Archive

  1. In the news | Summer 2022

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    The Van Alen network has been busy this summer! We’re thrilled to share a few recent accomplishments and accolades…

    Van Alen Board member Nnenna Lynch was named Chairwoman of the Board for the New York Road Runners (NYRR). Upon the announcement, she said, “Running has been a lifelong passion of mine, and after eight years of serving as a Board Member supporting NYRR’s community impact initiatives, I’m looking forward to serving in this role to help further NYRR’s presence in the community for future generations.”

    As a 2022 League Prize winner, design team Dept. spoke with the Architectural League of New York about Good Neighbor Stormwater Park. Located in North Miami, FL, this a stormwater retention basin doubles as a public park, and was an outcome of our 2019 initiative Keeping Current. Dept. principal Isaac Stein noted, “So many stormwater management projects are just holes in the ground that are fenced off and are very much not part of the community. I think the success of our approach was that we thought of the park as something that could tie together both public space and stormwater management.”

    Van Alen Board member Kia Weatherspoon and Point of Action designer Nina Cooke John were celebrated by the Future Rising initiative. Presented by Oprah Daily and Hearst Magazines, Future Rising tells the stories of 49 Black leaders across disciplines. Catch up with these conversations with Kia Weatherspoon in Veranda and Nina Cooke John in ELLE Decor.

  2. Office of Lou Arencibia

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    OLA is a landscape architecture and urban design studio dedicated to crafting meaningful spaces that reflect the unique spirit and story of each site. Our projects are made with honesty and clarity to serve the people, nature, and functions that inhabit them. As a team with diverse backgrounds and curiosities, we share an openness to different ways of living and perspectives of space. We believe that meaningful design unfolds from strong relationships. Together, we seek to uplift people and places through the creative process.

    Lou Arencibia founded the studio in 2018 in New York City. Since then, the office has grown to include a Miami studio that supports our work in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. Our portfolio spans all scales, from masterplans to waterfronts, parks, streetscapes, plazas, rooftops, and private gardens. Through our collaborations, we shape the experiences of public spaces, cultural destinations, hotels, residences, workplaces, and educational facilities.

    Lou Arencibia LLC is certified by the National Minority Supplier Development Council as well as the New York City Department of Small Business Services as a M/WBE firm.

    — louarencibia.com

  3. Bryony Roberts Studio

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    Bryony Roberts Studio is an award-winning design and research practice based in New York. Integrating methods from architecture, social practice, and historic preservation, the studio creates community-based projects in the public realm. With projects at international locations such as the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, the City Hall in Columbus, Indiana, the Federal Plaza in Chicago, and Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, New York, the practice works with local creators and community groups to develop processes of interdisciplinary, collaborative exchange. Bryony Roberts Studio was awarded New Practices New York from the AIA New York in 2020, the Architectural League Prize of 2018, and Bryony Roberts received the Rome Prize for 2015-16. The studio has received support from the Graham Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy in Rome, and has exhibited with the Chicago Architecture Biennial of 2015 and Performa 17.

    Complementing the practice, Bryony Roberts also teaches architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York and initiates research projects on design as a social practice. She has edited a book titled Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation published by Lars Müller Publishers, guest-edited the volume of Log 48: Expanding Modes of Practice, and co-edited the volume Log 31: New Ancients.

  4. Austin+Mergold (A+M)

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    Austin + Mergold (A+M) is a design collective, co-founded to engage that vast portion of built environment (especially in the US) that is often developed without the participation of architects. Our first projects in rural American Northeast taught us a great deal about the way construction industry works and how, especially over the course of the last century, it got there. It was there that we also began to wonder if spolia, an ancient practice of recycling, could be re-learned from and practiced with the material remnants and technological legacies of the twentieth century left behind in abundance today. We believe in radical upcycling of materials, technologies and ideas. Keeping the debris from the landfills, finding new uses for old skills, re-imagining forms, and types of the past in new ways will be our best resource yet.

    — austin-mergold.com

  5. Architensions (ATE)

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    Architensions (ATE) is an international architectural design studio and agency of research founded in 2013 and led by Alessandro Orsini and Nick Roseboro. Based in New York City and Rome, the studio investigates architecture, design, and the city with a perspective rooted in site-specificity, exploring ways to connect history, culture, and envisioning new modes of collective living.

    Our studio works at the intersection of practice and academia, focusing on architecture at the intersection of the political, social, and environmental networks. Our process is grounded in an open dialogue between clients, consultants, and local communities to promote inclusive design, materials choices, and climate strategies.

