Empire Stores « STUDIO V Architecture

Project

Old + New

We believe cities are the greatest artifacts of man, containers of collective myths and desires. STUDIO V explores and renews cities by creating contemporary architecture that incorporates and enriches history while expressing the ideals of our time.

Our designs combine old and new, integrate modern architecture with historic structures, and contrast craft and digital fabrication. Our research reveals historic layers of sites and structures while our architecture incorporates the radical recycling of industrial and historic artifacts including bridges, tanks, warehouses, buildings, former secret laboratories, and grain silos into surprising new uses and successful public spaces.

Edges + Centers

STUDIO V’s focus on the edges and gaps of cities. Underutilized waterfronts, abandoned industrial structures, failed urban renewal sites, and dead infrastructure provide fertile ground for our designs to reconnect communities.

Our architecture addresses the forgotten spaces of cities, to support entrepreneurs, reconnect neighborhoods, and promote equity. Our expertise in resiliency, affordable housing, waterfront design, public parks, brownfield remediation, reinventing infrastructure, and cultural spaces is transforming former edges into the new centers of urban life.

Structure + Movement

Innovative structural solutions and digital design tools ground our architecture. We combine research, CNC fabrication, and traditional craft to create innovative designs related to context, site, history, and meaning.

Our architectural designs incorporate expressive lattice shells, cable-nets, state of the art sustainable materials, and innovative solutions to save endangered historic structures. Our innovative approaches to digital fabrication are transforming public spaces, from an award winning underground street in Japan, to the longest bar in North America, to a pedestrian passage on a bridge over Niagara Falls.

Commercial Observer

Dumbo “wasn’t a retail center or even an office center” at the time, said Klaus. “So we did the tour of the building and I went back to my office. I got a telephone call from an architect I had met years before, Jay Valgora. He said, ‘I saw your name on the roster, I want to come see you right away.’ He came down to my office, I think that day. He said he had been a successful architect on the last round, he had a good concept for this, and he wanted to do the project.”

Archinect

"The Tanks at Bushwick Inlet Park embrace a collaborative process that integrates community needs and ideas in the architectural process while preserving industrial heritage. The notions of regeneration, re-rehabilitation and re-appropriation activate the healing of a site, both socially and ecologically."

The Nature of Cities

The Nature of Cities is an international platform for transdisciplinary dialogue and urban solutions. We facilitate the sharing of diverse, transformative ideas about cities as ecosystems of people, nature, and infrastructure. We are committed to the design and creation of better cities for all: cities that are resilient, sustainable, livable, and just.