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.
Exhibition
Agrest and Gandelsonas: Fabric Object II
April 10–May 2, 2025
Cooper Union
Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture
Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery
Opening Reception
Thursday, April 10, 6:30 pm
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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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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Shanghai 2000—Fabric and Speed
Shanghai, China
2000
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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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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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Goose Island—Object as Fabric
Chicago, IL
1989
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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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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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China Basin—
The Machine in the Garden
San Francisco, CA
Phase 1, 1989
Phase 2, 1999
Agrest
The city as object of desire is transformed into the city as the place where the forces of desire are set free. The China Basin project, much like Donna Haraway's cyborg, is ‘about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions and dangerous possibilities.’
This project is a provocation. It is, to paraphrase Haraway, a fiction mapping our urban, social, and ideological reality, resolutely committed to partiality, irony, and perversity. It is antagonistic, utopian, and completely without innocence.
This project is a provocation. It is, to paraphrase Haraway, a fiction mapping our urban, social, and ideological reality, resolutely committed to partiality, irony, and perversity. It is antagonistic, utopian, and completely without innocence.
Excerpt from ‘The Return of the Repressed: Nature’ by Diana Agrest in The Sex of Architecture, eds. Agrest, Conway, Weismann, MIT Press, p. 60.
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Object as Fabric—Porta Vittoria
Milan, Italy
1986
Our project for the Porta Vittoria area of Milan proposes to regain the area acquired by the construction of the Passante railroad. The project addresses urban fabric, defining the area that is based on the strict cardinal-point grid of the 1912 Pavia Masera plan.
The plan develops a double reading of the area. On one hand it extends and transforms the grid. On the other hand the concentric structure of the historic center of Porta Vittoria is marked with buildings throughout the project.
The project proposes an answer to the central problem of modern urbanism—the dialectics between building, object, and fabric. Porta Vittoria is a laboratory where new public buildings and spaces are created, marking an edge between the old and the new city, between the early twentieth-century buildings and the late twentieth-century project.
Every building is subject to the dialectic between building and fabric; nothing in the project is entirely building or fabric. The fabric-like constructions have, in different degrees, building roles. The slabs and the monumental building have precise urban roles as street walls, park walls, and gates.
The project overlaps a series of slab buildings with commercial and public functions against a ‘background’ of different residential fabrics that either suture the void left by the elimination of the railroad yards or are grafted into it. Public spaces permeate the project as the fabric unfolds from an ideal courtyard type to a double displaced grid of streets and buildings.
The plan develops a double reading of the area. On one hand it extends and transforms the grid. On the other hand the concentric structure of the historic center of Porta Vittoria is marked with buildings throughout the project.
The project proposes an answer to the central problem of modern urbanism—the dialectics between building, object, and fabric. Porta Vittoria is a laboratory where new public buildings and spaces are created, marking an edge between the old and the new city, between the early twentieth-century buildings and the late twentieth-century project.
Every building is subject to the dialectic between building and fabric; nothing in the project is entirely building or fabric. The fabric-like constructions have, in different degrees, building roles. The slabs and the monumental building have precise urban roles as street walls, park walls, and gates.
The project overlaps a series of slab buildings with commercial and public functions against a ‘background’ of different residential fabrics that either suture the void left by the elimination of the railroad yards or are grafted into it. Public spaces permeate the project as the fabric unfolds from an ideal courtyard type to a double displaced grid of streets and buildings.