NO ARCHITECTURE is a minority-owned, single-office international architecture and design practice based in New York.

Founded by Andrew Heid in 2014, NO ARCHITECTURE is known  for realizing spaces that offer greater spiritual, ecological, and cultural harmony.

Our current work includes private residences in urban and rural contexts, museums, interiors to large-scale planning and civic architecture around the country and the world.

Our work has been recognized by Architect Magazine’s Next Progressives, the Boston Society of Architects’ Honor Award, AIA New York’s Honor Housing Design Award, the Union Internationale des Architectes’ Japan Institute of Architects Prize, and Princeton University’s Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize.

Approach

NO ARCHITECTURE’s signature architectural approach prioritizes transparent and flexible spaces to create harmony between nature and architecture. 
 
Our projects are known creating connectivity between indoors and outdoors, private and communal activities, and adaptable live and work spaces. Creating simple gestures that connect people and spaces, NO ARCHITECTURE begins each unique project with a single question: “How do we best connect nature and modern life?”.

Recognition

NO ARCHITECTURE’s work has been nominated for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, Harvard University’s Wheelwright Prize, and has been featured in Architectural Digest, AD China, AD Germany, AD Italia, Architectural Record, Architect, Cultured, Divisare, Dwell, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Luxe TV, NBC, the New York Times, Phaidon, Taschen, Vogue China, Wallpaper* and the Wall Street Journal. PIN-UP Architecture Magazine published NO ARCHITECTURE as one of New York’s most innovative practices.

Expertise

NO ARCHITECTURE’s expertise is in new forms of organization in architecture and urbanism: from framing how people live at the scale of a room, to new ways of living convivially and resiliently at the scale of a city. Through this framework, the work innovates new spatial typologies that are dedicated to the harmony of nature, ecology, and urbanism with innovative architecture. NO ARCHITECTURE focuses on understanding how the world was organized in the past and present, in order to understand how the world can be organized in the future: liberating the built environment to support meaningful, sustainable connections to community and nature.

Experience

Ongoing urban development plans including new buildings and public spaces include Nanchong Nature City in Sichuan, China; and glass houses in Santa Barbara County, California and Devil Lake, Canada.

Recent private residential projects include Flower House, described by AD Italia: “ Thanks to the “umbrella” canopy structure, Flower House has the flexibility similar to a loft, free from structural supports. Views sweep in every direction, while each pavilion optimizes heating and cooling, sunlight and natural ventilation, along with the rituals of everyday life”; and Courtyard House described by Dwell: “ What makes the house particularly unusual is the small "courtyard" in the middle, its four walls of glass around a small space filled with native trees and bushes”

Process

NO ARCHITECTURE’s holistic, iterative design process combined with a rigorous interrogation of site, context, and constraints yields each project’s form. At each stage, from predesign through construction administration, we communicate and collaborate with clients, stakeholders and consultants to refine a project’s conceptual, formal and technical trajectories. Ultimately, our design process concludes with a clearly defined idea that is explored through an architectural form—from how to live and learn to how to play, entertain and work. Through this framework, NO ARCHITECTURE develops new spatial typologies for a variety of projects on unique sites that are dedicated to the harmony of nature, ecology, and urbanism with innovative architecture.

 

 

Andrew Heid 

Founding Principal


A licensed architect, Andrew Heid studied architecture at Yale University and the Architectural Association as an undergraduate, and received his M.Arch. from Princeton University, where his design thesis earned the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Prize, the graduate school’s highest honor. Prior to founding NO ARCHITECTURE in 2014, Andrew gained architectural design experience at REX and OMA in New York and Rotterdam. He also designed and edited Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950-2000 (Rizzoli) with Peter Eisenman. Andrew is currently a visiting assistant professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, building upon previous teaching experience at New York Institute of Technology and Columbia University.

Currently Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, visiting assistant professor at Pratt, and contributing editor at Phaidon, Andrew was architecture editor at Cultured Magazine, and visiting assistant professor at GSAPP at Columbia University, and lecturer at the New York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture. He has also been an invited juror at Harvard, Columbia, The Cooper Union, The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, NJIT, NYIT, Pratt, Parsons, Temple, UCLA, and Yale.

Andrew has lectured on his work at Tongji and Shenzhen Universities, on “Toward a harmony between nature and architecture” at Telluride Art and Architecture, on “Housing and Habitat in the 4th Industrial Revolution” at the Positive Economy Forum, and at the Beijing International Design Week. Previously, he exhibited “From Collective Form to Ecological Urbanism: Towards Climate Resilient Housing” at Re-Living the City, at the BI-CITY BIENNALE OF URBANISM ARCHITECTURE, Shenzhen. In addition, Andrew exhibited work in the Shenzhen Design Forum, MoMA, and the Beijing Architecture Biennale. Before founding NO ARCHITECTURE, Andrew practiced at REX and O.M.A. in New York and Rotterdam. Along with editing Glass Houses (2023), Andrew edited Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950-2000, with Peter Eisenman. Andrew studied architecture at Yale, the Architectural Association, and received his M.Arch from Princeton.