Ole Sondresen – The Architect’s Ingredients from The Avant/Garde Diaries on Vimeo.

A Film by Margarita Jimeno
Format: HD, color. TRT: 3:30 minutes 2013
Additional Camera by Nina Kuhn & Meg Schrock / Music by Found Objects
Distributed by The Avant/Garde Diaries

Ole Sondresen is a New York-based architect whose personal and non-intrusive work utilizes the humble aesthetics of reclaimed and recycledmaterials. His office is in the mythical 80 Wooster Street basement studio of George Maciunas – a location long abandoned after its original incarnation as a hive for Fluxus gatherings with artists like Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Mekas. For his first full-realized New York building, Sondersen is designing the offices of crowd-sourced fundraising website Kickstarter. Centered upon the remains of an old factory in northern Brooklyn, Oleʼs design leaves aspects of the ruin in place. “A ruin to me is a manifestation of our species battle with ourselves and our natural environment,” he says. “Do we celebrate the wonder of life and death like the Capuchin monks or do we bring in the bulldozers and start anew?