Interboro

Established 2002; based in Brooklyn, New York, and Düsseldorf, Germany
Tobias Arborst, Daniel D’Oca, and Georgeen Theodore, founders and principals

Like many young, progressive architecture firms, Interboro occupies the part of the professional terrain at which practice, research, and teaching converge. With experience that collectively encompasses architectural and urban design, planning in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, and marketing, publishing, and scholarly research, the firm brings to its projects an inventive pragmatism. Interboro’s working process combines expertise in global development trends with sensitive and rigorous analyses of local dynamics, in the belief that innovative proposals engage the full range of a place’s economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Although the firm works across the spectrum of scales, with projects ranging from urban feasibility studies to an interactive computer exhibit on the development of New York City’s Lincoln Center, its métier is the small gesture that acknowledges existing conditions and sees possibilities in incremental change. This non-normative attitude, complemented by respect for individual autonomy, drives projects such as Deploy the Devoider!, a competition submission for vacant land in Philadelphia that proposes not a grand program, but a line of cheap modular components that would allow individuals to colonize and repurpose these sites. Interboro was awarded the Architectural League of New York’s Young Architects Award in 2005 and, in 2006, the New Practices Award from the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter. It has won first prizes in the Dead Malls Competition, sponsored by the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design in 2003; the Shrinking Cities Competition, sponsored by Archplus magazine and the German Federal Cultural Foundation in 2004; and the Columbus Rewired exhibition, sponsored by the American Institute of Architects Columbus Chapter in 2007.