studio SUMO

Sunil Bald and Yolande Daniels are founding partners of the New York architecture and design studio SUMO. Founded in 1997, the firm “responds to contextual forces that include the physical, social, cultural, and historical conditions of site, program, and type, [while striving] for solutions that are inventive and unexpected.” Often working in the public realm, studio SUMO’s built work includes the Josai University School of Business Management, Sakado, Japan; the Museum of African Diaspora Art, Brooklyn; Leaney Harlem Duplex, Harlem; and interior space for the Museum of African Art in Long Island City. Current projects include Mitan Housing, Miami; Mizuta Museum of Art, Sakado, Japan; and the International Student Dormitory, JIU University, Togane, Japan.

Studio SUMO has received numerous awards from the AIA and was listed in the 2006 Design Vanguard from Architectural Record. The firm was selected in 1999 to participate in the League’s Young Architects Forum and was a 2002 finalist in MoMA/PS1’s Young Architects Program. Their work has been widely exhibited, including at the Museum of Modern Art and the Venice Biennale and has been published in Architectural Record, House and Garden, The New York Times, Dwell, Metropolis, Azure, and numerous other publications and surveys. Sunil Bald received his B.S. in biology from the University of California Santa Cruz and his M.Arch from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He currently teaches at the Yale School of Architecture. Yolande Daniels received her B.Arch from City College and her M.Arch from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. She is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.