ABOUT:

Cho & Urano is an architecture firm in Salt Lake City, Utah providing a full scope of services on projects of various types and sizes, and engaging in architectural research through experiments and theoretical projects.

We started in 2020 after winning an international competition with our project House for Our Mothers. Prior to that we worked in offices in Los Angeles, Beijing, Seoul, San Francisco, and New York.

We approach each project as a continuing investigation into relationships between architecture, structure, and landscape, using sketches, models, and collected images.

Our research has touched on a variety of subjects, including houses, housing, urban design, and infrastructure. It has been exhibited in Seoul, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as at the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, and has been published internationally in A+U, Shinkenchiku, and others.

BIO:

HANSONG CHO, AIA

hansong@chourano.com
Hansong Cho received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Seoul and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. She has managed numerous residential and cultural projects in New York for the offices of Kyle May, Toshihiro Oki, and Julian von der Schulenburg. Her personal work has been exhibited at the International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam, the Hunter East Harlem Gallery in New York, and was featured in a retrospective exhibition of Columbia University’s best housing projects produced over a 40-year period. She has served on design juries at RISD, UCLA, USC, and Texas Tech, and is an adjunct instructor at the University of Utah School of Architecture. Hansong is a licensed architect in the State of Utah.

SASHA URANO

sasha@chourano.com
Sasha Urano grew up in Honolulu and Salt Lake City. He holds a BA in Architectural Studies from UCLA, where he graduated with distinction, and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University. He has worked in a number of offices in the U.S. and Asia including Jones Partners Architecture, MAD, Mass Studies, and IDEO. Prior to co-founding Cho & Urano he spent four years as a project architect at Levenbetts in New York where he managed, among other things, a winning competition proposal for a public sculpture in Lower Manhattan and the renovation of a public library in Brooklyn. He has served on design juries at UCLA, USC, and Texas Tech, and is an adjunct instructor at the University of Utah School of Architecture.

NEWS:

  • Center for Bees featured in the Salt Lake Tribune, May 2023
  • Cho & Urano Receive Honorable Mention in Namdo Righteous Army History Museum Competition, 2022
  • House with a Corner Eave Wins Runner-Up Prize in Empowered Living Design Competition, 2021
  • Three Wall House and House with a Corner Eave Exhibited at AIA Utah Empowered Living Design Awards Ceremony, 2021
  • Salt Lake City Office Opened, June 2021
  • House for Our Mothers Published in A+U No. 592
  • House for Our Mothers Published in Shinkenchiku 2020:01
  • House for Our Mothers Awarded First Prize in Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition, 2020





TOKYO OLYMPIC PARK





Principal Use: Athletic facilities, public park
Project Site: Shinjuku, Tokyo
Exhibition: Super Jury Alternative Vision for the Tokyo Olympics 2020
Conceived amid the fiasco surrounding Zaha Hadid Architects’ competition entry for the New National Stadium, the objective of this theoretical proposal is to explore radically different alternatives to the traditionally un-compact and inflexible Olympic park type. Our approach is to design the park as a dynamic landscape that could accommodate a number of events whose footprints would normally exceed a site of this size, but through careful programming and experimental technology could adapt to different needs at different times.

Hoping to connect to a longer, local history of landscape design we pay tribute to the classic gardens of Japan, which share an ambition to make inert materials—soil, sand, gravel, and rocks—appear to behave in ways they shouldn’t, such as the raked gravel ripples at Ryoanji or the standing sand cones at Ginkakuji. Our proposed park diverges from these in that it is actually dynamic, able to change shape while accommodating a multitude of sports venues.

To achieve this the park is made with a specially engineered microsphere* soil and foundation-less vibrating buildings. Based on Archimedes’ principle and the phenomenon of liquefaction the park transforms over time as the buildings sink into hibernation or rise to the surface. Like a submarine each building can be dialed into a precise elevation, and, as it slowly finds its way there, the vibration and heave of the building are channeled into the surrounding soil to produce the dynamic ground.

*Microspheres are industrially produced microscopic spheres made of protein, synthetic polymer, or ceramic. Their near perfect sphericity reduces friction during liquefaction making them ideal as a liquid soil. Likewise, the ellipsoidal forms of the buildings have the important technical advantage of reducing drag while also paying homage to the giant eggs in classic monster movies.

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