by: AIA New York
Peter Zuspan, AIA, RA, is the principal of Bureau V Architecture (BVA) and a Co-chair of the AIANY Cultural Facilities Committee. Trained as an architect, software engineer, and performing artist, Zuspan’s work hovers between architecture, design, technology, and performance. His collaborative performance and design work has been featured at venues such as the Venice Biennale of Art, the Gwangju Biennale, Inhotim, the Cooper Hewitt, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and MoMA PS1. BVA’s projects include cultural institutions, residences, and mixed-use buildings. BVA’s design of the nonprofit chamber music hall National Sawdust has won numerous national and international awards, and was hailed by The New York Times as “the city’s most vital new music hall.” The studio’s recent clients include the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Goat Farm Arts Center, Chapter NY, the Bushwick Starr, and the Brooklyn Public Library.
Q: What is influencing your work the most right now?
I’m finally reading The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstam. I’ve always been fascinated by architecture’s failures—where it doesn’t quite operate as predicted, or the idea of creating a space where failure is okay and even celebrated, what that could mean—misuse and misinterpretation are such important creative forces in my process, and his work is suggesting some very strong new creative directions.
Q: What has been particularly challenging in your recent work?
Impatience. Always impatience. I love design and architecture. I love working with people to imagine what a space can be and how it can contribute to establishing a future that we haven’t yet experienced. But I struggle with the pace of architecture. My studio’s first building took eight years from start to finish. It’s a difficult hurdle to get over when you’re a young designer. I’m still not over it. Ha.
Q: What are some of your favorite recent projects that you’ve worked on?
Designing the performing arts space National Sawdust was such an incredible experience. I’m still working on ideas and approaches that have come from that project. More recently, our design of the Bushwick Starr’s new home, which opened its first theatrical production this past October, has been really rewarding. I’m also working on my first book project in collaboration with the San Francisco Opera—a manifesto on how opera and architecture could learn from each other. I love thinking on architecture’s relationship to other forces in our culture, and I’m so lucky to be granted the opportunity to do so with so many smart people.
Q: How do you feel about the state of the industry right now?
There is so much talent in architecture, but too many talented, independent designers are not getting connected to the clients who could most benefit from their perspective and ingenuity. Architects mostly have to be asked to dance. As an industry, we need more dance parties. The way architects get work is so antiquated and based mostly on proximity to wealth. This needs to change. We need more opportunities for less connected, brilliant designers to meet new clients and visionary property owners. It’s part of the reason why I’m working to create a small firms-focused network at AIA New York. I think it’s a solvable issue. The margins have always been filled with brilliant ideas. As an industry, we need to empower these margins.
Q: What are your thoughts on architectural education today?
The understanding of capitalism as a context for architecture is conspicuously absent from architectural education. Architectural thinking is so powerful as a medium of expression and understanding. Our schools are graduating so many brilliant designers who are ready to solve complex problems and dream up new concepts of space. But architects are not trained to understand the capitalist framework in which we operate—how to work within it, how to work outside of it, and how to bring our design thinking into not only dreaming up new spaces, but into a critical navigation of the systems of power that pay for those spaces.