WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND / THE LOT-EK MOVIE BY THOMAS PIPER



If we pay enough attention to the ordinary, we see the extraordinary. The shipping container is an accidental icon of our modern age: the eight-foot-by-forty-foot corrugated steel box that brings the world to our doorstep. It brings all our hearts’ desires’, available for purchase. And it brings us complicity in the global supply chains, and all the economic, ecological, technological, and political systems that forge those chains, as those great container ships link maker and user, buyer and seller, China and America together across the vast distances of the lawless sea. The design studio LOT-EK is a visionary practice at the intersection of art and architecture, that specializes in upcycling, which is the art and science of repurposing, remaking, rethinking, reimagining. Of using old things in new ways. The shipping container is the thing that has captured their imagination for over a quarter-century: they have remade containers into homes, schools, galleries, libraries, and more. With hundreds of millions of obsolete and unused containers around the world, this is a new and necessary architecture of the future, that repairs and regenerates the unnatural environment that we have inherited from the past. WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND is a feature-length documentary of this vision, and of the soulful lifelong partnership of the people, designers Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, behind it.

WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND shows us a way to be radically optimistic, creative, and constructive during times that can feel the opposite of all that. Director Thomas Piper’s acclaimed documentary feature Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf showed how the wild and unfavored plants could encourage audiences to live more responsibly with nature, and now he looks at living more smartly and sweetly with the effects of industry, infrastructure, and technology. Taking us from spark-filled workshops to a container ship sea voyage over a shimmering sea; and explaining all the prosaic and poetic design thinking behind how LOT-EK brings the container to life, the film shows how all we have can become all we need, how resourceful subsistence can feel like beautiful abundance, and how to keep going when we now know there is no such thing as a fresh start. The film is a humanist essay not only about a new kind of design thinking, but about a new design for life.





UPCOMING SCREENINGS



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THE CUBES @ SOCRATES


Client: Socrates Sculpture Park
Type: Art & Education
Location: Queens, New York
Size: 2640 SF
Design: 2016
Consultants: Structure/Silman; Mechanical/JFK&M; Civil/Langan
AWARD: NYC Public Design Commission - 2017 Award for Excellence in Design


The CUBES originally began as a commission by The Whitney Museum of American Art on Madison Avenue, then a six shipping containers/720 square foot structure which housed the museum’s education programs. When the Whitney vacated the Breuer building, the Museum donated the structure to Socrates Sculpture Park. This opportunity led to an expansion plan to create the Park’s first indoor public space.

LOT-EK’s concept expanded the design of the Whitney multiplying the original cube by 4, adding twelve additional shipping containers stacked on two levels. Diagonal, continuous bands of glass along the sides and roof of the building provide natural light and transparency, offering building visitors a view of the landscape and skyline outside, and park visitors a view of activities inside.

Located at the main entrance of Socrates Sculpture Park at Vernon Boulevard, the CUBES houses the park’s educational and administration programs with about 1,000 square feet at ground level of flexible multi-purpose indoor space for education programming and exhibits and about 500 square-foot shaded deck area for outdoor classes and programming, plus about 1,200 square feet of open space at the second level to house office and administration spaces.

LOT-EK’s innovative design and material choices underscore the Park’s history of reclamation and revitalization and its mission of presenting contemporary public art, fostering environmental stewardship, and community building.









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Socrates Sculpture Park︎

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DRIVELINES STUDIOS


Client: Propertuity, Johannesburg
Type: Residential and Retail building
Location: Maboneng, Johannesburg
Size: 75,000 SF
Consultants:  Structure/Silman + Asakheni Engineers; Electrical/VBK Engineering; Plumbing/Abbink Consulting; ire/Drofnets Engineering; Civil/DG Consulting Engineers
Design: 2017+ repainted 2023



LOT-EK was commissioned by Propertuity to design a live-work building with ground floor retail in the Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg. As a leader in urban regeneration, over the past few years Propertuity has single-handedly transformed the heart of the Maboneng precinct into a vital hub of leisure, cultural and commercial life. Our building introduces also housing in this urban mix.
The massing - entirely made of upcycled ISO shipping containers - is organized in a V generating a triangular open yard with swimming pool and sundeck.
All residential units are studio apartments varying in size between 40

and 60 square meters and include a private outdoor space along the walkways that look into the yard on all floors.




DRIVELINES STUDIO is on the cover of ARCHITECTURAL RECORD - October issue.
DRIVELINES STUDIO is in PIN-UP issue #25.
DRIVELINES STUDIO in DETAIL



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ARCHDAILY
ARCHELLO
ARCHITECT
ARCHI.RU
ARQUITECTURA Y DESEÑO
ÅVONTUURA
CURBED
DAILYMAIL
DESIGNBOOM
DESIGN INDABA
GOOOOD
INHABITAT
NEW ATLAS
ROCA GALLERY
WONDERFUL ENGINEERING








Bal Harbour Shops / ACCESS


Client: Bal Harbour Shops
Design: 2022
17,000SF
Consultants: Architecture/LOT-EK; Landscape/Studio Zewde; Structure/Silman; MEFP/ FISKAA; Lighting/ Available Light; AV+IT/MyArtsNet; Kitchen design/Space by Spielman
Fabrication: Containers/ BMarko; Logistics + Install / PopUp Agency; Planters and Displays / Deadalu; Canopy / ShadeFX+RA Engineering; Water Features/ Delta Fountain

Photo Credits: Danny Bright

Inspired by the unique Bal Harbor Shops in Florida and its long, lush, subtropical courtyard, Bal Harbour Shops/ACCESS is a transportable building conceived to bring the full Bal Harbour Shops tropical modernist experience to a new location every season. The black and white motif and the elegant, understated atmosphere are replicated here in an intimate, unexpected structure.

At 17,000SF, Bal Harbour Shops/ACCESS is exceptionally large for a mobile, and exceptionally daring with its transportable lush and large garden. Its real core, in fact, is the green space. 28 containers are organized in two 160’-long parallel volumes to capture an extensive garden—comprehensive of the signature species and water features with koi fish. This courtyard is flanked by pedestrian walkways as long shaded porticos, to visit and access all shops. Inspired by the long row of palm trees and their shadows on the walls at BHS, the porticos are cut and painted in the shape of palm tree shadows, bringing BHS character to this new experience.
The space is organized around a central gathering area with a restaurant, covered outdoor dining, and a lounge. Small, medium, and large shops, along the facing pedestrian paths, are activated on a rotating basis, and customized through a system of modular displays and graphic panels. A large monstera leaf marks the simple white volumes on their outer surfaces, in contrast with its rich interior experience.


DRAWINGS



FIRST FLOOR PLAN


CROSS SECTION


NORTH ELEVATION


YARD NORTH ELEVATION





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Bal Harbour Shops︎

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