Andrew Bromberg at Aedas
Andrew Bromberg at Aedas
Andrew Bromberg (RIBA, Assoc. AIA) is Global Design Principal at the international architectural practice, Aedas.
Bromberg, originally from the United States, has been steadily gaining recognition for his ground-breaking architectural design projects in China, the Far East, the Middle East, Europe and North America, ranging from smaller cultural venues to larger mixed-use commercial developments, as well as significant infrastructure and transport schemes.
The architect’s most notable projects include The Star in Singapore, a mixed-used development with a 5,000-seat concert hall dramatically perched atop publically accessible forecourt and retail areas, completed in 2012, Sandcrawler, the regional headquarters for Lucasfilmalso in Singapore, which is elegantly clad in energy-saving luminous facades, completed in 2014, and the place-making Nanfung Commercial, Hospitality and Exhibition Complex in Guangzhou, built on the bank of the Pearl River estuary, completed in 2013.
The most recently completed project by Bromberg is Hong Kong West Kowloon Station. His dynamic design allows people to walk up the station’s rooftop aligned with mature trees and shrubs to enjoy new views of the famous Hong Kong skyline. The project opened to the public in September 2018.
Bromberg received his Master’s degree in architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and University of Washington after completing his Bachler’s degree in Environmental Design from University of Colorado and Arizona State University a few years earlier.
A keen hiker and traveler since young age, Bromberg draws inspiration from nature and his interest in how people live in different cultures to create meaningful, people-centric architectural works.
Approach
Co-existence with nature
Growing up close to the foothills of Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Bromberg has developed a life-long passion for roaming in nature. He still regularly hikes up the hills in Hong Kong, where he has now made his home. Each hike grants him a fresh new perspective of the city.
Nature is inherently open and accessible – it does not discriminate. Bromberg appreciates the way nature enables us to have deeper connection with our world.
For Bromberg, then, designing a building is not necessarily about getting people from A to B as quickly as possible, vertically or horizontally. Nooks and crannies, light wells, zigzagging elevators, cantilevered landings, crisscrossing giant columns, all serve important purposes in enriching our souls, firing up our imaginations and enabling us to engage with our surroundings more meaningfully.
Roaming architecture
Wayfinding and programming are often intuitively formed in Bromberg’s buildings, leading to unexpected discoveries and encounters.
In a way, Bromberg is a perfect blend of the East and West, effortlessly combining, on the one hand, the efficient, logical, abstract mindset associated with architecture of the West, which is well suited to serving commercial developments, and on the other, more poetic, mind-bending didactic spatial renditions found in the East, as seen, for example, in traditional teahouses in Japan, designed to change the way we relate to one another as human beings and the world around us.
People-centric design
One of the hallmarks of Bromberg’s architectural design is fluidity. Inherently open, soft edges seamlessly connect his buildings to the urban fabric, blurring hard boundaries between inside and outside, between private and public, maximizing accessibility and connectivity, all the while enlivening the streets and surrounding neighborhoods in the process.
Cities are human-made. Central to Bromberg’s work is an underlying philosophy valuing not only the environmental sustainability but also human sustainability, manifested as an extension of the public realm and commitment to people’s well-being.