The Board of Directors of Storefront for Art and Architecture is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of Eva Franch who becomes the new director of New York’s most innovative platform for art, architecture and the built environment.

In mid-January, the Board launched an international search and was overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of the candidates who applied from around the world. More than 70 applicants were vetted and the list was first narrowed to a field of fourteen and subsequently to six finalists who were interviewed in New York City. Acting on the recommendation of the search committee, the Board unanimously ratified Ms. Franch’s appointment on May 10, 2010.

Ms. Franch, 31, is a Catalan architect, researcher, teacher and founder of OOAA [office of architectural affairs]. She has spent the last two years making a dynamic mark at Rice University where she was awarded the Worthman Fellowship and has been teaching as the Masters Thesis studio director. Previously she taught at the University of Buffalo where she received the Peter Reyner Banham Fellowship.

Franch studied at TU Delft, at ETS Arquitectura Barcelona where she received her Master in Architecture with Honors in 2003 and, with a “La Caixa” grant, at Princeton University, where she received the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize and her M.Arch II degree in 2007.

Peter Guggenheimer, Board President remarked, “We are all thrilled at the selection of Eva Franch to lead Storefront. She has it all – energy, intellect, charm and a commitment to keep Storefront at the forefront of the international conversation centered on the intersections of art, architecture and urbanism. Each prior director has taken us along a unique tangent to a relatively constant arc, and I have no doubts that Eva will bring a fresh eye to our programming and events, while adhering to Storefront’s core values of independence, exploration of the unexpected and to reach diverse audiences who want to know what is at the center of the conversation.”

Ms. Franch expressed, “To direct Storefront after visionaries like Kyong Park and Shirin Neshat, Sarah Herda and Joseph Grima is both an honor and a challenge I am relishing. I am delighted to join the institution par excellence that understands experimentation and risk as a priori conditions. New York is one of the most intense cities in the world and I am looking forward to working together with the board, the staff and the extensive network of thinkers involved in making Storefront the place that it is and that will be. I see my role within the legacy of Storefront as a stimulating experience and endeavor for the art and architectural communities inside and beyond cultural, geographic or institutional borders. My practice and my deep connection to the academic world has afforded me a global perspective and I look forward to unveiling, unearthing and spotlighting that which is on the “edge” in order to provide the new grounds from where to produce new “vectors of desire”.”

Ms. Franch will start August 1, 2010.

Additional information
Eva Franch’s work has been exhibited at the Center for Architecture in New York, Korean Institute of Architects in Daegu, FAD Barcelona, NAI Rotterdam, Shenzen Biennale of Architecture, SOA Princeton, COAR Rioja and ETSA Barcelona among others. Selected publications include “Terminal B. Barcelona Creative Database” (2008), “CityThemeCity” and “Content_A” in Pidgin (2006-7), “Dementia” in Postboks (2004), “Pause Pavillion” in Pasajes (2004), “Generative metaphors” in Sources of Architectural Form (2007), and “R.E.D. studies” in Imagined Spaces (2007). Awarded the Howard Crosby Butler Traveling Fellowship (2006) by Princeton University, Franch also received an Akademie Schloss Solitude research grant (2009), the Incubadora del FAD prize for emerging architects (2007), a Pasajes-iGuzzini prize (2004) and a Dragados Foundation prize (2005).