Since the winners of the Architectural League’s annual League Prize are young, and have a limited body of built work, perhaps the award’s most interesting aspect is its accompanying exhibition. For this show, winners are given (relatively) free rein to take on a common theme, presenting all (or some or none) of their past work. The competition is judged on the basis of portfolios (something juror Claire Weisz calls a “seemingly arcane form”) submitted by young architects and designers no more than ten years out of school.
Diverse formats and methods abound in the six installations featured in this year’s exhibition, themed Objective. The works, which range from a postcard stand to a pin-up of finely-plotted maps, allude to the ambiguity of the exhibition’s theme: “objective” can be defined as both shared goals, or truths or realities. “There is a broad interest in storytelling and public engagement, evidenced in the projects themselves as well as how the winners present their work,” says the League’s program director Anne Rieselbach, who has overseen the League Prize program, which includes the jury process, lectures, publications, and more, since 1987.
This year’s show examines, cumulatively, where objectives might be developed—whether in the home, the public sphere, elsewhere—and how they might be transmitted and perpetuated―via history, politics, or community. “The winners show that architecture can have objectives that expand beyond the footprint of the object,” juror and past prize winner Neeraj Bhatia said.
“Many of the firms are interested in analysis, both historic and contextual,” Rieselbach explains. “That’s something really different and partly in response to the theme this year.”
Given how our political and social common ground feels under persistent threat today, it feels impossible today to ignore history and context, in architecture and beyond.
The exhibition, which is surprisingly airy given its single white-box room, is located at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School of Design through August 4.
Anya SirotaSirota’s freestanding maquettes distill some of the Detroit designer’s mobile public-art installations. Sirota explains that the scale and siting of her built work, as well as their poppy and exuberant counterparts on view, helps explore how architecture can “engage broad audiences and participate in public discourse,” an idea especially encapsulated in her spacey DJ booth from 2015 inspired by Motown.
Anya SirotaSirota’s freestanding maquettes distill some of the Detroit designer’s mobile public-art installations. Sirota explains that the scale and siting of her built work, as well as their poppy and exuberant counterparts on view, helps explore how architecture can “engage broad audiences and participate in public discourse,” an idea especially encapsulated in her spacey DJ booth from 2015 inspired by Motown.
Coryn Kempster and Julia JamrozikThis duo stages what is probably the most physically engaging installation in the show. The Buffalo, New York designers, who find their “objectives in subjectivity, in stories told, places visited, and spaces imagined,” have an accordingly residential-heavy body of work, postcards of which are arranged in a display stand and are free for the taking. They describe the playful installation as an “un-precious and accessible framework that invites interaction.”
Coryn Kempster and Julia JamrozikThis duo stages what is probably the most physically engaging installation in the show. The Buffalo, New York designers, who find their “objectives in subjectivity, in stories told, places visited, and spaces imagined,” have an accordingly residential-heavy body of work, postcards of which are arranged in a display stand and are free for the taking. They describe the playful installation as an “un-precious and accessible framework that invites interaction.”
Gabriel Cuéllar and Athar MufrehCuéllar and Mufreh, founders of Brooklyn practice Cadaster, emphasize the visualization of political-geographical information in their work, scaling up from architecture. Their installation verges on urban and regional planning (what they call the “architecture of territories”) through the creation of ornate maps. The maps and texts communicate the relationship between overlooked data categories and geography, infusing cartography with local politics of race, climate change, and more. "It’s great to see work so rooted in exploring what it is about a particular place that determines how and what to do," said juror Claire Weisz.
Gabriel Cuéllar and Athar MufrehCuéllar and Mufreh, founders of Brooklyn practice Cadaster, emphasize the visualization of political-geographical information in their work, scaling up from architecture. Their installation verges on urban and regional planning (what they call the “architecture of territories”) through the creation of ornate maps. The maps and texts communicate the relationship between overlooked data categories and geography, infusing cartography with local politics of race, climate change, and more. "It’s great to see work so rooted in exploring what it is about a particular place that determines how and what to do," said juror Claire Weisz.
Bryony RobertsNew York–based Roberts, perhaps the best known among the group of designers, laid out her work, which encompasses performance, writing, textiles, and more, in a series of simple laminated-cover booklets along a zig-zagging surface, with a print of one of her studies into geometrical stone patterns spanning the height of the wall behind.
Bryony RobertsNew York–based Roberts, perhaps the best known among the group of designers, laid out her work, which encompasses performance, writing, textiles, and more, in a series of simple laminated-cover booklets along a zig-zagging surface, with a print of one of her studies into geometrical stone patterns spanning the height of the wall behind.
Bryony RobertsWhile a political dimension is alternatively easy and difficult to detect here, Roberts’s recent collaboration with Mabel O. Wilson Marching On at Storefront for Art and Architecture confronts the political more directly.
Bryony RobertsWhile a political dimension is alternatively easy and difficult to detect here, Roberts’s recent collaboration with Mabel O. Wilson Marching On at Storefront for Art and Architecture confronts the political more directly.
Dan SpiegelSpiegel, of the San Francisco–based SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop, also examines the domestic sphere as a site of understanding objectivities. His nine scale models, each representing past projects, are set in open (to the front) boxes affixed to the wall.
Dan SpiegelSpiegel, of the San Francisco–based SAW // Spiegel Aihara Workshop, also examines the domestic sphere as a site of understanding objectivities. His nine scale models, each representing past projects, are set in open (to the front) boxes affixed to the wall.
Dan SpiegelBy isolating sections and distilling perspectives of the projects, a specific condition is frozen in time and space, allowing an examination of subjective experiences of “objective” space. According to juror Claire Weisz, "It’s clear that this work shows a dexterity in playing with the processes of development."
Dan SpiegelBy isolating sections and distilling perspectives of the projects, a specific condition is frozen in time and space, allowing an examination of subjective experiences of “objective” space. According to juror Claire Weisz, "It’s clear that this work shows a dexterity in playing with the processes of development."
Alison Von Glinow and Lap Chi KwongThese Chicagoans installed a wood model of their award-winning Table Top Apartments, a concept for a large housing project defined by geometries and shared space. It combines overlapping square, rectangular, and circular plans to allow for endless interior courtyards and slices of refuge, “creating a diversity of spatial experiences,” according to the duo.
Alison Von Glinow and Lap Chi KwongThese Chicagoans installed a wood model of their award-winning Table Top Apartments, a concept for a large housing project defined by geometries and shared space. It combines overlapping square, rectangular, and circular plans to allow for endless interior courtyards and slices of refuge, “creating a diversity of spatial experiences,” according to the duo.
Alison Von Glinow and Lap Chi KwongTable Top gestures toward forging new ways of efficiently housing populations while creating shared spaces for social interactions.
Courtesy The Architectural League of New York
Alison Von Glinow and Lap Chi KwongTable Top gestures toward forging new ways of efficiently housing populations while creating shared spaces for social interactions.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer, while employed at the Architectural League in 2017, was involved in the presentation and publication of past League Prize–winning work, as well as in the development of this year’s League Prize theme.
You can find other video interviews—produced by Zoë Zellers—with 2018 Architectural League Prize winners on Hunter Douglas Architectural’s blog:
