It is not unique for many designers to work on a single

structure within an architectural practice. The building

industry, like every other, has both access and motive to

engage with the endless fount of collaborative tools

increasingly available to everyone all the time. Central

models, shared drives, remote viewers, 3D warehouses, 3D

scanners, and 3D printers are a mere handful of the tools

orbiting the heart of contemporary architectural practice

which allow collaboration to occur more seamlessly than

ever before. Massive offices consisting of many specialized

teams contribute to gigantic sets of drawings, liaise with

subcontracted specialists, and present designs with greater

ease than ever before. However, even with all this labor,

when one walks down the street and sees the fruits of all that

collaborating, it may be difficult to determine what exactly

the creative yield is supposed to be.

United Front is an architectural design charette, in which a

cadre of designers were compiled to redesign elements of

the front facade of a single building. One office does their

best brick facade; another has a go at window trim; another

designs a cornice. The final product is the patchwork quilt of

designers and intentions, blindly and uninhibitedly in

concert with one another. The charette is intended to

redirect the spirit of collaboration in architecture away from

the end-goals of greater efficiency, slimmer budget, shorter

timeline etcetera, and into a more noble potential: the

generation of a building facade which, by virtue of the many

hands of its authorship, would have no project lead, and thus

have no master-principle, and thus could aspire to some real

genuine novelty.

Collaborators:

+ Tom Hancocks
+ Jennifer Durand & Sergio Mutis

+ Jerome Byron

+ A+A+A

+ Juan Cantu

+ John Clayson

+ Manifold

+ Guillermo Trapiello

+ Hannah Kim

On Display and for purchase at Available Works:

Feb 9th to 11th

WSA
161 Water Street
New York, New York, 10038
USA