Education
- Yale University, 1986
Affiliations/Firms
- Asymptote
Related websites
Keywords
Austria, Dubai, New York, New York City, UAE, ViennaBiography
Career in Architecture
Lise Anne Couture as managing partner and principal at Asymptote is involved in all aspects of design oversight working directly with all our clients and internal project teams as well as specialist consultants ensuring creative design vision through all phases. Lise Anne’s has held numerous prestigious academic appointments including the Bishop Chair and Saarinen Chair at Yale University, the Muschenheim Fellowship at the University of Michigan, the Kenzo Tange Chair for architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and distinguished visiting professorships at Princeton University, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), the University of Virginia, l’Université de Montréal, the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam, Parsons School of Design and MIT. For over ten years she has been on the faculty of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and in 2009 Lise Anne Couture held the Davenport Chair at Yale University as a Visiting Professor, and in 2010 she was the Baird Visiting Professor at Cornell University’s College of Architecture. Lise Anne has been a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow and is a New York State Registered Architect and a member of the AIA. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Architectural League of New York, the Advisory Board of the Builder’s Association and serves on the federal government’s GSA Design Excellence Peer Review Board. She received a Master of Architecture from Yale University in 1986.
1989 Asymptote won international recognition for their winning entry of the Steel Cloud in the Los Angeles Westcoast Gateway Competition. In 1992, Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid were asked by The New York Times to design a hypothetical building for Times Square.[1]
In 1996, Asymptote built their first project overseas, the Universe Theatre in Aarhus, Denmark. The project was awarded the Danish building of the year award by the Architects’ Association of Denmark. In 1999, Asymptote designed the first large-capacity virtual reality environment and also completed the Advanced Floor Operations Center on the trading floor of the Wall Street facility. The project was listed in the AIA Guide to Noteworthy Architecture in New York City.[2]
In 2003 the firm won the AIA New York Chapter Design Award, Architecture Category for their Design of the HydraPier Pavilion in Haarlemmermeer, Netherlands.[3]
In 2003, Asymptote finished the American flagship store for Carlos Miele.[4] Three years later, they built the AlessiFlagship Store.[5][6] Both projects won the AIA NY Chapter Interior Architecture Award. In 2006, the second Carlos Miele Store opened its doors in Paris.
In November 2009, the firm completed the Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi Hotel[7] in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and in early 2010 166 Perry Street[8] a luxury residential building in Manhattan’s West Village was completed.
Other projects include 190 Váci Commercial Towers in Budapest, Hungary, the FCD Yongsan Landmark Tower in Seoul, South Korea,[9] a design for the Zurich Circle, Zurich, Switzerland,[10] the Strata Tower[11] [12] an innovative, forty-story, luxury residential tower in Abu Dhabi,United Arab Emirates, a large-scale cultural, hotel and performing arts complex in Penang, Malaysia[13] [14] and a commission to build the World Business Center Busan in Busan, South Korea.[15] The design for the World Business Center Busan consists of three separate, tapered towers “soaring” out of a single base and will, upon completion, will be among the tallest buildings in Asia at 560 m.[16]
2011 Asymptote Architecture won second place in the ‘Kaohsiung Port Terminal 2010’ competition, featuring a sculptural design for the Kaohsiung Port Terminal in Taiwan.[17] Another project from 2011 was the Beukonhof,[18] an auditorium / crematorium in the city of Schiedam, Netherlands.
In June 2012 Asymptote announced the launch of the Velo Towers, part of the Dreamhub development in the Yongsan District of Seoul, South Korea.[19] Asymptote’s project is designed as an integral part of the master plan accommodating several new projects that are situated along the newly planned Yongsan Park.[20]
For nearly two decades, Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture have also produced experimental art installations and exhibition design work involving multi-media technologies such as the Virtual Museum at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.[21]
DOCUMENTA XI in Kassel, Germany; the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and the Ministry of Public Works in Madrid, Spain. In 2003, Asymptote held its first extensive solo show, a survey of its work at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). [22]
In 2000 Hani Rashid co-represented the United States at the Seventh Venice Biennale of Architecture, and in 2004 both Rashid and Couture were chosen as the design architects for Metamorph, the Ninth Venice Architecture Biennale[13]. Asymptote has also produced design work, brand identities and product design for Alessi Italy, Volkswagen Wolfsberg Germany and Carlos Miele Brazil. The work of Asymptote is also included in several private and public collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Frac Centre in Orléans, France.
Press and Awards
- Middle East Architect Awards, Hospitality Project of the Year, The Yas Hotel (2011)
- Travel + Leisure Design Awards, Best Large Hotel, The Yas Hotel (2010)
- Grand Prix de l’Architecture, Festival Automobile International (2010)
- IESNA Illumination Award (2010)
- Le Grand Prix de l’Architecture, FAI, Paris, The Yas Hotel (2010)
- American Architecture Award, Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design (2008)
- AIA NY Chapter Design Award, Interior Architecture (2007)
- AIA New York Chapter Design Award, Interior Architecture (2005)
- Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2004)
- AIA New York Chapter Design Award, Architecture (2002)
Writings
Asymptote’s work has been the subject of 4 monographs and is widely published internationally in professional journals as well as the general press.
- Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture: Asymptote. Architecture at the Interval, Rizzoli 1995, ISBN 0847818616
- Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture: Asymptote: Flux, Phaidon Press 2002, ISBN 0714841722
- Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture: Asymptote: Works and Projects, Skira 2002, ISBN 888491261X
- Hani Rashid, Lise Anne Couture: Asymptote Architecture Actualizations, Asia Art & Design Cooperation 2010, ISBN 978-7-5609-5599-5