Holesum Studio was founded out of YSOA by consistent collaborators Dimitri Brand, James Coleman, and Azza Aboualam in 2021 with the intent of incorporating living and built environments and working in a collaborative way. Holesum believes the actionable and distinct quality of its parts help to inform one another towards a progressive and comprehensive method of design. Our practice blends historical, sociological, and ecological research with technical application to make objects and spaces that invite their users to engage with broader environmental contexts. Holesum now has two arms, Holesum Architecture and Holesum Research.
Holesum Architecture is led by Dimitri Brand and operated along with James Coleman. The studio is supported by a talented staff.
Holesum Research is a joint venture of Coleman, Aboualam and Brand and is partially funded by company profits.
Dimitri Brand
Dimitri is an architect, fabricator, writer, and researcher as well as the Director of Built Projects at Holesum Studio. He holds a bachelor's in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art, a master's in architecture from Yale University, and an masters of philosophy from the University of Cambridge. In 2021-2022, he was a Bass Fellow at the University of Cambridge where he researched the relationship between architecture and the environment in conservatories and early science fiction literature. Dimitri previously worked at KieranTimberlake in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and OPAL in Belfast, Maine. Previous to architecture he worked as a carpenter and fabricator for five years. His research and writing has been published in various architectural journals and magazines.
James Coleman
James is a designer, artist, writer, and educator. He holds three degrees in architecture including a bachelor’s from the University at Buffalo and a master’s from Yale University. He has worked professionally in art design, fabrication, and installation for the studio of Sarah Oppenheimer and Camber Studio, and in architectural design and research for Carlton Architecture and Eisenman Architects respectively. He was a founding member of the New York Review of Architecture and has issue edited for various publications including Paprika! and Retrospecta. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute and an Adjunct Instructor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology Hillier College of Architecture and Design. His research focuses on the aesthetics of ecological design and the architectural repercussions of historical landscapes. His art practice is concerned with the impact of human behavior and movement on land form.
Azza Aboualam
Azza is a designer, educator, and researcher. She is a Professor of Architecture at Zayed University in Dubai and was recently the curator of the United Arab Emirates pavilion at the 19th International Venice Architecture Biennale. Her scholarly interests include the intersection of memory, architecture and society in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. Her work with the UAE's Ministry of Culture's Architecture Initiative was published in the book titled In Search of Spaces of Coexistence: An Architect's Journey (Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development, 2019). Azza also contributed as a researcher in Building Sharjah, co-edited by Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi and Todd Reisz (Birkhauser, 2021), and Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai, written by Todd Reisz (Stanford University Press, 2020). Additionally Azza has been published in AA Files 78, the New York Review of Architecture, Paprika!, among other publications.
Past Staff:
Nico Cao, Zach Lauzière-Fitzgerald,
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
