Daily Features

Deconstructing with James Wines

Architect James Wines, a 2013 recipient of the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement, discusses his unique approach.

By Angela Riechers, Superscript November 20, 2013

In 2013, architect and founder of the New York–based office, SITE, James Wines was honored with the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Over the course of a career spanning four decades, the Penn State architecture professor’s multidisciplinary creative output has focused on site-specific structures that engage the environment, encompassing architecture, environmental works, public spaces, landscapes, master plans, interiors, videos, graphic design, and industrial design. He is the author of several books, including De-Architecture and Green Architecture, and the subject of 22 monographs.

Wines' design for Shake Shack in Madison Square Park (left). James Wines at his drafting desk (right). © SITE / James Wines

The Books

Green Architecture James Wines

De-Architecture James Wines

SITE James Wines
Herbert Muschamp
Alison Sky

New York City residents may know him best through his 2004 green design for Shake Shack’s Madison Square Park flagship. His architecture plays with ideas of purposeful deconstruction, most notably in his series of nine national showrooms for the BEST corporation. That commission brought him immediate recognition and accolades at the beginning of his career. Beginning with the Indeterminate Facade Building in Houston, 1974, designed to look as if the building was collapsing from the ragged top of the structure in a landslide of bricks spilling onto the canopy over the main entrance. Wines continued to explore ways of creating new structures that appear to be in physical flux, challenging public expectations of what a building should look like and how it should interact with the landscape around it.

In nearly all current design disciplines, dematerialization plays a key role. For instance, in advertising, signage is now often projected rather than fabricated; in publishing, we increasingly read digital material rather than a printed page; in architecture, the line between inside and outside, finished and rough, wild and civilized becomes increasingly blurred. Asked what he finds engaging about design that appears to be in a state of permanent decay, Wines had this to say:

Sometimes you want dematerialization in your work and sometimes you don’t. For instance, Robert Smithson loved the notion of entropy: He really wanted Spiral Jetty to disappear. Some things are made to disappear, and rotting away is part of the project. My whole series of BEST buildings was not intended to actually disappear and yet they did—torn down, renovated until they’re unrecognizable, built over. When nature is involved, then the character of the space changes all the time, like the Forest Building (1980). Metamorphosis becomes incorporated into the design: you expect and want the light, the space, the boundaries to change.

BEST Parking Lot Building, Los Angeles, CA, 1976. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Parking Lot Building, Los Angeles, CA, 1976. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Tilt Building, Baltimore, MD, 1978. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Forest Building, Richmond, VA, 1978. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Forest Building, Richmond, VA, 1978. © SITE / James Wines

Highway 86–Expo 87, World Expo 1986, Vancouver, Canada, 1986. © SITE / James Wines

Ross' Landing Park and Plaza, Chattanooga, TN, 1992. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Inside/Outside Building, Milwaukee, WI, 1984. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Indeterminate Facade Building, Houston, TX, 1975. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Notch Building, Sacramento, CA. © SITE / James Wines

BEST Peeling Wall Building, Richmond, VA. © SITE / James Wines

Aquatorium, Chattanooga, TN, 1993. © SITE / James Wines

Mallet House Interior, Greenwich Village, New York, 1985. © SITE / James Wines

Isuzu Space Station - Children's Plaza, Yokohama, Japan, 1989. © SITE / James Wines

Ghost Parking Lot, Hamden, CT, 1977. © SITE / James Wines

Among Wines' more recent commissions is the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. © SITE / James Wines

Architecture on the Edge of Postmodernism Robert A. M. Stern

iF Design Awards 2013 iF International Design Forum

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