Coren Sharples of SHoP Architects Accepts 2016 Lawrence Israel Prize

The new academic building at FIT could be considered a metaphor for the growth and development of SHoP Architects, the winner of FIT’s 2016 Lawrence Israel prize. As SHoP has evolved since the firm’s design for the new building was accepted in 2003, so the plans for the building – finally nearing its groundbreaking – have also evolved. On April 14, Coren Sharples, the partner in charge of interior design at SHoP, accepted the Lawrence J. Israel Prize on behalf of the firm and gave a talk in which she touched on many of the firm’s key projects, with special attention to FIT’s new academic building.

Model of New Academic Building by SHoP

Sharples discussed the origins of the firm, which occurred when the five partners met in 1990 at the Columbia School of Architecture. Each came from a different background—art history, fine arts, business management, finance, and structural engineering. This gave the firm diverse areas of strength. The name SHoP is based on the first initials of the partners’ last names. However, as the practice developed and interest and focus on materials evolved, as well as its hands-on 3D model building and use of indigenous materials, the “workshop” aspect of SHoP made it an even more appropriate name for the firm.

To understand SHoP, Sharples said, it is important to know where the firm fits in the history of the profession. “We set out to create a firm that would really bring together thinking and making, concept and reality,” she said. “A lot of that was possible because we came from professions outside of architecture, so we had all been in the world on the client side.”

Sharples recalled the competition that led to SHoP’s commission to design FIT’s new academic building in 2003. “At the time, it was the largest and most important project our office had taken on,” she said. “The proposal for the new building incorporated a lot of the things we had been thinking about. Even though the building was not constructed at the time, we took everything we learned from that process into other projects that did get built, so it was a seminal and important project for our office.”

Now that funding for the building has been secured, SHoP is revisiting the design, bringing with them all the experience gained in the intervening 13 years, including work on Mitchell Park in the Village of Greenport, Long Island;  the Barclay Center in Brooklyn; a number of lab spaces at FIT; and an innovation hub in Botswana.

“Thirteen years later, with everything that we’ve done and learned, we come back to this project in our city that is so dear to us,” Sharples said. “We have to remind ourselves, ‘What were the things that inspired us?’ [The Feldman Center] is a Brutalist building, but it has amazing textures and colors, and you have to celebrate those moments and revisit what some of the original work was about.”

Architect Lawrence J. Israel endowed the eponymous award, which has been presented annually by the Interior Design Program since 1998, to highlight ideas and work that enrich FIT students’ course of study. Past recipients are: Tony Chi; LOT-EK; Roman and Williams; Diller Scofidio + Renfro; David Rockwell; Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis; Gaetano Pesce; AvroKO; Lindy Roy; Jamie Drake; Adam D. Tihany; Bromley-Caldari; Vicente Wolf; Billie Tsien; Clodagh; Margo Grant Walsh, Gensler; John F. Saladino; and Charles Gwathmey.

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