Domus is proud to present its first 100+ Best architecture firms, the result

of a complex operation worthy of 90 years of architecture and design

exploration. Our approach follows a new paradigm of associated life,
where architecture is a central if not crucial point of discussion.
But Best architecture firms 2019 is more. It is the latest phase in the
metamorphosis of Domus, a magazine that is evolving into an ecosystem
of contemporary knowledge and competencies, an open workshop where
the critical review of architecture and design is expressed in diverse and
complementary learning experiences – magazine, website, social media,
focus topics, themed forums and data analysis – in a word, investigation.
Our intent is to make Best architecture firms 2019 the first of a yearly
outline of the state of the art of a field that has never been as important
as now. The compilation aims to be a well-honed tool, indispensable to
the different communities that have always formed the Domus mainstay:
architecture and design professionals, public officials, elites and
enthusiasts (not in order of importance).
When we began conceptualising the guide, we were aware of the risks
of the undertaking. We did not want a consumer product undistinguishable
from the many offerings of the “culture industry”. In order to construct an
authoritative source of reference, we adhered to the unique formula that has
been serving us as an elevated standard. We asked the last ten editors-in-
chief – plus the current one – to compile a selection of architecture firms
known for cultural innovation. In exchange, we promised them anonymity.
The result is a rich array. Of course some names are missing, mainly
the above-mentioned Domus editors. That’s a question of style, an
omission we wish to reward by stating here that they fully belong to our
Best Architecture Firms. Otherwise, they would not have been chosen
to conceptually lead Domus.

Walter Mariotti, editorial director

Best architecture firms 2019 003
Adjaye Associates
Principal Since the completion of his first iconic building (Dirty House in London,
Sir David Adjaye 2002), the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye (Dar es Salaam,
Associates Tanzania, 1966) has never stopped experimenting. Currently working a
Lucy Tilley (associate principle, 66-storey concrete skyscraper in New York, a new Holocaust Memorial
UK and global projects), in London and a cathedral in Accra, Ghana, Adjaye Associates (founded
Joe Franchina (associate director, in London in 2000) is known globally for the versatility of its designs.
US and American projects)
Ranging from private houses and exhibition displays to civic and
Staff commercial buildings, the architect’s most celebrated works include the
100 Aïshti Foundation museum and luxury shopping centre (Beirut, 2015), the
Established in Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2007), and the Skolkovo School
June 2000 of Management (Moscow, 2009). But the Smithsonian National Museum
Offices in Washington DC, a 39,000-square-metre exhibition space dedicated to
London, New York City African American history and culture, propelled Adjaye Associates to the
international limelight. Completed in 2016, the tiered building was named
www.adjaye.com
Design of the Year in 2017 by the Design Museum of London. Two years
earlier, on the occasion of the first Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015),
the Art Institute of Chicago presented Adjaye’s first career retrospective.
In 2017, he was granted British knighthood for services to architecture.
His work can be seen at the exhibition “David Adjaye: Making Memory”
hosted at the Design Museum of London until 5 May 2019. It shows how a
building can shape our perception of events and how architecture can be
used to tell stories. Not limiting himself to the architectural realm, Adjaye
has worked on several furniture design projects for major brands such as
Knoll (2014) and Moroso (2015).
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts
Smithsonian NMAAHC, Washington D.C., 2016 (photo Brad Feinknopf)
10
Best architecture firms 2019 004
Agency–Agency ©DOMUS
Principal Agency–Agency was established in New York City by Tei Carpenter
Tei Carpenter (NYC, 1982) in 2014 as a woman-led practice pushing the disciplinary
Staff boundaries of architecture towards new scales, devices and interfaces.
Arianna Deane, Minjae Kim, The studio is currently operating internationally and running a second
Jesse LeCavalier, Ashely Kuo, office in Toronto.
