Amale Andraos a Lebanese born American Architect is known to have made US history by being an immigrant and the first woman to hold the chair as the dean of Columbia University GSAPP. As an educator, Amale has been appreciated for her vigorous leadership and an intrepid vision as an integration while solving problems in the real world. She is also the principal architect of the WORKac architectural firm based in New York with her husband Dan Wood along with multiple publications under her name. She has also taught at various prestigious institutions, including the American University in Beirut and Harvard Graduate School of Design.
15 Influential Projects that describe the philosophy of AmaleAndraos:-
1. New Holland Island Master Plan, ST. Petersburg | Amale Andraos
The New Holland Island Master Plan, St. Petersburg was a competition win for WORKac brought the 8-hectare island which was inaccessible to the public in the heart of St. Petersburg to life. The design celebrates the unique identity of the island as a “city within the city” by conserving the site’s 18th-century warehouses and its intangible heritage as well as developing the core into a new form of development consisting of public parks along with commercial, residential and cultural spaces. New Holland Island, formerly home to a naval prison, lumber yard, military barracks, and radio station now has been interlaced through the existing structures with a raised interior promenade as well as historic warehoused with modern infrastructure.
2. Miami Museum Garage
Miami Museum Garage by WORKac creates an atypical garage facade in which the internal design leads to an unanticipated series of social interactions among the users. The garage is 4-feet in-depth houses various public spaces like a gallery for graffiti art, a slide and climbing wall in the children’s play area, a library, a fountain, a bar, space for pets, a garden with a single tree and a listening lounge accompanied by a small auditorium and beach space at the roof level. The garden is irrigated by the runoff collected at the roof level by a reservoir. The facade represents the street below by showcasing mesh-screens through the public spaces and the connecting staircases as an ant farm of urban activity.
3. Edible Schoolyard NYC At P.S 216 | Amale Andraos
The Edible Schoolyard project in P.S 216 Arturo Toscanini School in Brooklyn runs on a curriculum known as edible education launched by activist Alice Waters in 1995 to amalgamate organic gardening and cooking as a part of public school learning based on which a half-acre parking lot was transformed into a dynamic garden classroom by AmaleAndraos and her firm. The project consists of three buildings with interconnected programs such as a blue rubber “system wall” that represents a sustainable infrastructure; the kitchen classroom made of “decorated shed” and a greenhouse that permits the gardening classes to be functional throughout the year. The project intrigues children to understand the functional coordination between the building and systems with the surrounding garden through which they perceive a sense of relationship with the environment.
4. US Davis Manetti Shrem Museum
US Davis ManettiShrem Museum displays US Davis’ artistic legacy situated in a distinctive context of northern California’s Sacramento Valley with a landmark design that creates a platform for experimentation, creation, and collective learning. The design shelters under a single folded plane roof fabricating two individual facades one that faces the campus which is open and visual connections and the closed one adjacent to the highway. The building is built on two prominent axes which are enveloped by the landscape that creates a series of outdoor rooms. The first axis consists of formal galleries and the second incorporates informal spaces along with courtyards and terraces that help include natural light and ventilation.
5. Beirut Museum Of Art, Beirut | Amale Andraos
Beirut Museum of Art situated in central Beirut designed by WORKac is a symbolization that will represent the transition of the country into a united country respecting all aspects of diversity from the that was once tormented by war. The design of the museum is proposed to be an open plan that is a model for a contemporary museum, which will feature a six-story promenade encircling the facade along with sculpture at various exhibition spaces. The traditional balconies in the museum are designed as a new architectural intervention creating them as riveting walkways that connect with the internal spaces of the museum; this aspect was intentional design craved to defy the standard notions of a museum by allowing visual communication within the members of the community. The museum, however, acts as a connection with the surrounding community through the design elements like glass facade, outdoor balconies through the artwork and galleries devising a sense of welcome.
6. Public Farm 1 (P.F.1) Queens, New York
Public Farm 1 (P.F.1) Queens, New York was a project commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) a sustained half-acre urban farm made out of elevated cardboard tubes as a folded plane specifically designed to hold 50 different planters like organic fruit, vegetables, and herbs of which some of the tubes extend to the ground as columns offering shaded spaces and seating. The farm runs completely off-grid, creating a niche in the community by becoming an outdoor space for various activities like education, play, and community building.
