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Architect-US

Young Projects’ Selected Projects #2

History and Culture of Young Projects

Young Projects LLC is a design studio founded by Bryan Young in New York City in 2010, whose work includes buildings, interiors, objects, material prototyping and furniture. Geometry, pattern, texture and spatial complexity play a significant role in creating an ambiguous architecture. The studio explores a variety of methods: breaking traditional techniques for fabrication, hand pulling plaster, growing crystals and burning things, to name a few. In 2018, Noah Marciniak became a partner in the office, bringing a unique dedication to researching construction technology and a new consideration of material detailing. Mallory Shure joined the firm in 2019 and is now a partner at Young Projects.

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Young Projects’ work has been widely published and has received numerous awards including a 2021 AIANY Merit Award for Six Square House, Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard Award in 2020, The Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices award in 2020, a Progressive Architecture (P/A) Award from Architect Magazine for Glitch House in 2018, an AN Award for the MALI Museum proposal in 2017, and an Azure Award for «Best New Interior Product» for the pulled plaster panels in 2017, a “New Practices New York” award from AIA NY in 2016, a “Best of Design” award from The Architect’s Newspaper in 2015 for the Gerken Residence, an Architizer A+ Award for the 2014 Times Square Heart installation, and The Architectural League of New York’s League Prize in 2013. In 2018 and 2019, the firm was included in AN Interior’s annual list of the top 50 interior architects.

Bryan Young received his Master of Architecture with distinction from Harvard University in 2003, where he was awarded the AIA Henry Adams Medal and the Thesis Prize for his spatial diagrams on Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. He received his Bachelor of Arts with highest honors from UC Berkeley in 1997. Prior to establishing his studio, Young was a senior associate at Allied Works Architecture and previously worked for ARO, SOM and Peter Pfau.

Noah Marciniak is a partner at Young Projects and a licensed Architect in the State of New York. Noah joined the studio in 2011 and led much the design and construction of the office’s built work through the first decade of practice. He received his Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin and his Bachelor of Science with honors in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Mallory Shure is a partner at Young Projects and a licensed Architect in the state of New York. Mallory joined the studio in 2019 as associate partner. Her architecture career spans 30 years, working in both San Francisco and New York. Prior to Young Projects, she worked as project architect/manager on numerous building typologies from concept to closeout, including libraries, community centers, recreation buildings, museums, theaters, mixed-use commercial, schools, adaptive re-use, complex zoned development projects, single & multi-family residential, and more.

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Young Projects Selected Projects

Houses In The Block
New York, New York (2019)

New York, having nearly filled every developable space, has little space left for architectural intervention.  The city’s last frontier for new construction are the oddly sized and shaped properties that sporadically dot its neighborhoods.  These sites, mostly leftovers from centuries of subdivision, routing of infrastructure, or realignment of the city’s grids, are difficult to build on partly because of their non-Euclidian shapes, but also because of their misalignment with the city’s zoning laws.  We propose a series of common sense reinterpretations for zoning to assemble high quality housing on these sites at a scale reasonable to the current housing crisis.  ‘Houses on the Block’ makes the simple case that these sites should not be treated as narrow properties, which, for a site at 135th street, would allow an eight-story tower.

‘Houses on the Block’ revisits the skyscraper as a project.  The plan consists of a minimized core with elevator, fire egress, and utilities, leaving the rest of the plan free for residential and common programming.  Each apartment is designed to maximize daylight, ventilation, and livability; the units are varied and unique to accommodate extended family living or live-work lifestyles that are marginalized by market-driven development.  Across a single building, housing for families, seniors, the handicapped, and single households is considered.  In this way, the narrow sites are not only a site of housing relief, but also a site for radically rethinking urban living.

The construction of multiple projects across the city would be facilitated by a system of prefabricated concrete façade panels with simple geometries for easy replication.  The panels are articulated to block summer sun heat gain and allow winter sun in.  The concrete mix will include custom aggregates that through variable sand blasting, will become visible, bringing the solid portions of the facade to the foreground. The aggregate can change color or texture depending on constraints such as site context or material availability, encouraging a diverse array of appearances unified by their geometry. These unique geometries are also designed with shadows in mind, the interplay of contrasting figures of light and dark will create a fluttering effect across the surface of the building that can sit comfortably in a variety of neighborhood contexts.

Photos by Young Projects

Rock House
Dominican Republic

The Rock House sits adjacent to the Retreat House, nestled partially below grade as a unified collection of 6 rock-like masses.  The program includes an open-air massage space, steam and outdoor showers, underground sauna, cold plunge pool and an air conditioned treatment room.  The interstitial space between masses provides circulation to the various programs.

The geometry of the Rock House is broadly suggestive of formations like naturally eroded rock or strange ruins.  A closer reading reveals a carefully controlled unification of the 6 discrete volumes via inverting readings of symmetry, continuity, alignment, tangency and a singular architectural cropping envelope that bounds the entirety of the program. The sparkling concrete of the forms is embedded with green quartz aggregate that is willfully revealed in areas by sandblasting.  Deep scraping in the concrete adds an additional layer of texture and relates to areas of runoff from pooling water on the roofs.  Together, the additional concrete color and texture serve to reinforce the shifting reading of the volumes instigated by the geometry itself.

Photos by Young Projects

The Retreat House
Dominican Republic

Located on an undeveloped site in the Dominican Republic, the Retreat House is designed to take full advantage of the pristine beach scape at the front of the property, balancing expansive views of the Atlantic Ocean with the experience of the lush, dense jungle that dominates the majority of the site. The Retreat House is one of five structures that make up the Wellness Retreat. The project also includes a guest house, yoga pavilion, beach spa and glitch house, totaling approximately 30,000 square feet.

In the most diagrammatic sense, the Retreat House is simply a transformation of a courtyard parti. Directed by solar orientation, natural ventilation and the desire to preserve all existing trees and vegetation, the evolved form is a drifting ring that shifts in plan and section just below the jungle’s canopy. The roof is a ruled surface requiring over 200 scissor trusses; each is dimensionally unique, but simple in joinery and construction. The result is a highly complex and fluid structural condition that shifts along corridors, curves through primary double height spaces, and rotates to navigate the geometry at each corner. The design facilitates a panoramic experience of the site, from its diverse jungle landscape to its vast ocean views.

Structural Engineer: Silman | The Retreat House is the result of collaboration with local architect Estudio Sarah Garcia and landscape architects Green Paisajismo and Juan Diego Vasquez.

Photos by Young Projects

Do not forget that we will be posting more work by Young Projects in the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye out for more of their incredible work!! Every Friday we will be posting a new Featured Company, so join us again next week!

Young Projects

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