Carsten Rodin, Dan Taeyoung, Carpenter describes her practice as “seeking an expanded role for
Chris Woebken
architecture by engaging buildings, objects, interiors, infrastructures,
Established in speculations and environments,” a quest embodied by two recent
2014 projects on opposite scales. The New Public Hydrant for the city of New
Offices York (2018) is a concept project that redesigns the street hydrant as a
New York City, Toronto water fountain for adults, children, dogs and birds. It was developed
in response to a brief from the Water Futures research programme,
www.agency-agency.us
whose aim is to find design solutions to water scarcity issues. At the
other end of an imaginary line, the competition-winning Testbed project
(Carlsbad, New Mexico, 2017) is an answer to a technical brief: marking
a nuclear waste plant. The proposal transforms passive protection into
active improvement for the environment by integrating carbon-dioxide-
capturing technology inside the envisioned landscape formations.
Enlarging the realm of architectural action is an increasingly relevant
priority for contemporary young practices, and Carpenter’s former
education in the field of philosophy has undoubtedly set a trajectory
towards framing appropriate design questions. This approach is
broadened and shared through Carpenter’s research and teaching
activity as an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and adjunct
assistant professor at Columbia University GSAPP, where she directs the
applied research and design platform Waste Initiative.
Giovanni Comoglio
Testbed Perspective, 2017 (image courtesy of Agency–Agency)
11
Best architecture firms 2019
Andrés Jaque Architects -
Office for Political Innovation
Principals
Andrés Jaque
Associates
Roberto González, Paola
Pardo-Castillo, Luis González
Staff
Alberto Heras, Laura Mora, Marta
Jarabo, Ruggero Agnolutto, Bansi
Mehta, Jesús Meseguer, Garazi
Lara, Senne Meesters, Sebastian
Bech-Ravn, Felipe Arango, Flavio
Martella, Juan David Barreto,
Sebastian Kurth
Established in
2002
Offices
New York City, Madrid
www.officeforpoliticalinnovation.com
18
011
Andrés Jaque (Madrid, 1971) creates architectural “devices”, a concept
that goes beyond the built environment and the building type. He looks
at the social and political performance of the project rather than its
shape. Reacting to our increasingly complex and fragmented reality,
Jaque freely combines architecture with visual and performing arts to
address both the physical and immaterial dimensions of urban space.
Recently appointed as the director of the master’s degree course in
advanced architectural design at Columbia GSAPP in New York City, the
Spanish architect aims to trigger political changes and instigate new
forms of responsibility and subversion. This explains the name he gave to
his firm, Office for Political Innovation, which runs offices in Madrid and
New York.
Banalities, small dystopias and every day contradictions fuel Andrés
Jaque’s investigation. For example, he recently looked at how dating
apps like Tinder and Grindr change the way we interact, use public space,
and how this influences urban transformations. In February 2018, this
analysis was staged at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New
York with the exhibition “Sex and the So-Called City”. He transformed
the gallery into a film set where a documentary celebrating the 20th
anniversary of Sex and the City (the TV series) was produced and
broadcast online.
The office’s most emblematic work is undoubtedly Ikea Disobedients
(2013), the first performance to be acquired by the Architecture and
Design section of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It questions
the standards of the Western family’s domestic spaces. During the
performance, actors designed architectural “devices” that disobey the
(world-famous) instructions provided by the Swedish furniture giant,
creatively asserting their diversity and uniqueness.
Salvatore Peluso
COSMO, installation for MoMA PS1, New York, 2015
Best architecture firms 2019 012
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Annette Gigon/Mike Guyer
Architekten
Principals Architecture by Annette Gigon (Herisau, Switzerland, 1959) and Max
Annette Gigon, Mike Guyer Guyer (Columbus, Ohio, 1958) shares a major feature: the avoidance
Staff of trends, lines and styles typical of contemporary times. Still, their
40 30-year production shows specificities and hallmarks. There is the
employment of colour in the manner of Piet Mondrian’s Neoplasticism
Established in
1989 – see the exterior envelope of Résidence du Pré-Babel (Geneva, 2008)
and the balconies of the Brunnenhof housing development (Zurich,
Office
2007). There is a sculptural quality found in otherwise uniform materials,
Zurich
generating constant unpredictability in highly controlled masses – see
www.gigon-guyer.ch the glass volumes of the Prime Tower office high-rise (Zurich, 2011)
and the office building at Europaallee 21 (Zurich, 2013). There is mutual
exchange between rationalisation, individuality and uniqueness – see the
differentiation of terraces in the mixed-use building in Almere (Holland,
2007) and the windows texturing the concrete mass of the Espace de l’Art
Concret – Donation Albers-Honegger (Mouans–Sartoux, France, 2003).
