Architectural League Prize: Austin+Mergold; Bittertang; FAR frohn&rojas;

The League Prize exhibition opening and first evening of lectures by winners of the 29th annual Architectural League Prize, featuring Jason Austin and Aleksandr Mergold of Austin+Mergold; Marc Frohn and Mario Rojas Toledo of FAR frohn&rojas; and Michael Loverich and Antonio Torres of Bittertang. Austin+Mergold is an architecture and landscape practice based in Philadelphia and Ithaca. Founded in 2007 by Jason Austin and Aleksandr Mergold, the firm “operate[s] on the cusp of architecture, landscape, design, and installation art…Believing that it is preferable to rethink and repurpose existing resources than to tap new ones, we infiltrate existing systems that are responsible for constructed environments, rather than reinvent the wheel each time. …For us, this is sustainable design—both vis-à-vis the environment and our own practice—and it is particularly well-suited to the twinned economic and ecological crises that we face today.” Projects include: House-in-a-Can/Park-in-a-Can, Mechanicsburg, PA; SURAL wall; RVG club house, Mechanicsburg, PA; The Grand Resource, Hong Kong; and ParkView, Carlisle, PA. Their work has been widely published including in Inhabitat, The New York Times, The Architect’s Newspaper, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jason Austin received his Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. He also attended the University of Pennsylvania where he received a Master of Landscape Architecture. He currently serves on the adjunct faculty in the Department of Architecture at Temple University and Department of Landscape Architecture at University of Pennsylvania. Aleksandr Mergold received his Master of Architecture at Princeton and his Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. Currently he is a Visiting Critic in Cornell’s Department of Architecture. Bittertang strives “to bring humor and pleasure to the built environment by digging deep into the sensual world that surrounds us; extracting rich and hilarious fodder from overlooked eras that have contributed integral matter to the production of architectural atmospheres. One of our goals is to resurrect the Rococo continuing where its practitioners left off, privileging interactive pleasure, frothiness, plant, and animal sourcing as well as immersive design…Our explorations are based in digital and visceral matter with output transitioning between scales and localities leaving traces of our frothy matter in various disciplines.” Currently, Bittertang operates out of Guadalajara and New York City and has had work published in the U.S. and South Africa. The partnership of Michael Loverich and Antonio Torres began in 2005. Recent projects include Microcosmic Aquaculture, “gelatinous orbs” of living and man-made matter to produce recreational and farmed spaces; Plush Toy Collection, explorations of tectonics, sensation, atmosphere, and narrative in soft body miniatures; and the Gondwana Circle garden design. Antonio Torres and Michael Loverich both hold Master of Architecture degrees from UCLA. Michael Loverich received his Bachelor of Art in Architecture from the University of Washington. Antonino Torres received his Bachelor of Art in Architectural Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Bachelors Degree from the E’cole de Architecture de Versailles. FAR frohn&rojas; is a networked architectural design and research practice led by Marc Frohn and Mario Rojas Toledo, located in Berlin, Santiago de Chile, and Los Angeles. Through its name the office acknowledges “both its geographically distributed anatomy as well as the increasingly widened pro¬fessional scope that is literally shaping its work…establishing a more diversified type of architectural production in which both the inherent contradictions between geographies, as well as the stretching of disciplinary boundaries will let formerly undeterminable links thrive.” The firm also investigates “’deep structures’ at play in each new project: the legal and financial constraints, desires, power structures and technological, eco¬logical, material, and institutional frameworks that shape the built environment.” Projects include the Wall House in Santiago; the House in Heat, Rancagua, Chile; 2 in 1 in Cologne; and the Zero Emission Campus in Düsseldorf. The fir m has won the DETAIL Prize and the AR award for emerging architecture. Widely exhibited, the firm’s work has been published in Architectural Record, Icon, Architectural Review, Azure, Domus, and other journals. Marc Frohn received Master of Architecture degrees from Rice University and the University of Houston. He recently taught at SCI-arc. Mario Rojas Toledo received his diploma from the School of Architecture, RWTH Aachen and a degree in architecture from the Secretaría de Educación Superior. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor at the Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello in Santiago. Tickets are free for League members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing [email protected]. Member tickets will be held at the check-in desk; unclaimed tickets will be released fifteen minutes after the start of the program. Non-members may purchase tickets at www.archleague.org > events, beginning one week before each program until six hours before the program start. Purchased tickets are available for pick-up at the venue check-in desk and are non-refundable. For more information, email [email protected] or call 212.753.1722 x13. AIA and New York State continuing education credits are available. The Architectural League Prize is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. The program is also supported by the LEF Foundation, and by Dornbracht, Ibex Construction, Susan Grant Lewin Associates, and Tischler und Sohn. The League thanks the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design for co-sponsoring the exhibition and lecture series. Architectural League programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.