THOMAS PIPER, DIRECTOR
Thomas Piper is an award-winning filmmaker specialized in documenting contemporary artists and designers. His most recent film, Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf, won the 2018 Polly Krakora Award for Artistry in Film from the DC Environmental Film Festival, and is still in global theatrical release. His film, Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments, won Best Film for Television at the prestigious International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) in Montreal.
In addition, he has directed, photographed and/or edited more than 25 other films on painters, sculptors, photographers, architects, and writers. Subjects have included the artists Kiki Smith, Sol LeWitt, Alex Katz, Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi, the writer James Salter and poet Billy Collins, the art historian Vincent Scully, the architects Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, Jean Nouvel and Thom Mayne, and the only architects to win MacArthur “genius” grants, Jeanne Gang and Diller + Scofidio.
Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf
Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line
Sol LeWitt: Wall Drawings
Ellsworth Kelly: Fragments
LOT-EK
Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano have Masters Degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from the Universita’ di Napoli, Italy (1989). After graduating they completed post-graduate studies at Columbia University, New York (1990-1991) as Visiting Scholars. They founded LOT-EK in Naples, Italy in 1993 and opened up LOT-EK’s New York studio in 1995. Besides heading their professional practice, they also teach at Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture and Planning in Cambridge, MA.
LOT-EK is an award-winning architectural design studio renowned in the architecture/design/art world for its sustainable and innovative approach to construction, materials and space through the upcycling of existing industrial objects and systems. Their work has been exhibited in major museums, including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Guggenheim and the MAXXI.
Carroll House
Drivelines
Qiyun Mountain Camp
Container Assemblies
SHERRI WOLF, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Sherri Wolf is a long-time educator and currently an English teacher and English Department Head at the Brearley School, where she teaches an elective in South African Literature. She received her Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and her BA in English from Yale College. Fascinated by narrative and narrative structure, she has taught film at Hunter College and serves on the Board of the Educational Video Center, which empowers youth by teaching them to tell their own stories through documentary filmmaking. Since the day she met Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, the founding partners of LOT-EK, in 1997, she has been inspired by their work and creative vision.
ADVISORS
Jorge Fontanez
Jorge Fontanez advises small businesses and startups with a focus on brand and marketing strategy; intensely focused on go-to-market strategy, audience development, stakeholder engagement and creating earned revenue models.
Jorge is an adjunct professor of Marketing with Bard MBA in Sustainability, where he explores how to “Achieve a Regenerative Economy through Meaningful Stakeholder Engagement.” Jorge is also a First Movers Fellow since 2014 at The Business & Society Program of The Aspen Institute, expressing a commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), creating shared value at the intersection of corporate profitability while addressing environmental and social issues.
Thomas de Monchaux
Thomas De Monchaux is an adjunct assistant professor of architecture at Columbia, who conducted interviews in LOT-EK’s new monograph, LOT-EK: OBJECTS + OPERATIONS.
Thomas is the inaugural winner of the Winterhouse Award for Design Writing and Criticism.
Marques McClary
Marques is currently Director of Marketing and Communications for the American Academy in Rome, which supports innovative artists, writers, and scholars living and working together in a dynamic international community. At the Academy he is responsible for developing and managing communications/marketing strategy, media coverage, and public/external relations. In addition, he oversees all aspects of brand management and institutional identity, including the design and development of publications, electronic media and collateral materials.
Marques has over 17 years of experience in public relations, consumer advertising and marketing. Prior to AAR, he managed business development and marketing for LOT-EK, an architectural design firm based in New York City and Naples, Italy, and led account/strategy oversight for a variety of clients on behalf of global agencies such as Porter Novelli, Ketchum, Sudler & Hennessey (Y&R).