All this is combined with the continuous act of conferring the highest
value to the public dimension.
The transformation of the Löwenbräu-Areal complex (Zurich, 2004–2012)
epitomises this by also embodying the spirit and evolution of Zurich, the
city where Gigon and Guyer founded their practice in 1989 after having
graduated from the ETH, where they have both been teaching since 2012.
At the Löwenbräu-Areal, order and exception are found, plus a visual
and functional opening towards the city. This creates a dialogue with the
existing legacy and establishes the independency of new architectural
expression, which is at once the firm’s philosophy and the core feature of
its city.
Giovanni Comoglio
Archeological Museum and Park Kalklriese, Osnabrück, Germany, 2002 (photo Gigon/Guyer)
19
Best architecture firms 2019 023
Capella Garcia Arquitectura
Principal Founded in 2001 in Barcelona by Juli Capella (Barcelona, 1960), with
Juli Capella Miquel Garcia and designer Cristina Capella, Capella Garcia Arquitectura
is a flexibly generalist studio that sets out to push its creativity along the
Associates
Juli Capella, Miquel Garcia, legendary “from the spoon to the city” pathway, but that primarily aims
Cristina Capella at reversing the very logic of that pathway. The subtly iconoclastic and
openly ironic attitude that accompanies their design thinking process,
Staff
Román Ávila, Lisardo Adán, manifests itself in all their projects, whatever the scale, in the direct
Lorelay Gazo, Pamela Könsgen, dialogue it establishes with modern compositional and constructive
Félix Lora Deborah Morales, aspects, often challenged by the insertion of surprising interpolations
Gerard Puig, Alejandro Raya
or even surreal nuances that deform the exactitude of that code. Capella
Established in Garcia’s practice might therefore be less explicit and more subtle than
2001 the 1970s postmodern approach – which has had an impact on their
Office theoretical framework – but their output is certainly not less cultured
Barcelona or pervasive. An approach that also reflects in the studio’s multifaceted
activity and that of Juli Capella himself, who besides being an architect is
www.capellagarcia.com
also a journalist and an architecture and design theorist. Like the pli that
for Deleuze epitomised the Baroque process, the architecture conceived
by Capella Garcia usually incorporates a fold adding complexity and
meaning to shape; a fold that at times is not only metaphorical. This is
the case of Espai Ridaura (2007) for instance, a multi-purpose building in
Santa Cristina d’Aro near Girona, whose shape seems to emerge from a
process of “ground-exfoliation”. Even more radical in this respect is the
Hotel Omm in Barcelona (2003) whose façade is composed of stainless
steel prefabricated curved modules, like layers of tin curved by a giant
can opener that let light into the rooms, but that primarily and powerfully
question the traditional notion of architectural ornament.
Guido Musante
Hotel Omm, Barcelona, Spain, 2003 (photo Wenzel)
30
Best architecture firms 2019
Caruso St John Architects
Principals
Adam Caruso, Peter St John,
Rod Heyes (London); Michael
Schneider, Florian Zierer (Zurich)
Associates
Nina Lundvall, Simon Davison,
Stephanie Webs, Timo Keller
(London); Adriana Mueller
Philipp Boenigk, Silvia Pfaffhauser,
Thomas Wirz (Zurich)
Staff
London 29; Zurich 43
Established in
1990
Offices
London, Zurich
www.carusostjohn.com
024
©DOMUS
Adam Caruso (Montreal, 1962) and Peter Saint John (London,
1959) established their practice in London in 1990. Educated in the
cultural context of postmodernism, they soon developed a critical
reinterpretation of both modernism and historical styles, formulating a
design statement that has lasted through two decades now. In contrast
with the widespread domination of the open-plan space, Caruso St John
uses the vertical linear element – the wall as an interface – to generate
architecture. A relationship between the building and the contemporary
city is created by using the shapes and aesthetic assets of the
surroundings. The firm specifically designs the wall interface to control
the connection between outer space and inner functions, to regulate the
communication between house and city, shared and private living. Such
studies turn the exterior envelope into intense and vital devices that
master the experimentation, and sometimes the revival, of brick, stone
and wood cladding, light-controlling masses and surfaces – see the
floors and skylights of the firm’s recent spaces for art exhibitions.
