Bouwman Zago

Led by partners Laura Bouwman and Andrew Zago, Bouwman Zago brings open-ended, creative inquiry to disciplinary concerns in architecture. Noted for its prescient articulation of emerging sensibilities, the practice weds quasi-autonomous aesthetic studies to the art of making buildings and cities. In doing so, Bouwman Zago reaffirms the substantial and productive link amongst art, architecture and urbanism.

The firm has completed projects in the United States, Mexico, Iran, and Korea including the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Arup Downtown Los Angeles, the Fine Venture office tower in Seoul, Cornell Synthesis Studio for Cornell University’s Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and the Casa Autoproyectar in Nanacamilpa, Mexico. Current projects include “Blossom,” a multi-paneled digital billboard on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California.

This volume features detailed presentations of Bouwman Zago’s designs for the University of Illinois Chicago’s Visual and Performing Arts Center; “A New Federal Project for Detroit,” commissioned for the US Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Architecture Biennale; Michigan; and “Property with Properties,” the firm’s contribution to the exhibition, Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Alongside, Bouwman and Zago present the theoretical underpinnings of their approach to architectural form, urban space, color, and other topics. Critical essays by Jeffrey Kipnis, Anna Niemark, and R.E. Somol further elucidate the significance of the firm’s work and speculate on its disciplinary stakes and implications.

Source Books in Architecture is a product of the Herbert Baumer seminars, a series of interactions between students and seminal practitioners at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University. Following a significant amount of research, students lead discussions that encourage the architects to reveal their architectural motivations and techniques.