LATERAL THOUGHT
From Australia to conquering the world, CHROFI architectural practice craves collaboration, balance and the individuality of their projects.
THE GENESIS OF P RACTICE CH ROFI (pronounced Crow-fi) is the stuff of architectural folklore. Young architects John Choi and Tai Ropiha were working together at Hassell when they entered an international competition to redesign a ticket booth for TKTS in New York’s Times Square, which attracted 683 entrants from 31 countries.
Not only did they win, ahead of the likes of Lissoni Associates, but international acclaim and awards followed, culminating in it being cited in 2009 as New York’s Building of the Decade.
“At once humble and flashy, it distils the theatrical urge that electrified architecture in the last decade,” wrote Justin Davidson, architecture critic of New York magazine.
“We reacted to the visual buzz and tried to create a strong singular image in contrast,” says Ropiha of the stepped platform in red glass that allows people to pause, sit and observe the spectacle of the square itself. “It will add some beauty and some usefulness,” said Rudy Giuliani, the city’s former mayor.
Knowing they would have their work cut out, they set up an office in the coastal Sydney suburb of Manly in 2000, where surfing could be easily integrated into a long day’s work. They are still there 20 years later, as are their surfboards.
The approach to the TKTS project (1999–2008), which looked at how to strengthen the essential character of Times Square by asking a bigger question than what form a booth should take, has continued to define the practice. They strive to match strategy and logic with a “parallel pursuit for evocative architecture of unexpected delight”.
Choi admits that while feeling like a “rock star” architect (tongue firmly in cheek) on one hand, it was a narrow band of industry people who understood the magnitude of this success.
Hence the trajectory was the same as any young architecture practice: mixing tutoring, work for family and friends, collaborating with larger firms and landscape practitioners in projects where placemaking was key. As the practice grew, Steven Fighera joined in 2003, becoming a director five years later and bringing his enhanced understanding of craft and of how a building communicates a sensory experience.
Consolidating CHROFI’s reputation was the extraordinary undertaking of Lune de Sang (Blood Moon), a series of five structures (two working sheds, a guesthouse, a manager’s residence and a pavilion) on a former dairy farm in northern NSW, with the ambition to grow Australian hardwoods that take from 60 to 300 years to mature. This multi-generational project required a robust response and there was much debate before settling on the materiality of concrete for its ability to age and thermal qualities. “It has been a tremendous collaboration with the client,” says Choi. “It has been an evolving, organic process as we have learnt from one project to the next.” The most recent iteration, called The Pavilion (2011-18), is a combination of concrete and local stone, which has a communal aspect as well as a private one, with water recycling integrated into the forest ecosystem.
Choi is clear that, as a practice, they enjoy working with clients. They are equally inspired by the particularities of each client as much as the opportunities and constraints of a site. Private houses now dot Sydney’s North Shore from Balmoral via Manly to Church Point, while their public work stretches further afield.
The Ian Potter National Conservatory in Canberra, in collaboration with McGregor Coxall and Atelier Ten, is another opportunity to rethink centuries-old accepted norms around the traditional glass shell. “How can conservatories become unique, memorable experiences in the age of climate change?” they ask. Part of the answer is the age-old play of opposites to create sensory experience – solid and void, compression and release, light and dark, natural and man-made – and part is the way technologies are used, such as an insulative skin structure that uses solar heat to pre-warm the air.
Not shy of ambitious large-scale projects, they have recently completed the Harbord Diggers club (2013-19) on a prominent headland in Sydney’s Freshwater with design partners Architectus and JMD Design. Won through a competition, this massive site of nearly 50,000 square metres required a lot to be accommodated: a new club home, a seniors’ living village, community facilities, child care, a fitness centre and a public swimming pool.
“We like problem-solving, the balance between public and private, and how to draw on the right energy to get these different uses to happen. How to create a sense of place, an experience,” says Choi. “We spend a lot of time talking about that.”
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