The evolutionary trajectory of such exploration includes the Brick
House (2001–2005) in London, where the wall interface is wide open
to contemporaneity; the strict facades of the mixed-use development
Europaallee Baufeld E (Zurich, 2007–2013); and the synthesis between
five types of industrial building at Newport Street Gallery (London,
2004–2015).
Caruso and Saint John were appointed by the Tate Britain in London to
redesign the interiors of the Millbank complex between 2006 and 2013.
Giovanni Comoglio
Bremer Landesbank, Bremen, Germany, 2016 (photo Hélène Binet)
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Best architecture firms 2019 039 Best architecture firms 2019 040

©DOMUS
Forensic Architecture Foster + Partners

Principal What do drones, explosions, shipwrecks and environmental crimes have
Eyal Weizman to do with architecture? The Forensic Architecture research laboratory
Staff uses architecture in support of justice and truth with an unusual
27 combination of technology, visual arts and investigative journalism,
employing spatial analysis as a tool to study conflicts and crimes from an
Established in
unprecedented perspective.
2011
The interdisciplinary think-tank was founded by Israeli architect and
Office
London (at Goldsmiths University) intellectual Eyal Weizman (Haifa, Israel, 1970) in 2010 and is based at
Goldsmiths, University of London. The group works with international
www.forensic-architecture.org institutions and NGOs – such as the United Nations, Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch – to investigate human rights
abuses and injustices by corporations or state governments.
Presented over the years at biennials and cultural institutions around the
world, Forensic Architecture’s work brings together data, maps, official
documents, material research, photographs and audio-visual recordings.
Their installations produce a visual synthesis of collected evidence and
create correlations in order to make complex analyses and hidden truths
comprehensible.
Exhibited in 2018 at the nomadic art biennial Manifesta 12 in Palermo,
Forensic Oceanography is one of the London collective’s most current
and relevant researches: a critical, spatial and aesthetic investigation
on Mediterranean Sea migrations in which the two authors, Lorenzo
Pezzani and Charles Heller, analysed and represented the direct effects
of European policies on the ongoing migratory catastrophe occurring
on the southern border of the Union, the legal disputes between nation
states and the NGOs that help migrants, and reconstructed in detail a
shipwreck in which 63 people lost their lives.
Forensic Architecture therefore not only experiments with new forms of
documentation within the fields of international law and politics, but also
operates as a laboratory inspiring debate and personal mobilisation on
some of the main issues of our time.
Salvatore Peluso
Principal
Norman Foster
Associates
Spencer de Grey, David Nelson,
Grant Brooker, David Summerfield,
Luke Fox, Stefan Behling,
Gerard Evenden, Nigel Dancey,
Matthew Streets
Staff
1,375
Established in
1967
Offices
London, Abu Dhabi, Bangkok,
Beijing, Buenos Aires, Dubai,
Hong Kong, Madrid, New York City,
San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore
www.fosterandpartners.com
The history of Lord Norman Foster as an architect and the founder
of Foster+Partners is one that crosses all design scales and many
disciplines. His firm is one of the most important of the post-World
War II era.
Born in Manchester, UK in 1935, he founded Foster Associates (later
F+P) in London in 1967 after obtaining a master’s degree in architecture
at Yale University in Connecticut in 1961–’62. Ever since, he has been
exploring technology and form as an integrated system with which to
answer all design requests – infrastructure, public buildings of diverse
types, urban planning and industrial design, in the spirit of the American
architect Richard Buckminster Fuller and his techno-spatial matrixes.
