Architects Ajmal Aqtash and Richard Sarrach along with their partner Tamaki Uchikawa received the 30th annual Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers for their firm Form-ula's innovative design work.
Participants in the program are chosen through a portfolio competition juried by distinguished architects, artists, and critics, and the Young Architects and Designers Committee. The annual competition consists of a series of lectures and exhibitions open to designers 10 years or less out of college.
"The work of Ajmal Aqtash and Richard Sarrach represents architectural research of the highest order," said Thomas Hanrahan, dean of Pratt's School of Architecture. "Using digital technologies to investigate structure and material, their research has produced new and innovative forms that address complex, contemporary problems in a completely original manner," he added.
This year's competition, titled "It's Different," asked architects and designers to consider the new role of the designer and to provide new strategies of addressing existing and entrenched problems, proactive definitions of practice, and a rethinking of the design discipline in relation to new economic, political, social, and cultural paradigms.
Aqtash, Sarrach, and Uchikawa's work is on view as part of the 2011 Architectural League Prize exhibition, which is on going through July 29 at the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries at Parsons The New School for Design at 66 Fifth Avenue.
Aqtash, Sarrach, and Uchikawa founded Form-ula in New York in 2009. The firm is a multidisciplinary design practice that seeks to understand the intersection of design and engineering and its collaborative possibilities to produce culturally rich and high performance architecture for large- and small-scale projects.
Work includes Arch XXX, an art installation in Chicago; F.A.T. (face lift) in New York; and Clay Sutures: The Flats, an apartment complex in Louisville, Ky. The three are also co-founders of Core.Form-ula, the research and development wing of Form-ula, which seeks to capture cultural content related to design, engineering, science, technology, and art and organize it into an online repository.
