Archinect - News

Sketching with Steel & Light: Oyler Wu in Taipei

2017-12-27T15:00:00-05:00

When it comes to large-scale residential buildings, a complex set of economic, urban, and regulatory systems sometimes seem to have left little room for architectural exploration. Architects often struggle to find a point of entry for inserting their creative perspective in a way that would rethink or progress the typology. The resulting buildings typically reflect the reality of the efficiency-driven market - maximized footprint, relentless repetition, and lowest common denominator design appeal.

Photo: Oyler Wu Collaborative

Yet, Oyler Wu collaborative has built a library of success on finding the smallest of details, the nuances of nuance, and developing them into refined, varied manifestoes of architecture and design.

Photo: Oyler Wu Collaborative

When they were first approached by a prominent Taiwanese development company to work on the design of a brand new residential high rise, they expressed interest in finding an architectural approach that challenged these conventions. ...

A survey of architecture's new leadership, from Johnston Marklee to Bjarke Ingels

2017-09-13T09:49:00-04:00

They are in that fertile period — agewise, it typically runs from the mid-40s to mid-50s in architecture — when the profession’s next generation of leadership begins to make its mark.

NADAAA, Atelier TAG, SHoP Architects, Oyler Wu Collaborative: these are among the firms highlighted in this piece in the New York Times, which surveys the architects who are currently primed to "lead" the profession. Los Angeles-based pair and married couple Johnston Marklee, who are heading up this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial with a theme of "make new history," are included alongside relative youngster Bjarke Ingels of BIG, who champions his self-described "hedonistic sustainability."

Rendering of the Menil Drawing Institute, designed by Johnston Marklee. Image: Johnston Marklee/Nephew

Need some inspiration to submit to the "Bigger Than A Breadbox" competition? Take a peek at Oyler Wu Collaborative's "The Cube"

2015-02-12T15:11:00-05:00

We caught a glimpse behind the curtain of Oyler Wu Collaborative’s hand-over-hand process in Anthony Morey’s latest piece, where the principal’s meticulous and dogged drawing exercises helped push the firm’s formal development. Taking a look back at one of their earlier pavilions, “The Cube”, initially built for the 2013 Beijing Biennale, helps draw the contingency from line drawing to taught steel.

As Justine Testado previously described in her introduction to “The Cube”, the sculpture/pavilion “transforms a solid idea into an abstract piece”, complicating the supposedly concrete notion of an ideal form, the perfect cube. The pavilion is a clear elaboration on previous work, such as their Taipei Sales Center or the Stormcloud pavilion at SCI-Arc, where solid volumes are stretched and torn by lines and suspensions, testing the spatial limits of what they consider “pure” forms. OWC has also designed two other pavilions at SCI-Arc, including Netscape and Centerstage, which fit clearly ...

Advanced geometry with Oyler Wu Collaborative's "The Cube"

2014-03-05T20:24:00-05:00

L.A. architectural practice Oyler Wu Collaborative designed "The Cube" from a fundamental notion: to challenge the spatial and geometric properties of the cube, a geometric form long regarded as a basic element for design, art, and science. Built for the 2013 Beijing Biennale, the sculpture transforms a solid idea into an abstract piece -- and just a really cool-looking installation that surely makes a nifty backdrop for picture-taking.

We'll let Oyler Wu explain the intricate details behind the project:

"The Cube was designed with the intention of challenging the perceptual reading of the volumetric object. Beginning with this iconic and basic geometry, the overall scheme is designed to maintain the clear presence of the six-sided object in space.

Closer inspection of the scheme, however, is intended to reveal a more nuanced and experiential spatial effect - one that moves beyond the object and offers a radically different reading. Approximately sixteen meters tall and constructed of ...

Editor's Picks #343

2013-11-26T12:22:00-05:00

Archinect inaugurated a new interview series The Deans List. For the first installment, Archinect talked with David Gissen, the Director of Architecture at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Reflecting on current trends and his own interests for the future of architectural education he reflects "I think lots of architecture schools are interested in working with cities, and with centers of power like a municipal office – some powerful agent that has the ability to transform and legislate the shape of the city. It’s an exciting thing for architecture students to be involved in those forms of power".

While in the latest edition of Showcase; featured Taipei Sales Center by Oyler Wu Collaborative. A somewhat temporary project with limited programmatic needs resulted in "a five-story volume pierced (quite literally) and interconnected by an intricate ribbon of rope, steel, and fabric. The renovation creates an entirely new identity and is suggestive of the modern ...

Screenplay by Oyler Wu Collaborative

2012-06-19T17:22:00-04:00

LA-based architecture and design office, Oyler Wu Collaborative, is proud to announce their upcoming architectural installation entitled Screenplay. The installation will be unveiled at the Los Angeles Convention Center this Friday, June 22, 2012 as the featured installation of Dwell on Design 2012.

Press release from Oyler Wu Collaborative to follow:

Screenplay is conceived of as a ‘play’ on one’s visual perception. This twenty-one foot long screen wall is constructed of forty-five thousand linear feet of rope strung through a series of lightweight steel frames. The wall is designed with the intention of provoking a sense of curiosity by slowly revealing its form and complexity through physical and visual engagement with the work. The wall is made from a repetitious steel framework with rope infill that varies over the length of the wall in three dimensions, forming a thickened undulating screen made up of dense linework. In its orthographic, or ‘straight on’ view, the wal...