Foster was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1999. His use of materials
ranges from concrete, glass and light metals (the Carré d’Art in Nîmes,
1993) to wooden shingles (the Chesa Futura apartment building in St
Moritz, Switzerland, 2004). Foster+Partners is a global design company
providing integrated design services under a broad network of consulting
partnerships. Its main focus is the production of large public buildings
that deal directly with history, forming a framework of infrastructural
milestones (the Millau Viaduct in France, 2004; Beijing Capital
International Airport, 2008). Mediations between technology and heritage
are represented by the Great Court at the British Museum in London
(2000); the redevelopment of the Freie Universität Berlin (2005), which
respects the legacy of Team X; and the Apple stores located at the core
of urban and architectural identities of American and European cities.
Giovanni Comoglio

Sheik Hassan site, Iraq, 2018 (courtesy of Forensic Architecture) Maggie’s, Robert Parfett Building, Manchester, England, 2016 (Nigel Young/Foster + Partners)

46 47
Best architecture firms 2019 055
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Kuehn Malvezzi Associates
Principals Founded in Berlin by Simona Malvezzi (Milan, 1966), Johannes Kuehn
Simona Malvezzi, Johannes Kuehn, (Hamburg, 1969) and Wilfried Kuehn (Hamburg, 1967), Kuehn Malvezzi
Wilfried Kuehn Associates operates in different fields and on different scales of
Staff architectural design. The office has a special predilection for the creation
Nina Beitzen, Karin Fendt, of art-related spaces – installations, exhibitions and museums – always
Daria Grouhi (directors) cooperating directly with artists, curators and institutions.
and 15 others
Dialogue is certainly key in the architecture designed by Kuehn Malvezzi,
Established in whatever the purpose of the building. We see a dialogue between
2001 viewers and artwork at the Documenta 11 installation (Kassel, Germany,
Office 2002) where visitors could create individual trajectories across the
Berlin exhibition spaces. We see a dialogue between social, religious and
cultural backgrounds in the House of One, an interreligious house of
www.kuehnmalvezzi.com
prayer and learning (Berlin, 2017). And we see dialogue between context
and history in architectural statements based on the coexistence of new
and existing elements (Flick Collection, Berlin, 2004), on the critique of
historicist interpretations of the city (the firm’s project for the Humboldt-
Forum competition, Berlin, 2008), and on visually narrative functions
(the renovation of Rolf Gutbrod’s Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, 2014).
At Kuehn-Malvezzi, the controlled creation of form is a programme-
generating process. Theoretical categorisations such as “spaces for art”
or “rational shapes” are definitions of how space can be understood as
a generator of a critical approach that establishes connections between
the inhabitant and the content, between the inhabitant and the project
itself in relation to its purpose and context.
Giovanni Comoglio
Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2007 (photo Ulrich Schwarz)
62
Best architecture firms 2019
Lacaton & Vassal Architectes
Principals
Anne Lacaton, Jean-Philippe Vassal
Staff
Julien Callot, Florian Depous,
Gaëtan Redelsperger, vision is based on a clear and structured understanding of space,
Emmanuelle Delage, Elisabeth
Amorin, Francisco Latorre Navarro,
Carina Sacher, Julien Sage-Thomas
Established in
1989
Office
Paris
www.lacatonvassal.com
056
Specialised in private and public buildings and social housing, Lacaton &
Vassal is one of the most influential architecture firms in France.
It was founded in Paris in 1987 by Anne Lacaton (Saint-Pardoux-la-
Rivière, 1955) and Jean-Philippe Vassal (Casablanca, 1954), whose
architecture and society. Envisioning better living solutions is one of
the practice’s core aspects, while considering this field of research not
only to concern housing, but also the complex system of relations that
can develop between a space and its users. The perceived roughness of
Lacaton & Vassal projects paired with their distinctive simple finish are
integral aspects to programmatically light architecture. The reduction
of their formal language to a range of simple elements, however, is
not underpinned by minimalist aesthetics, but is a way of intensifying
an unrestricted experience of the quality of space. Regardless of the
functional purpose of the individual building, the practice understands
architecture as a continuous process of addition. The extension of the
Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2002-2012) is an elegant, respectful design,
without rigid architectural constrains that limit internal fluidity by
imposing their presence on the displayed artworks. The social purpose of
buildings by Lacaton & Vassal comes to the fore in housing projects such
as the Grand Parc in Bordeaux, which entailed the transformation of 530
apartments (2016), and Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris (2011), where spatial
dignity and generosity are the main elements behind the transformation
of an entire housing block.
