WORKac book. We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge

In their foreword, architects and authors Amale Andraos and Dan Wood state that “duograph” is simply the best term to define their book, "WORKac. We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge". It is not a monograph on architecture but, rather, a “duograph”, as the two architects share their professional and personal life and as, since 2003, they have been working together on all of their projects. At the same time, for Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, this book is a long conversation on architecture, on what it is today, and on what it could become, thanks to their imagination and common work.

The book presents the 15 years of professional activity of the two architects and their New York-based studio, WORKac, which stands for WORK Architecture Company. The book allows the architects to show their projects and to accompany them with their theoretical visions and critical insights. This way, they can provide a complete picture of their professional activity, with some self-irony.
From their words, we get to find out that, after their experience at the Dutch studio OMA, founded by Rem Koolhaas, their professional life continued in a small studio in New York. From that starting point, documented by old pictures, the studio became successful in just a few years. Today, it boasts a team of not less than 20 collaborators. Its success came with a great number of awards, including the “New York State Firm of The Year” (2016), and the "top design firm" in the US (2017), assigned by Architect Magazine.
During the 15 years described in the book, WORKac signed over 60 projects in different countries all over the world, from the United States to Africa, and from Europe to Asia and the Middle East. Their projects were not only architectural projects, but involved several aspects of the architecture field as well, such as town planning and interior design. Besides the success of their studio, the two architects also boast a successful academic life: Amale Andraos is the Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation of the Columbia University, while Dan Wood was a professor of Architectural Design at the University of Toronto and at the Yale School of Architecture. 

On 13 September, architect Dan Wood will take part in the opening night of the fourth event of The Architects Series, the format by SpazioFMGperl'architettura, the showroom gallery of Iris Ceramica and FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti of Iris Ceramica Group. For the exhibition dedicated to WORKac, Dan Wood will deliver a lecture entitled “We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge”. The lecture has the same title as the book, which will be the starting point to debate the themes that the studio loves the most, such as commitment to sustainability, intended as an “integration of functions combining architecture, landscape design and ecological systems”. This vision is part of a wider vision of an architecture that, as declared in the event presentation, is intended “not only as a merely technical and practical exercise, but as a cross-cutting discipline embracing both technology and culture, giving life to colourful, visionary and highly creative projects based on assessment of the expected results and on cutting-edge ecological systems and infrastructure”.

(Agnese Bifulco)

Titolo: WORKac. We’ll Get There When We Cross That Bridge
Autori: Amale Andraos e Dan Wood
Editore: The Monacelli Press 
ISBN: 9781580934992
Pagine: 360

Images courtesy of WORKac

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