiors, which run the gamut from ultra-luxurious to handcrafted.

In concepts for a wide range of speculative clients—from restaurant patrons and super-yacht guests to San Francisco’s homeless population—these young designers experimented with an equally broad array of approaches. For one student, the way fabric folds inspired architectural forms and surfaces, while another developed jewelry displays informed by the organic forms of gemstones.

By Ethan Tucker

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Bifeng Lin’s design for TEIEN Restaurant and Bar (opposite) in Osaka, Japan, shows a meticulous attention to every detail of the guest experience.

Lin combines a brash concrete structure with wooden accents that hark back to the region’s traditional architecture, to create a modern space with programming across three floors.

An elevation view of Conor Daly’s Nesting Rooms restaurant (below) imagined for San Francisco’s Mission District depicts an array of dining spaces organized in terms of privacy. As visitors move through the establishment, they pass areas to see and be seen before making their way to private dining spots in the rear.

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HOSPITALITY CAROLINA CARDONA Florida International University Graduate Interior Architecture NOMINATOR: Janine King, Associate Professor Chic collages and elegant material palettes lend Cardona’s projects a sense of serene luxury befitting designs for high-end spas and yacht interiors.

CONOR DALY California College of the Arts Undergraduate Interior Design

TOP: COURTESY BIFENG LIN; BOTTOM: COURTESY CONOR DALY

NOMINATOR: Katherine Lambert, Professor of Architecture and Interior Design A curiosity about pattern and geometric form is present throughout Daly’s portfolio, from a community hub imagined for San Francisco’s Civic Center to light fixtures and 3D-printed textiles.

BETHANY JOHNSON Auburn University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Anna Ruth Gatlin, Assistant Professor Johnson’s designs are rendered in careful detail showing an attention to materiality and atmosphere.

BIFENG LIN Algonquin College Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Tamara Phillips, Program Professor Stylish renderings in Lin’s portfolio show the handiwork of a thoughtful designer whose work ranges from jewelry cases and custom lighting to interventions at the building scale.

MADELYN ORCUTT Kent State University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Ronn Daniel, Associate Professor In addition to designs for food halls and museums, Orcutt demonstrates an interest in the roots of interior design with an investigation into the legacy of Elsie de Wolfe.

NICOLAS SWANER Marymount University Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Jihyun Song, Associate Professor Swaner’s careful designs and conscious material choices for a day spa, medical clinic, and coworking space show appreciation for design’s potential to enhance wellness in everyday life.

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ON-THE-BOARDS APPROVALS

One critical lesson new design practitioners learn is the value of flexibility. That’s because in the “real world” a firm’s long-term success often requires pivoting—from one building type to another, or between the disparate design languages of, say, health care and retail. Clients can come from anywhere, so that kind of readiness matters (as does trend-watching for the next bread-and-butter hybrids like condo-hotels and retail–health clinics). Some students’ portfolios already anticipate working across categories. Those graduates are likely to hit the ground running.

By Kelly Beamon

NEXT Tech Satellite (left), an office concept based on Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, is the project in which Julia Sorenson flexes her interdisciplinary approach.

In it, she reproduces the visual impact of the museum’s “infinitely reaching ramp” to give the office its own symbol of corporate outreach.

Tiffany England’s portfolio is distinguished by undulating wood structures like this seating nook (opposite, middle). In multiple projects, wavy wood forms slatted screens and ceiling baffles.

Nicole Roberts’s Capitol Bar (opposite, below) gilds an imagined Raffles Hotel.

Its interior design scheme was inspired by the details of a chair.

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COURTESY JULIA SORENSON

Wood figures prominently in Corrie Ostrander’s portfolio.

Various applications from finishes to furniture to framed structures (opposite, above) add warmth to hospitality projects and enhance the feeling of wellness in her health-care concept.

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MULTIFACETED MEGAN BROWN Rochester Institute of Technology Undergraduate Interior Design

SIYAO LI University of Oklahoma Graduate Interior Design

NOMINATOR: Mary Golden, Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Program Director

NOMINATOR: Mia Kile, Associate Professor

Brown’s passion for interdisciplinary design is apparent in Aperture, a restaurant themed for The Eastman Kodak Company.

