JA Architecture Studio and Tsz Yan Ng Design

JA Architecture Studio and Tsz Yan Ng Design were two of the eight winners of the 2022 Emerging Voices competition, which recognizes North American designers with distinct voices and significant bodies of realized work. 

Behnaz Assadi and Nima Javidi, of JA Architecture Studio, presented projects including Bore-ing Lightness, Underscore Gallery, and Forno Cultura. Through these, JA located their practice in the ‘missing middle’ between architecture as a service and architecture as an art form. By using light weight wood structures to create geometries that are formally related to their vernacular surroundings, and also breed outside them, Assadi and Javidi showed how their designs both belong to and are slightly off from their context—which is, most often, the neighborhood where they live and work.

Tsz Yan Ng of Tsz Yan Ng Design presented projects including Lafayette 148 Global Headquarters, Robotic Needle Felting, and SPLAM_SPatial-LAMinated Timber (SLT) Pavilion/Outdoor Classroom, tracing the history of her interest in the intersection of architecture and global manufacturing processes, materials and labor. Through these themes, Yan Ng shared her work to expand the agency of architectural research, and rethink manufacturing processes using technology.

The presentations were followed by a conversation with Marc Neveu, that touched on the role of research, materiality, and scale in both practices. Neveu is the head of the architecture program in The Design School at Arizona State University.