Frederick Biehle Erika Hinrichs Viaarchitecture

Frederick Biehle Erika Hinrichs viaARCHITECTURE is an inter-disciplinary architecture and design studio, a partnership between Frederick Biehle and Erika Hinrichs. Founded in New York City in 1997, the firm allows them to engage a shared approach to making- a “thinking through drawing” that offers speculations on interiority, porosity, and materiality. Interiority Porosity Materiality Interiority- “Interior space constitutes the basis of architectural experience,” said Le Corbusier in his seminal publicationVersUne Architecture. He was referring not to the design of that which is indoors but to all architecture, from the scale of the room to the urban condition, where a sense of enclosure offers the spatial possibility of “being within”. A conscious awareness of the space of figuration is a foundational motive in our work. Porosity- Altering the fabric of enclosure by opening- window, door, threshold, or aperture can transform the role and character of a particular space. A multiplicity of openings introduces choice, and with choice of movement comes individual empowerment. Choice engages the inhabitant and therefore contributes to the construction of meaning. We are all the sum total of our choices. Materiality- Engaging both the tactile and visual senses, how one material is joined together with another is where form takes on its final character. Thoughtfulness is expressed in the definition of material relationships. It is in the craft of making that a distinction is made between inhabiting and dwelling.