[text-only version of linemag.org CRITICAL PRACTICES issue portfolio feature]

Ogrydziak / Prillinger Architects:  The Heuristic Practice

To describe this five-year-old practice as an "architectural research studio"--as Luke Ogrydziak and Zoe Prillinger do--belies the ambitiousness of the firm's premise and the caliber of its accomplishments. The firm has several significant projects currently underway: a "skyspace" in Sonoma (in collaboration with James Turrell) and several provocative residential projects throughout California. Yet Ogrydziak / Prillinger sustain a strong commitment to incorporating conceptual work on a regular basis to achieve a 3:1 ratio of built and theoretical work.

Ogrydziak and Prillinger believe that "critical" architecture is self-aware, evolving out of an internally consistent discourse regarding its own formal genesis. Specifically, they explore how reconfiguring the "ground" or origin that locates each project fundamentally informs every design decision. The construction of the "ground" itself--highly contingent and fragile--springs from the convergence of universal architectural questions with the local imperatives of site specificity. A critical practice thematizes this contingency, asking questions rather than delivering answers. One of their recent studies, the 20 Degree Isometric House, an AIA SF 2005 award-winner, exemplifies their current focus on "issues of geometry and geometric projection that manifest the conflict between idealized theoretical space and physical space."

One might say that Ogrydziak and Prillinger view the balance of built work and research as a delicate titration with potent implications. Although the firm's client-driven work is born of the same diagrammatic impulse that structures their conceptual work, pure research obviously offers freedom to explore ideas beyond what is appropriate for built work. Yet they also have sought out and have been fortunate enough to find clients whose projects complement their research, moving the firm closer to its ultimate goal of merging the real and the theoretical more and more over time.