THE MASTERY OF NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY
By Nicole Bray
The holy grail of architecture and design apparently lives in the Lower East Side. The offices of Aranda\Lasch are a playground of experimentation and what if’s. Architects by trade, Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch, have found a sweet spot in their signature forms that draw upon natural matter to create stunning furniture and works of art. Their projects extend from homes and public spaces to furniture, lighting, and sculpture; their work rides a remarkable binary of perfect imperfection. Obsessed with nature, science, and complex matter structures, they emulate these forms to create livable furniture that feels organic and at times, otherworldly. You can see in their work how they take one shape and manipulate it multiple times to create a chair or table. In other cases, such as their Railing Series, they use the constraints of a pre-determined structural field to create elegant and opulent chairs that can only be described as noodle-like. Similarly, they create geological forms that emulate geodes to create stunning light formations with a programmable multi-color function.
Art Deco Project, DACRA, Miami, Florida 2012
Credit: Benjamin Aranda, Chris Lasch, Joaquin Bonifaz, Stephanie Lin, Lindsey Wikstrom. SB Architects, Executive Architect. Spiers&Major, Lighting. CHM, Structural Engineers.
Art Deco Project, DACRA, Miami, Florida 2012
Credit: Benjamin Aranda, Chris Lasch, Joaquin Bonifaz, Stephanie Lin, Lindsey Wikstrom. SB Architects, Executive Architect. Spiers&Major, Lighting. CHM, Structural Engineers.
Night Drawing. Image courtesy Aranda\Lasch
Night Drawing. Image courtesy Aranda\Lasch
Railing Series chair, 2015 (33 x 28 x 30 in). Courtesy Aranda\Lasch.
Play and experimentation are central to their work. As architects, they start by looking for structural motifs and ways in which the forms naturally grow. We see new language and qualities emerge out of the multitude of forms twisting and turning to create the structure. The Primitives Series, first seen at the Venice Architectural Biennial in 2010, draw on the facade of ruined landscapes; with rocks piling up and falling apart to create a series of unique yet similar chairs and tables. From a distance, the furniture looks like a cluster of rocks, but close up you see the signature hand of Aranda\Lasch as the modular fractals expand and move to emulate nature.
Modern Primitives, Venice Biennale, 2010
Credit: Aranda\Lasch with Island Planning Corporation Supported by Fendi. Co-produced with Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Arizona State University – School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture. The Johnson Trading Gallery.
Two years prior, commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza, Aranda\Lasch collaborated with sculptor Matthew Richie and Daniel Bosia of Arup’s AGU created The Morning Line, conceived as an exploration of the interplay between music, art, architecture and cosmology. Imagined as a ruin from the future, each line flows and connects with others to create a dense network of figures and narratives with no beginning or end, expanding effortlessly in multiple directions. The Morning Line has traveled from Seville to Istanbul to Vienna and is currently installed, as part of the permanent collection, at ZKM in Karlsruhe Germany.
The Morning Line
Credit: Aranda\Lasch. By Matthew Ritchie with Aranda\Lasch and Arup AGU. Commissioned by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Seville, Spain, 2008.
While giving a fresh perspective to architecture and design with their confluence of nature and technology, Aranda\Lasch ground their thinking in the confines of art and architectural history to ensure they are always working towards expanding the canon. We can see the minimalist design elements of Donald Judd, Mies van der Rohe and Brancusi combined effortlessly with the cubist abstraction of forms in the work of Picasso and Picabia, mixed with the rugged embrace of nature and land interventions from the Land Artists of the 1960’s: Robert Smithson and Walter De Maria.
So, next time you are in Miami, treat yourself by popping into the Tom Ford store in the Design District and checking out one of Aranda\Lasch’s architectural masterpieces.
For inquiries about Aranda\Lasch’s work please contact info@mercercontemporary.com
– Nicole Bray, Contemporary Art Consultant | info@mercercontemporary.com
artREAL contributor Nicole Bray is the founder of Mercer Contemporary and guides private and corporate clients through each step of acquiring, selling, managing, and displaying artwork. She received her Masters in Contemporary Art (Hons.) from Sotheby’s Institute of Art, New York. She was the recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Emerging Curator Fellowship 2015, and has worked at both an Auction House and for a distinguished private family. If you would like to contact Nicole, or if you are interested in starting your own collection, please email her at info@mercercontemporary.com or visit www.mercercontemporary.com.