LOT-EK  LOT-EK is an architectural design studio based in New York and Naples, Italy. Founded in 1993 by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, it has designed institutional, commercial and residential projects globally. In addition, LOT-EK has conceived and executed exhibition design and site-specific installations for several cultural institutions and museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Walker Canter, among others. Their projects have been widely published and exhibited. In December 2011, Ada and Giuseppe were recognized as USA Booth Fellows of Architecture & Design by United States Artists. As a studio, LOT-EK is committed to ecologically responsible and intelligent methods of building. They have built a critical architectural practice through research into the adaptive reuse (“upcycling”) of infrastructural and industrial objects — most notably the standard 40-foot shipping container. They are recognized for initiating the concept of creating architecture with shipping containers and has successfully leveraged this construction technology with several award-winning projects. In addition to utilizing containers as building blocks for architecture, LOT-EK has upcycled other objects – including truck bodies, airplane fuselages, and reclaimed wood or steel doors – as structural interventions to design buildings and interiors. Their stated goal is to not only recycle an object, but to recycle the intelligence that went into the object’s development. LOT-EK’s ongoing research has focused on man-made objects and systems and the way they proliferate, accumulate, overlap and interfere with the built, and natural, environment around the globe. The manufactured objects that interest them include: air-conditioners, airplanes, antennas, billboards, highways, jetways, and tunnels; boats, booths, boxes, coils, cranes, ducts, lifts, lights, strips, scraps, stacks, shacks, sheds, and trucks; packaging, parking, plumbing, scaffolding, shipping containers and tanks. Ada and Giuseppe traveled extensively throughout the United States upon finishing architecture studies in Italy. Inspired by the American landscape – both natural and urban – they won a scholarship to conduct post-graduate work at Columbia University. This allowed them to experience both the experimental academic environment of Columbia, as well as the urban complexity of New York City. The work they produced during that year was compiled in a book, which served as the foundation of the primary idea behind LOT-EK as a design studio.