Buildings and Almost Buildings - by Eric Bunge & Mimi Hoang (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Is architecture inherently complete? Or is it a state of incompletion and seeming inadequacy that incites us to imagine architecture as an armature for an ever-changing daily life?

Buildings and Almost Buildings, made possible in part through a grant from the Graham Foundation, explores the work of nARCHITECTS as a single project - an anti-monograph with a subtle manifesto about the open-ended, incomplete, and ambiguous in architecture. Structured around a variety of modes of representation specially prepared for the book, Buildings and Almost Buildings reveals the ways in which the celebrated New York office led by Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang addresses contemporary issues of a world in flux. Across a range of buildings, public spaces, and ephemeral installations, nARCHITECTS argues for the formal and social potential of an architecture that remains somehow incomplete and ambiguously perceived--or in the authors' words, Almost Buildings.

nARCHITECTS is a Brooklyn based architecture office led by Principals Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang. In recent projects such as Carmel Place (New York City's first micro unit building), the design center A/D/O, and the renovation of Chicago Navy Pier, nARCHITECTS is tackling the most pressing issues that our cities face - how we live, work and activate public spaces in response to our nation's changing demographics, housing shortage, evolving workplace technologies and need for equality in the public realm.

The firm's awards and honors include a 2017 national AIA Institute Honor Award in Architecture, the 2017 NYS AIA Firm of the Year, a 2016 Academy of Arts and Letters Award in architecture, the AIANY Andrew J Thomas Award for Pioneers in Housing, the 2006 Architectural League's Emerging Voices and the Canadian Professional Rome Prize in 2005. The firm has been ranked within the top 10 in the US in the design category for the past five years by Architect Magazine.

Review Quotes

"Buildings and Almost Buildings presents nArchitects' oeuvre in a clear, concise volume that illustrates their conceptual frameworks through a non-linear presentation of their projects. The result is a beautiful and informative book that gives us insight into their way of seeing and thinking, and reminds us what happens when even the simplest problem becomes an opportunity to remember to design." --Matthew Shaw, Architects Newspaper

"From the founders of New York-based nArchitects, this book explores what it means for architecture to be complete--or not. By the same token, this book is not quire a monograph, although it does include myriad images of the firm's works, such as the 2016 Brooklyn design center A/D/O." --Architectural Record

"That is why "near buildings," a label insisted upon by Bunge and Hoang in their practice and book, radiates fresh thinking about what architecture is, but can become. A "near building" isn't a pale imitation of something once substantial, like "near beer," but a refusal of closure in favor of continuous attentiveness to the present." --Norman Weinstein, ArchNewsNow