Architecture Competition Toronto Affordable Housing Challenge 2nd prize winners – Giovanni Fruttaldo, Kimberly Carlisle and Noah Lemus

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the 2nd prize winners of our “Toronto Affordable Housing Challenge” competition – Giovanni Fruttaldo, Kimberly Carlisle and Noah Lemus from United States!

Kimberly Carlisle, Giovanni Fruttaldo and Noah Lemus from United States

F-ARE is a young architectural practice based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 2017, and its team currently has 5 people.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been involved?

The studio currently focuses on residential projects at the single and multi-family scale. Our smallest project is a garage conversion into a guest studio, and our largest is a 7-story mixed-use building. Our design approach starts with researching the history of a place and the economic agents at play, and then moves to create scenarios for its sustainable development. We put an emphasis on enduring craft and efficient technical solutions. The result is a highly detailed and stylistically measured design.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

Architecture is made of projects. Through its practice of physical or speculative designs, architecture envisions, alters, or creates ecologies made of places, cultures, and nature. As such, the architect is an agent of change.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

Competitions are invaluable opportunities to research and test ideas that may not be possible to investigate within the confines of a project brief developed in an office or educational environment. Entering a competition deepens the knowledge of place, typology, and tectonic of architecture. Designers are asked to communicate an idea visually in a concise and compelling fashion. Through failures and successes, competitions are skill builders and thought-provoking bombs for those who participate.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

Practice makes perfect, or at least better. We believe that entering a competition is always the right choice to become better designers. Participating in a competition is a catalyst of professional growth: it brings better ideas into the practice of architecture.