24-10-2018

Ennead Architects and Tomas Rossant at SpazioFMG Milano

Ennead Architects,

Jeff-Goldberg, ESTO, Richard Barnes,

Shanghai, Milan, New York, USA,

University,

FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti, SpazioFMGperl'Architettura, Iris Ceramica Group, Iris Ceramica, The Architects Series,

At 18:30 on October 25, Tomas Rossant, founding Design Partner of Ennead Architects, will hold a lecture at the opening of the fifth event in The Architects Series, focusing on the architects’ and designers’ collective in New York and Shanghai.



Ennead Architects and Tomas Rossant at SpazioFMG Milano

Ennead Architects, an architects’ and designers’ collective with offices in New York and Shanghai, is the studio featured in the fifth event in The Architects Series, the cultural event format SpazioFMGperl'Architettura, the showroom and gallery of the Iris Ceramica Group brands Iris Ceramica and FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti present to the public in partnership with The Plan magazine.

"The Architects Series - A documentary on: Ennead" takes spectators "behind the scenes" of this important architectural studio to investigate the origins of the collective’s architectural projects all over the world, both built and under construction. The Video Exhibition will be inaugurated at 18:30 on October 25 in Via Bergognone 27. After a screening of the fifth episode in the series, Tomas Rossant, a founding Design Partner in the studio, will give a lecture entitled “One:Ten:More”, in which he discusses a number of key concepts in the studio’s way of working. The lecture title is linked with the very identity of Ennead Architects. Guided by ten partners, the architectural practice is characterised by a strong spirit of teamwork; every decision is made by the group as a whole, encouraging discussion and circulation of ideas and cross-contamination among projects of different types and on different scales and among different disciplines. The studio contrasts the figure of the “heroic architect” with that of the “community”, which is where the studio’s strength lies.
The collective sees the architect as a “problem solver”, asked to settle a long series of questions, important, large-scale issues that an individual cannot address alone. Teamwork and cooperation are essential in today’s society, and are particularly important in a discipline such as architecture which has the power to become an engine for promotion and social change as well as a tool for the reclamation and restoration of complex ecological and urban systems. Hence the need for architects to base their work on discussion, collaboration and cooperation among different professionals and disciplines.

Taking a look at the studio’s portfolio, Ennead Architects has designed buildings for major North American universities such as Yale and Stanford. Floornature has presented some of the studio’s recent projects, including the Bridge for Laboratory Sciences building in Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. The new volume is designed as a bridge over the Fonteyn Kill, and Ennead’s architects have also redeveloped a number of existing buildings to establish unity in the Sciences complex.
Another recent university project is the new Engineering Education and Research Center (EERC) at the University of Texas in Austin. A glass foyer between two towers of stone is the fulcrum of Ennead’s design, produced in partnership with Jacobs structural engineers.
Work is currently underway on the construction, due to be completed by 2020, of the new Shanghai planetarium designed with Thomas Wong. This ambitious, important project will represent a continuum between the past, embodied in the rich, long history of Chinese astronomy, and the future, represented by the country’s ambitious space exploration programmes.

(Agnese Bifulco)

"The Architects Series - A documentary on: Ennead"
SpazioFMGperl'Architettura, via Bergognone 27 Milano - Italia
Opening: 18:30 on 25 October 2018 free of charge with registration through https://www.eventbrite.it/
Video exhibition from 25 October until 7 December 2018, every Thursday and Friday from 16 to 19.
Photographs:
Engineering Education and Research Center (EERC): Jeff Goldberg
Bridge for Laboratory Sciences: Richard Barnes


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