An impressive dexterity in illuminating surfaces marks Li’s portfolio from the chiaroscuro of carved wood models to edge-lit spaces that appear to float.

SARAH BUTT Sheridan College Undergraduate Interior Design

CORRIE OSTRANDER Florida State University Graduate Interior Architecture and Design

NOMINATOR: Brad Culver, Program Coordinator

NOMINATOR: Jill Pable, Professor, Department Chair

Butt’s interiors range from an African restaurant in Toronto called The Coast of Namibia and Sunrise Therapeutic Learning & Riding Centre, a stable-themed rehab facility.

Ideas such as Bijou, a boutique hotel in Lisbon, and Holstein’s Market, a gourmet grocery, point to market shifts—and Ostrander’s interest in design at all scales.

TIFFANY ENGLAND Drexel University Graduate Interior Architecture and Design

NICOLE ROBERTS Auburn University Undergraduate Interior Design

NOMINATOR: William Mangold, Program Director

NOMINATOR: Anna Ruth Gatlin, Assistant Professor

Highlighting her grasp of interdisciplinary design and experimentation, England’s coworking concept Echo Memory incorporates sound-wave technology.

Pivoting between industrial and interior design, Roberts’s Raffles Hotel in Singapore and Higher Ground restaurant demonstrate her agility in playing with scale.

CAROLINE GRESH University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Undergraduate Interior Architecture and Design

JULIA SORENSON Virginia Tech Undergraduate Interior Design

FROM TOP TO BOTTOM: COURTESY CORRIE OSTRANDER; COURTESY TIFFANY ENGLAND; COURTESY NICOLE ROBERTS

NOMINATOR: Stephanie McGoldrick, Full-time Lecturer Gresh’s portfolio showcases her background as an artist. The Edge Restaurant and Bar reflects her painterly approach to interiors: Sherbet hues saturate chairs, walls, and ceiling baffles.

HEATHER KELLY University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Undergraduate Interior Architecture and Design NOMINATOR: Stephanie McGoldrick, Full-time Lecturer Kelly’s projects include an octopus-inspired hotel restaurant, among retail and residential designs with ample plantings and micro-agriculture.

SHISIRA NAMBIAR MADATHIL KUPPADAGATHIL Savannah College of Art and Design Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Challie Schafer, Professor Kuppadagathil’s “inclusive” Netflix headquarters, Resto Bar in Chennai, India, and Soul Food Community Centre show that her vision straddles disciplines and continents.

NOMINATOR: Lisa M. Tucker, Program Chair Inspired by Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, Sorenson’s NEXT Tech Satellite office uses a gallery-like atmosphere to engage visitors.

HOA VO University of Minnesota Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Abimbola Asojo, Associate Dean for Research, Creative Scholarship and Engagement Vo integrates creativity and analytics in her approach, presenting a range of work from a salon that merges industrial and vintage styles to an office that meaningfully captures the essence of its occupying brand.

KARIZMA WOODS Radford University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Joan Dickinson, Professor, MFA in Design Thinking Coordinator Woods injects delight regardless of context: Prison Cell of the Future conceives uplifting finishes and furnishings as “a cell for rehabilitation and rejuvenation.”

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FANGMING CAI

One interior design student conjures sheer happiness by centering users’ agency and empowerment in projects.

By Lila Allen FANGMING CAI Pratt Institute Graduate Interior Design

NOMINATOR: Jon Otis, Professor Cai’s concepts are informed by free will. In her portfolio, the improvisational quality of jazz is abstracted to create a fluid workplace and children’s furnishings function as classroom manipulatives for truly independent learning.

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If 40 percent of our happiness depends on environment, as some psychological studies have shown, then an enormous burden falls on interior designers to create settings that delight and support well-being. One important tool at their disposal is designing for choice—that is, creating flexible spaces that enable users to exercise their voices.

