Founded in 2010 by Jon Lott (San Jose, California, 1976), Para Project has two offices, one in Brooklyn, New York and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The office employs a team of five people and works with the Collective-LOK (Clok) architects on the fine-tuning of projects. Work at Para Project is heterogeneous: temporary installations, exhibitions, cultural centres, auditoriums, housing and offices. Projects by the office cannot be read all in the same way, seeing the interdependence they share with the context they relate to. Even when the same construction solutions are used, the interpretation of the setting leads to results with diversified meaning.

The use of skeletal structures is favoured. They constitute a metaphor at La Casita cultural centre (2011) at Syracuse University, where they allude to the temporary gathering places built by Latin American communities in the Bronx. At the installation for Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York City, 2016), they are used as a rhythmic and reflecting texture that interacts with the movement of pedestrians. At the University Museum of Contemporary Art (2018) in Amherst, Massachusetts, skeletal structures construct an open-air room to offer flattering contrast with the architectural qualities of the built environment.

When it comes to housing, the Para Project approach is different. For Stump House (Ben Lomond, California, 2018), Pioneertown House (California, 2017) and Haffenden House (Syracuse, New York, 2014), the practice shows an attraction to architectural culture from the 1960s. John Hejduk’s concepts of living find a probing and an updating in the former two, while the Haffenden is influenced by Gianni Pettena’s architectural interest in American suburbs.