TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;05;13

Doug Patt (DP)

Let's go inside the vault. The design vault.

 

00;00;05;15 - 00;00;30;15

Peter Vanderpoel (PV)

Even though it wasn't important at the moment, but with COVID, the idea of having a prominent place or office in the house also came to the fore during the design process, three car garage, the expectation of a pool, some sort of flattened area for a deck around that pool, and then we've got the very steep hill in the back that turned into this terrace for someone could lay out there and get sun. It's fairly private there in the center of that spot.

 

00;00;30;17 - 00;02;15;21

DP

This is my guest, Peter Vanderpoel. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from The Design Vault, we’ll highlight Peter's project, Guilford Court. Guilford Court is a luxury home in a suburban area of McLean, Virginia. The lot is angular and located on a cul-de-sac with narrow street frontage. It's also quite steep, rising 20 feet as it extends back from the street.

Peter uses three separate virtual axes to inform the floor plan and programmatic organization of the house. The garage, located on the south side of the property, is clad in wood, while the private portion of the house, which resembles a kind of modern Tudor facade, is enclosed in fiber cement siding. The middle semipublic spaces are enclosed in a dark brick veneer.

The landscape also reflects the same three axis grid with sculpted geometry that level out the site.

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault.

Today we're talking to Peter Vanderpoel, registered architect of Vanderpoel Architecture. Peter is a practicing architect, licensed in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. His practice focuses on residential and small commercial projects in and around Washington, D.C. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kansas and a Master of Architecture from Virginia Tech.

He's a certified Passive House consultant and has taught architecture at the university level for over ten years. He's currently an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech's Washington Alexandria Architecture Center, located in Alexandria, Virginia. So, let's get into the details. Welcome, Peter.

 

00;02;15;26 - 00;02;16;14

PV

Thank you.

 

00;02;16;16 - 00;02;27;21

DP

Thank you very much for being here. So first, tell us a little bit about Peter Vanderpoel architecture. Where you guys located? What type of projects do you take? And what have you been working on lately?

 

00;02;27;23 - 00;02;55;18

PV

The practice is located in Arlington, Virginia. If you're from the area, it's not far from the courthouse metro. Arlington used to be part of DC before receded back to Virginia a few hundred years ago. So we're right near downtown D.C. The practice is mostly residential and some small commercial projects. I'm trying to expand some of the commercial portfolio just to have a better balance in the marketplace. But I've been practicing - I've been on my own now for about 20 years now.

 

00;02;55;20 - 00;03;02;01

DP

Wow. So, tell me a little bit about the office. So how many people do you have working with you? Is that pretty consistent?

 

00;03;02;08 - 00;03;27;04

PV

So, the studio is in the backyard of my house, but it is off grid, so I have solar panels to run it and huge battery and a room in the back. It's not a passive house quality in terms of the exterior envelope, but it sort of leans those ways in response to the site. But it's very small. It's not much bigger than a garage. And I have two employees there, one full time, one part time. We can spend most of our day in there in a pretty comfortable fashion.

 

00;03;27;06 - 00;03;34;18

DP

That's pretty cool. Let's dig into that a little bit. So when did you decide to have an office or a building on your property that was off grid?

 

00;03;34;20 - 00;04;16;26

PV

Well, we used to have a garage. It was doing self-demolition over time. It used to be – it was not a Sears and Roebuck house, but it was a kit house from the 1980s. Yeah. And I forget the name of the company that made it. And it was one story. So, when my wife originally bought the house and then when our first child came, we decided to add the second floor.

And then I was working in the basement for a long time. But as the practice progressed, decided that I needed extra space. So, we finished off the demolition where the garage was essentially put it in the same location. But it's a story and a half. There's one floor and then there's a mezzanine above. Both my wife and I paint and so we have a couple easels up there on that second level. But the lower floor is all architecture.

 

00;04;17;03 - 00;04;19;19

DP

That's so cool. How long has your office been there then?

 

00;04;19;21 - 00;04;28;19

PV

Physically, for about five years. I started doing my own residential work in about 2001 when I was in graduate school, evenings and weekends.

 

00;04;28;22 - 00;04;31;16

DP

So, your first client, was that somebody you knew?

 

00;04;31;18 - 00;04;52;05

PV

No. It's a woman and I – she had a house not too far away, and she wanted to make it more energy efficient. So, we worked on that together. It went very well. And she decided that she wanted to do a more robust project. She bought the house across the street from her. Kind of a long, interesting story that goes with that. But then we built a new house for her and that was sort of my first big project.

 

00;04;52;12 - 00;04;57;02

DP

So, have you always been interested in energy efficiency in architecture and building?

 

00;04;57;08 - 00;05;29;16

PV

No, to be honest, it doesn't come up as often as you'd think and conversations with clients. But it's something that I'm trying to push now. As a passive house consultant, I can see the value of it, and it's not that difficult to get to. That's kind of fussy when it comes to construction, but in terms of the cost, it's making a much better envelope.

The tail on idea is that the mechanical systems, they don't need to be that special because you're not using them that much. The idea is not to be clever about producing energy, it’s to avoid using it in the first place. So, keep what you have.

 

00;05;29;18 - 00;05;34;26

DP

So, is it gotten less expensive over the last five or ten years to do energy efficient homes?

 

00;05;35;02 - 00;05;38;16

PV

I don't think so, because all of the construction costs have gone up after COVID.

 

00;05;38;22 - 00;05;39;10

DP

Oh wow, interesting.

