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





C.S.O.Q.B.





Principal Use: Exhibition
Project Site: New York
Exhibition: International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam: “The Communal City, The Learning City”
Collaborator: Bingyu Guan
Combined Sewer Overflow of Queens and Bronx

It would not be untrue to say that the East River wasn’t the dirtiest river in New York City, but the distinction is of little account. Like the Hudson, its slightly filthier counterpart, the East River has served New York throughout its history as a receptacle for all kinds of pollution. Today, it is fronted by many of the city’s heavy-industrial brownfield sites, and is the dumping ground for 139 combined sewer overflows, or C.S.O.’s, which provide a regular supply of stormwater runoff—5 billion gallons annually—containing raw human waste, industrial waste, and toxic materials, making the river a perfect home for dangerous bacteria such as enterococci.

The river is also home to Rikers Island, which has served as a geographically convenient island-jail for almost a century. But now, with its 400 acres of relatively undeveloped, uncontaminated land, public opinion has reached a consensus that the island would be better zoned as recreational open space for the ever-densifying Bronx and Queens neighborhoods nearby as well as prime real estate to be sold to the city’s growing research and educational institutions.

Our response to the Biennale’s theme “The Communal City, The Learning City” is a radical vision for the five-mile stretch of river between Randall’s Island to the west and Whitestone Bridge to the east, wherein the city begins a slow process of expansion into the river through new construction methods applied at the convergence of current social and economic forces:

1) It anticipates a growing need for slow infrastructure—roads and facilities aimed at creating safe outdoor recreational space specifically for pedestrians and cyclists—while providing a solution to the great transportational divide separating these two boroughs.

2) It sets in motion a massive undertaking to treat the last major source of pollution plaguing the river, with sewer overflow from all 139 C.S.O.’s being redirected to water treatment pipelines before flowing into the river.

3) It recovers a valuable piece of land much needed for future populations as the outer boroughs continue to densify, and at the same time affords opportunities for architectural innovation in the area of correctional facilities.

It is, we believe, a logical next step in the city’s development, and may be the key to correcting New York’s relationship with this formerly mistreated body of water.

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