Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 1 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5aa8/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c2a/newsletter/ahmedreza_4.jpg?1695046335)
Based mostly between Tehran, Iran, and New York Metropolis, ASA North has emerged for instance of an architectural observe based mostly on malleability and adaptableness. Chosen by ArchDaily as a part of our 2023 New Practices, ASA North stands on the forefront of melting the boundaries between structure and artwork. ArchDaily had the possibility to interview Ahmadreza Schricker, its founder delving into the evolution of his life, profession, and observe.
Ahmadreza Schricker is an architect whose journey was formed by his work with Herzog & de Meuron and his time with the well-renowned OMA. His studio ASA North, is well-known for its award-winning adaptive reuse of the Argo Up to date Artwork Museum & Cultural Middle, a former distillery that was awarded at the 2020-2022 Aga Khan cycle. It’s a testomony to the work ASA North does, bridging gaps between previous and future, conventional and modern. The interview additionally goes past ASA North, trying into its sister firm, ASA South. Based mostly within the digital world, ASA South challenges standard boundaries and reimagines architectural observe within the digital age.
Learn on to find the total interview with Ahmadreza Schricker, founding father of ASA North.
Associated Article
Tideland Studio Applies Architectural Applied sciences to Create a Sensorial Understanding of Environmental Modifications
AD: The corporate is break up up into ASA North and ASA South. Why did you do that division, and what does it imply? We all know that you simply name ASA South your “crucial conscience.” what does that suggest for ASA North?
AS: In the summertime of 2020, whereas engaged on a fee to design the primary ground-up ‘Digital Museum’ for the Afkhami Assortment, ASA was first uncovered to the unconventional tempo of change on the earth of AI. An growing demand for experience in the direction of a ‘new digital structure’ along with the worldwide pandemic lockdown that made precise structure inaccessible, led me to create ASA South, a brand new firm devoted to the ‘digital’ realm. ASA North is a extra conventional worldwide architectural observe and is devoted to the “bodily” realm with a workforce of architects, engineers, curators, and researchers and collaborates with artists and writers all over the world to design and execute interdisciplinary tasks that vary in scale from exhibitions to personal residences and concrete grasp plans.
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 14 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/650b/fc9c/0e2c/3a3e/9c61/c8a6/newsletter/ahmedreza_22.jpg?1695284394)
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 20 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5a9a/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c20/newsletter/ahmedreza_3.jpg?1695046333)
AD: How does your Iran workplace and affect come into play when designing within the US and vice versa?
AS: Much like how ASA North & ASA South affect one another, they too act as two different cardinal factors on the ASA compass…. On the Jap facet, we are able to nonetheless experiment with the intimate act of constructing structure by hand and, on the similar time, attempt to stability it with the Western affect of technological progress on modern society.
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 8 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5a7f/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c1d/newsletter/ahmedreza_1.jpg?1695046302)
AD: In ASA South, you experiment lots with the basic concept that “kind follows operate.” How are you going to clarify that idea?
AS: In an interview in 2001, Richard Serra mentioned, “There are too many constraints in structure. I lived with architects at Yale, so I knew what they have been up in opposition to. Architects need to take care of an entire host of features which are non-aesthetic, and I wasn’t notably involved in plumbing.”
Does a Digital Structure want “plumbing”? By way of ASA South, that is exactly the query that we wish to incorporate within the Afkhami Digital Museum, which showcases a rising assortment of practically 800 artworks, together with work, sculptures, images, and installations by worldwide artists in addition to a big Islamic Artwork assortment. Thus, our response was designed to abide by a “kind follows assortment” mandate reasonably than a “kind follows operate.” I provide you with a blatant instance: one of many facets of this digital museum permits guests to drag again the curtain on the artist’s course of and see the ambiance by which artworks are conceived and produced by digital replicas of the studio areas of artists represented throughout the Afkhami assortment. This act supplies a possibility for guests to have interaction with the artists, revealing their routines, references and rejects, the – the place and the way – the artwork was made as properly; maybe this house is as worthwhile as the ultimate object: The alpha and the omega.
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 3 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5a88/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c1f/newsletter/ahmedreza_10.jpg?1695046337)
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 12 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/650b/fca1/0e2c/3a3e/9c61/c8a8/newsletter/ahmedreza_22.jpg?1695284463)
AD: How did your work at OMA and your profession earlier than beginning ASA affect your structure observe and methodology?
AS: Earlier than beginning ASA in New York in 2015, I labored on the workplace of Herzog & de Meuron in Switzerland as properly, and each OMA and HDM influenced me as two other forms of reverse cardinal factors on the ASA compass. After I was working at HDM, it appeared like they have been doing the most effective structure that was potential, and in OMA, for me, they made Structure that was inconceivable. In OMA, New York, we have been form of liberated from the duty to assemble, and I ended my days in that workplace with out ever having labored on a challenge that received constructed. I’m delighted with this destiny. As an alternative, I received to give attention to materials regarding the world round us, we may change. After I was in Basel, Switzerland, it felt like being Peter Pan, and I skilled private, skilled, and social life as a maelstrom, and to me, everybody else remained platonically un-age-ed. At HDM, Jacques and Pierre’s unconditional ardour for the standard and permission to make use of the phrase ‘stunning’ when discussing structure nonetheless impacts me.
