Roy Designs

Last night, in a lecture sponsored by the Chicago Women in Architecture at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Lindy Roy of Roy Design presented about twelve projects spanning about five years. These projects included a proposal for fashion designer Issay Miyake's flagship store in Tribeca (eventually built to a Frank Gehry design), a bar for a space in Manhattan's Meat Packing District, a project for a safari company in Botswana, the P.S.1 Young Architects competition she won in 2001, unbuilt houses in Houston, a house on Long Island soon to start construction, Cancer Alley (a project with photographer Richard Misrach), Mobile Graceland, book cradles for a photography exhibit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the new Vitra store in the Meat Packing District, a hypothetical residential project for the West Side Highway in downtown Manhattan, and an extreme heli-ski hotel in Alaska.


Wind River Lodge in Alaska

While the P.S.1 courtyard, the CCA exhibition, and the Vitra store have been built, the last is the only permanent construction to Roy's name. Regardless, she informed the audience that at least four projects are on the boards for construction, though they could not be presented last night.

As she described the wide variety of projects, a consistency could be found in their flowing, organic forms, as much inspired by natural processes and forms as made possible by computers. Responding to questions after her talk, she gave the P.S.1 competition a high place in her portfolio, not so much for the design - a wall of oscillating fans combined with mist and areas of rest shaded by scrims to cool off people during the hot summer months in the museum's courtyard - but for the exposure her first built project gave her. It enabled her to publish more projects, even ones originating before P.S.1, eventually leading to more commissions from this exposure. She admits to luck in getting jobs, since in projects like the heli-ski, the client approached her after seeing - and liking - the project in Botswana. It appears that Roy is able to do her own thing, her clients finding something they like in what she's done, enabling her to become successful in a rather unconventional way.