ARCHITECTS ON OLANA
Experience Olana’s Main House through the eyes of an architect. The Olana Partnership introduces a new series which invites contemporary architects to interpret Olana. Susan Wides, Director and Curator of Steven Holl’s ‘T’ Space, Rhinebeck has curated the series to include some of the world’s leading voices.
This series was offered in conjunction with In Frederic Church’s Ombra: Architecture in Conversation with Nature, hosted at the Sharp Family Gallery from May 12 to November 3, 2019.
Architect Bios
Matthias Neumann & Natalia Roumelioti
Natalia Roumelioti is an architect and artist living in NYC. She is the co-founder & creative director of Ruho Design. She is also the founder of NTILIT, a design studio dedicated to a passion for creating wearable sculptures. Ruho Design is a multidisciplinary design studio focusing on the transformation of old objects into high-end furniture. She studied architecture at NTUA of Athens, pursued a Master in Design/Space/Culture at the NTUA, and later, a Master on Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University in NY. www.thegreekdesigners.com/2017/01/22/ruho-design-present-remnants/
Matthias Neumann is a Brooklyn based artist and architect. His projects were presented at venues such as Manifesta 8, Spain, Galeria HIT, Slovakia, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Romania, SITE:Lab, Queens Museum, Montalvo Art Center, Jule Collins Smith Museum, and the Cape Cod Museum of Art, among others, in addition to a significant number of public art installations throughout the US. He is a Kaplan Director’s Award of the Cape Cod Museum of Art recipient, and his work has been recognized nationally and internationally. He is a fellow at Mac Dowell Colony, MoKS, Estonia, Lower Austrian Architecture Network (ORTE), I-Park, and Vermont Studio Center. He currently teaches at the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College New York. www.normaldesign.com
Christian Wassmann
Christian Wassmann (born 1974) began his career in Switzerland at age fifteen when he started an apprenticeship as an architectural draftsman. He studied interior architecture at the University of Art and Design in Zürich and architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Since 1997, he has collaborated with like-minded artists and architects. In 2005, he established Studio Christian Wassmann in NYC. In 2010 Christian Wassmann received the Swiss Art Award in the architecture category, and in 2012, the Studio won the AIA New York New Practices Award. His design objects are represented by R&Company and his first monograph and manifesto was published by Koenig Books in 2017. He is currently building two houses Upstate including one for his family. www.christianwassmann.com
Cathryn Dwyre & Chris Perry
Cathryn Dwyre is Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture. She received a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in philosophy and geology from Colgate University. Dwyre previously served as managing editor of ViaBooks and its volume Dirt (MIT Press).
Chris Perry is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at Rensselaer’s School of Architecture. He received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University and a B.A. in philosophy from Colgate University. Perry is a recipient of the Architectural League’s Young Architects Award and co-guest editor of AD: Collective Intelligence in Design (Wiley-Academy).
Dwyre and Perry are co-principals of the experimental design practice pneumastudio, the work of which has been exhibited at the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, the Design Museum in Barcelona, and NYU. Publishers that have featured pneumastudio’s work include Routledge, Actar, Prestel, and Wiley-Academy.
Dwyre and Perry are co-recipients of the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, co-editors of a special issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art (MIT Press), co-curators of the exhibition Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural, and co-editors of a forthcoming book featuring work from the Ambiguous Territory exhibition and content from its affiliated symposium.
Clara (Mu) He
Ms. Clara (Mu) He graduated from Columbia University in 2019 with a B.A. in degree in art history and mathematics and is currently pursuing a Master degree in Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. During her undergraduate studies, she conducted research on the social implications of architecture in rural reconstruction in contemporary China. Clara is the co-founder of Columbia Art Business Association, an organization that seeks to connect students with art business industry knowledge, career opportunities, and mentorship. In 2018, Clara organized Columbia China Art International Development Forum, which aims to facilitate conversations on China’s future cultural perspectives and the shifting landscape of Chinese Art. Clara is also a freelance photographer.
Jane Stageberg & Tim Bade
Jane Stageberg is a principal at Bade Stageberg Cox Architecture, a Brooklyn-based firm founded in 2006. With her partners Tim Bade and Martin Cox, Jane has developed a practice exploring the intersections of architecture, landscape and the visual arts. Bade Stageberg Cox has designed such award-winning projects as the National Academy Museum + School, Cubic Housing, the Art Cave, Grafted House, MoMA’s PS1 Summer Blow Up, and Casa de Sombra. Jane attended Harvard University Masters of Architecture program and has taught at Parsons The New School, co-taught a graduate design studio at Cornell University with her partners, and is a frequent guest juror at Pratt University, New York Institute of Technology and City College of NY School of Architecture. Jane is an active member of ArtTable, a leadership organization for professional women in the arts.
Tim Bade worked at Steven Holl Architects for 13 years and was named Partner in 2006 prior to joining Bade Stageberg Cox. After initial work on the Helsinki Museum, Tim was promoted to Senior Designer for such notable projects as the Chapel of St. Ignatius, the Center Wing of Higgins Hall, Pratt School of Architecture Simmons Hall at MIT, and a modern interior renovation of a historic building for the Department of Philosophy at NYU. At Bade Stageberg Cox and at Steven Holl, Tim has worked with a wide variety of client groups to execute exceptional designs. Current work in the studio includes a research project exploring speculations on the hereafter, resulting in the design of The Evergreen House, a communal mausoleum featured at Art Omi in the spring of 2019. http://www.bscarchitecture.com/
Daniel Sachs & Kevin Lindores
A graduate of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Daniel Sachs studied sculpture and photography in the late 1970s, an era Minimalist, even austere. This education, anchored primarily in the principles of the Bauhaus, lent Sachs a rational aesthetic which his own later studies in the history of architecture, design and the decorative arts would expand to embrace the more ornamental styles of earlier eras. His aim, whatever the artifacts, is always the house and interior as totalized work of art, one in which structure, plan and function, beautifully conceived, are a platform for all history has to offer, controlled and refined by his original eye. For Sachs, an exalted moment of the design process is the selection and display of works of art, through a prodigious, often personal knowledge of art and artists.
Kevin Lindores received his architectural degree from Carleton University, Ottawa, continuing his studies at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. As an undergraduate, Lindores wrote about the architecture of houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a passion for the buildings of Adolf Loos, Edwin Lutyens and McKim, Meade & White, all architects whose work departed from the 19th century while retaining respect for its richness and ornament. Lindores hews distinctive architectural spaces from the ordinary, often transforming buildings from the outside in. It is no surprise that the firm’s practice now includes the design of free-standing buildings, all of them shaped by Lindores’ vision.
Sachs and Lindores met while both working for Frank Gehry in Los Angeles, bringing the architect’s designs for furniture and sculpture to realization. In 2000 they began working in NY on residential projects which frequently involve major architectural alteration of existing buildings and apartments. In 2011, they won the prestigious Palladio Award for design and execution of their first ground-up building, a Shingle Style-inspired house in Portsmouth, RI. While referencing a historical style, the house nevertheless breaks new architectural ground: its organization both of interior spaces and facades is original, a complex chiaroscuro of vast windows and walls, brick or shingled. Sachs and Lindores bring to design the seriousness of both creator and curator. www.sachslindores.com
This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.