A House and a Tower: Sustainable Building with Inès Lamunière

Award-winning Swiss architect Inès Lamunière has consistently shaped the built environment with vision and purpose. As the head of dl-a designlab-architecture in Geneva, she presents two recent projects that serve as both case studies and contributions to their urban contexts: a brand-new townhouse in Brooklyn and the expansive Pictet bank tower in Geneva.

Her lecture delves into critical issues of scale, form, and materiality, highlighting the contrast between spaces designed for the most intimate and private (the house) and those designed for the collaborative and public (the tower). Lamunière's work demonstrates a deep commitment to context and sustainability, skillfully transforming these concerns into distinctive, atmospheric buildings that engage with their surroundings on multiple levels.

Speakers:
Inès Lamunière, Founder, dla-a designlab-architecture
Chris Cooper, FAIA, LEED AP, Design Partner

About the Speakers:
Inès Lamunière has had a distinguished career as a professor at EPF Lausanne and ETH Zurich, where she also served as Chair of the Architecture Department at EPFL. She has been a visiting critic at various European schools and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Recognized for her significant contributions to the field, she has been honored with the Swiss Meret Oppenheim Award for the Arts and the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. Her work with dl-a has garnered international acclaim, with projects exhibited and published globally. Notable publications include Inès Lamunière (Birkhäuser Verlag, 2018), It's All About Space (Istituto Svizzero, Milano, 2019), and the upcoming dl-a (Quart Verlag, December 2024).

Based in New York, Chris Cooper is an ambitious design leader who brings foresight, elegance, tectonic rigor, and artful experiences to his buildings. Throughout his two decades at SOM, he has led projects with a careful attention to scale, sustainability, and placemaking. Chris’s design approach—expressing an inherent sense of place, finding expressions that resonate with the past while charting new paths forward—is evident in one of his first major projects, 7 World Trade Center. As the first tower to be rebuilt on the World Trade Center site, it established a vision for the future of the district while setting a benchmark for environmental performance. Chris’s attention to detail led him to collaborate with artists and specialists to develop a finely calibrated glass facade that reflects the changing sky conditions.

This event is presented by the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York as part of Archtober.