Tucked away in a subterranean South End warehouse on a blustery fall afternoon, architects Chris Grimley and Mark Pasnik are busy taking a visitor on a tour of their work and gallery space. In the office, two fellow architects tap away on a laptop at a communal work table while two young Vizsla hounds battle for rubber-toy supremacy. New Order pours from the speakers.
It's an apt soundtrack for pinkcomma, a gallery that aims to promote the work and ideas of emerging and innovative architectural and design talents - something the city, with its stately red brick and frequently conservative design sensibility, has long struggled to do on its own.
Pinkcomma is the latest endeavor from over,under, a design firm founded four years ago by expats from the highly regarded architecture firm Machado and Silvetti. Grimley, 35, and Pasnik, 37, along with Rami el Samahy, 37, and Roberto de Oliveira Castro, 31, sought a common outlet for their multiple interests - architecture, interiors, graphics, publications, and urban design among them - as well as their diverse viewpoints (the four principals all hail from different continents).
The gallery is, in many ways, an effort to spread the wealth - to offer emerging designers a platform from which they can promote their own architectural visions.
"The agenda here is a cultural one," Grimley said, leaning forward as his canine charges pant for attention. "We want to be a part of a collaboration and also be provocative."
Both the lanky, soft-spoken Pasnik and the hale, passionate Grimley - who together serve as the codirectors of pinkcomma - speak optimistically of the city's current architectural climate, one traditionally quite staid. They point to projects such as Wellesley College's Wang Campus Center by Scogin and Elam, the Macallen Building by Office dA, and the Genzyme headquarters by Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner as recent indicators that the city is becoming more open to innovative design. They attribute those developments to the rising profile of the city's already well-regarded architecture schools.
"As the schools have reached a more global audience in the last decade, some of these international figures have begun to rub off on the local architectural culture," said Pasnik, who has a master's degree from the Harvard's Graduate School of Design and is currently an assistant professor of architecture at Wentworth. "Many young designers have stayed here either to teach or to work, and a number of them are now forming their own practices."
Still, they agree, resistance remains to the new, the different, the adventurous.
"The history of Boston's demolition of neighborhoods has led to a distrust among Bostonians, and in general a reactionary stance against anything unfamiliar," Pasnik said. "We have lived with a surprising contradiction: Some of the most liberal thinkers politically have been the most conservative architecturally."
Which brings us back to pinkcomma, the first gallery of its kind in the city. From the early days of over,under, the group talked about developing a forum for architects that would give visibility to less established firms and designers, and promote a dialogue between the old guard and the new.
"Because of the various design interests of the group, we had always wanted an opportunity to express noncommercial ideas," Samahy said by phone from Pittsburgh, where he and his wife live during the school year while teaching at Carnegie Mellon. "And pinkcomma seemed like a great way to do that."
Originally conceived as a website, pinkcomma's naissance as a gallery owed to a bit of serendipity. First was the discovery of over,under's newish locale on Wareham Street. Previously, the firm's existence had been a nomadic one, with the four principals often working out of their homes. But after happening upon the rough warehouse space this spring, the group took a risk and signed a lease, in part because of its potential as a gallery space - as well as it being a place where the word "underground" could have both literal and figurative meanings.
"We did like the idea that it's a little bit edgy and junky and has the remnants of having been an industrial building," Pasnik said. "Instantly that signals that it's not going to be some high-brow gallery."
Then, additional happenstance: ArchitectureBoston, the bimonthly magazine put out by the Boston Society of Architects, was planning an issue on "Reimagining City Hall" and had invited over,under, along with five other young firms, to submit a redesign of the controversial Kallmann, McKinnell & Wood building.
Inspiration sparked, and after talking with editor Elizabeth Padjen, the team decided to display the six submitted designs, along with several of Kallman's original City Hall sketches, as their inaugural pinkcomma exhibit in early September.
The team spent much of the summer demolishing the space, then worked many late nights in August building walls and painting the gallery space white to contrast with the black walls and floors of the over,under offices. (They painted the bathroom pink.)
The unrelenting work schedule paid off. The opening, titled "Rethinking City Hall," attracted more than 200 people, from big-name architects to curious visitors.
"There was buzz," said Padjen. "It came from the exhibition, but I think the buzz also came from the place itself and the idea that there was a focus in the city for like-minded people."
"This space is absolutely so urgent and needed for Boston," said Eric Howeler of Howeler + Yoon Architecture, one of the six firms that participated in the "Rethinking City Hall" exhibit (he was also Pasnik's roommate at Cornell).
"When the gallery opened, it was so wonderful, because you really got the sense that there was a community of designers and there was this new exhibit space for design."
Though pinkcomma's inaugural exhibit was an architectural one, the gallery's mission is fluid. Future possibilities include a video game exhibit and a collaboration with nearby art gallery Space Other.
Kelly Smith, who together with Grimley also runs textile design studio Etcetera Media out of the over,under space, has also begun a series of short exhibits called "Design Nearby," which display the work of local textile, houseware, and fashion designers. The longterm ambition is to one day commission the projects of young designers, similar to the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York.
In the meantime, the one assured constant is the ambitions of over,under's founding fathers. The firm has residential projects underway in Guatemala and Egypt, and they've just begun two jobs in Honduras - one a hotel, the other a master plan. Add to that the gallery, graphics work, and teaching (not to mention writing - Grimley and Mimi Love, a principal at Utile, just published a new book called, "Color, Space, and Style"), and the days get rather busy.
"We want to showcase newer works and ideas that are taking form at present to as large an audience as we can," Grimley said. "The ultimate goal is to both support the innovation and to have an outreach to other designers, to students, and to the general public."
