Here, we ask designers to take a selfie and give us an inside look at their life.
Age: 38 (JK). 37 (ID).
Occupation: Designer and teacher (JK). Architect and teacher (ID).
Instagram: @new_affiliates
Hometown: Albany, NY (JK). Athens, Greece (ID).
Studio location: Financial District, New York.
Describe what you make: Buildings, renovations, installations, messes.
The most important thing you’ve designed to date: Our Testbeds project in collaboration with architectural historian Sam Stewart-Halevy. It’s a self-initiated project to reuse architectural mockups as cornerstones of public structures in community gardens. We’re building our first iteration this spring!
Describe the problem your work solves: We like to understand how architecture operates within cultures of material excess and how architects can locate value in forgotten, underused, and sometimes abject things.
Describe the project you are working on now: We’re working on a lot of projects (a house, a studio arts building, a coffee shop, and an installation, among others) that deal with clashes in material, from media to physical design artifacts, existing structures and industrial byproducts.
A new or forthcoming project we should know about: Immediately, we have three exhibitions we worked on in various capacities all open in February. “Tomas Saraceno: Particular Matter(s)” at the Shed; “Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running” at the Jewish Museum; “Rashaad Newsome: Assembly” at the Park Avenue Armory.
We’re also working on a cheap-and-fast getaway home in Vermont that starts with a steel butler frame under which smaller structures are built to create a house with many durations and uses, which will complete September 2022.
What you absolutely must have in your studio: Our office tree, which we got when we formed our office and has grown about six feet since!
What you do when you’re not working: Everything with an attempt at nothing (JK). Reading, not architecture (ID).
Sources of creative envy: Geological time.
The distraction you want to eliminate: Distractions are good (JK). Zoom meetings (ID).
Concrete or marble? Granite!
High-rise or townhouse? High-rise in the city, homestead in the country (JK). Townhouse (ID).
Remember or forget? Forget (JK). Most definitely remember (ID).
Aliens or ghosts? Ghosts, zombies, and anything with an afterlife.
Dark or light? Contrast (JK). A mix (ID).
