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August 22- August 29,2004 |
Architects' Low Tech Housing
Transplanted Neapolitans Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano showcase creative mettle
By Mark Curtis
Originally Published: 2004-04-25
Like the child who finds more use for the box than the toy it contains, two New York architects are positioning the common metal freight container as a legitimate choice for home and office designs.
Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano of New York's LOT-EK Architects have devised the Mobile Dwelling Unit, or MDU, a 40-foot long self-contained live/work space converted from its original purpose as an industrial strength container of goods. If they can convince enough clients of its viability as architecture, Tolla and Lignano may have created an inexpensive and environmentally positive building type. The two architects will deliver a keynote address at a portable architecture conference next week at Ryerson University.
The MDU is not Tolla and Lignano's first exploration of an alternate use for the ubiquitous shipping container. In the art exhibition space of New York's Bohen Foundation, LOT-EK (pronounced "low tech") employed eight bright red steel containers to create offices, a conference room and a video lounge. The reclaimed shipping containers sit on steel rollers and move along tracks in the floor. Some of the furniture in the space is made from the corrugated metal of the containers.
Tolla and Lignano are childhood friends from Naples who earned master's degrees in architecture and urban design from the Universita di Napoli in 1989. They moved to New York a year later, studied at Columbia University and established their firm in 1993. LOT-EK clients include the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim Museum. Besides their practice, the design duo also teach at New York's Parsons School of Design.
The architects' fascination with the freight container seems to stem from their earliest experiences in America. After completing their Italian schooling, Tolla and Lignano took an extended trip across the United States. "In Italy, the burden of history is always with you," Tolla told the New York Times in late 2002. "When we came here, it was like these doors sprang open. Ah, there is also this modern world!" Her design partner Lignano once noted that "New York and Naples are very similar. They're both port cities, both chaotic and anarchic. But there is of course this absence of history in America, which leads to complete freedom of expression, allowing people to build in all kinds of ways".
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