Ahead of the curve

Digital media have transformed nearly every field of design, and Douglas Garofalo has been in its vanguard in architecture.

He first gained attention for his collaborative effort on the 2001 Korean Presbyterian Church in Sunnyside, Queens, New York, and later through some widely published polymorphous suburban and country houses. Most recently, with praise received for the new Hyde Park Art Center, he’s become The Man for supersophisticated, digitally enabled achievements in new building forms. Although Garofalo is still quite young (47, and yes, that’s young for an architect to have realized such recognition) and his built portfolio is still quite modest, the Art Institute’s Department of Architecture and Design’s retrospective of his work only validates his big-time credibility.

Joseph Rosa, the department’s curator, included Garofalo’s work in a 2001 show he mounted at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum. When Rosa came to the Art Institute last fall, he asked Garofalo if he’d like to be the subject of his first exhibition at the museum. “Who would say no?” says Garofalo.

Educated at Notre Dame and Yale, Garofalo has been practicing on his own since 1987. In conversation, he displays his belief in the interrelation of forces that shape the environment. He’s cerebral (he’s on the faculty at UIC and also teaches at Archeworks, a highly regarded post-graduate design program founded by Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman), but not oppressively so, explaining that his work is grounded in an ideology committed to exploring architecture as “landscape” in the broadest sense. He sees the world as a set of ecosystems—not just in the sense of their interrelated form and space, but also their less visible connections and complexities. “There are competing interests everywhere,” he says, suggesting that architecture should try to strike a balance among them.

In a catalog essay accompanying the show, Rosa mentions Garofalo in the same breath as Michael Graves and Frank Gehry; others have compared Garofalo’s work to Gehry’s fluid, curvilinear forms. While Garofalo acknowledges this is a compliment, he—unlike many of his colleagues—doesn’t aim for any sort of signature style. Which is not to say he doesn’t imprint his particular vision on every project; he seems to tailor it to the circumstances of the job. Despite his idealism, Doug Garofalo is no Howard Roark. You don’t see much ego in his work. Some critics have linked Garofalo with what they called the “blob” architecture phenomenon (certainly one of the grossest entries in the art-crit lexicon), but the designer doesn’t seem to mind: “It was really just a catchall for describing what it was.” A more accurate adjective for what Garofalo does might be “fluid.” As Rosa points out, fluidity is at the core of his work, both in the abstract notion of interconnected systems and in his exploration of rounded, non-linear forms. And while Garofalo continues to explore new geometries, he hasn’t abandoned right angles entirely. One project—which he recently learned will go unbuilt, but is illustrated with a panel in the exhibition—proposes a high-rise building with an undulating façade of cantilevered balconies in varying depths. “Fluidity doesn’t necessarily involve an actual curve,” says Garofalo.

Ideologies aside, Garofalo is hardly insulated from the mundane details of the architect’s trade. Although the HPAC opened in April, it’s still not completed and he’s stressed about the glass contractor’s subpar performance. “You don’t realize how one bad link messes up the whole process,” he says.

Which just proves his point about interconnections.

“Douglas Garofalo” opens at the Art Institute Saturday 17.