Founded in 2010. Eunjeong Seong joined Michael Bell to re-launch and expand the practice Bell founded in 1989.
Bell had founded his practice at Berkeley basing it subsequently in San Francisco, Houston and New York City prior to 2010.
Visible Weather
A collaborative founded in 2011 to work with partners in energy, engineering, materials science and advanced manufacturing.
Our partners have included Arup, Buro Happold, Transsolar, Lafarge, Oldcastle Glass and advanced manufacturing companies in the Bay Area.
The design concept for a thermally sensitive cover - Slow Space - by Rebeca Méndez, responded to the book's content and contributors.
Released 20 years ago this year Slow Space was edited by Michael Bell and Sze Tsung Leong and featured writing and projects by:
Lars Lerup, Álvaro Siza, Peter Testa, Robert Smithson, Michael Bell, Dana Cuff, Durham Crout, Sze Tsung Leong, Mark Wamble, RAAUm (Jesse Reiser, Polly Apfelbaum, Stan Allen, Nanako Umemoto), Greg Lynn, Hubert L. Dreyfus, Elizabeth Burns Gamard, Adi Shamir Zion, Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray, Yung-Ho Chang, Stanley Saitowitz, Steven Holl, Farès el-Dahdah, Karen Bermann, Jeanine Centuori, and Julieanna Preston, Rebeca Méndez and Aaron Betsky.
Published by Monacelli Press with critical editorial support by Gianfranco Monacelli and Andrea Monfried.
16 Houses: Owning a House in the City
16 Houses opened at Diverse Works in Houston in 1998. 22 years ago. Working with the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation (FWCRC) - a non-profit builder whose team had made incredible strides in housing in the neighborhood - we proposed 16 unique houses that could be realized by the FWCRC. With support from an array of partners we opened the exhibition, held community discussions, took seven of the works through contract documents and pricing and published the work for Monacelli Press. We were grateful to: the Graham Foundation, the Local Initiative Support Corporation, the FWCRC founders Rev. Harvey Clemons and Stephan Fairfield, Mardie Oakes of the FWCRC who served as partner and client. And especially Emily Todd, Executive Director at Diverse Works (who mopped the floors with me on opening night).
Dezeen, May 7, 2019. Jenna McKinight documents the newly updated Binocular Housefor Dezeen. LINK
Originally completed in 2007 the Binocular House is being updated and its grounds newly designed by Field Operations.
Housing and Urbanism
Michael Bell has focused on housing and urbanization over a period of more than 25 years. Bell has sought to bring innovation to housing and to open new paths for affordability and design in projects for Houston, Texas and New York City; and with Seong for sites in Tampa, Florida and in new prototypes developed with industry partners in Silicon Valley.
Bell and Seong have been commissioned for housing design and research by the Museum of Modern Art and Bell's earlier Fifth Ward - Houston-based work was included in MoMA's "Un-Private House" exhibition.
Bell was a frequent guest on Chris Hays "Up With Chris Hays" MSNBC program to discuss Bell-Seong work and issues of gentrification, walkable cities, energy and new forms of financing for housing.
Bell directed the "housing studios" at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning for more than a decade and teaches courses that focus on housing. Seong focuses on housing and urbanization at Pratt Institute.
Simultaneous City: Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream
Commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art
Michael Bell, Eunjeong Seong, Visible Weather
Simultaneous City, Temple Terrace, Florida "12 hours in 7 minutes 7 seconds" Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong
Foreclosed : Rehousing the American Dream
The Museum of Modern Art
Simultaneous City, Temple Terrace, Florida "Four months in 13 minutes 3 seconds" Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong
Foreclosed : Rehousing the American Dream
The Museum of Modern Art
Simultaneous City: Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream
Commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art
Michael Bell, Eunjeong Seong, Visible Weather
A Ross Dackow directed short documentary on our proposal for Temple Terrace, Florida.
Dackow's video was unscripted - members of the office each explain work in progress.
The project was supported by Roseanne Haggerty, Nadine Maleh, Peter Hance, Brian Loughlin,
as well as Transsolar (Matthias Schuler, Erik Olsen), Buro Happold (Mark Malekshahi), and Arup (Zachary Kostura).
Simultaneous City: Museum of Modern Art: 2012
Recent News and Lectures
SCI Arc has recently posted lecture archives on Youtube. In 1994 I had the honor of speaking at SCI Arc soon after moving from Berkeley and San Francisco to Houston. A move from the College of Environmental Design at Berkeley to Rice University School of Architecure. This lecture was introduced by Aaron Betsky. A later lecture at SCI Arc was introduced by Eric Owen Moss. Posted with apprecation of SCI Arc and its influence in giving space to work out ideas in a critical yet generous setting.
