Agrest and Gandelsonas Architects is an internationally renowned New York-based partnership founded in 1980 by Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas. The firm has developed a distinctive approach to architecture and urbanism, working across scales from city planning and urban design to architecture and interior design. Their work combines disciplinary expertise, form-making always attuned to social and cultural forces and inventive modes of representation.
Agricultural Corridor
Des Moines, IA
2017
While the city of Des Moines has developed historically in the east to west direction, the growth of downtown has been prevented on the north to south direction, by the freeway to the north and by the railroad tracks to the south. The freeway is a permanent obstacle for growth. However, there is a strip of undeveloped land that runs adjacent to the railroad tracks that presents a unique solution for growth and development.
The Des Moines Agricultural corridor is such a solution, one that simultaneously addresses a number of issues important for the community. An urban farming corridor including a string of greenhouses providing for 365 days a year of farming could perform the aforementioned roles simultaneously encouraging future development towards the south as well as dealing with issues of education, food, health and sustainability.
The Des Moines Agricultural corridor is such a solution, one that simultaneously addresses a number of issues important for the community. An urban farming corridor including a string of greenhouses providing for 365 days a year of farming could perform the aforementioned roles simultaneously encouraging future development towards the south as well as dealing with issues of education, food, health and sustainability.
- The Des Moines Agricultural Corridor provides an urban feature that would transform what is now a barrier inside the city into a transitional area by encouraging the future development of downtown to straddle the railroad tracks which would restore the continuity and allowing the city to expand to the south.
- It helps to educate people about gardening practices, reconnect city dwellers to the source of their food, and contribute to an increased awareness of the health benefits of choosing fresh vegetables and fruits.
- It supplies produce to the outdoors farmers market, during the months when it is functioning and to future hyear-round interior markets in the proximity of the residential areas in the west and the east. It will complement the greenhouse of the homeless shelter by supplying produce during the winter months.
- The farming corridor complements the Des Moines school lunch initiative and a farming pilot program for downtown schools through the Des Moines Edible Schoolyard program. Students, starting in kindergarten through high school, will learn about farming in greenhouses build in the school yards. And finally, in terms of the environment, eating locally grown food will help to reduce the distance from farm to table, lowering carbon emissions related to transporting food.
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Refiguring Walnut Street
Des Moines, IA
2012
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Xerrovidebis molupta voluptati nonsequae doluptam et ius acestis rentum fugit, veniae. Orporei uriaectus inusam verum et quaectectio explique iducit ea verchic aborporese preped mint laut lit am in entotaque volorere nis aut volupisi consequis vendunt quos undam debis sam si blaboremodia porest inus, saecepre sequia volupta adis estibus, simet liquia videliam fugiaecus, simodita dolorpo rporess itiumen totate num consequis dolenti venimin es ma quuntiorum aut prest ex eaturepe dolut mos ex eum repe non nullacil id que lab inum inctota tiatius audi siminti busciis arcius, int, num que moditaeste cus, odita sit est maio id excepel ides entorec tecerum ent vellorumqui nis sunt.
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John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park
Des Moines, IA
2009
The John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park is located on the fourth and largest block—300x900 feet—of the Gateway Park, in. It is the permanent locus of a major collection of contemporary sculptures donated by John and Mary Pappajohn to the Des Moines Art Center to be exhibited in a Public Park. This important intervention, both cultural and recreational, will identify Downtown Des Moines as the most vibrant Cultural Urban Center of the Metropolitan Region. A most unique aspect of the park is that although it is an extension of a museum, it will be permanently accessible to the public . The Park exhibits sculptures by artists, including: Louise Bourgeois, Sol Lewitt, Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero, Tony Smith, and Ellsworth Kelly.
The park has been conceived as a constructed undulating landscape, an urban public space for the enjoyment of art. This new topography modulates the scale of the otherwise very large and flat site. The project addresses all scales of perception, from the distance of a moving vehicle, from the sidewalk or from within the park in a close relationship to the sculptures. The concept of framing the sculptures in the parabolic ‘rooms’ creates a focus and facilitate the understanding of their inter relationships. View corridors allow for the people to see the sculpture park from their cars entering and exiting the city, views that will entice the car viewer to come back and visit the park. Because of their parabolic shape the walls allow for views while partially screening the areas where the sculptures are placed creating a variety of perspectives and visual experiences as the viewer moves through the park. The walls are slanted, receding from the sculptures and giving them prominence. The space in between the rooms offers possibilities for meandering through the park and discovering other sculptures in the landscape. People of different age groups can enjoy the park in different ways, including walking up the berms and seating on the benches along the paths.
The walls are built in exposed aggregate concrete and a path throughout the park has been built in a dense exposed green aggregate. Sustainability has been a major concern in the project. For instance, gray water will be used for irrigation in a manner that reduces levels of pollutants in storm water discharges leaving the project. The project reduces the carbon footprint related to transportation by using local aggregates for the concrete walls, and local specimens, for landscaping.
The design makes possible the addition of sculptures in the future. A donors plaza has been created as a special point of entry where a concrete wall with a stainless steel front has the names of the various donors from the local community.
The park has been conceived as a constructed undulating landscape, an urban public space for the enjoyment of art. This new topography modulates the scale of the otherwise very large and flat site. The project addresses all scales of perception, from the distance of a moving vehicle, from the sidewalk or from within the park in a close relationship to the sculptures. The concept of framing the sculptures in the parabolic ‘rooms’ creates a focus and facilitate the understanding of their inter relationships. View corridors allow for the people to see the sculpture park from their cars entering and exiting the city, views that will entice the car viewer to come back and visit the park. Because of their parabolic shape the walls allow for views while partially screening the areas where the sculptures are placed creating a variety of perspectives and visual experiences as the viewer moves through the park. The walls are slanted, receding from the sculptures and giving them prominence. The space in between the rooms offers possibilities for meandering through the park and discovering other sculptures in the landscape. People of different age groups can enjoy the park in different ways, including walking up the berms and seating on the benches along the paths.
