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The day before his inauguration, Barack Obama made an appearance at the Washington, DC, homeless-youth center Sasha Bruce House, pulling down a stubborn curtain and rolling cerulean paint on the walls according to a redesign by New York-based architecture firm HWKN. And while studio namesakes Matthias Hollwich (the HW) and Marc Kushner (KN) admit their $1,500 scheme merely created cleaner and more private spaces, the outpouring of responses to the project pegged it as revolutionary. Scores of TV viewers contacted their SoHo office to learn how they, too, could construct a more socially responsible reality.   MORE >>

The day before his inauguration, Barack Obama made an appearance at the Washington, DC, homeless-youth center Sasha Bruce House, pulling down a stubborn curtain and rolling cerulean paint on the walls according to a redesign by New York-based architecture firm HWKN. And while studio namesakes Matthias Hollwich (the HW) and Marc Kushner (KN) admit their $1,500 scheme merely created cleaner and more private spaces, the outpouring of responses to the project pegged it as revolutionary. Scores of TV viewers contacted their SoHo office to learn how they, too, could construct a more socially responsible reality.

Since 2006—when Hollwich, a 38-year-old German, and Kushner, a New Jersey-born 32-year-old, met in the office kitchen of progressive Berlin-based architect Jürgen Mayer—the partners have wanted to get more people talking about their craft.

That method entails making observations. Instead of performing a typical young-architect renovation, in 2008 HWKN lined part of a 4,000-square-foot Manhattan apartment with built-in storage that changes volume to accommodate an extensive Judaica collection and other trappings. Although built from familiar materials such as MDF, cork and bleached ash plywood, the so-called Wall Unitizer articulated its homeowners' lifestyle more expressly than the foyer table, breakfront and desk they had originally requested.

Their method also means taking positions. For the annual Evolo Skyscraper Competition in 2006, HWKN's Skygrove tower features multiple legs resembling a mangrove tree, which can better withstand flooding from rising seas. "It's too late to avoid global warming, so it heightens awareness of that reality," Hollwich says. Indeed, Skygrove personifies HWKN's concept of "econic" design—creating green-minded icons that galvanize people to embrace sustainability in every aspect of their lives.

But the pair's growing body of work is not limited to the physical realm. "Architecture is about communication," Kushner says. "And to communicate, every tool is at your disposal." Their latest tool is Architizer, an online social networking site and project database for the architecture community. Echoing a familiar theme, Kushner says, "It's a way to reach a greater population, to show them what we do and to make architecture consumable instead of an out-of-reach art form."

Following a 2009 commission at LA's Virgil Skilled Nursing Center, the pair has set its sights on geriatric environments. In addition to overseeing the mid-April New Aging Conference at UPenn, HWKN is on track to complete a retirement facility in Africa's Ivory Coast for elderly priests in 2012. Residences are arranged in a village configuration, an on-site school allows priests to teach the local population and other radically communal gestures all banish the ascetic spaces that today define the end of life. It promises to position the duo as architects who are as sensitive as they are fearless. hwkn.com   << LESS

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James Coombes and Dominique Gonfard see the bright side in a depressing marketplace. The two met in a restaurant four years ago, married last November and officially launched Lerival just a month before their wedding. It was a love match with the market, too: the New York-based company, which produces furniture designed by architects, has already expanded into European distribution.   MORE >>

"When I was doing my masters in architecture, I began to notice that a lot of firms were doing interesting furniture work, as a custom piece or to test a material or fabrication process," Gonfard, 28, says of her student days at Parsons. "But the pieces weren’t getting the attention they deserved." In these less-harried times, 27-year-old Coombes adds, "Architects have more time to consider alternative ventures that come their way."

Sometimes acting on a tip about designs gathering dust, or simply recognizing that an oeuvre could work nicely writ small, Coombes and Gonfard introduced local and international firms Della Valle Bernheimer, Incorporated, Moorhead & Moorhead, nARCHITECTS and Carl Fredrik Svenstedt to their alternative venture, and enrolled them to supply the firm's first series of products. "All the talents possess unique and singular approaches to their work, yet have a sharp attention to details and materials in common," says Gonfard, "as well as an ability to work consistently and meticulously across varying scales."

The results largely straddle scale with modularity. In the Plate Shelf by nARCHITECTS, reconfigurable aluminum plates slip in and out of slotted white-oak volumes, and the Hex Table by Incorporated grows and shrinks according to the number of stainless-steel pods arranged within a single footprint. It's similar in principle to Incorporated's Endless Sofa, in which five-inch-wide segments of leather-wrapped foam are zippered together.

Honestly conveying the relationships between material and fabrication, the Moorhead & Moorhead-designed Felt Stool is a sheet of industrial felt folded and riveted into a three-dimensional form that is simultaneously structure and upholstery. And by CNC-routing concentric hoops from two sheets of furniture-grade plywood, Svenstedt created the undulating Infinity Bench. "We pride ourselves on maintaining intimate relationships with the designers and the fabricators, and we’re really trying to involve both in the development process," says Gonfard.

Looking ahead, the couple mentions that some of the greatest examples of modernist furniture were the work of architects. For this spring's ICFF, they'll spotlight Della Valle Bernheimer's Jack table, which features—surprise—modular linking legs and a topographical desktop whose mass-customized indentations accommodate the user's size and organizational preferences. They're also developing new pieces with Los Angeles architect Elena Manferdini and other Mies in the makings. And Gonfard promises that the innovation of these pieces will not only make a splash in the design world, but also "influence the overall way we do business." lerival.com   << LESS

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When Zaha Hadid won the commission to design a new art museum in Rome's Flaminio neighborhood, Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao was two years old, Zaha's office was twenty-strong and the world was heading into a boom period. Ten years later, the 312,000-square-foot MAXXI (National Museum of the 21st Century Arts) seems at first glance like just another starchitect project. Instead, the MAXXI, developed and run by Italy's Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities as a way of bringing the nation fully into the current century, is a leap forward in museum architecture as remarkable as Gehry's Guggenheim.   MORE >>

When Zaha Hadid won the commission to design a new art museum in Rome's Flaminio neighborhood, Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao was two years old, Zaha's office was twenty-strong and the world was heading into a boom period. Ten years later, the 312,000-square-foot MAXXI (National Museum of the 21st Century Arts) seems at first glance like just another starchitect project. Instead, the MAXXI, developed and run by Italy's Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities as a way of bringing the nation fully into the current century, is a leap forward in museum architecture as remarkable as Gehry's Guggenheim.
The project transforms the idea of a museum from a central and coherent block and moves it in a new direction. "We wanted to compose a building out of a field of elements," project architect Gianluca Racana says of the MAXXI, which is built mostly from concrete, steel and glass, and incorporates galleries for art and architecture produced since 2000. The building also includes an auditorium, library and conference rooms. "It's a space you have to explore, visit and navigate before getting a full grasp of it," he says.
One of the firm's biggest challenges was in engineering the concrete facade, a surface that also functions as the galleries' interior walls, requiring the material to incorporate both strength and sleekness. Overall, the coiled, snake-like building exemplifies motion—forward and back, up and down, twisting and turning.
This playfulness sets the building apart from so many others that have opened in the post-Bilbao craze. As much as Gehry’s curved-titanium ship was a marker for so-called helicoptered-in structures, the MAXXI, which appears to grow out of the ground, is the perfect architectural expression of our diversified and ultimately elusive museum culture. maxxi.beniculturali.it, zaha-hadid.com   << LESS

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