Young Projects

Young Projects is a design studio founded by Bryan Young in New York City in 2010. Our work spans buildings, interiors, material prototyping, furniture, and objects of curiosity driven by an interest in pattern, texture, and spatial complexity. The body of work connects through an experimental approach to material properties and material deployment. Our designs seek to unearth invisible or previously unexplored aesthetic qualities through trials of material formation. We see the results as distinct from Modernism’s associations with material and tectonic clarity. Instead, we produce material and tectonic ambiguity...or at least the unexpected. The research has included: hand-pulling plaster with an irregular knife, forming concrete with palm stems, thinning onyx to varied transparencies, and growing crystals of spiritual significance. These experiments, among many others, reveal qualities one would not typically associate with a given substance. Our research sometimes literally breaks traditional methodology, allowing for characteristics of randomness and spontaneity to enter the process of making. We find that letting go of control (by working with unpredictable chemicals, for instance) produces results that are surprising, alluring, and resist replication. The looseness of our approach is determined by intrinsic material properties and organizational tendencies that are discovered and teased out rather than predetermined or designed.
Our fascination with ambiguity and transformation also extends to our approach to form and geometry as we look for ways to highlight shifting and hybrid readings of space. This results in highly charged and complex spatial propositions, where various elements seem to evolve (from void to mass or from compressed to expansive) as one moves through a building. Across our projects, there is a deep, inextricable relationship between our material research and our approach to space-making