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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Fax:
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 ...  

 

 

 

Video
14:41
The Indifferent Courier
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Architectural Indifference.

 

If all disciplinary narratives are personal and provincial, then we are not quote-un-quote postmodern, but post-parametric. Parametricism was our model of both total expert control and novelty, a positivist expressionism. (Gestural forms argued through technical precision.) This expressionism encourages our indifference. Previous progressive (avant-garde) disciplinary narratives relied upon technique to destabilize “form.” Eventually, technique was simply replaced with technology. Nowadays, it is the idea of progress itself (both disciplinary and technological) that is in doubt. The Belgians have replaced the Japanese. We’ve witnessed the return to the pre-internet 80s, pre-nurb painterly compositional models, hand-sketching, collage instead of photo-realistic digital renders, Miami Vice pastel colors, etc…. But that said, today nothing dies, so even constructing a narrative like this seems inaccurate and partial. All disciplinary procedures, narratives, models, etc… co-exist, perhaps it is the volume and tone that has shifted. Students aren’t racing towards the latest technological apparatus or digging up some arcane geometry, like they used to, if anything they seem to be looking for some forgotten stylistically bizarre image from the junkpile of history. Our field appears flatter and more diffuse. It is impossible to imagine an original architecture or something shockingly new. (Similarly, pedagogy itself has been replaced by an amazon algorithm, if you like this you’ll probably like this too.)

All in all, Architecture seems pretty boring these days, and that’s okay. Our current condition is the aftermath to the recent positivist expressionism and the academic and curatorial emphasis on urgency or crisis over the past decade. There are plenty of things to be worried about and need solutions, but our current architectural problem might be the reverse- how can we instrumentalize or perhaps construct new modes of architectural indifference. Architectural indifference puts things together that don’t necessarily belong, it stares blankly, it confuses or equivocates parts and wholes (a doorstop could be as important as a wall.) Indifference works with the vaguely familiar, the deadpan. It uses our collective state of constant distraction and flattened forms of attention towards constructing an architecture.

Project Team: Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, Ryan Barney, Mark Acciari

Related Project:
House No. 11
Rock No. 1-12