After returning from a two year research project on contemporary housing and urban reconstruction in East Berlin, Elizabeth Gray and Alan Organschi founded the design/build partnership Gray Organschi Architecture in 1994.
The projects completed in their studio and fabrication facility in New Haven have ranged from the development of hardware, furniture, and building assembly systems to the design of buildings for evolving institutions such as community child care centers and, most recently, a residence and chapel for a community of Jesuit teachers and priests, now under construction at Fairfield University.
They have worked extensively with the prefabrication and installation of bridges and buildings in remote and logistically complex building sites, developing low impact rigging and installation systems to minimize damage to delicate ecologies. Their designs for the adaptive reuse of abandoned urban structures have included the award winning Firehouse 12 Music Recording and Performance Space and a proposal for the reprogramming and redevelopment of the New Haven Coliseum, which received an AIACT Honor Award.
Their staff of ten architects, designers, and fabricators spends as much time in the workshop and in the field as at the desk; each is closely involved in the construction of the work they design, developing prototypes, producing components, and coordinating assemblies. Rather than advocating a single design approach, they seek instead to explore ideas and improvise solutions relevant and appropriate to each program and place.
Elizabeth Gray graduated with a Bachelor's degree in English and Architecture from Yale College and a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. Upon completion of her graduate work, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study the traditional houses of the Minangkebau and Batak peoples of Sumatra.
Alan Organschi is a member of the faculty of the Yale School of Architecture where he coordinates Yale's first year graduate housing studio which culminates each spring with the student design and construction of an affordable house in New Haven. He received a Bachelor's degree in History from Brown University and a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. He is a co-recipient of a research grant from The Hines Research Fund for Advanced Sustainability in Architectural Design for work on high density, high performance wood housing in the United States.
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