Ace Architects, Oakland, California, USA
From Archiplanet
| Architecture Firm | Ace Architects |
| People | Lucia Howard, RA; David Weingarten, RA |
| Address | 330 2nd St. #1 |
| Oakland, California, 94607 USA | |
| Telephone | (510) 452-0775 |
| Fax | (510) 452-1175 |
| aces@aceland.com | |
| Web Site | http://www.aceland.com |
| AW Directory | ArchitectureWeek Directory Listing |
| Add buildings by this firm |
Contents |
[edit] Services
Fun architecture and interiors, gardens and graphic design, and furniture. From theme parks to dog houses.
[edit] Focus
Who thinks that architecture ought to be a lot of fun? Ace Architects does, and their new site features entertaining buildings and interiors, gardens, furniture, and graphic design. New projects include a house in Honduras shaped like a Mayan temple and Fairyland, a children's theme park in Oakland, California.
[edit] Projects
Described in Vanity Fair as “the court jester of California architecture,” Ace Architects has authored scores of singular, memorable buildings and interiors over the past 25 years. Often exuberant, spatially charged, and vividly polychromatic, as well as flat-out fun, Ace places are the antithesis of the current vogue for cool, minimal, and abstract.
In an age favoring architectural specialization, Ace’s work could scarcely be more various. Consider their projects – theme parks, office buildings, commercial districts; houses, playhouses, doghouses, and children’s building blocks. Their client list includes Walt Disney’s Imagineers, World Savings, the University of California; and the Archive of Love, O-Town Beauty, and Mercado Guadalajara #2. Ace Architects has designed buildings styled Bay Region and Gothic; Chinese and Japanese; Mayan, Mission, Modern, and Monterey Revival; Spanish Colonial and Storybook; as well as structures resembling sea monsters, hot dogs, and the flame-colored flower of the exotic monkeyhand tree.
There is variety, too, in the coverage of the firm’s work – the New York Times and Architectural Digest, as well as the Magic Leaf and East Bay Express. Perhaps not surprisingly, Ace Architects’ work is more often noticed in the popular than in the American professional press. A story suggestion to Progressive Architecture from Ace’s photographer brought this response – “The project looks like a lot of fun. It didn’t raise much interest here.” Progressive Architecture has since folded; Ace continues to work.
Just as unsurprisingly, the foreign architectural press is much interested in Ace, and projects have been featured in journals in England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, even the former Yugoslavia. The work has, as well, inspired criticism. This, too, has taken many forms. The blood of architecture critics has boiled; television anchors have fumed and seethed. Ace receives anonymous letters and telephone calls. Its buildings are marked with erudite, art-critical graffiti. A Berkeley city planning commissioner dressed, one Halloween, as the firm’s latest building in that city. It was, he said, the most frightening costume he could imagine. Other criticism has been less genteel, though equally emphatic. The contractor’s punch list for an almost-completed commercial building in San Jose, California, included the repair of several small-caliber bullet holes.
What provokes such, well, deeply felt responses? Ace believes that architecture, like all the Arts, is capable of pursuing the universe of subject matter, from sea monsters to monkeyhand flowers. The most usual of architectural subjects is, of course, architecture. Consequently, it is no surprise that what most buildings most resemble is other buildings. Ace’s interests range wider, and their architecture is not necessarily only architectural. Too, rather than disguise its enthusiasms beneath layers of abstraction, Ace renders the subjects (these are always multiple) of its buildings vividly, unmistakably, representationally. A sea monster’s eyes glow red, its scales are green, its beak angular and sharp.
Ace has received a range of architectural distinctions, including awards from the Graham Foundation, American Institute of Architects, and California Preservation Foundation. The firm has twice been included with Architectural Digest’s “AD 100.”
