troy NEW YORK

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
critic: Fleet HOWER.

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

Ellen WONG & Peter ZAMBELLETTI: Situated along the Hudson River in Troy, New York, FLUX Amalgamation is a synthesis of a materials-research center and 100 units of mixed housing.

Conflicting programs are mitigated through a performative facade that diffuses noise and air pollution from the research center as it rises up to the housing levels. FLUX Amalgamation aims to bring technological industry to a suffocating Troy landscape, once booming during the 19th-century industrial revolution.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
EW & PZ: Burnt croissants, pearls, Victorian patterns, and leaves.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
EW & PZ: Reading Jeffrey Kipnis, “Toward a New Architecture”; Rem Koolhaas, Junkspace; Gretchen Reynolds, The First 20 Minutes; Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
PZ: Listening to Chance the Rapper, Earl Sweatshirt, and Action Bronson.
EW & PZ: Watching The Shining, Dexter, TED talks, and Fight Club.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
EW & PZ: Herzog & de Meuron; Delugan Meissl; Daniel Libeskind; Zaha Hadid; BIG; Woods Bagot; and Francis Bitonti.

Additional credits and links:
[www.behance.net/peterzambelletti]
[ellenhtwong.com]