Asymptote Architects - Form follows... risk

The Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, in collaboration with the Embassy of the United States of America in Slovakia, presented a lecture by architect Lise Anne Couture from the New York firm Asymptote Architects on October 12. This accompanying event of the exhibition "Form... follows risk," curated by Jana and Jiří Ševčíkovci and Monika Mitášová, was originally to feature co-founder of the firm Hani Rashid, who unfortunately apologized due to an unexpected delay in a construction project in Asia.

The lecture began with the Dutch project Hydra - Pier, Haarlemmermeer (2002), which was accompanied by efforts to optimize, prefabricate, and manufacture a complex design along with 3D construction drawings. This was followed by a series of unrealized competition proposals. Two notable competitions for German car manufacturers: the BMW Delivery and Event Center in Munich, which has recently opened and was realized according to the winning competition design by Coop Himmelb(l)au, and the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart, which was ultimately built by UN Studio. In the competition for the Guggenheim Museum in Guadalajara, Mexico, Asymptote placed second. The building is situated on an exposed site at the summit of a mountain. The first place here went to Ten Arquitectos with cubes of exhibitions embedded in a tower.

They further applied their design principles and experiments with form in the implementations of boutiques for Carlos Miele or for the first flagship store of Alessi directly in New York. Dynamic surfaces are also characteristic of their installation at the penultimate Biennale of Architecture in Venice (2004), which Asymptote inundated the halls of Arsenale with.

From small scale, Lise Anne transitioned to mega projects involving towers. They were invited to the project of the Bank Tower in the nearby metropolis of Budapest, and in the United Arab Emirates, they are preparing a Luxury Residential Tower, balancing on the edge of commercial "no-name" architecture. The geometry of both buildings is based on movement, on a "twist" method, or on the dynamic growth of the floor area, where the base is larger than the top floor. The largest project by Asymptote to date is the World Business Center in Busan, Korea, which awaits realization. Lise Anne Couture concluded her lecture with a master plan in Malaysia, Penang. This is a complementary master plan to the existing urban structure, from which a portion with towers at the foothills of the mountains is to be eventually realized.