Ambasz's trademark style is a combination of buildings and gardens, which he describes as 'green over grey'.[1] He bucked the trends of the 1970s, hiding his buildings under grass or putting them on boats.[1]
Born in Argentina (13 June 1943, Resistencia, Chaco), Ambasz is also a citizen of Spain by Royal Grant.[2] At Princeton University he within two years received bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture. Kenneth Frampton said that Ambasz was briefly his student "but I hardly can [say that] ... there wasn't very much I could contribute".[3]
He also won the First Prize and Gold Medal ex aequo in the competition to design the Master Plan for the Universal Exhibition of 1992, which took place in Seville, Spain, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of America's discovery.
The headquarters designed for the Financial Guaranty Insurance Company of New York won the Grand Prize of the 1987 International Interior Design Award of the United Kingdom, as well as the 1986 IDEA Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America. He won the First Prize in the 1986 competition for the Urban Plan for the Eschenheimer Tower in Frankfurt, Germany. His Banque Bruxelles Lambert in Lausanne, Switzerland, received the 1983 Annual Interiors Award.
Ambasz represented the United States at the 1976 Venice Biennale.[4] In 2021, the Italian Pavilion at the Biennale paid tribute to Ambasz's creations as an inspiration for modern-era sustainable architecture.
Since 1980 until 2008 Ambasz has been the Chief Design Consultant for the Cummins Engine Co. He holds 220 industrial and mechanical design patents, and his Vertebrax chair is included in the Design Collections of the Museum of Modern Art[5] and the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[6] New York. The MOMA has also included in its Design Collection his 1967 3-D Poster Geigy Graphics and his Flashlight,[7] among more than 20 other pieces.
Ambasz is the author of several books on architecture and design, among them Natural Architecture, Artificial Design, first published by Electa in 2001 and re-published four times since in expanded versions. "I detest writing theories. I prefer writing fables," he said in 2017.[8]Domus magazine has published some of those fables, including this one:
"Italy has remained a federation of city-states. There are museum-cities and factory-cities. There is a city whose streets are made of water, and another where all streets are hollowed walls. There is one city where all its inhabitants work on the manufacture of equipment for amusement parks; a second where everybody makes shoes; and a third where all its dwellers build baroque furniture. There are many cities where they still make a living by baking bread and bottling wine, and one where they continue to package faith and transact with guilt. Naturally, there is also one city inhabited solely by architects and designers. This city is laid out on a grid, its blocks are square, and each is totally occupied by a cubic building. Its wails are blind, without windows or doors.
The inhabitants of this city pride themselves on being radically different from each other. Visitors to the city claim, however, that all inhabitants have one common trait; they are all unhappy with the city they inherited and moreover, concur that it is possible to divide the citizens into several distinct groups. The members of one of the groups live inside the building blocks. Conscious of the impossibility of communicating with others, each of them, in the isolation of his own block, builds and demolishes every day, a new physical setting. To these constructions they sometimes give forms which they recover from their private memories; on other occasions, these constructs are intended to represent what they envision communal life may be on the outside.
Another group dwells in the streets. Both as individuals and as members of often conflicting sub-groups, they have one common goal: to destroy the blocks that define the streets. For that purpose they march along chanting invocations, or write on the walls words and symbols which they believe are endowed with the power to bring about their will. There is one group whose members sit on top of the buildings. There they await the emergence of the first blade of grass from the roof that will announce the arrival of the Millennium. As of late, rumors have been circulating that some members of the group dwelling in the streets have climbed up to the buildings' roof-tops, hoping that from this vantage point they could be able to see whether the legendary people of the countryside have begun their much predicted march against the city, or whether they have opted to build a new city beyond the boundaries of the old one."
In the winter of 2011–12, Ambasz architectural, industrial, and graphic design work was exhibited at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, in a comprehensive major retrospective of his complete works.[9] In 2017, Lars Mueller Publishers issued a much improved version in English (Emerging Nature: Precursor of Architecture and Design) of the book issued on the occasion of that exhibition.
In June, 2021, Ambasz was awarded an honorary degree in Building Engineering and Architecture by the University of Bologna (Italy) as a "trailblazer" for green architecture, In September 2020 Emilio Ambasz won his fourth Compasso d'Oro, for his outstanding career "as a pioneer of the relationship between buildings and nature."[10]
Exhibitions of works
1983 Emilio Ambasz: 10 Years of Architecture, Graphic and Industrial Design, a circulating show presented in Milan, Madrid, and Zurich
1985 Emilio Ambasz, The Axis Design and Architecture Gallery, Tokyo
1986 Emilio Ambasz, Institute of Contemporary Art of Geneva at HaIle Sud, Switzerland
1987 Emilio Ambasz, Arc-en- Ciel Gallery at the Center of Contemporary Art, Bordeaux, France
1989 Emilio Ambasz: Architecture, one-man show at The Museum of Modern Art, New York
1989 Emilio Ambasz: Architecture, Exhibition, Industrial and Graphic Design, a circulating one man show presented in San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs de Montreal, the Akron Art Museum in Ohio, the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois, and the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis
1993 Emilio Ambasz, one-man show, Tokyo Station Contemporary Center, Japan
1994 Emilio Ambasz, Architecture and Design, one-man show at the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City.
2005–2006 In-Depth: The House of Spiritual Retreat by Emilio Ambasz, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
2009 In Situ:Architecture and Landscape, a group show at The Museum of Modern Art, New York
2010 Green over Gray, one-man show at the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco
2011–2012 Emilio Ambasz: Inventions – Architecture and Design; a comprehensive major retrospective, at the Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain
Publications by Ambasz
1972 Ambasz, Emilio, ed.: Italy: The New Domestic Landscape: Achievements and Problems of Italian Design. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1976 Ambasz, Emilio, ed.: The Taxi Project: Realistic Solutions for Today. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1976 Ambasz, Emilio: The architecture of Luis Barragàn. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1999 Ambasz, Emilio: Shigeru Ban. Lawrence King Publishing, London.
2004 Ambasz, Emilio: Analyzing Ambasz. The Monacelli Press, New York.
2006 Ambasz, Emilio, ed.: The Universitas Project: Solutions for a Post-Technological Society. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Publications about Ambasz
1989 Emilio Ambasz: The Poetics of the Pragmatic: Architecture, Exhibit, Industrial and Graphic Design. Rizzoli International Publications, New York.
1993 Emilio Ambasz: Inventions: The Reality of the ldeal. Rizzoli International Publications, New York.
1999 Architettura e Natura: Emilio Ambasz – Progetti & Oggetti. Electa, Milan
