citylikeyou — New York / Leticia Wouk Almino

Leticia Wouk Almino is a Brazilian architect based in New York, NY. She has lived in Brasília, Washington, San Francisco, Lisbon, London, and again in the Brazilian capital before moving to the United States for her studies. She most recently completed her Masters in Architecture at Yale University in New Haven, CT and is currently working at Robert A.M. Stern Architects in New York. She draws her inspiration from the world of cinema, as she is interested in exploring the interstice between architecture and fiction, real and imaginary, public and private space. She is looking to publish her book, Capital Urbanism, a comparative study of public space in four capital cities in Portugal and Brazil.

http://www.leticiawoukalmino.com

Architect Painter

Current city: New York

leticiawoukalmino.com

New York / Gallery

I discovered the Frick my first week in New York, during a heat wave in August. The galleries were surprisingly empty, with only the occasional visitor strolling through the rooms, gently creaking the floorboards. I stood for a while in front of the Bronzino, a portrait of a boy standing against a background of green drapery, and then sat in the courtyard for a long, cool hour.

New York / Gallery

I came alone and walked up an unassuming flight of stairs to the second floor that opened onto a narrow hallway with a reception desk. Before arriving at the Room, I could already sense the rich smell of damp earth that permeated the space.

New York / Cinema

After his guitar class, I would ride the 1 train down and meet him for a movie. That was years ago. Now I continue to come, sometimes alone. It’s one thing I enjoy doing by myself: going to the movies to see independent films that are oftentimes bizarre and somewhat depressing, but I like it all the same.

New York / Restaurant

It was a warm evening in the city and not yet dark. We arrived, giddy and happy, and he ordered two glasses of prosecco. The waiter managed to fit onto our tiny wood table two plates of tartines, a legumes dish, and a tray of fromage. And then we shared dessert. I can’t remember exactly but it must have been chocolate.

New York / Transport

Coming back from from New Haven, we got off at Grand Central and he took me down one of the concourses to the place with the vaulted ceiling. He stood at one corner and I stood at another and we whispered into the walls, our voices drifting across to each other.

New York / Designer

Francisco Lopez (born 1974 in Miami, Florida) is a Creative Director, Visual Artist and Filmmaker living in Brooklyn. He graduated from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2000. In 2004 Monica Brand and Francisco Lopez founded the multidisciplinary Creative studio “Mogollon” in New York City. Together they have created work for both art and commerce experimenting with virtually every media. Mogollon’s art films and work have been exhibited at PS1MoMA, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Diesel Art Gallery in Tokyo and The Drawing Center in New York.

New York / Photographer

photography

New York / Photographer

Sarah Moussa is a Brand & Digital Strategist and Photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is also the founder of Unfaded (unfadedstudio.com), a project sharing the stories and interviews from inspiring folks creating beautiful stuff and making the world a better place.

New York / Creative Director

Throughout his professional career, Clabots has worked as a designer, a creative director, a university professor, and as a serial entrepreneur, having started and run a series of design-related businesses.

New York / Artist

Chris Ballantyne’s work focuses on vernacular architecture and observation of the American landscape. Banal features of suburban and industrial zones are sources for paintings that highlight the quirky and absurd. Ballantyne states that, “Growing up in a military family and moving to different parts of the country, there was a certain familiarity to the kinds of houses and neighborhoods. They were a series of suburban developments built in separate regions of the country, always on the outskirts of larger cities, at the exit ramps of interstate highways, and all very similar in age and design. My own notions of space developed out of this cultural landscape which was striving for an indidvidual sense of personal space, consciously economic, and somewhere between urban and rural.” Dysfunctional structures are flawless in their strangeness, made beautiful through symmetry, simplified lines and flat, subdued colors. Ballantyne eliminates detail to emphasize the subtleties of the way we experience space and our attempts at containment. He extends these concepts further by expanding the imagery of his paintings beyond the picture plane and onto the surrounding walls. “Most of my works involve combinations of various places, drawn from memory. As well, my own interests in skateboarding and surfing altered how I saw the use of these structures ranging from empty pools, sidewalk curbs, to ocean jetties in a way that tied in to my sense of this larger push and pull between culture and nature.” With shrewd restraint, Ballantyne accentuates the antisocial effects of our built environment with a hint of humor and plenty of ambiguity. A curious emptiness permeates the work of Chris Ballantyne. Graphically rendered buildings, pools, parking lots, and fences take on new meanings and amplified significance, isolated on flat fields of color.

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