7. Kew Garden Hills Library, Queens, New York
Kew Garden Hills Library, Queens, New York is a 15-foot deep zone built with custom glass fiber reinforced concrete panels with curtain-like folds on the exterior facade structured with a 200-foot long beam resting on two columns only. The shape and design of the library create interesting architectural spaces for the users amongst a diverse community. The building consists of lively interior areas that channel a series of spaces accommodating reading rooms for different age groups. The modulation of the roof drops down till the ground and lifts eventually as per space’s built-in; also the roof’s slope acts as a green roof, which continues as a garden space connecting the backside of the garden of the library.
8. Arizona House | Amale Andraos
Arizona House is an atypical house style amidst a challenging context that encourages architects to think out of the box about the living possibilities in such a dire environment. The house is lifted from the ground being a rare design aspect, facing the surface which encounters maximum sun rays is covered with solar panels creating a sustainable building. The materials used along with the form of the house represent certain solid bodies and certain lightweight masses. The house is built using a thick high-tech adobe brick wall accommodating spaces like bedroom, bathroom with compost toilet, kitchen, and water storage. The idea of using brick was its mechanism to absorb heat during the day and radiate it out during the night.
9. Irkutsh Smart School
Irkutsh Smart School located on the edge of Lake Baikal designed as a linear building that follows the site gradients from the waterfront to the city with multiple sloping wedge peaks from south to north. The school houses a new concept of learning from the locals to orphans by creating a sundry experience by combining the program with the landscapes. It consists of both residential and institutional spaces that provide accommodation to over 1000 students, 400 adults, including the caretakers and teaching staff in the building surrounded by gardens and parks; an integration with an adventure landscape is created amongst the school from preschool to the senior school.
10. Guggenheim Collection Centre | Amale Andraos
The Guggenheim Collection Centre is located on a potential site in East Harlem holding administrative offices for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and an off-site art storage facility to integrate the community spaces that beholds a secure facility. The design of the building weaves together all the tangible and the intangible elements in sync as the design envelopes a vertical column-free core for storage facility along with interactive spaces created for the public and building inhabitants through a transparent envelope. The building is divided into two parts strategically as per design where the ground floor houses an open lobby leading to the underground auditorium and on the fourth floor a public roof garden.
11. Weifang Masterplan, China
Weifang Masterplan is a new educational district development near Weifang, China is an 8-million sq.mt site that will collaterally combine the nature with urbanization; accommodates seven university campuses along with mixed-use hub which will also boost the economy by attracting companies that will benefit from the university resources. The design is based upon a series of “bands” that extend towards the river which cuts creating salt marshes intended to help restore the native and wildlife habitat and provide protection against floods. Each band will have a central pedestrian mall that creates a central focal point for a series of quads and plazas encouraging student interactions along with parkways that provide automobile access to the campuses that merge into the campus grid.
12. Weifang Campus Library, China
Weifang Campus Library is encompassed in a simple rectilinear volume with a series of multilevel public spaces within one functional box joined with an angled base that stretches out to the main campus quad. The design aims to serve 20,000 students creating interesting spaces within the larger volume. The design consists of multiple reading rooms, computer labs, and garden spaces that cross through the atrium developing punctures on the exterior facade of the library.
13. L’assemblee Radieuse, Libreville, Gabon | Amale Andraos
L’AssembleeRadieuse, Libreville, Gabon is a circular body integrating sustainable strategies to create a vast assembly hall for the head of state of the African Union using the diverse ecology of the country. The entire building is shaded and covered with louvers made from the African limestone, which will consist of conference spaces, assembly, and dining facilities around carved courtyards which will represent the rich and diverse ecosystems of Gabon. The courtyard functions to serve the atmosphere of the building by facilitating natural ventilation, cooling, and smoke exhaust for the whole building.
14. Boathouse, Sherman Creek Park
Boathouse at Sherman Creek Park settles seamlessly within the natural topography of the site consciously accommodating within the existing trees and creates a passage for the floodwater to flow underneath by being raised from the ground level. The design ensures to respect the nature around it by developing a pavilion invisible in nature and minimal imprints on the site houses a classroom and boathouse.
15. Nature City | Amale Andraos
Nature City proposes to intermingle the natural greens with the urban redeveloping the American suburb through the design which resulted in a highly dense neighboring suburb in appropriate ratio to the public open space with a series of piers. These urban piers will consist of multifunctional units and affordable housing, generating a new community, expanding into the suburbs through sustainable infrastructure services by using the natural energy resources vitally. The design builds various individual forms of housing and public spaces within boundaries respecting the natural setting.