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 associate 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 associate 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





GREAT SALT LAKE STATE PARK





Principal Use: Marina, Public Park, Offices
Project Site: Magna, Utah
Total Floor Area: 000 sq ft.
Design Period: 2021.01
Host: Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism
This is a speculative proposal for the Great Salt Lake State Park, an existing park with a yacht club and marina that are under threat of obsolescence due to the lake’s ever-changing water levels and annual droughts. It is a far-reaching look at what a lakeside park could be if the purely practical concerns of dredging and earthmoving were informed by an architecturally inventive solution.

The Great Salt Lake, located just west of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere and the eighth largest endorheic (closed) lake in the world. Every spring it fills with mineral-rich snowmelt from the surrounding mountains, and over the course of the year it gives that water back to the atmosphere by evaporation, resulting in a dramatic fall in water level—ranging as much as five feet in a typical year. This range itself fluctuates in elevation relative to mean sea level (msl) since the amount of precipitation varies from year to year. It has reached as low as 4,191’ msl on numerous occasions—nine feet lower than its nominal level of 4,200’ msl.

The lake contributes $1.3 billion annually to Utah’s economy mostly from mineral extraction. Recreation accounts for $136 million, facilitated in large part by the Park. Being situated at 4,200’ msl the Park is constantly hindered by falling water levels, and during low-water years it cannot accommodate even the smallest boats and is all but abandoned until the next snowmelt. This happened as recently as 2018, and before that in 2016 when the lake reached its lowest level in recorded history.

The cause is nothing more than two basic site conditions: the lake’s shallowness and its imperceptibly low slope, whereby a mere foot of water rising vertically can mean a hundred feet of land running horizontally. Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, located at 4,195’ msl on the north shore, also suffers from these conditions, being either completely submerged or left high and dry for decades at a time. Ironically, these conditions are key contributors to the beauty of this ancient landscape, as they allow for a continual alternating process in which minerals are deposited across huge areas, then exposed to sun and air for months, producing vivid colors over vast expanses of shoreline.

Our proposal considers the opportunities afforded by large-scale engineering applied to the simple rise-run problem presented by the marina. The marina is made deeper by 15 feet, and extends out to the deeper regions in the form of a canal (perpendicular to the slope for the shortest distance) ensuring boat access anytime regardless of the water level. The relocated soil is dredged, dozed, and dumped at predetermined coordinates, producing an artificial landscape and a new extended shoreline. In the process, a soil binder is added, which contains a blend of minerals native to the lake.

This both stabilizes the resultant earth forms and over time produces a range of colors depending on the mineral.

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