The walls are built in exposed aggregate concrete and a path throughout the park has been built in a dense exposed green aggregate. Sustainability has been a major concern in the project. For instance, gray water will be used for irrigation in a manner that reduces levels of pollutants in storm water discharges leaving the project. The project reduces the carbon footprint related to transportation by using local aggregates for the concrete walls, and local specimens, for landscaping.
The design makes possible the addition of sculptures in the future. A donors plaza has been created as a special point of entry where a concrete wall with a stainless steel front has the names of the various donors from the local community.
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OPD House
Los Angeles, CA
2009
Located on a dead-end street that opens onto a panoramic view of the valley, the house sits on the upper portion of a sloping site facing a landscape of green hills illuminated by the unique Los Angeles light at sunset. The lush vegetation surrounding the house provides views of a subtropical garden with Mediterranean touches, giving the house its distinctive character.
The original house occupied the highest point of a 60-foot-wide by 90-foot-deep sloping lot. It consisted of a living room and dining room separated by a double-sided fireplace, one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen. The structure was a simple “box” composed of five wooden modules with a sloped roof and an inclined glass rear façade perpendicular to the roof. This glass wall rested on a horizontal louvered “shelf” that provided cross-ventilation in combination with a high horizontal window on the opposite, street-facing side.
The renovation expanded the footprint of the existing structure to the maximum allowed by code, adding two additional structural modules to create a second bedroom and bathroom. Another key change was the removal of the louvered shelf, extending the inclined glass façade to the ground and introducing three low windows to preserve the cross-ventilation originally facilitated by the louvers. The rear glass façade now reads as a plane perpendicular to the sloping roof, visually independent from the vertical structural posts that support it, which establish a rhythmic order organizing the interior space.
The entrance to the house was redefined through the creation of a breezeway—an interior/exterior space between the house and the carport that opens to the street. These spaces form a Z-shaped plan defined by three walls of horizontal redwood planks separated by half-inch gaps, acting as visual filters and providing privacy for the upper outdoor patio. A redwood-slat roof defines the space of the breezeway and connects it visually to the upper courtyard, establishing a spatial sequence that begins at the street and culminates in the garden. The redwood planks enclosing the garage also frame and define the upper courtyard.
The garden’s retaining walls were reconfigured to create a larger main patio and a smaller lower patio—a more intimate space where a redwood cabin encloses an outdoor shower. The lower patio, surrounded by fruit trees, is connected to the upper patio by a circular stair framed by bougainvillea. Although the house measures only 960 square feet, it feels substantially larger. The breezeway and new patios add about 600 square feet of outdoor living space, while the rear glass façade—visually detached from the structure—extends the interior outward, creating a continuous spatial flow between inside and outside. The sequence of spaces, beginning at the breezeway and unfolding through the patios and garden to the lower terrace immersed in the surrounding landscape, generates a visual and spatial outdoor experience that plays as a counterpoint to the interior sequence of spaces of the house.
The original house occupied the highest point of a 60-foot-wide by 90-foot-deep sloping lot. It consisted of a living room and dining room separated by a double-sided fireplace, one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchen. The structure was a simple “box” composed of five wooden modules with a sloped roof and an inclined glass rear façade perpendicular to the roof. This glass wall rested on a horizontal louvered “shelf” that provided cross-ventilation in combination with a high horizontal window on the opposite, street-facing side.
The renovation expanded the footprint of the existing structure to the maximum allowed by code, adding two additional structural modules to create a second bedroom and bathroom. Another key change was the removal of the louvered shelf, extending the inclined glass façade to the ground and introducing three low windows to preserve the cross-ventilation originally facilitated by the louvers. The rear glass façade now reads as a plane perpendicular to the sloping roof, visually independent from the vertical structural posts that support it, which establish a rhythmic order organizing the interior space.
The entrance to the house was redefined through the creation of a breezeway—an interior/exterior space between the house and the carport that opens to the street. These spaces form a Z-shaped plan defined by three walls of horizontal redwood planks separated by half-inch gaps, acting as visual filters and providing privacy for the upper outdoor patio. A redwood-slat roof defines the space of the breezeway and connects it visually to the upper courtyard, establishing a spatial sequence that begins at the street and culminates in the garden. The redwood planks enclosing the garage also frame and define the upper courtyard.
The garden’s retaining walls were reconfigured to create a larger main patio and a smaller lower patio—a more intimate space where a redwood cabin encloses an outdoor shower. The lower patio, surrounded by fruit trees, is connected to the upper patio by a circular stair framed by bougainvillea. Although the house measures only 960 square feet, it feels substantially larger. The breezeway and new patios add about 600 square feet of outdoor living space, while the rear glass façade—visually detached from the structure—extends the interior outward, creating a continuous spatial flow between inside and outside. The sequence of spaces, beginning at the breezeway and unfolding through the patios and garden to the lower terrace immersed in the surrounding landscape, generates a visual and spatial outdoor experience that plays as a counterpoint to the interior sequence of spaces of the house.
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Newark Gateways
Newark, NJ
2008
Newark has an enormous population that travels in and out of the city every day (a few years ago the NJ Path system was the most heavily peaked system in the world). Many of the current gateways these people use are designed for the peak hours of commuter traffic (and work well during those times), but are poorly utilized during off peak hours (middle of the day and on weekends). This suggests a design opportunity to make gateways that adapt to the different ways they are used throughout the day.