    We engage in projects and research at multiple scales, working with institutions, municipalities, and private clients through design, exhibitions, curatorial work, and writing. We have completed projects in the US, Italy and United Kingdom and some others are under construction and development in Myanmar and Senegal. Recent projects include a vision plan for San Ferdinando, Calabria, Italy (2022) a holistic strategy to develop its urban fabric while focusing on the promotion of the commons and new publics; a large-scale installation, The Playground, for Coachella Music and Art Festival (2022); and an ongoing housing project in Yangon, Myanmar which proposes an alternative model for collective dwelling.

    Our work and research have been published in international magazines such as Domus, Frame, Wallpaper, Architectural Digest, and exhibited at the a83 Gallery (2022), Modest Commons (2023), and Center for Architecture (2022), at The Storefront for Art and Architecture (2017), the Java Project Gallery (2016), the Van Alen Institute (2014). In 2015, Libria published the volume “Forma Urbana,” focusing on studio research through a selection our of projects and writings. The studio was profiled as the Next Progressives in Architect Magazine in September 2020, and in 2021, Cultured Magazine selected Architensions as part of their inaugural young architects list. In 2023 and 2024 Wallpaper Magazine selected Architensions’ principals as part of their 300 and 400 people list of visionaries redefining American creative landscape. Architensions is a recipient of the 25th annual Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard 2024.

    — architensions.com

  6. Studio Zewde

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    Studio Zewde is a landscape design, urban design, and public art practice. Named to the Architectural Digest AD100, an Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York, and one of ArchDaily’s Best New Practices, the studio’s work is lauded for its design methodology that syncs site interpretation and narrative with a dedication to the craft of construction. The firm’s employees have multi-disciplinary backgrounds in landscape design, city planning, urban design, sociology, statistics, community organizing, public art, and beyond. Studio Zewde is devoted to creating enduring places where people belong.

    — studiozewde.com

  7. Studio Cooke John

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    Studio Cooke John, founded by Nina Cooke John, is a multidisciplinary design studio that values placemaking as a way to transform relationships between people and the built environment. Working at the scale of the human body; individually or collectively, in the home or on the street, we respond to how we use space in our everyday lives, whether in the family unit or as a community.

    We play out intimate relationships in the privacy of our homes, but in public, in the streets, we play out important relationships with our neighbors.  It is where we strengthen the bonds with those whose backgrounds might be different to ours as we build community.  It is in public space that we provide a place for and acknowledge the presence of those who have been systematically silenced.

    Throughout the design process, our collaborations with clients and community members, yield insights that inform how we, alongside our network of craftsmen, fabricators and consultants, transform spaces within the home and in the public sphere. What emerge are spaces tailored to each client’s needs, revealing elements of serendipity and surprise.

    – cookejohn.com

  8. Ekene Ijeoma

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    Ekene Ijeoma is an artist, professor at MIT, and the founder and director of the Poetic Justice group at MIT Media Lab. Through both his studio and lab at MIT, Ijeoma researches social inequality across multiple fields including social science to develop artworks in sound, video, multimedia, sculpture and installation. Working from data studies and life experiences, and using both computational design and conceptual art strategies, he reframes social issues through artworks that embody and empower overlooked truths within systems of oppression. Ijeoma’s work has been presented by museums and galleries including Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, Museum of the City of New York, Neuberger Museum of Art, Design Museum London, and Storefront for Art and Architecture. Ijeoma’s practice has also been supported by grants, fellowships and residencies including Creative Capital, Map Fund, Wave Farm, The Kennedy Center, and New York Foundation for the Arts.

  9. Jae Shin

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    Jae Shin is a designer and partner at HECTOR. She recently led the consultant team for Cody Rouge & Warrendale Neighborhood Framework Youth-Centric Neighborhood Plan for the City of Detroit. She previously served as an Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), where she facilitated efforts to define and implement design principles for preserving and rehabilitating New York City’s public housing. She holds degrees in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and architecture from Princeton University. Her projects have received support from the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts, and she has taught design studios at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Yale School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

  10. Leni Schwendinger

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    For more than 20 years, Leni’s exploration of light has evolved into a profound understanding of the medium, which informs her unique approach across a variety of genres, including infrastructure, landmarks and the ever-changing urban environment and inclusive of community engagement practice. Her work weaves the dramatic and playful possibilities of light onto the fabric of urban life, sparking an expansion of social interaction and activity in public gathering places. She is an expert in light planning, with clients in the U.S. such as Downtown Santa Monica, City of Saratoga Springs, 82nd Street Partnership (Queens), and city councils in Australia and Colombia. Recent lighting design projects can be experienced at sites such as parks, subways and bridges for architects, engineers and landscape architects.  Examples include the New York MTA Subway Refurbishment, Cleveland’s Little Italy transit head-house, Hunters Point South Park (NYC) and Mulberry Commons (New Jersey).