Dean/Wolf Architects

New York City-based Dean/Wolf Architects have been praised for their uncanny ability to turn architectural constraints into powerful generators of form. Since founding their firm in 1991, architects Kathryn Dean and Charles Wolf have completed residential and institutional projects at a variety of scales. Their projects are distinguished by a thought-provoking manipulation of light and space. The firm's award-winning loft interiors are small-scale wonders precisely crafted from sensuous materials such as concrete, steel, wood, and glass. The Dean/Wolf firm activates these highly resonant materials with deliberately focused light in order to dissolve boundaries of interior and exterior space. For Dean/Wolf, this requires not only a consideration of physical space, but also a psychological engagement between the clients minds and the space they inhabit.

Versed in architectural thought and theory, the firm finds aesthetic applications for their investigations into the nature of spatial perception. The architecture that emerges--a mixture of unexpected exterior views and areas for quiet reflection--celebrates both the outgoing and introspective sides of the inhabitants. The firm's 2007 AIA Honor Award-winning Operable Boundary Townhouse Garden in Brooklyn is one such example. Inside and outside are integrated vis-a-vis a giant, pivoting, steel-framed glass wall and a continuous thirty-foot-long table piercing the wall. With company, the glass wall can be pushed aside allowing the back garden to become an extension of the interior living room. The work of Dean/Wolf Architects is bursting with similar exquisite details and Dean/Wolf Architects showcases twenty-four projects in detail with photographs, drawings, and renderings as well as an introduction by architect Robert McCarter.