Could mathematical patterns and molecular structures hold the key to architecture's next revolution? Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch, founders of the brainy New York architecture firm Aranda/Lasch, think so. The pair designs provocative buildings and furniture by crunching numbers and mimicking the behavior of atoms, rather than pressing pencil to sketch pad.
"We think of our practice as a way of putting together craft and computation," Aranda, 34, tells me when I meet the partners at their Lower East Side studio, where outré woven baskets share space with building models that look like lunar igloos. "People want to hear that a building is rooted in a place and materials. We're sympathetic to that, but we also believe that you can get there with more universal ways of thinking — through geometry, mathematics, and pattern." Since establishing their office in 2003, the young Columbia-trained architects have developed a cultlike following by taking math-based architectural theories to almost absurdist heights. One of their best-known concepts is a proposal for a towering coil of freeway on the outskirts of Las Vegas, based on a spiraling algorithm. Ten miles long, it would allow you to play roulette, get married, and enjoy a free car wash in the sky, all without ever leaving the comfort of your vehicle.
Yet despite all the attention and cutting-edge research, there was a problem: Aranda and Lasch had managed to build very little in the physical world. Paul Johnson, owner of the Manhattan furniture outpost Johnson Trading Gallery, helped change that situation. In late 2005, Johnson happened upon Aranda/Lasch's output while attending a party at their studio, and realized the architects had the potential to make some outrageous furniture. "I was lucky I met these guys in the freaky way that I did," says Johnson, 33, a shaggy, laid-back fellow with an eye for what's next. "And once I did, I realized they needed to be shown at design fairs."
Previously specializing in blue chip vintage works by the likes of Paul Evans and George Nakashima, Johnson decided to fund the development of a few key furniture pieces by Aranda/Lasch, including the Quasi cabinet and table. "The Quasi series is a result of long-standing research we've been doing into quasicrystal geometries," says Lasch, 35, whose dry wit does little to dispel the notion that he's an intense thinker. "Quasicrystal geometries are made up of modular elements, but the large-scale pattern never repeats the same way."
The Quasi table is made from 3,700 individual blocks of solid walnut cut in only two different shapes but assembled in a complex pattern. The finished piece explodes with hundreds of accidental forms. For their solid-aluminum Fauteuil, Aranda/Lasch created a three-dimensional grid of truncated tetrahedrons and then fashioned the form of a seat — producing a stunning chair that's perhaps kinder to the eyes than to the backside.
The furniture has brought Aranda/Lasch a new wave of praise — and buyers — at fairs like Design Miami, where their pieces have sold for as much as $95,000 to such powerful collectors as art-world maven Francesca von Habsburg and Miami developer Craig Robins. Meanwhile, their giant wall relief based on hexagonal structures was a show-stealer at MoMA's recent "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition, and other museums are already inquiring about buying their own Aranda/Lasch prototypes. In addition to collaborating on a project with the artist Matthew Ritchie, the partners will unveil a new Quasi piece at Design Miami/Basel in June and have a solo exhibition planned for Johnson Trading Gallery this fall.
