Selected Publications and Exhibitions
Office Statement

If given the choice between staring blankly into space or reading architects’ office statements on their website, we choose the first. They all say the same thing: we’re sustainable, responsible with budgets, experienced, award-winning, etc. . . . The game seems to be how to say nothing in particular and comfort any worries of someone contemplating hiring you. After a few clicks, it’s hard not to think that all this quote-unquote professionalism is very cold at its core. We can’t tell you exactly when MOS started. We like to say it was 2003, sometimes we say 2005, but we were drifting from place to place, we didn’t have an office space then and our name was !@#?, which we quickly found was too difficult to use because 1. you couldn’t pronounce it and 2. you couldn’t get a Web address. In 2008, we were licensed and became a legal entity, but we had already had an office and made some buildings. At some point, we drifted towards MOS—an acronym of our names and reflection of a shared desire to be horizontal and fuzzy, as opposed to tall and shiny. We began around an oversized table, a surface for collecting, gathering, and working through a range of design experiments—a make-believe of architectural fantasies, problems, and thoughts. We are now located in New York, we have grown a little, but remain around a large table, working together on each project through playful experimentation and serious research. We have won some awards. We have written some books. We have built some buildings. We are currently making more. This website indexes that work: housing; schools; houses; cultural institutions; retail; exhibition design; installations; furniture; objects; books; writing; software experiments; and videos.

 

— Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample

Project Index
General Information
Visit:
226 W 135th St. NY, NY 10030
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866 431 3928
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Selected Awards
2019

Houses for Sale receives AIGA “50 Books” Award

2019

MOS receives an AIA New York State Honor Award for School No. 3 (Petite École)

2014

Krabbesholm Højskole (Denmark) is awarded an AIA NY Excellence Award
    
MOS receives an AIA New York Award of Merit for Element House

Flat File

We draw, talk, email, doodle, diagram, render, print, print, draw, model, receive, distribute, call, approve, confirm, reject, plead, deny, laugh, export, import, present, listen, order, zoom, script, post, pan, copy, paste, scale, collate, staple, eat, list, drink, walk, draw, chat, meet, photograph, crop, calculate, draw, adjust, tweak, sip, solve, stack, note, organize, scan, edit, review, print, question, comment, make, sketch . . . and occasionally we store them in a flat file.

MOS: Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, Paul Ruppert, Charles Dorrance-King, Lafina Eptaminitaki, Matthew Acer, ...

© MOS Architects PLLC

Web site by Studio Lin 

Programming by Brazen

Thank you to all those who have worked with us over the years: 


Michael Abel, Victoria Abel, Marc Acciari, Matthew Acer, Adam Ainsley, Omar Ali, Matthew Allen, Siobhan Allman, Kristy Almond, Andrew Atwood, Katy Barkan, Ryan Barney, Jonas Barre, Ashley Bigham, Heather Bizon, Ryan Bollom, Jason Bond, Tim Brennan, Lasha Brown, Benas Burdulis, Chad Burke, Michelle Chang, Yam Chumpolphaisal, Jacob Comerci, Taylor Cornelson, Robert Crabtree, Russell Crader, Zac Culbreth, Ryan Culligan, Gideon Danilowitz, David Delgado, Leigha Dennis, Phillip Denny, Ivi Diamantopoulou, Cyrus Dochow, Ian Donnelly, Charles Dorrance-King, Esra Durukan, Cecily Eckhardt, Ceri Edmunds, Lafina Eptaminitaki, Fauzia Evanindya, Michael Faciejew, Fancheng Fei, David Fenster, Jose Miguel Ahedo Fernandez, Darby Foreman, Justin Fowler, Andrew Frame, Griffin Frazen, Michaela Friedberg, Paul Frederickson, Forest Fulton, Judy Sue Fulton, Yann Gay-Crossier, Steve Gertner, Fabiana Godoy, Marti Gottsch, Nile Greenberg, Simon Greenwold, Jerome Haferd, Helen Han, Thomas Heltzel, Fred Holt, Elliott Hodges, Kai Hotson, Steve Huang, Justin Huxol, Sarah Iwata, Maciej Kaczynski, Mark Kamish, Alexandra Karlsson, Jeremy Keagy, Martin Kedzior, Tessa Kelly, Yair Keshet, Jason Kim, Stefan Klecheski, Brandt Knapp, Lukasz Kos, Kera Lagios, Jimenez Lai, Man-Yan Lam, Nicola Laursen-Schmidt, Taekyoung Lee,  Cara Liberatore, Joanna Ligas, Kate Lisi, Clair Logoz, Jaron Lubin, Ryan Ludwig, William Macfarlane, Lorenzo Marasso, Gabrielle Marcoux, Steve Martinez, Meredith McDaniel, Patrick McGowen, Zane Mechem, Julia Muntean, Magdalena Naydekova, Zosia Nowakowska, Griffin Ofiesh, DK Osseo-Assare, Miriam Peterson, Elijah Porter, Jericho Prater, Jason Pytko, Andy Rauchut, Carson Russell, Paul Ruppert, Laura Salazar, Shu-Chang, Zach Seibold, Temple Simpson, Carter Skemp, Michael Smith, Zachary Snyder, Igsung So, Niko Stahl, Rudolph Stahl, Ian Starling, Mathew Staudt, Joel Stewart, Sara Stevens, Liza Stiff, Julia Suh, James Tate, Chat Travieso, George Valdes, Geoff von Oeyon, Phi Van Phan, Sarah Wagner, Yshai Yudekovitz, John Yurchyk ...  

 

 

 

Housing
No. 1
Thoughts on a Walking City
Location:
Orange, New Jersey
Program:
Housing, Work, Office, Retail
Status:
Speculative Proposal, 2011

Orange, New Jersey, a once-thriving commuter suburb located 30 minutes outside of New York City, currently suffers from high rates of foreclosure and unemployment. Working with the economist Ed Glaeser, an in-depth statistical analysis was undertaken, considering property ownership, municipal budgeting and infrastructure, public health, and alternative models of ownership that could promote new flexibilities in housing and work spaces. Currently, streets are 22 percent of our proposed site’s total land area, costing the city $642,958 in annual maintenance.

Our proposal reimagines the street as the site of a new collective housing model that incorporates a localized energy infrastructure. With the rail station at its center, the proposal removes the individual automobile within a walkable half-mile radius, filling the streets with four-story townhouse structures that radically mix commercial, office, and residential spaces while still providing access for emergency vehicles and pedestrian circulation.

This proposal envisions large-scale urban development through small-scale live/work units, a pedestrian focus, and a local model of governance while engaging previous housing histories—both the large-scale concrete New Brutalist developments of the ’60s as well as Jane Jacobs and New Urbanist models of a walkable city.

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Project Team: Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, Katy Barkan, Jason Bond, David Delgado, Leigha Dennis, Ian Donnelly, Justin Fowler, Griffin Frazen, Steve Gertner, Fabiana Godoy, Marti Gottsch, Jeremy Keagy, Kate Lisi, Meredith Mcdaniel, Magdalena Naydekova, Zach Seibold, Mathew Staudt, George Valdes
Filmmaker and Photographer: Christopher Woebken
Housing Specialist: Eric Belsky, Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University
Public Health Specialist: Kelly Brownell, Rudd Center of Public Health, Yale University
Economist: Ed Glaeser, Department of Economics, Harvard University
Climate Engineer: Emilie Hagen, Atelier Ten
Landscape Architect: Chris Reed, Stoss

Related Project:
Already Happened Tomorrow

External Link:
MoMA, Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream