Archinect - News

INABA's Flatiron Plaza installation adds a frame to NYC landmarks

2014-12-26T17:27:00-05:00

Back in September, Archinect published INABA's winning entry for the first-ever Flatiron Plaza Holiday Design Competition. Titled "New York Light," the public artwork was recently installed for the holidays and is now open to the public on...well, Flatiron Plaza.

Project description from INABA:

The Flatiron Plaza is a unique space in New York.

Standing in the middle of the plaza people can see two of the city’s great landmarks: the Flatiron and Empire State buildings. It is a place to experience the magnificence of Manhattan’s urban plan – with a dramatic view of Broadway cutting diagonally through the famous grid. And because Madison Square Park creates a clearing in the urban fabric, the plaza is one of the few places in the heart of the city to see the skyline from street level.

Our public art installation ‘New York Light’ pays tribute to the special urban experiences from this one-of-a-kind vantage point. Designed to echo the form of the plaza’s namesake building, the prow of the st...

Red Bull's INABA-designed office is the "antithesis" of trendy workspaces

2014-11-18T19:05:00-05:00

When it comes to a high-energy drink giant like Red Bull, most would probably expect their corporate offices to reflect the sporty, frat bro-friendly culture that the brand overwhelmingly attracts. Not a single hint of that can be seen in the company's newly designed office in New York by Brooklyn-based architects INABA.

In fact, Red Bull's New York office looks generic and insignia-free -- which is not common for large companies. INABA states that the design doesn't integrate the latest theories of workplace productivity nor is it driven by narrative or graphic imagery. It ignores workspace interior trends like grand-scale gestures, playful recreational lounges, or urban-chic office decor. On the other hand, the no-brand minimal aesthetic is a growing trend itself as well.

The office's "timeless" and brandless design questions the standard that corporate offices must be a spatial representation of the company and the brand qualities of which it established itself. "Red Bull’s New Yor...

INABA Wins First Ever Flatiron Plaza Holiday Design Competition

2014-09-23T13:02:00-04:00

New York Light by INABA to Anchor Flatiron’s Public Plaza Activities, Providing Interactive Feature Illuminating Month-Long Holiday Celebration

NEW YORK, September 16, 2014 – The Flatiron/23rd Street Partnership and Van Alen Institute announced the winner of the first-ever Flatiron Plaza Holiday Design Competition, in which top designers and architects proposed dynamic structures to be installed in front of the famed Flatiron Building during the 2014 winter holiday season.

Designed by INABA, the winning installation New York Light will illuminate the plaza as a backdrop for public events and provide visitors with a special view of the Flatiron building and the Madison Square skyline during the holiday season. The design is the result of a collaboration between the Brooklyn-based INABA, Tillotson Design Associates, and bengal.fierro.

Created to echo the plaza’s namesake skyscraper, the installation will frame the Flatiron Building to its south. At the other end, the steel tube installat...

INABA Completes Red Bull Music Academy New York

2013-05-13T20:18:00-04:00

Jeffrey Inaba’s firm INABA was commissioned by Red Bull Music Academy to transform four floors of a vacant building in New York's Chelsea neighborhood into a model learning environment. INABA has used dramatic walls and lighting to create unique collaborative work areas in place of the traditional classroom.

Curving walls throughout the 38,000 square foot forum give shape to the distinct spaces. On the ground level the walls extend far into the former warehouse allowing passersby and users unrestricted views across the floor. They reveal a cross section of the types of activity taking place which include performances, private workshops, music production and broadcasting, aimed at making a statement that the space is different in its use from the shops, galleries, and cafés of the area. Below, on the cellar level, the arcing walls of the capsule-shaped lounge are interrupted only to establish long views from the recording studio located at the south end to the open-air patio ...

INABA Completes Skylight

2013-01-14T19:32:00-05:00

INABA has completed Skylight, a permanent installation for KORO Public Art Norway. The 6.6 m (22 ft) diameter, 11.5 m (38 ft) long structure hangs from the foyer of the New Concert Hall in Stavanger, Norway. It is visible from the adjacent public plaza, and surrounding neighborhood and harbor, serving as a light beacon for the complex. Responding to the region’s extreme atmospheric conditions, Skylight emits a range of pure color light patterns that contrast and complement the blended luminous tones of the dawn and twilight Nordic sky. Conceived of as an inverted chandelier, Skylight’s light fixtures are mounted to face inward and illuminate the structure’s interior surface. Its programmable LED system is animated to change in brightness and hue, and produce distinct patterns during arrival, theater calls, intermission, departure, and after hours.

Skylight is based on a simple cylinder. Areas along the surface of the cylinder were removed to create views from the five-stor...

Adaptation: Architecture, Technology and the City by INABA in collaboration with FREE

2012-12-12T15:03:00-05:00

"As the city becomes more technological, architecture will become more essential. Technologies are growing as part of the functioning of cities, and as a result, the design of the urban environment will take on central importance. But this shift won’t occur as we might think.”

Download the PDF

Bringing together a host of interviews, contributions, and art works, Adaptation: Architecture, Technology and the City is a preliminary study of digital technology in the built environment. The publication surveys the ways that technology generates new kinds of experiences in the city, as well as the spaces created in its wake, including outmoded infrastructure, glitch space, and public zones populated with tethered cables. If digital technology promised a smooth environment independent of the constraints of geography, Adaptation makes clear that the digital also overlaps with and complicates the physical world.

Adaptation concludes by exploring the unexpected ways in which t...

Information Center for Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City

2011-07-11T19:55:11-04:00

LA architecture office INABA and NYC graphic designers MTWTF have shared with us their design for the information center for Little Tokyo Design Week: Future City. The festival, which opens this Thursday, July 14, celebrates the intersection of Japanese design and technology with experimental architecture in Southern California. The event in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo will feature exhibitions, panel discussions, and other public activities that explore future approaches to urbanism.

The information center displays a video that introduces the festival and which features participating designers and scholars. The exterior of INABA and MTWTF’s project borrows graphic elements of the LTDW theme logo to create a new font. The word ‘info’ is spelled out and repeated as a black and white pattern on three sides. Along the two long interior walls letters of the info font are scaled up into a large graphic that appears to change in form and color as the visitor moves through the space.

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