Johnsen Schmaling Architects

Profile of Johnsen Schmaling Architects

Business Name

Johnsen Schmaling Architects

Location

United States

Services

Architecture

Website

http://www.johnsenschmaling.com

Principal(s)

Sebastian Schmaling and Brian Johnsen

Philosophy

Johnsen Schmaling Architects was founded in 2003 as a design and research studio in Milwaukee. Since then, the work of Brian Johnsen and Sebastian Schmaling has garnered critical attention for its conceptual clarity, formal discipline, astute detailing, and its unequivocal commitment to architectural innovation and sustainability - an "architecture of melancholic silence and intense restraint", as Rodolfo Machado writes in a recent exhibition catalogue of Johnsen Schmaling's projects.

Practicing in a region shaped by the tensions between a besieged urban rustbelt and its agrarian hinterland, Johnsen and Schmaling use both city and rural sites as complimentary laboratories for their ongoing architectural investigations. Their projects are informed by a poetic reading of site and terrain that rejects contextual mimesis as much as modernism's preoccupation with self-referential objects; instead, Johnsen Schmaling's intense dissection of context and cultural memory translates into an abstract palette of articulate architectural operations and a sober design vocabulary, transcending both entropic rustbelt fantasies and bucolic sentimentalism that, for decades, have stymied the architectural discourse in Middle America. Equally important is their experimentations with the "extended surface" - the blurring of boundaries between interior and exterior, public and private, and foreground and background, derived from carefully studied tectonic, material and tactile manipulations of conventional building systems and new technologies. Johnsen and Schmaling employ a rigorous design methodology that takes advantage of digital tools and fabrication techniques but, more importantly, relies on physical, analog models at all scales. These models, from preliminary, abstract concept studies to precise detail mock-ups, form a series of artifacts, a comprehensive, three-dimensional narrative that traces the conceptual evolution and eventual execution of each project.

The work of Johnsen Schmaling Architects has been widely published in several books and numerous national and international design magazines, including Architectural Record, Metropolis, Azure, Dwell, Harvard Design Magazine, Interior Design, Contract, Modernism, Competitions, The New York Times, Deutsches Architektenblatt, Residential Architect, Plan Magazine, D Casa, and Monitor. Johnsen Schmaling's projects have been featured in galleries here and abroad, most recently in the exhibit "Young Americans" at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt surveying the work of emerging architecture practices in the US. In July, Johnsen Schmaling Architects will be featured in an exhibit at Aedes Gallery in Berlin. Johnsen and Schmaling have won several architectural competitions and have received numerous national and international design awards, and have lectured on their work around the world.

Background

• Founded: 2003
• Offices: 1
• Design team: 6

Key projects

• Zero House, Single Family residence, Racine, USA 2008
• Downtown Bar, Restaurant/Bar, Milwaukee, USA, 2008
• Ferrous House, Single family house, Milwaukee, USA, 2008
• Palomar Welcome Center, Retail, Milwaukee, USA 2008
• Camouflage House, Lake retreat, Green Lake, USA 2007
• Urban Infill 02, Milwaukee, USA, 2007
• The Blatz, Urban mixed-use project, Milwaukee, 2006
• Urban Infill 01, Milwaukee, USA, 2005
• House in the Woods, Port Washington, USA, 2005
• Parts House Pavilion, Milwaukee, USA, 2004

Key publications

• Architectural Review, 2007
• Metropolis, "Into The Woods", May, 2007
• Interior Design, "Past and Future", November, 2007
• Azure, "Material World - The Blatz", November, 2007
• Young Americans (book), Johnsen Schmaling Architects, September, 2007
• Dwell. "Geiger Sanctioned", September, 2007
• Architectural Record, "House of the Month", July, 2007
• Residential Architect, "Sheltering Birches", March, 2006
• Architectural Record, "Blurring Exteriors and Interiors", February, 2005
• Monitor, "Parts House Pavilion", June 2004

Key awards

• National Housing Design Award, AIA, USA, 2008
• Honor Award, AIA Wisconsin, 2008
• Emerging Voice Award, New York Architectural League, USA, 2008
• National Interiors Award, Contract, 2008
• Honor Award, AIA Wisconsin, USA, 2007
• Project of the Year Award, Residential Architect, USA, 2007
• House of the Year Award, Custom Home Magazine, USA, 2007
• Ferrous Park International Design Competition, Kansas City, USA, 2006
• National Housing Design Award, AIA, 2005
• Merit Award, AIA Wisconsin, 2005