The Individual and the Collective ― Duda/Paine Architects

Through the conceptual framework of five overlapping themes, readers will consider the following issues:

Choreographed Experience. Just as globalization and cultural conformity make the uniqueness of place more essential, so too does our virtual connectedness call for a physical counterweight. The work of Duda/Paine Architects explores how visual, auditory, and tactile perception anchors an individual's physical experience and intellectual understanding of his or her surroundings. Like storytellers, choreographers, and directors, they design meaningful sequences of movement and discovery that add layers of sensory information, giving personal meaning to the architectural experience.

Creating Context. Duda/Paine Architects often adapt urban strategies to suburban and edge city settings, creating destinations with a strong sense of place - even in the absence of an existing architectural context of neighboring buildings, sidewalks, and open spaces. Each of these projects uses multiple buildings to strike a balance between built form and open space; each contrasts man-made gardens with the natural landscape; and each looks at the physical qualities of its site and surroundings to inspire an appropriate architectural language.

Transformations. Progressive leaders in business, healthcare, and education often aspire to cross disciplinary boundaries, collaborate more effectively, and innovate more freely. Architecture, like alchemy can effect transformation. Duda/Paine's interactive and inclusive design process not only reflects their clients' strategic visions but can also act as a catalyst to help redefine how they live, work, play or learn. The projects in this section establish new paradigms by bringing people together in ways that stimulate fresh ideas and practices.

Skyline/Streetscape. A majority of the world's population now lives in cities for the first time, making the tower typology more crucial than ever. Towers make public gestures in the skyline and the streetscape, acting at the scale of the city as well as the more intimate scale of the human body. Whether seen from a distance or experienced close-up, these projects become landmarks in the city skyline while simultaneously responding to the characteristics of the existing urban fabric and amplifying the vibrancy of its' street life.

Public Rooms. The benefits of today's virtual connectedness and increased mobility cannot replace the importance of physical gathering places where we share experiences, build collective memories, and see ourselves as part of a larger community. The privatization that leads to suburban sprawl and gated communities reinforces the architect's civic duty to provide public spaces that counteract this tendency. Whether urban or suburban, indoors or out, Duda Paine's public rooms nurture civic life by encouraging social interaction through chance encounters and casual conversations.