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CHO & URANO

PROJECTS

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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




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OFFICE PHOTO:


Office

CONTACT:

Cho & Urano
360 W Broadway #228
Salt Lake City, UT 84101

T: 801 895 2002
E: office@chourano.com
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LIGHTNING ENGINE

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Principal Use: Electrical storm generator
Project Site: Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela
This conceptual proposal explores the intersection of architecture, megastructure, and weather through the creation of electrical storms.

Studies of the “Catatumbo Lightning” at Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela—a site famous for nearly continuous lightning—suggest that this spectacular phenomenon may be the combined effect of methane gas from the lake with orographic lift caused by the surrounding mountains.

An overlay of two world maps—1) average annual lightning activity and 2) methane concentration—seems to support this hypothesis, leading some experts to suggest a causal relationship wherein methane acts as a catalyst for electrical storms by polarizing water particles in the clouds.

But what about those concentrations of methane that have no tall mountains nearby to lift the gas into the atmosphere, for example in Chongqing, China? … And what about the reports of the dangerous surge in global methane levels in recent years?

Architecture, again, asks the question on everyone’s mind: By supplying the second ingredient—orographic lift—could buildings intervene in the process of weather, and produce lightning on a large scale?

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