Drawing on examples of their own instantly recognizable Minimalist-inflected designs, often evoking the work of Donald Judd, celebrated architects Messana ORorke demonstrate how to create a serene haven for modern living.
Founded in 1996 by Brian Messana and Toby ORorke in New York City, Messana ORorke is renowned for crafting spaces of sublime restraint and ethereal beauty. Their process utilizes a rigorously limited palette of materials orchestrated in an architectural language of distilled boxes, blocks, and containers that emphasize the qualities of space itself rather than the things that fill it. The apparent simplicity and serenity of Messana ORorkes designs belie the astonishing richness and variety of the experiences they nurture.
The architects projects span a wide spectrum of residential and commercial assignments in multiple geographiescity, country, mountain, desert, coastal. Yet even as they adapt their fundamental design vocabulary to address differences in program and context, Messana ORorkes signature remains unmistakable in the ways they carve space and light. Their designs simultaneously foster both contemplation and invigoration, repose and action. There is no straining for theatrical effect, no tortured architectural calisthenics, simply a search for order, clarity, and beauty.
