2023 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE
Winner International Architecture Award
Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso Is a "Phaidon
Louise Presents The Derfner Museum At AIANY
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
Poets House Auditorium Opens To Teardrop Park
"Maps + Movies" Engaged The Public
LOCAL + GLOBAL SCOPE
Off-The-Grid Staff Housing In Burundi, Africa
Educational Inspiration At NYC Community Charter School
AN ECONOMY OF MEANS
Chelsea Court Affordable Housing Celebrates 10+Years
SUSTAINABILITY
Poets House Library Achieves LEED Gold
VHW Staff Housing In Burundi Is 100% Off-The-Grid
Sustainable "Repurposed" Brooklyn Public Branch Library
Layers
VENICE BIENNALE
2023 Venice Biennale
CENTRO DE ARTES NADIR AFONSO
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION WITH ART
Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso Museum
BOTICAS, PORTUGAL
Centro de Artes Nadir Afonso literally and figuratively breaks new ground in Portugal. Divided into two distinct but connected parts, the new sustainable museum merges landscape and architecture into a bifurcated sustainable building consisting of an urbane cultural structure facing the newly built municipal building and a green-roof park covered below-grade exhibition hall facing the rolling hills adjacent to Boticas. The urban face of the building includes a double-height entry hall and a one-hundred-seat auditorium that contribute to the civic stature of this growing Portuguese town. The exhibition space, embedded in the hillside and covered with a sustainable planted green roof park, functions as a connection to the more pastoral section of the town. The below-grade exhibit hall and surrounding outdoor court are carved out of the natural hillside.
Strategically located at the intersection of a newly built national highway, the new 20,000-square-foot sustainable museum can also serve as an anchor for additional development within the adjacent region. The museum is poised to become a global destination that will expose the art of Nadir Afonso to a much larger audience for it has the potential to serve as a cultural and economic engine to drive the growth of both the local and regional economy.
DERFNER MUSEUM
The Derfner Judaica Museum
RIVERDALE, NEW YORK
The design for the 5000 square foot Derfner Judaica Museum located at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, New York establishes a sophisticated prototype for the design of cultural institutions in the era of the aging, urbane, baby-boom generation. It is a forward-thinking yet humane environment comprised of accessible spaces that are architecturally comfortable, curatorially comprehensible and technologically equipped to meet the needs of both the current and future elderly. The urbanity of the Derfner Museum allows boomers to experience the intellectual stimulation typical of the Manhattan art scene within their own immediate surroundings.
SUSTAINABLE HOUSE
Early Sustainable House
WESTCHESTER, NEW YORK
This is a house that both grows out of the landscape and is open to the landscape, emerging from the ledge upon which it is built. Constructed on a wooded lot, it straddles the northernmost part of the site like a line in the earth, delineating the spare cultivated land to the north form the heavily wooded forest to the south. This high-performance house is a model of sustainability, containing radiant heat, multi-zoned air conditioning, low-energy glazing, and low VOC plaster interior finishes that are the core of today’s green LEED thinking.
KIGUTU MASTERPLAN
Master Plan for a Sustainable Kigutu
KIGUTU, BURUNDI
Capturing the romance between East African elemental aesthetics and inventive off-the-grid sustainability, the master plan for this 40 acre rural mountainous Burundian site manifests the villagers’ love for their land. Yet Kigutu is also a community where conversation creates social fabric. These conversations, that are typically informal, in groups and outdoors, are the impetus for the design of a series of bucolic communal places and spaces that encourage dialogue.
KIGUTU STAFF HOUSING
Village Health Works Staff Housing
KIGUTU, BURUNDI
Merging architecture and landscape, the design of the 18 bed Staff Housing for Village Health Works in Kigutu, Burundi is a romance between east African elemental aesthetics and inventive off-the-grid sustainability. Cutting a skewed line in the terrain, the 6,000 square foot dormitory is sited to capture the breathtaking mountain views. The porosity of the porches encourages sociability, enhances air flow, and frames magnificent unobstructed transverse views of the landscape beyond.
