Commonwealth

Boira & Coombes:

Founded in 2005 by Zoe Coombes and David Boira, Commonwealth is a furniture, art and design studio based in New York City. Harnessing a new fluidity enabled by machine languages, Commonwealth's interests are as material and emotional as they are technical. Working within the worlds of contemporary art and industrial furniture design, Commonwealth aims to produce work that embodies a sense of elegant desire through an engagement with both the newest of tools and the oldest of techniques.

Contact us: hola[at]commonwealth.nu. tel: 917.747.1085

Internship inquiries follow link

F.David Boira:

David's visual sensibility is influenced by that of his father, the Catalan painter, Francisco Boira. After gaining a foundation in Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design, David pursued an architectural degree and later went to work in the Barcelona office of Enric Miralles, one of the central figures of Catalan contemporary architecture. David's obsessions with precision and fluidity were greatly stimulated by his exposure to Catalan design history, and its visually-rich design traditions.

David holds a Bachelors Degree in Architecture from Florida International University and a Masters of Architecture (M.Arch.) from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture. Upon graduation from Columbia, David was the recipient (along with Zoe) of Columbia's Honor Award for Excellence in Design.

Zoe Boira Coombes:

Zoe earned her Masters of Architecture (M.Arch.) from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture. Upon graduation, she was the recipient (along with David) of the Honor Award for Excellence in Design.

Zoe also holds a Bachelors degree with honors, in Philosophy and History from the University of King's College, Halifax. A desire to work with ideas within a more material medium lead her to study architecture first at the undergraduate level at Parsons School of Design, and later in the graduate school at Columbia University. A break between degrees was spent as a caretaker of the Villa van Doesburg in Meudon-val-Fleury, just outside Paris, giving her the chance to inhabit and intimately experience one of the pivotal sites of experimental, early Modernism.

Boira & Coombes: Following three years of graduate studies at Columbia University, Zoe and David studied in the automotive design department at Art Center in Pasadena, California a breeding ground for automotive design innovation. This exposure to a highly functionalist field within design, (one rife with new technologies as much as with contemporary problems) continues to influence Commonwealth's design agenda.

Select Exhibitions:

Kuwait Art Foundation Limited, 11/2008

Fragiles: Porcelain, Glass and Ceramics.

Curated by Die Gestalten Verlag.

Presented by: H.H. Majed J. Al Sabah.

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SIGGRAPH 2008. Los Angeles. 08/2008

Design and Computation exhibition 2008.

Curated by Lira Nikolovska.

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DAM: Berlin. 05/2008

GeneratorX_2.0: Beyond the Screen. Berlin.

Produced by GeneratorX and Club Transmediale

Curated Marius Watz.

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Gallery311. Kortrijk, Belgium. 02/2008

Fragiles: Porcelain, Glass and Ceramics.

Curated by Die Gestalten Verlag.

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Design Miami/, 12/2007.

Fragiles: Porcelain, Glass and Ceramics.

Curated by Die Gestalten Verlag.

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London Design Festival. 09/2007

On/Off: and everything in between. Commonwealth vs. Build.

Curated by the Maxalot Gallery.

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Espeis Gallery, New York City. 06/2007

Tropism: Commonwealth vs. Joshua Davis.

Curated by the Maxalot Gallery.

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Espeis Gallery, New York City. 11/2006

Closer: Commonwealth vs. Kenzo Minami.

Curated by the Maxalot Gallery.

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Espeis Gallery, New York City. 06/2006

On/Off: and everything in between. Commonwealth vs. Build.

Curated by the Maxalot Gallery.

Upcoming Lectures:

-SCI-Arc. Southern California Institute of Architecture. Los Angeles, CA

'Agnus Dei and the Dirt of Tomorrow'. March 17th, 2010.

-Parsons the New School for Design and the Museum of Modern Art. NYC, NY

'HEADSPACE: A symposium on scent as design'. March 26th, 2010.

-IDSA.Pratt Institute Industrial Design. Brooklyn, NY

'It smells and we like it". March 31st, 2010.

Past Lectures:

-College of Design, University of Kentucky. Lexington, KY

'Decaying Organics'. Dec. 2nd, 2009.

-The School of Architecture, Northeastern University. Boston, MA

'Commonwealth: Vespers and Feasts'. Nov. 16th, 2009.

-Department of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Puerto Rico: 'Cmmnwlth : A Dirty Requiem for Tomorrow'. October 29th, 2009.

-Design Indaba 2009. Cape Town, South Africa. 02/2009.

-AA DRL (Architectural Association, Design Research Lab).

. Presenting to A. Andrasek's EmbodiedPatterns02. London, UK. 02/2009.

- IaaC. Institut Avancada de Arquitectura de Catalunya. Barcelona, Spain.

. 'Calorie Counting with Soft Materials'. 01/2009.

-Acadia'08: Silicone and Skin. Minneapolis, MN. 10/2008.

-SIGGRAPH 08. Panel on Craft and Digital Process. LosAngeles. 08/2008.

.LaN: LiveArchitecture Network. Summer Seminar Series. NYC. 07/2008

-OFFF festival. New York City. 11/2007

-PetchaKucha. New York City . 03/2007

Team:

Thanks to: Ronnie Parsons, Gil Akos, Dylan Baker Rice, Robert Mezquiti, Samuel Brisette, Robert Lee Bracket, Yi-Kuan Eddie Chou, Noah Sherburn, Noel Ocasio, and Julia Savastinuk, for their work in the past at Commonwealth.

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"Arguing for beauty is a fool's game.

The production of it, on the other hand, is another matter."

-cmmnwlth.