Federica Rasenti
Fonds régional d’art contemporain, Dunkirk, France, 2015 (photo Philippe Ruault)
63
Best architecture firms 2019 063
Max Dudler
Principal After having worked for several years in the studio of the German
Max Dudler architect Oswald Mathias Ungers, in 1992 Max Dudler (Altenrhein,
Staff Switzerland, 1949) founded his own firm with branches in Switzerland
120 and Germany. Ranging from civic and public buildings – such as libraries
and museums – to residential projects, his architectural practice draws
Established in
from the rational volumes and lines that characterised Ungers’ work.
1992
Rigorous and direct, Dudler’s practice is often referred to as realistic
Offices
and seeks continuity and inclusion with local contexts. Completed in
Berlin, Zurich, Munich, Frankfurt
2009, the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre of the Humboldt University
www.maxdudler.de in Berlin, encapsulates his architectural language. With its monolithic
facade, rhythmed by rows of slender windows, and its reading room
– a long nave illuminated by natural roof lights – Germany’s largest
open-access library is infused with austerity. Along the years, Dudler’s
calibrated approach enabled him to undertake various renovation
projects of historical buildings. In 2014, he realised the visitor centre
of the Sparrenburg Castle, a 16th-century fortress located in the city of
Bielefeld, Germany. With its thick “rammed concrete” walls, the building
was conceived as a “contemporary update” to the existing and eclectic
architectural ensemble, whose latest extension dated from World War
II. Three years earlier, Dudler had already successfully worked on the
integration of new and old in his Hambach Castle restaurant project
(2011) for which he received the DAM Prize for Architecture in 2012.
Accustomed also to urban planning, between 1997 and 2013 the architect
realised the Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz S-Bahn station, one of the four
stops of the Leipzig City Tunnel railway line, which features a 140-metre-
long bright tunnel made of prefabricated backlit glass bricks.
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts
Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm Zentrum, Berlin, 2009 (photo Stefan Müller)
70
Best architecture firms 2019 064
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Meyer-Grohbrügge
Principal After graduating from the ETH Zürich, Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge
Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge (Sigmaringen, Germany, 1979) worked at SANAA in Tokyo from 2005
Staff to 2010, after which she branched out on her own, her work showing
Jennifer Kurth, Thibault Trouve, continuity with her former place of employment. With her SANAA
Sophia Frommel, Frank Wang, colleague, the American Sam Chermayeff, she founded the office June
Eva Lindsey 14 in Berlin and New York. Since 2015 she has also been developing an
Established in independent trajectory with her own firm, Meyer-Grohbrügge, in Berlin.
2015 Mainly designing and redesigning spaces for contemporary art, Meyer-
Office Grohbrügge has maintained a certain coherence in her spatial approach.
Berlin Her spaces are activated and shaped by simple, light geometric elements
that separate or define different areas and stress certain directions or
www.meyer-grohbruegge.com dimensions. By using light and visual texturing, the space itself is made
visible, more than the building elements.
At the Julia Stoschek Collection offices (Berlin, 2016), a curtain is used
as the linear normative element for space, defining inside and outside,
go and no-go for sight and light. Similar expressions of this principle are
found in the installation design for the Edi Hila retrospective (Warsaw,
2018), which features the translucence of barely material white partitions;
or the Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Gallery (Berlin, 2017) organised by an
open modular structure constituting a space matrix, fully reconfigurable
according to different requests in time and space.
Meyer-Grohbrügge taught at several institutions in the United States
including Columbia University GSAPP and is currently a guest professor
at DIA Dessau.
