Barry Yanku
AIA, RID
Vice President, Aviation Studio Design Director
New York, New York USA
Initially pursuing a career in the performing arts, Barry turned his love for dance into a 40+ year career in architecture design. Driven by his passion for designing dynamic spaces with the latest technologies, dance movement influences his approach to design, in which he “choreographs the built environment to create beautiful, memorable spaces working in concert with the operational demands of a building and the people who move through it.”
Throughout his career, he has led the design and construction of virtually every building type to enhance the user experience, including complex residential, institutional, and commercial projects. A Design Director since 2019, Barry leads his team from conceptual ideas to the final product, developing, maintaining, and coordinating with consultants and clients.
Barry uses modeling software and digital tools to investigate design ideas. “With the enhancement of digital modeling, I liken architectural design to that of a choreographer; using tools we have today, we can create and explore solutions with a varied and rich spectrum of ideas.”
Selected Content
As a design mechanism, the choreographed design uses kinetic principles as part of the design gestalt, taking the design process out of the static paper conceptual world into a virtual world, which relies on three-dimensional modeling as its primary vehicle. Elevations and plans merge into a volumetric realm from the beginning of the design process. Many other kinetic principles take place in choreographed spaces, such as inflicting changing light on a material, or tracking the daily changes of natural light over the period of a day. Additionally, the immediacy of visualizing a three-dimensional environment gives the user a look into the future by seeing a space from almost any direction.
