Faculty Profile

Sulan Kolatan is the principal of KOL/MAC LLC, a professional architecture and design firm based in New York City and operating internationally. The firm is currently in the process of opening a second office in Istanbul, Turkey. Kolatan, is of Turkish origin and has been educated in Turkey, Germany and the United States. The director of KOL/MAC LLC is William Mac Donald, an American educated in England, Germany and the United States. Due to their respective backgrounds, they have established the firm from its inception in 1988 as an international practice with projects, publications, exhibitions and lectures located worldwide.

Widely acknowledged as a leader in architecture and design for its innovative digital approach, the firm’s current work is focused on linking unique digital design methods to new methods of construction, new technologies of production and a new generation of materials. KOL/MAC LLC designs are unique in their field. They utilize advanced 3D software tools from outside the field of architecture in order create more intelligent and extraordinary architectures. This represents a creative method and a view toward problem-solving that is firmly rooted in the 21st century. Alongside its projects, the firm continues to do its own research in order to evolve its design tools. KOL/MAC LLC’s core philosophy is based on bringing together advanced technologies and the human desire for a beautiful, healthy and functional environment in ways that are both unexpected and thought-provoking.

Unlike conventional architectural firms, KOL/MAC LLC operates as a distributed office by forming project-based teams and collaborations locally, nationally and internationally.  Previous and current collaborations include elite firms who are leaders in their respective fields such as the British engineering firm Arup AGU London, the US landscaping firm Hargreaves Associates, the French lighting and scénography firm Duckscéno and the Canadian real-time artificial intelligence software firm Biographic Technologies, Inc. among others.

KOL/MAC LLC’s work ranges from large urban design proposals to furniture lines, from institutional to commercial projects, from virtual environments to advanced prototyping. The firm selects projects based on interest rather than type or scale. Recent projects include the competition for the redevelopment of the Carlsberg brewery site in Copenhagen, Denmark, the competition for the FRAC Museum for Contemporary Art and Architecture in Orléans, France and the design and development of a high-performance ecological skin for high-rise buildings sponsored by DuPont Corian.

At the other end of the spectrum there is currently the design for a series of light fixtures to be produced by state-of-the-art rapid prototyping methods for a European lighting industry leader and the design for a production line of chaise lounges based on artificial intelligence software.

Among the many awards the firm has received to date one stands out in particular as a benchmark. Sulan Kolatan and William Mac Donald were two of “Forty (best US architects) under Forty (years)”, a US award given every ten years by a special jury of architects to pin-point the next generation’s most talented.

KOL/MAC LLC’s role as one of a select group of top young design firms was further affirmed through an appointment by the United States State Department to represent the US at its national pavilion at the 9th International Architecture Biennial in Venice. During the same biennial KOL/MAC LLC was also chosen by Kurt Foster, the exhibition curator, to show the project for the redevelopment of Manhattan’s 5th Avenue the international section.  The firm’s principal, Sulan Kolatan, is the first Turkish architect to be invited to the official section of the Venice Biennial. KOL/MAC LLC appears in a great number of international shows worldwide. The firm’s first inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art (New York) was in “The Un-Private House”, the first architecture show at this museum to become a “blockbuster”. Other KOL/MAC LLC work has been exhibited there since, with the most recent project being INVERSAbrane-an Invertible Ecological Building Membrane featured in “SAFE-design takes on risk”.

The firm’s avant-guard position in digital design and fabrication has brought Kolatan and Mac Donald and their work to lectures, conferences and shows across the world - to Europe, China, Russia, Australia and the Middle East. KOL/MAC LLC’s inclusion in seminal events and publications furthering digital design in architecture is marked specifically by an exhibition and conference at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) titled “Architecture Non-Standard”. Only 11 firms from around the world were showcased here, together with KOL/MAC LLC, as standard-bearers for a historically significant new approach in architectural design.

Following this exhibition, one of KOL/MAC LLC’s projects on display, the RESI(dential) high RISE, was purchased by the museum’s board for the Pompidou’s permanent collection. This represents one of many other purchases of KOL/MAC LLC work by some of the world’s finest museums for their permanent collections. As the purpose of these collections is to preserve work deemed important for their time, Kolatan and Mac Donald are greatly honored to have their work viewed as part of an architectural legacy.

Additionally, Kolatan and Mac Donald bring to their firm a high level of professionalism and experience with large-scale projects. They have a combined experience of 12 years in prestigious corporate architecture firms in New York -Kolatan at KPF and Mac Donald at SOM. Their expertise includes the design and management of 100,000+ sm projects with budgets of $200,000,000+ and high-profile clients such as General Electrics and Olympia + York.

KOL/MAC LLC believes in adding value through design excellence -to the everyday experience of the individual, to contemporary urban culture, and to the clients’ goals and investments. While always forward-looking and progressive, the firm is equally sensitive to the programmatic, situational and socio-economic conditions defining each project. It is our experience that design excellence is achieved by forming strong architect/client relationships.