Giovanni Comoglio
Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin, 2016 (photo Jan Bitter)
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Best architecture firms 2019 067
NHDM Architecture
+ Urbanism
Principal Founded in New York City in 2010 by Nahyun Hwang (Seoul, 1973) and
Nahyun Hwang, David Eugin Moon David Eugin Moon (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1974), NHDM approach the
Staff design of architecture by looking first at its use, before considering
Clare Hacko, Stella Ioannidou, its characteristics in terms of form or construction: a quality that
Justin Kollar, Violette Yang in itself demonstrates the intertwining of the two young architects’
Established in research and teaching activities with the practice of the studio. Human
2010 actions like sharing, interpreting, lingering or exchanging are thus
Office seen as opportunities to test out new approaches to buildings and
New York City spaces, allowing them to be appropriated in an unconventional manner
and to activate more flexible modes of use, open to individual and
www.nhdm.net collective transformation and interpretation. As such, the design of
the Library in the Nam June Paik Art Center at Yong-In (South Korea,
2011) takes inspiration from the processes of the Korean artist Nam
June Paik to define a multifunctional spatial device that redefines the
relationship between users and access to information. In contrast
with the conventional typology of the library, characterised by the
centralised, unidirectional and static placement of the contents, the
programme developed by NHDM offers non-linear and dynamic access
to information, transforming a visit to the library into a multi-directional
and reciprocal experience. In a way that is even more pervasive, the
design of the social building Wolgok Youth Platform in Seoul responds
in particular to the difficult economic and living conditions experienced
by many of the inhabitants of the Korean capital aged between 20
and 35 years. The design thus exploits the opportunity offered by the
collaboration between a non-profit organisation and local government
for developing a new alternative housing prototype for young people,
proposing flexible living units, integrated with spaces where long-term
programmes for learning and working can be developed.
Guido Musante
Nam June Paik Library, Yong-In, South Korea, 2011
74
Best architecture firms 2019 068
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Nlé
Principal His Makoko school concept floated in the Arsenale basin in Venice three
Kunlé Adeyemi years ago. His lectures are scheduled inside and outside universities
Staff across the world. Kunlé Adeyemi epitomises a generation of architects
5 in evolution. Born in Kaduna, Nigeria in 1976, a former associate and
project architect at OMA, Adeyemi founded Nlé (which means “at
Established in
2010 home” in the Yoruba language) in 2010 together with his partner Berend
Strijland, opening branches in the city of Lagos, Nigeria and Amsterdam .
Offices
Amsterdam; Lagos, Nigeria Both before and after starting his own practice, Adeyemi has
concentrated on developing a line of research. His focus is envisioning
www.nleworks.com settlement solutions to face the challenges of increasing urbanisation
in countries such as his homeland by consolidating communities around
safe and inclusive spaces. This devotion to research has been articulated
through teaching and lecturing at universities, and through participation
in the extra-academic debate.
The aim at Nlé is to increase quality of life by responding to basic needs
while designing space as both social and environmental improvement.
Immaterial assets are integrated in order to catalyse community interest,
provide visual enrichment and offer appreciation of the context and the
living space.
This theoretical line has found two different realms for its practical
application: a poorer and a richer context where there is an equal
effort to maximise the experience of human association in its positive
aspects. The Makoko Floating School (2012) was awarded the Silver
Lion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, and is now enjoying its
third reformulation in Minjang, China. The design provides safety from
floods and is at the same time a cheap multi-scale settlement concept.
The Summer House for the Serpentine Pavilion (London, 2016) creates a
sense of place by reinterpreting monumental heritage.
