Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, founders and principals of Asymptote Architecture, are leading architectural practitioners of their generation whose innovative work and academic contributions have received international acclaim.
Since Asymptote’s founding in 1989, the practice has been at the forefront of technological innovation in the fields of architecture and design.
Asymptote has earned recognition for important built projects in Europe the UAE and the US as well as praise and awards for visionary building designs, master planning, art installations, exhibition and product design, and ground breaking digital spatial environments.
Asymptote is currently working on a broad range of commissions in the United States, Europe and Asia including a 100,000-square-meter master plan in Bergamo, Italy; the World Business Center Solomon Tower in Busan, South Korea, a skyscraper that will be among the tallest buildings in Asia at 560m.
Also in progress are the Penang Global City Center (PGCC), a one-million-square-meter cultural, hotel and performing arts complex in Penang, Malaysia; the Strata Tower, an innovative, forty-story, luxury residential tower in Abu Dhabi, UAE; and two contemporary art pavilions commissioned by The Guggenheim Foundation for the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island, also in Abu Dhabi.
Other recent competition proposals from Asymptote include a large-scale master plan and landmark tower design for the Yongsan International Business District in Seoul, South Korea; the winning entry for an iconic, forty-story corporate headquarters in Tbilisi, Georgia; a design for the Dubai International Financial Center, a 146-story building that punctuates that city’s skyline; an exhibition and music hall in Vitoria, Spain; and a dramatic design for a new Guggenheim Museum in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Recenty completed projects by Asymptote include The Yas Hotel, a luxury hotel and one of the main architectural features of the new Yas Marina development and accompanying Formula 1 raceway circuit in Abu Dhabi, and 166 Perry Street, a high-end residential building in New York City. Other recently completed projects include the award-winning HydraPier Pavilion in Haarlemmermeer, The Netherlands; the Guggenheim Virtual Museum; and the New York Stock Exchange Advanced Trading Floor.
Asymptote has also produced design work, brand identities and product design for Alessi Italy, Volkswagen Wolfsberg Germany and Carlos Miele Brazil.
For nearly two decades, Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture have also produced experimental art installations and exhibition design work involving multi-media technologies for venues such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City; DOCUMENTA XI in Kassel, Germany; the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt and the Ministry of Public Works in Madrid.
In 2000 Hani Rashid co-represented the United States at the Seventh Venice Architecture Biennale, and in 2004 both Rashid and Couture were chosen as the design architects for Metamorph, the Ninth Venice Architecture Biennale.
In 2004 Rashid and Couture were presented with the coveted Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts in recognition of exceptional contributions to the progress and merging of the disciplines and fields of art and architecture.
Asymptote’s work has been widely published and is included in various private and public collections including The Museum Of Modern Art in New York, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Frac Centre in Orléans, France.
