ideas for governor’s island

2021
NY Magazine

Justin Davidson invited four firms to develop ideas for the future of Governor’s Island in NY: Anupama Kundoo from India, Estudio Macías Peredo from Mexico, Barbara Bestor in Los Angeles, and Reiulf Ramstad from Norway. They have built their practices in dramatically different cultures of design and construction. In India and Mexico, architects design around minimal budgets that are more efficiently spent on labor than on imported materials; craftsmanship takes precedence over factory-made modules shipped from half a world away. In Norway, the government has a long-standing program of commissioning architecture that is knitted to the nation’s natural marvels. Los Angeles lays a byzantine set of seismic, zoning, and preservation rules over rocky and hugely expensive terrain. Despite their differences, all these architects understand the dynamic between what they do and the environment they do it to.