Kim YAO
Co-Founder and Principal
Architecture Research Office (ARO)
23 October 2019
Wednesday, 7 pm
Reception and Check-In Beginning at 6:15 pm
Horchow Auditorium, Dallas Museum of Art
Free for Forum Members, $15 DMA Members, $20 General Admission
Tickets at Door, No Reservations Needed, Join Us!
Kim Yao, AIA is principal, with Stephen Cassell and Adam Yarinsky, of Architecture Research Office (ARO), a 30-person firm in New York City. ARO’s diverse body of work-spanning strategic planning, architecture and urban design-has earned the firm over a hundred design awards including the 2018 AIA New York State Firm of the Year Award and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt 2011 National Design Award. She is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia and has also taught at Parsons and Barnard. She is also the 2019 President-Elect of AIA New York. ARO has earned a reputation for elegant, innovative, and imaginative architecture born out of relentless exploration and engagement.
At its core, Architecture Research Office is a practice for the new millennium. Its diverse project portfolio – spanning strategic planning, architecture, and urban design – embodies “Visionary Pragmatism” for its ability to achieve remarkable aesthetic and programmatic results while exhibiting profound responsibility for financial and natural resources. From a low-cost, energy-efficient housing prototype to a proposal to reinvent public space, ecology and infrastructure in New York City, ARO’s work is simultaneously sensuous, intellectually rigorous and socially engaging.
ARO has collaborated with leading universities, cultural institutions, global corporations, government agencies, and private residential clients. The firm’s current and recent projects include the new academic research hub at Brown University’s 164 Angell; the restoration of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, along with a new campus plan for the Menil; the expansion of Dia Art Foundation’s locations; and a new home for the Vilcek Foundation.
Past notable projects include a New Urban Ground, a proposal for urban climate change adaptation; the restoration of the seminal 20th-century-artist Donald Judd’s Home and Studio; Knoll’s flagship showroom and corporate offices; and the Princeton School of Architecture. Architecture Research Office received the 2018 AIA New York State Firm of the Year Award, the 2011 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters honored the firm with their 2010 Academy Award for Architecture. ARO’s projects have garnered more than 100 design awards and have been widely published nationally and internationally. The firm’s work has also been exhibited widely and is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.