Fangming Cai, a graduate student at Pratt Institute, stands out as one who understands this dynamic. Her portfolio is filled with projects that lend users agency and independence across different programs and contexts. In a speculative design for B-Side, a music company, Cai used the experimental and improvisational nature of jazz as inspiration for workspaces, which empower staff. “I want to design for the employees,” she says, “so I want to make this place more flexible.” A series of rotating modules that include cork- and whiteboards, bookshelves, and upholstered furniture can be rearranged into six combinations that allow workers to personalize their work areas. A modular benching system transforms into a stage, a catwalk, and additional office seating.

In Cai’s designs, even the youngest occupants of a building are granted agency: Green Memory, a children’s library that she conceived as part of a group project, showcases furniture that can be manipulated and reconfigured by young children.

A series of “tents”—reading areas delineated by sheer curtains—gives young readers a choice of semiprivate spaces that are also open enough for supervision by adults. By viewing spaces from the perspective of a child, Cai and her team have created an environment that empowers new generations. M

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COURTESY FANGMING CAI

Explore with Stairs (left) is Fangming Cai’s museum concept in which the act of climbing leads people to experience “levels of discovering.” Bubble Memory (below) is a childcare center imagined for Beijing. Lighting Kids Memory (opposite) is from a series of artworks included in Green Memory, a children’s library concept.

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BEYOND BRICK AND MORTAR

With the increasing popularity of online shopping, brick-and-mortar retail has become less about selling products and more about providing experiences. These projects interpret that critical shift in a way that emphasizes the ability of beautifully designed spaces to stimulate emotional responses. The best concepts range from an informational kiosk investigating interior design’s influence on mood to surreal, neon-lit clothing stores. Others use color, ambient lighting, and technology to engage the senses and activate space.

By Leilah Stone Unwind (opposite, top) is a loungewear boutique designed to “encourage mental decompression” by engaging the senses with color, scent, sound, and light. Violette Chartock creates a sensory experience using sheepskin upholstery, cove lighting, and undulating walls, which represent the “unwinding” of thread.

Drawing on the psychology of color, Victoria Vatne renders a retail environment that uses various hues to encourage a sense of peace. Vatne designed The Crystal Palace (left) with soft-edged forms, diamond-shaped lighting fixtures, and arched display cases.

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COURTESY VICTORIA VATNE

In this proposal for a pop-up shop for SketchUp (opposite, bottom), Ielyzaveta Ignatyeva creates an immersive experience that incorporates augmented, mixed, and virtual reality technologies. Locating the concept in a shipping container is “symbolic of the movement and ease” of the software interface.

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RETAIL KAILEY CARTER Florida State University Graduate Interior Architecture and Design NOMINATOR: Marlo Randsell, Associate Professor, Studio D: Design and Fabrication Lab Director Carter’s design for ALL THAT! Gourmet Grocer is inspired by nostalgia for 1990s pop culture. Informed by the decade’s digital revolution, her project playfully embeds technologies such as take-home meal kits dispensed via vending machines.

VIOLETTE CHARTOCK New York School of Interior Design Graduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Ellen Fisher, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean Chartock represents her retail designs by way of detailed 3D visualizations that illustrate an attention to materials.

With her design for an Australian skin care store, she notes the importance of regional suppliers and ethical production standards.

MICHAELA COOK University of Wisconsin–Stout Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Shelley Pecha, Interior Design Program Director, Professor As the events chair for the Student Interior Design Organization at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, Cook aims to create emotional experiences through commercial design. Her surrealist retail project Extraño goteo is sure to leave an impression.

TOP: COURTESY VIOLETTE CHARTOCK; BOTTOM: COURTESY IELYZAVETA IGNATYEVA

IELYZAVETA IGNATYEVA Fashion Institute of Technology Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Mark Bradin, Adjunct Assistant Professor Be it a concept for a conference center or a design for a luxury hotel suite, Ignatyeva’s work is driven by the end user. By focusing on the journey throughout each project, she designs moments for unique, individual experiences.

