"Exquisite Corpse." Miami Museum Garage by WORKac, Nicolas Buffe, Clavel Arquitectos, K/R and J. MAYER. H.

WORKac is interested in positing architecture at the intersection of the urban, the rural and the natural. They embrace reinvention and collaborate with other fields to rethink architecture ‘in the world.’ In the face of overwhelming challenges and increasingly normative scenarios, they remain stubborn in our commitment to imagine alternate scenarios for the future of cities. They appropriate the more productive aspects of the urban discourse – from density and compression, to appropriateness of scale, the expression of intelligent and shared infrastructures, and a more careful integration between architecture, landscape and ecological systems – to bear upon architecture as we find shared concerns across their global practice. They hold unshakable lightness and polemical optimism as a means to move beyond the projected and towards the possible, an ambition with which they approach every project.

Dan Wood, FAIA, LEED AP, leads international projects for WORKac ranging from masterplans to buildings across the United States as well as in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Wood holds the 2013-14 Louis I. Kahn Chair at the Yale School of Architecture and has taught at the Princeton University School of Architecture, the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Ohio State University’s Knowlton School of Architecture, and the UC Berkeley School of Environmental Design, where he was the Friedman Distinguished Chair. Wood is originally from Rhode Island and lived in Paris and in the Netherlands for many years before moving to New York in 2002. He is a licensed architect in the State of New York and is LEED certified.

Amale Andraos is the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. She has taught at numerous institutions including the Princeton University School of Architecture, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania Design School, and the American University in Beirut. Andraos is committed to research and publications. Her work has recently explored the question of representation by re-examining the concept of the ‘Arab City.’ Andraos was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She has lived in Saudi Arabia, France, Canada, and the Netherlands prior to moving to New York in 2002. She serves on the board of the Architectural League of New York, the Advisory Board of the Arab Center for Architecture in Beirut and is a member of the faculty steering committee for the Columbia Global Centers | Middle East.

Jürgen Mayer H. Founded in 1996 in Berlin, Germany, J. MAYER H Architects’ studio, focuses on works at the intersection of architecture, communication and new technology. From urban planning schemes and buildings to installation work and objects with new materials, the relationship between the human body, technology and nature form the background for a new production of space.

Jürgen Mayer H. is the founder and principal of this crossdisciplinairy studio. He studied at Stuttgart University, The Cooper Union and Princeton Universtiy. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide and is part of numerous collections including MoMA New York and SF MoMA. National and international awards include the Mies-van-der-Rohe-Award-Emerging-Architect-Special-Mention-2003 ,Winner Holcim Award Bronze 2005 and Winner Audi Urban Future Award 2010. Jürgen Mayer H. has taught at Princeton University, University of the Arts Berlin, Harvard University, Kunsthochschule Berlin, the Architectural Association in London, the Columbia University, New York and at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Photograph.- Jens Passoth