Modern Atlanta

Public celebrates winning installation and nationwide competition making case for bold architecture in Atlanta and Southeast

Edge Condition public installation. Designer: Synecdoche, image courtesy Synedoche

Atlanta, Georgia
Co-sponored by MA, (Young Architects Forum), AIA Atlanta, and , the 2011 10Up! Competition winner, Edge Condition, was a huge success and featured on top design websites including designboom, dezeen, and archdaily, a first at this level in recognizing cutting-edge Atlanta-based architecture and design. According to Bernard MCoy, founding partner at MA, “being recognized in this manner is indeed a huge honor for the city of Atlanta and for the sponsors of Edge Condition. Additionally, congratulations to Synecdoche for delivering the city an icon structure that has quickly gathered international attention. We are extremely proud of Edge Condition in how it speaks volumes to bold contemporary architecture making its way to Atlanta.”

10Up winner goes to Edge Condition public installation

Want to see more Edge Condition, click here for more on Flickr.

Edge Condition

factoid: to challenge 10UP applicants and feed the public’s fascination with bold architecture and design excellence, all 10UP qualifying projects have to be inhabitable and be constructed within 24 Hours/dismantled within 24 Hours

Utilizing a by-product material as a means of invoking the temporary pavilion with a temporary material wood edges cut from hardwood boards give a standardized object to build upon creating a field in which to inhabit. By operating on the edge of definitive material, neither board nor wood chip, the wood edge becomes the temporal object between two phases.

image courtesy MA

In the same light the pavilion offers the capacity to be an edge condition of construction. The methodical mode of stacking and maneuvering the edges is in itself on the edge of a mode of construction. The flat stacking method gives way to opportunities for expansion and contraction of the volume between the material. The variable of stacking techniques allow for light to move into the pavilion only through the spaces between the edges transforming the edge condition into an ephemeral effect.


image courtesy MA

The standardized one inch thick wood edge and weight of the hardwood compress the stack into a inhabitable nest stabilized by its dimension and assembly. While dis-assembly is the reverse operation, the disposal of the material is a process of returning the wood edges to the hardwood mill as to re enter the recycling process that would otherwise take place.


image courtesy MA

Ann Arbor crew: Christopher Holzwart, Mary O’Malley, Sarah Petri, Kyle Shobe, Peter von Buelow, Robert Yuen

Atlanta crew: Emily Bacher, Keith Brockman, Jason Diehl, Adam Glenn, Nathan Koskovich, Carolina Montilla

Sponsors and Support: wood edges donated by Hardwoods of Michigan in Clinton, Michigan. Young Architects Forum of Atlanta, Octane Coffee Bar, AIA Atlanta, MA (Modern Atlanta), Midtown West, Cartel Group

Synecdoche (Si-NEK-duh-kee) “simultaneous understanding”
Lisa Sauvé
Adam Smith

As fresh designers we are growing with our work. Beginning with small scale architectural interventions, we work in a fast and nimble environment as a production technique. Architecture creates opportunities to work on multiple scales with the same discipline. Our belief is that every tangible object and experiential space is a design problem. From the minute scale of a business card to the immense scale of an urban infrastructural investigation, design is an all encompassing discipline. As young designers in a young office, we have taken the optimistically naive approach that anything is possible and we would love to design anything. Every project gives us the opportunity to learn more about ourselves and the direction of the office. We learn and receive as much out of a project as our clients do. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel by learning how to run an office without the office experience. Instead we are inventing our own model of design that works for our personalities, discussions and lifestyle and fusing that with the needs of our clients and the possibilities architecture presents in design.

Lisa and Adam both hold Master’s degrees in Architecture from Taubman College at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, and Bachelor’s degrees in Architecture from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI. Lisa was recently awarded the Sarah Marian Parker Award as the outstanding woman M.Arch degree candidate of 2011. She is continuing her academic research on contingent issues latent to architectural endeavors. Adam’s current interests focus on large scale infrastructural landscapes as well as material resource and assembly techniques.