VICTORIA VATNE Mount Royal University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Helen Warren, Interior Design Program Director, Professor With a keen desire to create ambient atmosphere, Vatne’s portfolio showcases fluency in a wide range of projects including retail, hospitality, entertainment, and workplace design.

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OBJECT CREATIVITY

With a year defined by quarantines and physical distancing, the new ways we engage with one another and the natural world are informing student industrial designs that warrant a closer look. For one scholar, new social norms manifest as seating engineered to explore the duality of love and separation. Others bring in the outdoors with items inspired by flora, fauna, and the ecosystems that sustain us.

By Leilah Stone

PRODUCTS AND MATERIALS NORA ALKEYAT Ryerson University Undergraduate Interior Design

NICOLE WOLERT New York Institute of Technology Undergraduate Interior Design

NOMINATOR: Jonathon Anderson, Associate Professor, Director of FCAD Creative Technology Lab

NOMINATOR: Gertrudis Brens, Director of Interior Design

HANNAH KOCH University of Minnesota Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Meghan Hendrickson, Professional Instructor A finalist in the University Hall of Innovation’s By Design Single Sheet Plywood Challenge, Koch’s fixture Sun on the Ridge references the way light cascades down a mountain peak (opposite, left). With a passion for hospitality and sustainable design, Koch’s portfolio encompasses a diverse set of projects including a veteran living community and an adaptive reuse hotel.

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Inspired by the natural world, Wolert often incorporates organic forms in works such as The Orchid Collection, which includes a lamp, settee, stool, chair (this page, left), and table. Her proposal for a three-story headquarters for Teavana is an abstracted section of an old-growth tree from root to crown.

AMY YAN Ryerson University Undergraduate Interior Design NOMINATOR: Jonathon Anderson, Associate Professor, Director of FCAD Creative Technology Lab Yan’s work operates at “the intersection of design and storytelling.” She has applied her narrative approach to spatial problems in projects such as an ethnocultural investigation into Toronto’s Chinatowns.

The Not Love Seat (opposite, top right) was awarded first place in Wilsonart’s Annual Student Chair Design Competition.

COURTESY NICOLE WOLERT

Chrysalis, a project designed with classmate Paul Lee (opposite, bottom right), is a lighting fixture designed to emulate the natural process of cocoon building. Using digital fabrication techniques, Alkeyat’s biophilic design mimics the layered, meshlike forms produced by insect larvae.

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: COURTESY AMY YAN; COURTESY NORA ALKEYAT; COURTESY HANNAH KOCH

Cheung looks to building and material technologies as a way to understand the economic and cultural forces that drive the field of architecture.

COURTESY ERIC KYLE CHEUNG

ERIC KYLE CHEUNG

By Adrian Madlener

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ERIC KYLE CHEUNG Rice University Undergraduate Architecture NOMINATOR: Andrew Colopy, Assistant Professor With an interest in building technologies, Cheung often evaluates how digital technologies such as parametricism and numerically controlled fabrication “give merit to form.”

Rice University architecture student Eric Kyle Cheung gravitates toward building technology. His investigations of new materials and algorithmic processes range from table-size assemblages to 1:3-scale models of bent plywood as an alternative to framed systems. “Embedded in many of these projects is an age-old intent to find out how material properties can drive design,” he says. “Recently, I’ve become more interested in how other realities factor in, such as cost or biopolitical impact.”

Aside from his exploration of the building sciences, Cheung is also inter-

ested in uncovering the external economic and cultural forces that drive architecture. With the Station of the Future project, he seeks to address the issues involved in the broad rollout of electric car charging hubs. Cheung questions whether this new type of infrastructure will completely replace obsolete gas stations while still offering the same essential amenities Americans have grown accustomed to, such as food and retail options. He argues that even if paradigmatic shifts in technology change our urban landscape, we will still need to rely on existing architectural typologies to signify the services each type of structure provides.