New York: Michael Bell will speak at the AIA New York on November 19. The event will be a round-table discussion and launch for Log 47: Overcoming Carbon Form, a guest-edited issue that reevaluates architecture’s role in climate change. The discussion will be moderated by Cynthia Davidson, editor of Log, and will include Elisa Iturbe, guest-editor, Daniel Barber, Associate Professor at UPenn, and Michael Bell, Principal at Bell-Seong Architecture and Professor at Columbia University. Eunjeong Seong and Michael Bell contributed the essay “Encrypting the Sun: Housing after Banking” to Log 47. LINK
New York: Eunjeong Seong will offer a lecture on our forthcoming book, Housing After Banking: Encrypting the Sun, at Pratt Institute on April 8, 2019. The lecture is followed by a panel discussion with professors Frederick Biehle, Lawrence Blough, and John Szot. LINK
New York: Pratt Sessions #14: Michael Bell + Greg Lynn, at Pratt Institute School of Architecture, March 7, 2019. LINK
New York: Michael Bell will speak at the "Acts of Design: New Housing Paridigms in North America" at Columbia University, GSAPP. November 16, 2018. LINK
Ann Arbor: Michael Bell speaks at the "Shaping Future Cities" at the University of Michigan. November 9, 2018 LINK
Scottsdale, Arizona: Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong will join the Taliesin West Lecture Forum on January 30, 2018. LINK
Hudson Valley, New York: The Binocular House lanscaping has been expanded and completed with design by Field Operations.
San Francisco: Michael Bell presented research at the California College of Arts confrence "Designing Material Innovaiton" on October 26/27, 2018. The conference accompanied an exhibition of the same name curated at CCA by Jonathan Massey. LINK
Detroit: Michael Bell presented new housing + mobility reseach by Bell-Seong at the Stanford University, Center for Design Research and Royal Dutch Shell "Futures Forum" at the North American International Auto Show. LINK and LINK
San Francisco: Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong offered a lecture titled "Engineering after Risk" at CCA. February 2017 . LINK
Detroit: Michael Bell presented new housing + mobility reseach by Bell-Seong at the Stanford University, Center for Design Research and Royal Dutch Shell "Futures Forum" at the North American International Auto Show. LINK and LINK
New York: Up with Chris Hayes: August 25, 2012. Michael Bell was a guest with Ta-Nehisi Coates for Up with Chris Hayes. A discusison of gentrication in United States cities and the role of public policy in how cities change. LINK
The Art of Foreclosure
Alex Ulam, The Nation discusses
Bell Seong, Simultaneous City
MoMA
Fox Business News
April 9, 2012
International Design Conference Aspen: Poster by MADXS / Erik Adigard and Patricia McShane. The 1999 conference was organized by Aaron Betsky. I recently asked Erik and Patricia if they had an image of the poster and graphic identity they created. We all spoke at the conference and I recall in particular Bill Joy, founder, Sun Microsytems and Craig Kanarick, founder of Razorfish. Many of us had spent three days at a retreat hosted by SFMoMA in 1996 titled "The Mouse, the House and the City" -- Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari, hosted us at Stinson Beach to discuss the emerging effects of the internet on the future of the city -- on urbanism. Erik at the time was helping design Wiredintroductory spreads and this poster shows the crossover. At Rice a great deal of work cities and architecture was being done by many of us who had moved from San Francisco and Berkeley.
Selected Projects
Shanghai, China
Westbund Galleries, Shanghia, China. One of twelve new galleries that comprise an extended museum and the first West Bund Biennale. The twelve new buildings are sited along the Huangpu River adjacent to the new DreamWorks animation campus. Bell and Seong were commissioned along with Wang Shu, Anton Abril, Yung Ho Chang, Atelier Bow Wow, Li Hu, and Mark Lee/JohnstonMarkLee.
Visible Weather - Research, Materials and Structure
Post Construction Analysis - Assembly
Housing After Banking (forthcoming)
Housing After Banking (forthcoming)
Housing After Banking (forthcoming)
Housing After Banking (forthcoming)
Westbund Gallery, Shanghai, China
Simultaneous City, Museum of Modern Art
Glass House @ 2 Degrees: Fifth Ward CRC, Houston, Texas
Binocular House
Double Dihedral House: La Cienega, New Mexico
Arverne by the Sea: New York Department of Housing, Preservation and Development, New York City
California, Texas, New York is a collection of projects assembled in 2002. This folio was the precursor to the later book project "Space Replaces Us".
Binocular House 2018: Assembly and Components
A post construction study of the assembly and components with a focus on assembly process, part count, weight and materials.
FEA: An Analysis of Villa Bianchi, 1936, and Palazzo Littorio, Scheme A, 1934 (Giuseppe Terragni); and the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris (Henri Labrouste) using finite element analysis.
The analysis focused on major and seemingly minor aspects of the architect's work and shows where structural and mechanical/material concerns are conflated as design, material and engineering.
Did Terragni in effect design within the imminent and potential energy of a literal and optically failing structure? Does the leaf pattern in the iron work of Herni Labrouste’s masterpiece delimit stress in the iron and in effect render the structure as an arch?
Research presented at:
The Museum of Modern Art, March 28, 2013, in conjunction with the exhibition Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light.
The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, October, 8 and 15, 2013.
Pratt Institute School of Architecture in a joint lecture with Greg Lynn. March 7, 2019.
Research by: Michael Bell, Eunjeong Seong. Team: Hyon Woo Chung and Junggu Kim. Thanks to Zachary Kostura.
Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering, by Michael Bell and Craig Buckley. Princeton Architectural Press, 2014.
Post Ductility: Metals in Architecture and Engineering, by Michael Bell and Craig Buckley. Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.
Solid States: Concrete in Transition, by Michael Bell and Craig Buckley. Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.
Engineered Transparency: The Technical, Visual, and Spatial Effects of Glass; Michael Bell and Jeannie Kim. Princeton Architectural Press, 2008.
Michael Bell: Space Replaces Us: Essays and Projects on the City. The Monacelli Press, 2004.
16 Houses: Designing the Public's Private House by Michael Bell. The Monacelli Press, 2004
Slow Space, Edited by Michael Bell and Sze Tsung Leong. Monacelli Press 1998.
Stanley Saitowitz: Architecture at Rice, 33. Edited and with an introduction by Michael Bell. Princeton Architectural Press
Selected Design and Research Publications
See Research
“Ten Points on a Projective Economy and Architecture” by Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong. Under Pressure, Essays on Urban Housing
Edited By Hina Jamelle, University of Pennsylvania and Routledge, 2021
Michael Bell reviews Lateness, by Peter Eisenman with Elisa Iturbe for CAA and Taylor and Francisc. 2021. LINK
"Encrypting the Sun: Housing after Banking" by Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong is published in Log: 47: Overcoming Carbon Form.
Edited by Cynthia Davidson and Guest Editor Elisa Iturbe. Available November 2019. LINK
“Encrypting the Sun; Housing after Banking” completes a trilogy of essays that preview a book of the same name -- Housing after Banking. The essays include:
TAD: The Journal of Technology | Architecture & Design, Issue 1 | VIRAL: Information Technology as Prophet, Panacea, or Pariah? “Powerwall” | By Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong
Architectural Design: AD: Mass Customized Cities, Fall 2015, edited by Tom Verebes. Includes essay by Michael Bell and architectural and urban design by Michael Bell and Eunjeong Seong.
Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream is an exploration of new architectural possibilities for American cities and suburbs in the aftermath of the recent foreclosure crisis in the United States. During the summer of 2011, five interdisciplinary teams of architects, urban planners, ecologists, engineers and landscape designers were enlisted by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and MoMA PS1 to envision new housing infrastructures that could catalyze urban transformation, particularly in the country's suburbs. Drawing on ideas proposed in The Buell Hypothesis, a research publication prepared by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, each team focused on a specific location within a "megaregion" to come up with inventive solutions for the future of housing and cities. This publication presents each of these proposals (exhibited at MoMA in Spring 2012) in detail, through photographs, drawings and renderings as well as interviews with the team leaders. With texts by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA's Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Henry N. Cobb, a founding partner of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Reinhold Martin, Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center, Foreclosed examines the relationship between land, infrastructure and urban form, exploring potential futures for America's extended metropolises.
Casabella, Volume 777. "Una casa sull' Hudson," By Joan Ockman. Gefter-Press House
included with Double Dihedral House and Glass House at 2 Degrees. Milan, Italy.
Photography by
Richard Barnes and Bilyana Dimitrova.
American Masterworks: Houses of the Twentieth & Twenty-first
Centuries by Kenneth Frampton and David Larkin. Gefter-Press House
included in collection. Rizzoli, New York
Photography by
Richard Barnes.
Currents | Books: 11 More Great Homes by Elaine Louie, The New York Times, January 7, 2009
New York: 2000, Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Millennium by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove The anthology and analysis of New York City presents Stateless Housing and urban design and planning for the New York City Department of Housing, Preservation and Development.
How We Live: Free and Clear By Karrie Jacobs. Gefter-Press House with RU 128 by Werner Sobek and Philip Johnson Glass House.
The Gefter-Press House is featured in Metropolis, January 2008 and online at Metroplis. Article by Stephen Zacks. Photography by Bilyana Dimirova.
The Glass House MoleskineSketchbook produced for Philip Johnson Glass House in 2008. Includes Gefter-Press House drawing.
Michael Bell interview by Andrew Benjamin; BOMB, New York; Summer 2004
Design Review: "Drop-Dead Beauty and Luxe, With an Intimate Index of Change" By Roberta Smith. Published: July 2, 1999
"It should be pointed out that there are exceptions to the general spare-no-expense atmosphere. Michael Bell's 900-square-foot ''Glass House @ 2degrees'' may resemble Philip Johnson's glass house, but it was designed to conform to the strict requirements of a Federal housing program for the Fifth Ward of Houston." "They are beautiful esthetic objects, but with the exception of Mr. Bell's glass house and possibly Mr. Denari's metal one, none could be a prototype for a larger community."
Glass House @ 2 Degrees, The Un-Private House, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
32 - Beijing / New York. Issue 1-7: founding editors Michael Bell, Steven Holl, Yung Ho Chang. Princeton Architectural Press.
The Houston Press: Not Your Standard Issue: Architects design one-of-a-kind houses for the Fifth Ward, trying to prove that even lower-end houses don't have to be a cookie-cutter box. By Lisa Gray. Published: November 9, 2000
