APTUM Architecture

APTUM Architecture APTUM LLC is a design and architecture firm based in the United States (Aptum Design) and Switzerlan

APTUM is actively involved with award-winning competitions, exhibitions and built work. Over the last ten years, the office has been engaged with a range of large-scale, high-design projects with strong, urban visibility; from galleries and museums, to prominent waterfront projects to culturally rich locations such as Finland, Kosovo and Taiwan. We utilize our diverse American and Swiss background

to establish an architectural practice that merges interests in contemporary design and sustainable solutions with client needs. Whether we work at the scale of an interior or a landscape - external constituents are developed to foreground the built object. Our interests lie in projects that utilize digital computation, material and structural explorations as design opportunities. Consequently, our work finds its tectonic (construction and structure) through an intensive experimentation and engagement with new materials and novel computational approaches to form-making. Our technical approach to each project is to strengthen the relationship between conceptual form, final structure and context through attention to detail, ecological response to the environment and passive sustainable building systems. Architectural form, spatial organization and materiality are hereby the main tools. Building technology itself remains in the background, meanwhile digital technologies play an essential role during the design process to develop performance benchmarks for structural as well as ecological aspects of each project.

Project Cover Boy Stage Set at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery.Design Team:- Aptum Architecture- research interns:Gaelan...
02/11/2026

Project Cover Boy Stage Set at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery.

Design Team:
- Aptum Architecture
- research interns:
Gaelan Finney-Day, Kevin Jele
Aaron Laniosz, Brian Vesely

Collaborator:
- Choreography by Tere O’Connor

- Original Music by James Baker
- Lighting by Michael O’Connor
- Photos by Julietta Cervantes

- Featuring Cover Boy Dancers -
Michael Ingle, Niall Jones,
Paul Monaghan, and Matthew Rogers

“Cover Boy” is a stage set designed for New York-based, contemporary dance choreographer Tere O’Connor. His world-renowned dance company, Tere O’Connor Dance, featured its 25th year of experimental performance at the infamous Danspace Project located in the historic St. Mark’s Church in-
the-Bowery in New York City in 2011. The construction and details of the project are a result of stringent weight and time constraints. St. Mark’s church shares the space with Danspace Project but is still an active church so the set needed to be
dismantled after every performance and re-assembled the next day for the following performance (within 2 hours). In order to create an elaborate but simple assembly and transportability, the system was designed with CNC routed technology to shorten the process of continuous assembly and dis-assembly for
each performance. 3D modeling techniques were used to generate unfolded forms for the router that are then used as patterns to re-assemble the pieces. The technology allowed
us to create a piece that became an interaction between the performance and its context with the set mediating between the performance itself and the surrounding church.

Beth Weinstein had her book signing for “Architecture & Choreography: Collaborations in Dance Space and Time” last night...
02/11/2026

Beth Weinstein had her book signing for “Architecture & Choreography: Collaborations in Dance Space and Time” last night at Museum Of Arts & Design. It was a huge success!

Grateful to her that she included our collaboration, Cover Boy Stage Set, with dance choreographer Tere O’Connor in her book! Congrats Beth!!

collaboration

02/11/2026

Proud to be in Beth Weinstein’s book: “Architecture & Choreography: Collaborations in Dance Space and Time” with our project Cover Boy that we collaborated with dance choreographer Tere O’Connor!

Congrats Beth!!

collaboration

Studies in aggregation of our hexagonal folded columns
11/30/2025

Studies in aggregation of our hexagonal folded columns

Our folding work is an ongoing project from 2019 in which we have been collaborating with Cemex Global R&D. The speculat...
11/30/2025

Our folding work is an ongoing project from 2019 in which we have been collaborating with Cemex Global R&D. The speculative work experimentally focuses on deliberately treating concrete and composites as if they are flexible, reconfigurable textiles. We use full‑scale prototypes to test the limits of what these “foldable” planes can do structurally to reduce the amount of concrete needed to make a formal expression in concrete without all the material and formwork.

Conceptually, the projects reframe concrete from static mass to an active surface that can pop up, hinge, and aggregate, opening up future scenarios like floating infrastructures and lightweight hybrid wall‑shell systems we went on to do later.

Aesthetically, the resulting forms sit between artifact and construction mock‑up—creased, perforated, and cellular—so that the evidence of folding, misalignment, and assembly reads as an intentional expression of process rather than a polished final object.

Theoretically, this practice positions design as a speculative tool: folding becomes a way to argue for new material logics, new forms of “thinness,” and new ideas of firmness and support, using empirical experiments to question how structure, surface, and environment might be reorganized in future architectural systems.

Our folding work is an ongoing project from 2019 in which we have been collaborating with Cemex Global R&D. The speculat...
11/30/2025

Our folding work is an ongoing project from 2019 in which we have been collaborating with Cemex Global R&D. The speculative work experimentally focuses on deliberately treating concrete and composites as if they are flexible, reconfigurable textiles. We use full‑scale prototypes to test the limits of what these “foldable” planes can do structurally to reduce the amount of concrete needed to make a formal expression in concrete without all the material and formwork.

Conceptually, the projects reframe concrete from static mass to an active surface that can pop up, hinge, and aggregate, opening up future scenarios like floating infrastructures and lightweight hybrid wall‑shell systems we went on to do later.

Aesthetically, the resulting forms sit between artifact and construction mock‑up—creased, perforated, and cellular—so that the evidence of folding, misalignment, and assembly reads as an intentional expression of process rather than a polished final object.

Theoretically, this practice positions design as a speculative tool: folding becomes a way to argue for new material logics, new forms of “thinness,” and new ideas of firmness and support, using empirical experiments to question how structure, surface, and environment might be reorganized in future architectural systems.

Our folding work is an ongoing project from 2019 in which we have been collaborating with Cemex Global R&D. The speculat...
11/30/2025

Our folding work is an ongoing project from 2019 in which we have been collaborating with Cemex Global R&D. The speculative work experimentally focuses on deliberately treating concrete and composites as if they are flexible, reconfigurable textiles. We use full‑scale prototypes to test the limits of what these “foldable” planes can do structurally to reduce the amount of concrete needed to make a formal expression in concrete without all the material and formwork.

Conceptually, the projects reframe concrete from static mass to an active surface that can pop up, hinge, and aggregate, opening up future scenarios like floating infrastructures and lightweight hybrid wall‑shell systems we went on to do later.

Aesthetically, the resulting forms sit between artifact and construction mock‑up—creased, perforated, and cellular—so that the evidence of folding, misalignment, and assembly reads as an intentional expression of process rather than a polished final object.

Theoretically, this practice positions design as a speculative tool: folding becomes a way to argue for new material logics, new forms of “thinness,” and new ideas of firmness and support, using empirical experiments to question how structure, surface, and environment might be reorganized in future architectural systems.

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!
11/30/2025

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Had an opportunity to see SOM‘s Walter Netsch Personal residence in Chicago. Very cool house! A little disorienting and ...
11/30/2025

Had an opportunity to see SOM‘s Walter Netsch Personal residence in Chicago. Very cool house! A little disorienting and unnerving stairs with no railings (!) but very intriguing spaces and details. Inspiring!

01/05/2022

Hey… We started a new page on tiktok. Check it out and follow us +!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and a safe & healthy 2021 from APTUM!
01/05/2021

Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and a safe & healthy 2021 from APTUM!

Address

822 Westmoreland Avenue
Syracuse, NY
13210

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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