CHICAGO- Volume Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition with Young and Ayata, Base Flowers, opening December 11th from 5-8 PM at 845 West Washington Blvd, Chicago.
In Base Flowers, Young and Ayata explore the conflict and objectives of a common domestic object: the flower vase.
There is a conflict in the aesthetics of the cut flower. It is a living thing, purposely severed and put on display through the abstraction of a vase. A flower vase has two primary objectives. The first, to hold water which suspends the flower’s death and the second, to position or pose the flower in a particular gesture. Considering this combination a vase is actually closer to a support system, or a base.
The vases developed for Base Flowers are a combination of five vases in one. The base can be positioned in multiple orientations to privilege one vase over another. The different positions have different character allusions that attempt to animate the neutrality of a common vase.
Base Flowers will also display five new flowers genetically engineered by Young and Ayata’s design team. These “flowers” are primitive specimens, both in their aesthetics as a well as their digital origin. As such, they are not attempts to mimic any existing flower, but are instead the “base flowers” for an alternate understanding of floral aesthetics. The cut flower in a vase is an artificial construct, an abstracted fragment of nature, severed, recontextualized, and posed for aesthetic contemplation.
Young & Ayata formed a partnership in New York in 2008 to explore the conceptual and aesthetic possibilities of architecture and urbanism. The practice is dedicated to both built commissions and experimental research. The practice views the reality of contemporary building as a provocation for architectural form, material and technology. In following these trajectories it is necessary to understand architecture in its historical processes. Both principals teach and view the educational experience as crucial to the continual development of architectural ideas.
Young & Ayata is one of two first prize winners in the International Competition for the New Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany. Recently, they were finalists in the 2015 MoMA YAP Program in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2014, the partners were the recipients of the Young Architects Prize from Architectural League of New York, their entry in the open international competition for the Dalseong Citizen’s Gymnasium in South Korea received an honorable mention, and their submission for the Pamphlet Architecture 35 publication was also given an honorable mention. A manifesto titled “The Estranged Object: Realism in Art and Architecture”, written by Michael Young with the projects of Young & Ayata was published in the Spring of 2015 by the Graham Foundation; an exhibition with the firm’s work in relation to this publication was on display at the Graham Foundation in Chicago. In 2015, the Firm’s work was also exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art-New York, the Istanbul Modern and Princeton University.
Michael Young is an architect and an educator practicing in New York City where he is a founding partner of the architecture and urban design practice Young & Ayata. Michael is an Assistant Professor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at the Cooper Union where he has taught design in the third year and second year undergraduate studios, and graduate seminars on a range of topics. Additionally, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Princeton University teaching geometry and representation. Previously Michael taught in the core graduate studios at Yale and was the co-coordinator of the Architectural Drawing & Representation II course at Columbia University, GSAPP. He has been a Visiting Professor at Syracuse University, University of Innsbruck, Shih Chien University, the Crete Technical University, the GSAPP Studio X summer workshop in Thessaloniki, Greece, and the Possible Mediums Conference and Workshop at Ohio State University. Michael received his Masters of Architecture from Princeton University where he was the recipient of the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize and the Howard Crosby Butler Traveling Fellowship in Architecture. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo including studies at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Consortium and the CVUT in Prague.
Prior to forming Young & Ayata, Michael worked for a number of award winning architectural firms in New York and San Francisco, including Reiser+Umemoto, Stan Allen Architects, and Pfau Architecture. His professional experience includes cultural institutions, office towers, residential projects and experimental competition entries. Michael is a Registered Architect in the State of New York. Michael’s drawings are part of the Drawing Center’s Viewing Program and have been shown nationally and internationally. In addition to teaching & practicing, he is invested in writing, research and experimentation on issues concerning geometry, representation and aesthetics.
Kutan Ayata is an architect and an educator practicing in New York City where he is a founding partner of the architecture and urban design practice Young & Ayata. Kutan was a fellow at Princeton University School of Architecture and earned his Masters of Architecture degree in 2004 as a recipient of the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Thesis Prize. While at Princeton, he represented the School of Architecture in the FIPSE academic exchange programs in Los Angeles and Paris, in addition to an academic/professional exercise to rethink the future of Midtown-West Manhattan initiated by the Newman Real Estate Institute of New York. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture in 1999 from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston with studies including at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence and Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul.
Prior to forming Young & Ayata, Kutan worked at Reiser+Umemoto, Agrest & Gandelsonas and Friedrich St. Florian Architect. His international professional experience includes projects for urban scale master-plans, cultural institutions, transportation buildings, commercial/mix-use high-rises and high-end residences. He is a registered architect in the Chamber of Architects in Turkey. Currently, Kutan is a Lecturer at University of Pennsylvania and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute (GAUD), teaching architecture and urban design studios at graduate level. Previously he thought at Columbia University, NJIT, Cooper Union and Princeton University.