In a similar spirit of adaptation, he also believes that architects should expand their scope of practice and apply their skills to other sectors that could benefit from having architects do more comprehensive and intuitive modeling of their products. “This diversification would take the financial pressure off the problems that come with the lowest-bid system and create opportunities to focus on design without squeezing pay or overtime,” he concludes. M

Station of the Future (top) seeks to understand “the next evolution in the lineage of gas station design” from aesthetic, structural, and programmatic standpoints.

Exploring the deep-rooted symbolism of the American gas station, Cheung suggests that qualities such as respite and convenience should be reimagined for a near-future society in which electric cars are the norm.

Cheung’s project Cross Conics (left) investigates the intersection of the waffle slab structural system with conic volumes.

The resulting proposal is a boathouse that uses the forms created by the overlaps as thresholds that help define circulation.

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FRONTIERS IN VISUALIZATION

It’s a rite of passage for architecture students to get lost in the digital universe of Rhino or V-Ray, spending countless nights creating photo-realistic renderings. But architectural representation is less about creating a polished image or model, and more about generating new ideas, fleshing out loose concepts, and exploring critical ways of communicating. That’s why these student works stand out. Their presentations tend to eschew “realism” for more emotive modes of visualization, taking forms that range from collage to comic books to board games. Clearly, they’re thinking outside of the nine-square grid.

By Leilah Stone

Yaxuan Liu uses comic strips and board games to express design concepts.

Four Chinatowns (opposite) explores the affordable housing crisis—and an accompanying identity crisis—in Los Angeles’s Chinatown neighborhood.

Liu’s board game Dynasty is a cross between the games Go and Monopoly, with the goal of helping players understand the complex context and multiple stakeholders involved in Chinatown’s affordability battle.

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COURTESY TIAN LIU

Tian Liu’s Multiple House (left), a design for a highdensity artists’ community in Shibuya, Tokyo, aims to merge “spirituality with ordinariness by using light to introduce ritual” into everyday life. A modular wall is deployed variously to form different programs with distinct lighting conditions throughout the compound.

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COURTESY YAXUAN LIU

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COURTESY BRAYTON GREGORY

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Brayton Gregory created this model (opposite) by examining and applying the geometry of the torus in three concentric shapes repeated vertically. For Gregory, the “goal was to create a new ‘front’ to the building within the interior.” The masses are then carved to create a continuous space that encourages occupants to rethink what is interior versus what is exterior.

Airene Dizon’s proposal for a new structure at Compton College in California is based on the idea of porosity. Dizon employs transparent materials to define a visual and performing arts center that allows occupants to observe the production of each art form. Pictured here (left) are diagrams illustrating how social life functions during such events as film screenings, outdoor performances, gallery exhibits, studio visits, and shows in the auditorium.

COURTESY AIRENE DIZON

VISUALIZATION AIRENE DIZON Cal Poly Pomona Undergraduate Architecture

BRAYTON GREGORY Harvard University Graduate Architecture

TIAN LIU Rice University Graduate Architecture

YAXUAN LIU Harvard University Graduate Architecture

NOMINATOR: Sarah Lorenzen, Professor

NOMINATOR: Toshiko Mori, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture

NOMINATOR: Carlos Jiménez, Professor

NOMINATOR: Toshiko Mori, Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture

When it comes to representation, Dizon’s portfolio showcases a range of styles, including colorful collage perspectives that illustrate the experience of a college campus and diagrammatic vignettes highlighting the social interactions that can occur in each program.

Physical model-making is one skill reflected in Gregory’s portfolio, whether it be a section model of an addition to a parking garage or a geometric study that evaluates the spatial possibilities of a hyperbolic parabola.

Liu’s drawings, collages, and renderings of museums and housing all contain a careful attention to the effects of light, shadow, and atmosphere. Through rigorous daylighting studies, the young designer speculates on the experience of each project according to the time of day and the season.

In addition to displaying a proficiency in both physical model-making and digital rendering skills, Yaxuan Liu’s portfolio makes use of graphic design, comic strips, and board game design to represent work of domestic and urban scale.

