James Wines is an American architect known for his philosophy of integrating buildings with their surrounding natural environments. He advocates for hand drawing in conceptual design alongside computer tools. One of his projects was a retail showroom for The Best Products Company that had portions of its brick facade peeled away to reveal the space behind it, exploring relationships between art and architecture. Another project was a food kiosk for Madison Square Park designed to blend into the surrounding vegetation as a miniature garden. He also proposed an environmental center called the Aquatorium that would tell the story of water through interior and exterior exhibition walls fused with the surrounding topography.

1. MADE BY:
UDAY YADAV
3RD YR – B
ROLL NO.19

2. LIFE HISTORY
• James Wines (born 1932) is an American
artist/architect associated with Environmental
design.
•
Wines is founder and president of SITE, a New
York City -based architecture and environmental
arts organization chartered in 1970.
• The main focus of his design work is on green
issues and the integration of buildings with their
surrounding contexts.

3. PHILOSOPHY ON HAND DRAWING
• Wines strongly advocates hand drawing as a key to
conceptual processes, along side computer-aided tools.
• For most architects graphic representation is notional,
technical, or illustrative and mainly used as an analytical
tool to record design intentions, but he considers drawing
more as a way of exploring the physical and psychological
state of inclusion, suggesting that buildings can be
fragmentary and ambiguous, as opposed to conventionally
functional and determinate.

4. • The fluidity of connection between mind and hand
determines the quality of the architect you become.
• It shapes your thinking and, therefore, the kind of firm in
which you practice, including the creative level of people
with whom you choose to associate.
• A high aptitude in hand drawing influences the character
and innovative level of the work you produce.

5. • A number of his drawings explore the integration of
architecture and landscape. As a result, buildings often
appear to be consumed by their own environment—or,
seen more perversely, as victims of nature’s revenge.
• In other examples, the renderings describe the need for
more forested areas, water sources, and urban
agriculture in the cityscape.

6. • The primary purpose is to explore the integration of
architecture with context to a degree where it becomes
difficult to discern where a building ends and the
environment begins.
• In this way, vegetation, topography, and climatic
conditions can become as much a part of the
aesthetic/functional fabric of a structure as masonry,
glass, and steel.

8. • The BEST Products
Company of Richmond,
Virginia - a retail
merchandiser of hard
goods in the USA. The
Peeling Project
showroom was first of
nine commercial
buildings designed for
the company.
THE BEST PRODUCTS COMPANY

9. • Portions of the brick
veneer of the facade are
peeled away precariously
into space, revealing the
beyond. This sculptural
innovation produces the
effect of architecture in a
state of tentativeness and
instability.
• Since the project is not
about formalist design, it
explores the alternative
relationships between art
and buildings.
THE BEST PRODUCTS COMPANY

10. • The Peeling Project
was followed by a
series of eight more
retail showrooms.
• Each of these
architectural concepts
treated the standard
"big box" prototype as
the subject matter for
an art statement.
THE BEST PRODUCTS COMPANY

11. • By means of inversion,
fragmentation,
displacement, distortions
of scale, and invasions of
nature and by engaging
people's reflex
identification with
commonplace buildings,
the BEST showrooms
also explore the social,
psychological and
aesthetic aspects of
architecture.
THE BEST PRODUCTS COMPANY

12. • This small food kiosk is
designed for the historic
Madison Square Park in
New York City.
• The concept responds to
several important features
of the surrounding
community - the triangular
shape of Daniel Burnham’s
Flatiron Building, the plan
of the historic park, the
profusion of vegetation, and
the festive atmosphere that
prevails during all seasons.
SHAKE SHACK

13. • A large shade trellis, overgrown with English ivy, covers
an inclined roof and the entire back wall of the five
hundred sq. ft. building.
• The general intention of the design is to provide a food
kiosk for Madison Square Park that becomes a
miniature garden in itself, thus, making it a part of the
surrounding enviornment by following his philosophy of
integrating architecture with enviornment.
SHAKE SHACK

14. • This environmental center explores all aspects of waterrelated science and culture.
• The concept, entitled “AQUATORIUM” is intended to
inspire a profound appreciation of humanity's
relationship to the earth's most precious resource.
• By means of sight, sound, and touch, the building and
its exhibition spaces are designed to tell the story of
water and people.
AQUATORIUM
CONCEPT

15. •
•
Located on top of hill,
this new facility is
integrated with its
circular site as an over
and underground
experience.
The building is
composed of lateral
information walls that
carry the exhibitions
from interior to exterior
and fuse with the
surrounding
topography.
AQUATORIUM
CONCEPT

16. •
These animated walls
divide the sections of
the museum into
culture, science,
habitat, technology, and
agriculture, using such
exhibit devices as
video, water events,
virtual reality
experiences, gardens,
natural phenomena and
hands-on displays that
explain the value of
water in the history of
civilization.
AQUATORIUM
CONCEPT