Giovanni Comoglio
MFS IIIx3 – Minjiang floating system, Chengdu, China, 2018 (photo Iwan Baan)
75
Best architecture firms 2019
Rogers Stirk Harbour
+ Partners
Partners
Stephen Barrett, Ian Birtles, Lennart
Grut, Ivan Harbour (senior partner),
Stephen Light, Andrew Morris,
Tracy Meller, Richard Paul, John
McElgunn, Richard Rogers (senior
partner), Simon Smithson, Graham
Stirk (senior partner), Andrew Tyley
Staff
170
Established in
1977 (as Richard Rogers
Partnership; current branding since
2007)
Office
London
www.rsh-p.com
86
079
After exactly 30 years of activity, the Richard Rogers Partnership founded
in London in 1977 by the British-Italian architect Richard George Rogers
(Florence, 1933) became Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, to reflect
the vital contribution of two long-standing collaborators, Graham Stirk
and Ivan Harbour. “We wanted to avoid the situation where the name
of the practice is someone who died 100 years ago. Architecture is a
living thing. If I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to
change,” explains Rogers in a 2012 interview in The Guardian. The words
reflect an essential element of his design vision: addressing what lies
ahead. The whole thing began in the mid-1960s, when particularly in the
UK, high tech was considered more reliable than anything traditional. But
buildings made of tensile structures, Vierendeel frames and curtain walls
in glass and steel (see the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the Lloyds
building in London, two of the practice’s early works) did not remain
fixed in time. It is interesting, exciting even, to recognise some of these
elements in the firm’s recent work, always optimistically suspended
between radical dream and technological certainty (or the other way
around). The Macallan Distillery and visitor experience at Speyside in
Scotland (2018) designed by Graham Stirk is striking for its undulated
timber roof, which reflects the interior, a series of open-plan units that
house all the production phases of whisky. The continuous, green, dune-
shaped roof brings to mind the “this was tomorrow” of the British avant-
garde, as well as an enchanted elsewhere, almost as if the architecture
by Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners wished to remind us that time
holds many dimensions, and just as many surprises.
Guido Musante
The Macallan Distillery, Speyside, Scotland, 2018 (photo Mark Power/Magnum Photos)
Best architecture firms 2019 080
©DOMUS
SANAA
Principals Established in 1995 in Tokyo as the combination of the two individual
Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa practices of Kazuyo Sejima (Ibaraki, 1956) and Ryue Nishizawa (Tokyo,
1966), SANAA is a globally renowned reference in terms of an almost
Associates
Yoshitaka Tanase, Yumiko Yamada, immaterial control of architectural shape and programme.
Rikiya Yamamoto The uniqueness of its architecture lies in its mastery of the relationship
Staff with the surrounding environment – enclosure or disclosure,
40 transparency or filtered translucence, full contact with the ground or
Established in buildings as free surfaces floating above the site. Such relational choices
1995 are not a consequence of an ideology, but originate in the programme,
namely the experience of the place, function and space. Fluidity between
Office
Tokyo public dimension and private experience is created, differently fine-
tuned according to each project. This approach sets SANAA firmly
www.sanaa.co.jp in contemporaneity. Theirs is a continuous dialogue with present
experiences rather than a reference to the past.
Their experimental studies culminated with the appointment of Sejima as
the curator of the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, SANAA creating the
2009 Serpentine Pavilion in London, and the duo being being awarded
the 2010 Pritzker Prize.
Their built works have explored all possible scales and functions. See
the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (1999-2004);
the Louvre-Lens Museum in Lens, France (2005-2012), which alternates
material and immaterial restitution of the surrounding landscape
through an almost theoretical employment of aluminium and glass; the
generation of minimal open spaces by torsions of volume in Sejima’s
Small House (Tokyo, 2000); and the translucence of the Kitagata housing
complex in Tokyo (1995-2000) and of the Rolex Learning Center in
Lausanne (2010). Here, perception is the key to time-and-place-specific
designs.
Giovanni Comoglio
Rolex Learning Center, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2010 (photo SANAA)
87
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supplement
100+ Best architecture firms
editorial director
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art director
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graphics
Elisabetta Benaglio, Franco Miragliotta
coordinator
Miranda Giardino di Lollo
contributors
Francesca Acerboni, Alessandro Benetti,
Giovanni Comoglio, Valentina Croci,
Laura Drouet, Marianna Guernieri,
Olivier Lacrouts, Salvator-John Liotta,
Gabriella Lo Ricco, Fabienne Louyot,
Manuel Orazi, Jessica Mairs, Guido Musante,
Salvatore Peluso, Emanuele Piccardo,
Federica Rasenti, Giulia Ricci
translations
Annabel Little, Miranda MacPhail,
Karen Tomatis, Wendy Wheatley
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