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





HOUSE FOR OUR MOTHERS





Principal Use: Residence
Total Floor Area: 10,000 sq ft.
Design Period: 2019.09
Host: Yoshioka-Bunko Foundation & Shinkenchiku-sha
Competition Result: First Prize
Website: https://sk-jutaku.shinkenchiku.net/ en/ results/ living-in-the-future/
This is a house for our mothers, both of whom always wanted to have bigger families and bigger houses in which to live together as families. Really, it is a house for any kind of big family, whether blood relatives or not. Importantly, it is not a big and empty house, but full and densely lived in.

Our mothers’ desire for big families and big houses, while perfectly intuitive on their part, offers architects an opportunity to reinterpret traditional forms while at the same time taking advantage of the recent drive toward high-rise timber construction.

It also reveals interesting clues as to how some of tomorrow’s challenges might be met, such as the need to use land more efficiently or to reduce consumption of resources. Since members of families are able to share space and resources so freely due to the familial intimacy that exists between them, big-family-living has the potential to improve resource consumption and land use like no other co-living arrangement can.

In addition, it engenders far-reaching social benefits, which ultimately derive from one single fact—that the members so depend on each other for survival that breaking up an entire family is never seriously considered. Members are, in a way, forced to get along, to learn social skills and conflict resolution, to learn how to treat others with respect, and to take responsibility for one’s actions, which leads to more responsible citizens and a more prosperous society.

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