With 90+ categories and 300+ jurors, the Architizer A+Awards is the world’s definitive architectural awards program. In anticipation of the Awards Gala and Phaidon book launch on May 14, we are pleased to share the stories behind the winners of the 2015 Awards program — see all of them here.
ORE Design won the 2015 A+Awards, Popular Choice, for the Landscape & Planning: Private Garden Category with Riverpark Farm. An uncommon oasis, Riverpark Farm joins a growing movement in urban agriculture, using unconventional spaces and technologies for crop harvesting within a densely populated environment.
Your name: Thomas Olin Kosbau
Firm name: ORE Design + Technology
Location: Gowanus, Brooklyn
Education: Bachelor of Architecture, University of Oregon
When did you decide that you wanted to be an architect?
I was enrolled as a chemistry major and was traveling through Amsterdam in 1999 when I came across a Kisho Kurokawa retrospective (in the Van Gogh Museum Annex he designed). I immediately fell in love with his hand-carved, six-foot-tall dark walnut models of double helical super cities rising out of the Tokyo Bay, as well as his rooms-as-plant-cells diagrams. I made the switch to architecture as soon as I returned to school.
First architecture/design job:
Right after I visited that Kurokawa exhibition, I started visiting architecture offices. I was living in Wiesbaden, Germany, at the time, and a small local firm allowed me to job-shadow for the summer. They gave me a desk and an instruction manual for Vectorworks (called Nemetschek at the time) and left me to my own devices, which was a great way to explore the profession. I ended the summer building physical models, sitting in construction meetings, and hearing the partners complain about the economics of being an architect.
Design hero and/or favorite building (and why):
I may be biased because I used to share a studio with them — or perhaps because I was able to witness their process so closely in parallel to my own startup architectural practice — but nArchitects always impresses me with the quality and quantity of work that they produce. Managing an office is an art. Incorporating innovative design into built projects, from convincing clients to making each project work, is masterful. Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang are getting astounding results from their team.
What do you find exciting about architecture and design right now?
More and more frequently I meet young architectural firms that are experimenting with the business of architecture. I get very excited when I find that a principal of a firm is thinking of the office less as a professional service fee vehicle and more as an entrepreneurial engine. Learning how to create financial projections, business plans, pro formas, etc., is an extremely useful skill for any architect who wants to be a larger stakeholder in the decision-making of a project.
Tell us something that people might not know about your A+Award submission:
The portability of the farm was tested before it even opened. When Hurricane Irene threatened to make a New York landfall, ORE and 10 volunteers moved the entire farm (6,000 mature crops) into the lobby of an adjacent building. The image of a farm in a corporate lobby is striking. I wish that I had designed that as a project, or that I at least had a better camera with me.
Which jurors do you find most compelling and why?
I’m a longtime fan of David Benjamin‘s coupling of architecture and biology. I’m very excited to see where his partnership with Autodesk leads both in terms of new research, but also how it will inform the tools that Autodesk creates.
Among your fellow A+Award winners, what is/are your favorite(s)?
Cykelslangen (The Bicycle Snake) looks like such a fun experience to use on your daily commute. It is so deceptively simple and reads like a diagram of a bridge, but looks like it affords cyclists a sense of soaring through that volume of space as the sidewalk disengages from the earth. I had the opportunity to visit David Benjamin’s Hy-Fi last summer. We have been experimenting with Mycelium in the office, as well, so it was great to see how that material might be realized in architecture. Beyond the material innovation, the interior spaces that the pavilion created and the shadow-play made visiting the project a rich experience.
Other than your computer (or phone), what is your most important tool?
Multilateral problem-solving instilled in us through our education and practice is the most important tool of an architect.
Outside of architecture, where do you look for inspiration?
ORE feels the line between architectural practice and the world that informs it can be very porous. The daily experience informs the human interface of a project (the materials, the scale, how light emphasized form …). We are also continually inspired by natural systems and new developments in research, which we often try to synthesize into a design concept for competitions (HYDRAL, DESAL, PYLON, SAND.STONE.ROAD …).
See all of the 2015 A+Award Winners here and all of the Winner Q+As here — and order the book from Phaidon here.