SpeakerSouth African-born Lindy Roy founded Roy Co in New York in 2000. Undertaking projects of different sizes and scales the design firm has worked in environments as diverse as Alaska, New York, the Okavango Delta and Singapore.
Projects of note include Cairnhill Circle Towers, three 20-storey towers sited in a layered, interwoven landscape in Singapore; Highline 519 an 11-storey residential building in New York; Gallery Met, a new contemporary visual arts gallery at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Centre; the headquarters for Vitra USA; Andre Balazs's Hotel QT in Times Square; L'Oreal's Living Labs; and the Poolhouse in Sagaponac New York. Roy Co was included in a group of internationally recognised architects commissioned by the New York Times Magazineto reconceptualise the development of the World Trade Centre vicinity one year after 9/11.
In ROY Co's work, nature is objectified and even simulated to create a scenery of leisure. For subWave, the winning design in the 2001 MoMA/PS1 Young Architects Programmw, the courtyard of PS1 Contemporary Art Centre was transformed into an urban oasis. For the Wind River Lodge, a hotel complex was combined with a paramilitary depot for heli-ski activity. In turn, the Okavango Delta Spa targetted two opposite audiences: prosperous tourists and impoverished residents
A permanent resident of the United States, Roy moved to New York after receiving a B Arch from the University of Cape Town in 1985. She went on to receive an M Arch from Columbia University in 1990. ROY Co's work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2001), the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum (2002), Artists Space (2002) and the Museum of Berlin (2004). A solo exhibition entitled ROY/Design Series 1 was presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2003.
The firm has been published widely in the US and internationally, appearing in the New York Times, Vogue, ID, Surface, Frame, Blueprint and Condé Nast Traveller, among others.