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SPONSORED CONTENT

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Schools Showcase Sustainability

Showcase

The Metropolis Future100 studied at some of the finest architecture and interior design programs in North America. Here are some of those educational institutions for you to consider for your own learning journey.

For a digital version, go to metropolismag.com

Auburn University College of Human Sciences Auburn University is an R1 land-, sea-, and space-grant institution with Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement Classication. The nationally-ranked, CIDA-accredited Interior Design program, housed in the College of Human Sciences, is a highly competitive program that prepares students to be holistic design practitioners—professionally competent, globally aware, and socially engaged. Students can also pursue advanced study through our nationally-ranked, interdisciplinary M.S. and Ph.D. programs. Assistantships are available. @chsatau | aub.ie/interiordesign

New York School of Interior Design Congratulations Violette Chartock for being selected as one of the Metropolis Future100! New York School of Interior Design’s mission is to provide the most innovative, immersive, and transformative interior design education in the world. With seven different programs including graduate programs for both career changers and experienced designers, as well as specialized degrees including our Master of Professional Studies in Sustainable Interior Environments, NYSID offers something for every interior designer.

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The Boston Architectural College The Boston Architectural College is a national leader in online sustainable design education. The BAC's Master of Design Studies in Sustainable Design curriculum is built around whole systems thinking—the philosophy that design of the built environment should be engaged with the larger systems of nature and society. Students cover subjects ranging from sustainable regional and community planning, healthy and green building design, and sustainable policy and advocacy. @theBACBoston | the-bac.edu

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Contemporary technology, service-learning experiences, and internship opportunities make a BS in Interior Architecture + Design at UMass Dartmouth the ideal way to launch your professional design career.

At the only public institution offering this degree in New England, this program within the College of Visual & Performing Arts (CVPA) provides the tools to cultivate your creative and technical design skills. cvpainfo@umassd.edu | @umassdcvpa | umassd.edu/cvpa

Marymount University Congratulations to Nicolas Swaner for his selection in the Metropolis Future 100! Whether you are graduating high school, completing an associate degree, changing careers or advancing your industry knowledge, Marymount University can fit your needs – offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in Interior Design. Located just outside Washington, D.C., our programs develop qualified professionals through an interdisciplinary approach to design that emphasizes critical thinking and lifelong learning. @marymountid | marymount.edu/interiordesign

University of Wisconsin-Stout The University of Wisconsin-Stout is a career-focused, polytechnic university that offers 50 undergraduate and 21 graduate degrees in fields ranging from art and design to science and engineering, and everything in between. Unique degrees include Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Design and Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Interior Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design & Interactive Media, Game Design & Development, Animation & Digital Media, Studio Art, and more. @uwstoutpics | uwstout.edu

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NOTEWORTHY Virginia San Fratello

I can’t think if my legs aren’t moving. I went out for a walk to think about what I might write for this column and realized that walking enables me. For over a decade, I have been walking in the southern parts of the high desert of the San Luis Valley where it meets the Taos Plateau, which spans southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. The ground in this region has been used to make buildings and pottery for thousands of years, and as I wander its volcanic landscape, I collect the ground. It is my medium for 3D-printing ceramics and buildings such as the Casa Covida, pictured here, a house for cohabitation and respite during the time of COVID. Right now this 152

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ground is covered with snow. The surrounding mountains look like alabaster, and the sky closest to the earth is filled with icy cirrus clouds. It feels like I’m walking through a vast white canvas where my mind can wander. As I walk, I contemplate a future where additive manufacturing can interface with natural phenomena—such as earth and snow—outside of the lab and outside of the factory, and I realize this is my way forward.

Virginia San Fratello is cofounder with Ronald Rael of the multidisciplinary studio Rael San Fratello. Earlier this year, Teeter-Totter Wall, their temporary installation with Colectivo Chopeke along the U.S.–Mexico border, was named a Beazley Design of the Year by London’s Design Museum.

COURTESY ELLIOT ROSS

ON WANDERING

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Aerie

Made in America | Versteel.com

M I R AG E C O L L E C T I O N

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