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 28 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/650d/6bcd/071b/b301/7c80/33e2/newsletter/bridging-boundaries-an-interview-with-ahmadreza-schricker-of-asa-north_28.jpg?1695378415)
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 4 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5a44/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c15/newsletter/ahmedreza_1.jpg?1695046227)
AD: How has your high quality arts background influenced your architectural observe?
AS: Structure will not be Artwork as a result of it all the time has to operate with a program, be accessible to everybody, and likewise reply to a web site and a price range, and so on… I feel possibly my background made me extra conscious that Structure and Development are product of the identical components; they differ completely in the way in which of bringing sense to a metropolis or a spot.
AD: Your tasks are documented as snaps, moments, and curated pictures.. are you able to inform us extra about your conceptual strategy to structure?
AS: There isn’t any clear recipe for inventing structure, and our representational methodology’s function is consistently altering and never outlined. We use all these supplies for every challenge to shock ourselves and relearn what we already know. Within the workplace, we carry supplies on the desk like we’re cooking after which take a look at them, like substances, to see if they’re working collectively to make an architectural response.
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 25 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5a51/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c17/medium_jpg/ahmedreza_7.jpg?1695046245)
AD: In your studio’s restoration of the Argo Manufacturing unit (which acquired the Aga Khan Award), you defined that you simply wished to offer the constructing “a second probability.” Are you able to elaborate in your views of restoration? How can we give buildings new life?
AS: We reside in a time when the structure of latest artwork museums, particularly in Iran’s neighboring nations, has change into spectacular, so it was very fascinating to contemplate changing an current 100-year-old beer manufacturing unit into a up to date artwork museum & cultural middle. I feel “a second probability” permits it to have a brand new form of affect by turning into one thing it was not initially meant to be…This response gave Argo an opportunity to not change into a typical restoration challenge as a result of if it was that, then it needed to be transformed right into a functioning beer manufacturing unit that was not of its time.
Adaptive reuse mustn’t solely give attention to turning outdated buildings into cultural facilities or boutique resorts…We’re very involved in trying into historic buildings/ industrial buildings and learning them and reworking them into functioning faculties, hospitals, malls, stadiums, social golf equipment, housing tasks, and so on…
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 7 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5aba/0e2c/3a0d/6d33/2c03/newsletter/ahmedreza_1.jpg?1695046377)
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 11 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5acd/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c2d/newsletter/ahmedreza_2.jpg?1695046409)
AD: What are your future tasks? What’s within the pipeline?
AS: Structure-wise for the previous three years, we’ve got been engaged on a 12,000 m2 cultural station in Kashan, Iran, that consists of a textile museum, an artwork pavilion, a brand new theatre with an auditorium, and an schooling middle for the Manouchehri Textile Assortment. One other cultural challenge that we’re very enthusiastic about is a 600m2 consolidated modern artwork gallery house, with a efficiency space and a restaurant/bar in Toronto, Canada, for the Dastan Gallery. We’re additionally engaged on a four-story mega single-family residential tower on a mountainous web site and a grasp plan to design a small village for Avli on a scenic hill by the Caspian Sea. Workplace-wise, presently in formation, we search to pursue design in different instructions and past… ASA East will give attention to the ‘previous’ and the preservation of the surroundings & adaptive reuse of current buildings, whereas ASA West seeks to invent structure for the ‘future’ in lesser-explored frontiers equivalent to Earth’s.
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 23 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6508/5a72/0e2c/3a0d/3333/2c1b/newsletter/ahmedreza_5.jpg?1695046316)
![Bridging Boundaries: An Interview with Ahmadreza Schricker of ASA North - Image 6 of 29](https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/650b/fc9e/0e2c/3a3e/9c61/c8a7/newsletter/ahmedreza_23.jpg?1695284405)
The studio may be very well-known for its adaptive reuse challenge of the Argo Up to date Artwork Museum & Cultural Middle, which gained them the Aga Khan Award. Most lately, the studio introduced their exhibition “Remembrance of Issues Current,” which came about on the Cultural Middle. The exhibition featured chosen works from ASA North whereas documenting the transformation of the Argo Manufacturing unit. Furthermore, it explored the studio’s observe, growing a commentary on their tasks and self-awareness. The ArchDaily New Practices 2023 selects these working towards throughout the broadest definition of structure and its train to share their progressive, recent, and forward-thinking mission with the group. The chosen checklist options designers, panorama architects, researchers, curators, activists, writers, and three ground-breaking startups.