Publication

  • Projects and Their Consequences
    Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto
    Authors
    Princeton Architectural Press, 2019
  • GRANTEE
    Jesse Reiser & Nanako Umemoto
    GRANT YEAR
    2015

Reiser + Umemoto, 1994–2004, 2015, New York. Courtesy of Reiser + Umemoto.

Projects and Their Consequences is the definitive catalog of Reiser + Umemoto's past work, serving as a thorough reference for the firm's projects as well as their conceptual foundations and relationships. A collection of over sixty projects, it spans thirty years and ranges in scale from furniture, object, and interior to landscape, urban design, and infrastructure. Organized around a continuous stream of work, it presents lineages and generates taxonomies, a wunderkammer and visual encyclopedia of latent tropes. As a follow-up, specific and exhaustive by nature, to the concepts and propositions put forth in Atlas of Novel Tectonics, the monograph's relation to architectural discourse is demonstrative. The breadth of work, in constant competition with itself and with the architects' contemporaries, embodies the inextricable relationships between recently built and speculative proposals. It dispels myths and welcomes questions, revealing the agency of a sustained overall project in architecture.

Reiser + Umemoto, RUR Architecture PC, is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary architectural firm, which has built projects at a wide range of scales: from furniture design, to residential and commercial structures, up to the scale of landscape, urban design, and infrastructure. With the support of the Graham Foundation, Reiser + Umemoto published the Atlas of Novel Tectonics in 2006, and released the Japanese edition in 2008. They have recently won two international competitions: the Taipei Pop Music Center and the Kaohsiung Port Terminal, both currently under construction. The Kaohsiung Port Terminal recently received the  PA Award (2014). O-14, a 22-story exoskeletal office tower, has been completed in Dubai and has received numerous international honors, including an AIA Design Award, the Concrete Industry Board's Award of Merit (2009) and the American Council of Engineering Companies' Diamond Award (2009). A comprehensive monograph of the project, O-14: Projection and Reception, was published by AA Publications in 2012.

Nanako Umemoto received her BArch from the Cooper Union in New York in 1983, following studies at the School of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at the Osaka University of Art, and formed Reiser + Umemoto with partner, Jesse Reiser, in 1986. She has taught at various schools in the United States and Asia, including Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Hong Kong University, Kyoto University, and the Cooper Union, and she has lectured widely at various educational and cultural institutions throughout the US, Europe, and Asia.

Jesse Reiser received his BArch degree from the Cooper Union in New York and completed MArch at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He was a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in 1985 and he worked for the offices of John Hejduk and Aldo Rossi, prior to forming Reiser + Umemoto with partner, Nanako Umemoto. He is professor of architecture at Princeton University and has previously taught at various schools in the US and Asia, including Columbia University, Yale University, the Ohio State University, Hong Kong University, and the Cooper Union, and has lectured widely at various educational and cultural institutions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.