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REX is an international architecture and design firm based in New York City. Led by Joshua Prince-Ramus, the office has a staff of 45 people of 16 nationalities. Buildings under construction include the Dee & Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas, Texas; Museum Plaza, an art center and mixed-use waterfront development in Louisville, Kentucky; and the new headquarters for Vakko, Turkey’s preeminent fashion house, in Istanbul. REX is also designing the Vestbane, a multi-use development including the new Deichmanske Library and Stenersen Museum, scheduled to open in Oslo, Norway in 2011.

Joshua Prince-Ramus was a founding partner of OMA New York—the American branch of the Rotterdam-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture—and served as its director until redefining the U.S. office as REX in 2006. At OMA New York, he was partner-in-charge of the Seattle Central Library and the Guggenheim Hermitage and Guggenheim Las Vegas Museums. Mr. Prince-Ramus received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy with distinction from Yale University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University, where he was the first Araldo Cossutta Fellow and an SOM Fellow.

We design collaborations rather than dictate solutions.
The media sells simple, catchy ideas; it reduces teams to individuals and their collaborative work to genius sketches. The proliferation of this false notion of "starchitecture" diminishes the real teamwork that drives celebrated architecture. REX believes architects should guide collaboration rather than impose solutions. We replace the traditional notion of authorship: "I created this object," with a new one: "We nurtured this process."

We embrace responsibility in order to implement vision.
The implementation of good ideas demands as much, if not more, creativity than their conceptualization. Increasingly reluctant to assume liability, architects have retreated from the accountability (and productivity) of Master Builders to the safety (and impotence) of stylists. To execute vision and retain the insight that facilitates architectural invention, REX re-engages responsibility. Processes, including contractual relationships, project schedules, and procurement strategies, are the stuff with which we design.

We don't rush to architectural conclusions.
The largest obstacle facing clients and architects is their failure to speak a common language. By taking adequate time to think with our clients before commencing the traditional design process, it is our proven experience that we can provide solutions of greater clarity and quality. With our clients, we identify the core questions they face, and establish shared positions from which we collectively evaluate the architectural proposals that follow.

We side with neither form nor function.
REX believes that the struggle between form and function is superficial and unproductive. We proffer the term "performance" instead: a hybrid that doesn’t discriminate between use, organization, and form. We free ourselves from the tired debate over whether architecture is an art or a tool. Art performs; tools perform.The measure of high performance is relative to each project and the positions established with our clients.

We reach for the unexpected by exposing root problems.
We don’t innovate for innovation’s sake. Nor do we accept predigested solutions. We return to root problems and doggedly explore them with a critical naïveté. Unprejudiced by convention, we expose solutions that transcend those we could have initially or individually imagined. Sometimes we discover uncharted territory; sometimes we rediscover forgotten territory that has renewed usefulness; sometimes we reaffirm conventions with assured conviction.

We view constraints as opportunities.
Engaged intelligently, limitations such as budgets, schedules, codes, politics, and site conditions are opportunities that can catalyze the most innovative solutions. Architectural concepts that capitalize on our clients’ constraints will surpass any vision that resists intractable realities. We produce specific designs that are highly effective, not universals diluted in application.

We advance new strategies for flexibility.
Despite an increased need to accommodate change, contemporary design still relies on an antiquated version of flexibility: one size fits all. The promise of a blank slate upon which any activity can occur has produced sterile, unresponsive architecture. REX advocates delimiting activities and addressing the possible evolutions of each on its own terms. With this strategy, one activity can evolve without sacrificing another, and collisions between activities unleash surprising potentials.

We love the banal.
REX dares to be dumb.

Guggenheim-Hermitage and Guggenheim Las Vegas Museums; Las Vegas, NV. Completed 2001.

Seattle Central Library; Seattle, WA. Completed 2004 (OMA/LMN).

Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre; Dallas, TX. Commenced 2004; completion expected 2008 (REX/OMA).

Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology; Pasadena, CA. 2005-6.

Museum Plaza; Louisville, KY. Commenced 2005; completion expected 2011.

Forward Residence; New York, NY. Commenced 2006.

Vakko Headquarters and Power Media Center; Istanbul, Turkey. Commenced 2006; completion expected 2008.

Governors Island Public Open Space Competition; New York, NY. 2007 (REX/MDP).

Deichmanske Library and Stenersen Museum; Oslo, Norway. Commenced 2007; completion expected 2011 (REX/SPACEGROUP).

University of Louisville College of Business; Louisville, KY Commenced 2007.

Aurora Fernandez Per and Javier Arpa, Density Projects,  A+T Ediciones, 2007.

Erin Cullerton, Young Architects Americas, Rolf Daab Publishers, 2007.

John Gendall, “REX Marks its First Year,” Architectural Record, September 19, 2007.

William Smith, “Art-Capital,” Pitch Magazine, Fall,  2007.

Nadine M. Post, “Form Follows Structure,” Engineering News-Record, August 6, 2007.

Joshua Prince-Ramus, “Manifesto #31,“ Icon Magazine, August 2007.

Alexandra Lange, “Fantasy Island: Five teams compete to make Governors Island an urban paradise. Only one will survive.” New York Magazine, June 4, 2007.

Karrie Jacobs, “The New Tastemakers: Group Dynamics,” House and Garden, June 2007.

Witold Rybczynski, “Central Park South: Choosing the best Design for a New Park on New York’s Governor’s Island,” Slate.com, June 14, 2007.

Mimi Zeiger, “The Next Generation,” Architect, March 2007.

Herbert Muschamp, “The Cumulus Effect,” The New York Times Style Magazine, October 8, 2006.

Tim Abrahams, “American Evolution,” Blueprint, August 2006.

Jena McGregor, “The Reluctant Starchitect,” Business Week Online, May 19, 2006.

Yoshida Nobuyuki, “Joshua Prince-Ramus – OMANY: Seattle Central Library”; Joshua Prince-Ramus, “The Lost Art of Productively Losing Control”; Architecture and Urbanism, May 2006.

Robin Pogrebin, “Go With My Blessing. And My Staff, While You’re At It,” The New York Times, May 14, 2006.

Alex Frangos, “Way Up And Far Out,” The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2006.

Yoshida Nobuyuki, “OMANY Dee & Charles Wyly Theatre,” “OMANY Museum Plaza,” Architecture and Urbanism, April 2006.

Ana G. Cañizares, ed., Great New Buildings of the World,  LOFT Publications, 2005.

Michael Kubo and Ramon Prat, eds., Seattle Public Library: OMA/LMN, Actar, 2005.

Jena McGregor, “Company Builder,” Fast Company, June 2005.

Jena McGregor, “The Architect of a Different Kind of Organization,” Fast Company, June 2005.

Futagawa, Yoshio, “Seattle Central Library,” GA Document, June 2004.

Yoshio Futagawa, “OMA: Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre,” GA Document 85, May 2005.

Yoshida Nobuyuki, “OMA/LMN: Seattle Central Library,” Architecture and Urbanism, January 2005.

Karen Steen, et al., “The Making of a Library,” Metropolis, October 2004.

Paul Goldberger, “The Sky Line: High-tech Bibliophilia, ” The New Yorker, May 24, 2004.

Herbert Muschamp, “The Library that Puts on Fishnets and Hits the Disco,”  The New York Times, May 16, 2004.

Jeff Derksen, “New York Daybook/Vegas Daybook,” Hunch, The Berlage Institute, December 2001.