REX is an internationally acclaimed architecture and design firm based in New York City. Believing architecture should do things for its users and communities—not simply be a representational art—REX challenges and advances building typologies and promotes the agency of architecture. REX aspires to produce inventive designs so functionally specific that they offer inspiring aesthetic experiences. The firm has twice been named one of the World’s Top 10 Innovative Companies in Architecture by Fast Company.
The studio is composed of 30 designers of varied cultural, social, and educational backgrounds, led by Joshua Ramus, REX’s founding principal. The firm’s current work includes the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center in New York, New York (under construction); The Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (under construction); Elizabeth Quay Lots 5 & 6, a pair of mixed-use skyscrapers in Perth, Australia (under construction); 205 North Quay, an office tower in Brisbane, Australia (under construction); the Necklace Residence on Long Island, New York (under construction); the adaptive reuse of the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in Detroit, Michigan; and a virtual museum and performing arts space for Metapurse “housing” Beeple’s infamous NFT Everydays: the First 5000 Days. REX recently completed 2050 M Street, a premium office building in Washington, DC that hosts CBS’s Washington Bureau; and the re-cladding and interior renovation of Five Manhattan West, a 158,000 m2 (1,700,000 sf) Brutalist landmark straddling Penn Station’s rail yard in New York City.
Seminal projects include the AT&T Performing Arts Center Dee & Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas, Texas; the Vakko Fashion Center & Power Media Headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey; and the Seattle Central Library in the State of Washington. Joshua led the Seattle Central Library—hailed by Herbert Muschamp in The New York Times as “the most exciting new building it has been my honor to review in more than 30 years of writing about architecture”—while a founding partner of OMA New York (the firm he later rebranded as REX).
Testimony to the firm’s design excellence, REX and Joshua’s projects have been recognized with top accolades, including two AIA National Honor Awards, a U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology National Honor Award, an American Library Association National Building Award, two American Council of Engineering Companies’ National Gold Awards, a CTBUH Award of Excellence, Time magazine’s Building of the Year, inclusion in the prestigious Aga Khan Award and Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize competitions, and numerous AIA New York, ArchDaily, Architect/Progressive Architecture, Architect’s Newspaper, Architectural Review/MIPIM, Architizer, and Wallpaper* design awards.