Brooklyn-based architecture practice Peterson Rich Office has been named as a 2020 Emerging Voice by The Architectural League, a non-profit organization "for creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related disciplines" based in New York. 

Established in 1982, Emerging Voices is an annual invited competition for North American firms and individuals with distinct design voices and significant bodies of realized work. 

A view from Peterson Rich Office. Image courtesy of Peterson Rich Office

Peterson Rich Office is an interdisciplinary design studio founded in 2011 by Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich specializing in cultural and residential projects as well as urban design proposals.

The design in Brooklyn, NY is a deep study of masonry building technique. Corners are curved, giving the brick an appearance of softness that will change with the sunlight over the course of the day. Image © Peterson Rich Office

"We are honored to be named among the 2020 Architecture League Emerging Voices by a jury of colleagues who are working on some of the most pressing challenges facing the built environment today," said Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich, principals of Peterson Rich Office.

"In its nearly 40-year history, the EV program has identified many of the most impactful practices in North America, including some of our greatest influences." 

"We aspire to be an office that generates many kinds of value - cultural, economic, and social - and see this award as both an honor and a responsibility," they added.

Built on a rural site overlooking the Connecticut River, this studio was commissioned by an artist who paints large-scale, imagined landscape paintings. The building, located in Lyme, CT, also evokes landscape, the black wood siding is of the earth, while the anodized aluminum roof is of the sky. Image © Kevin Kunstadt

Among the Peterson Rich Office’s body of realized work are: 130 Orchard Street for Galerie Perrotin on the Lower East Side, New York City; the single-family Prismatic Bay Townhouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Glossier Flagship in Soho; and a ground-up art studio for painter Tula Telfair in Connecticut. The firm has also completed a number of studies and concepts for the New York City Housing Authority.

The painter Nina Chanel Abney recently commissioned Peterson Rich Office to convert a dilapidated garage building in Cold Spring, NY into a live/work studio space. The design is an adaptive reuse of the existing structure, strategically re-purposing concrete block walls for a new layout and building form. Image © Peterson Rich Office

The firm’s growing number of ‘On the Boards’ projects include: a multi-residential building designed with curved brick corners in Williamsburg (commencing construction); the conversion of a dilapidated garage building into a live/work studio space for the artist Nina Chanel Abney (in design); and the adaptive reuse of a large Catholic Church into a mixed-use arts and community space in Detroit (in design), among others. 

Galerie PerrotinThird Floor. Because of its scale and varied uses, Galerie Perrotin in New York functions more like an institution than a commercial art gallery. Image © Guillaume Ziccarelli

This spring, Peterson Rich Office will complete the inaugural 2019 Kaplan Chairs for Urban Design as part of a yearlong fellowship with the Regional Plan Association.

Top image: Nathan Rich and Miriam Peterson, image courtesy of Peterson Rich Office

> via The Architectural League