 

00;05;39;10 - 00;05;54;11

PV

Everything associated with construction is – most of its up. Some things are starting to come down now. There are some materials that sort of lend towards that or lean towards the passive house and they're expensive like everything else. So, I don't think so.

 

00;05;54;18 - 00;06;02;28

DP

Interesting. Well, I’d love to talk more about that, but we're here to talk about Guilford Court. So, let's dig in here. How did you guys get the project? How did you get Guilford Court?

 

00;06;03;05 - 00;06;25;10

PV

I used to belong to a business networking group, and it was there that a friend of mine who was an insurance agent had met somebody who did construction. He wanted to do some projects and I went and had coffee with him one time, and then he had some backers who wanted to do a luxury home, and they found a lot in McLean. So he gave me the call and then we got started on the project from there. So, it was through business networking.

 

00;06;25;13 - 00;06;40;08

DP

Okay, so you didn't know the clients initially. Interesting. So, let's talk a little bit about the site. Tell me a little bit about the architecture around the site and I guess I should ask, was there a house on the site before you guys got there?

 

00;06;40;14 - 00;07;13;14

PV

Yes, there was. So, most of the houses there on that cul-de-sac were built, I would think in the seventies, the split-level brick. And over time – so when I first saw the site, all the houses on the cul-de-sac were like that. And during the design and construction process, I think at least two of them now have been torn down and rebuilt. There are a lot of tear downs in Washington D.C. because a lot of people come into the neighborhood – Amazon and whatnot – so it's not too hard to sell a house in that area at this moment. The houses that were on the lots were McMansion. I mean, I want to say-

 

00;07;13;17 - 00;07;17;05

DP

Sure. So stylistically, colonial stuff?

 

00;07;17;07 - 00;07;37;24

PV

Yes, colonial, stucco, no modern leanings at that time. That was sort of just before things were starting to get modern in the general building industry in D.C. So, it was typical suburban, large suburban houses. McLean's a wealthy community, so they're large and very nice but kind of standard stuff.

 

00;07;38;00 - 00;07;44;19

DP

Sure. So, it was kind of goofy when your client was like, hey, I want to do something modern. You're thinking, oh boy-

 

00;07;44;21 - 00;07;47;09

PV

Oh no. That's what I want to hear! I mean, the nice thing is I-

 

00;07;47;09 - 00;07;58;01

DP

No, I meant for all the neighbors – potentially for the neighbors. Sure. Right in the back of their mind. Did they ever talk about that? Hey, do you think, you know, we're going to put something modern here? We're excited about that. We don't really care.

 

00;07;58;05 - 00;08;09;10

PV

I think there's enough new things in that market, and new neighbors and so on that it's not as tight as it might be in terms of styles. And I think that's okay.

 

00;08;09;13 - 00;08;11;00

DP

How long has the house been finished now?

 

00;08;11;06 - 00;08;12;18

PV

It's been a couple – three years.

 

00;08;12;19 - 00;08;15;08

DP

Okay. So, you would have heard by now through the clients?

 

00;08;15;15 - 00;08;17;20

PV

Yes.

 

00;08;17;22 - 00;08;26;01

DP

So, let's see, programmatic requirements. So, you guys had your first meeting and they said, this is what we want. What was that?

 

00;08;26;03 - 00;09;25;17

PV

Well, the program was fairly standard, in that, the expectation to be a family, a number of bedrooms, a studio – if there was an artist, that would be sort of back on the site, but even though it wasn't important at the moment, but with COVID, the idea of having a prominent place or an office in the house also came to the fore during the design process – three car garage, the expectation of a pool, some sort of flattened area for a deck around that pool, and then we've got this very steep hill in the back that turned into this terrace for someone could lay out there and get sun. It's fairly private there in the center of that spot. So, in terms of the programmatic elements, they were more luxurious than some, but nothing out of the ordinary.

And then it was mostly dealing with the site that I think the interest started to come into the project because the first time I saw it, there was a house on there. We went out the back door and I went, ‘Oh my.’ In school you always go, ‘Oh, this will be challenging,’ but then in real life it's like, ‘oh, how are we going to do this?’

 

00;09;25;19 - 00;09;36;00

DP

So, did they talk about square footage in the beginning too? We want a house that's going to be 5,400 square feet, 3,000 square feet, 8,000. They have an idea because of square foot costs. Did they think about the house-

 

00;09;36;00 - 00;09;45;23

PV

No. As it was built – so, the contractor made some changes as the project was built. So, there was square footage added between permit and occupancy.

 

00;09;46;01 - 00;09;47;28

DP

You can do that? Don't you have to re permit?

 

00;09;48;03 - 00;09;56;08

PV

Different jurisdictions. Like they don't have an FAR in McLean. That's Fairfax County. Alexandria does and it's a-

 

00;09;56;09 - 00;09;59;09

DP

Yeah, I know. I deal with FAR like, it never ends.

 

00;09;59;09 - 00;09;59;19

PV

Yeah.

 

00;09;59;23 - 00;10;05;28

DP

And then you start thinking about renovating the basement and then FAR comes back in and you're working on the house and it's crazy.

 

00;10;06;01 - 00;10;08;29

PV

Yeah, it's just lot coverage there, and that's never a problem.

 

00;10;08;29 - 00;10;10;27

DP

Okay. What size is the house?

 

00;10;11;01 - 00;10;13;03

PV

I think it's 7,000.

 

00;10;13;03 - 00;10;29;18

DP

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the building design. So, we already discussed the fact that you've got a site with some challenging topography. Talk a little bit about the unique geometry or the geometries that were generated based on what's physically out there.

 

00;10;29;18 - 00;12;18;03

PV

So, the lot as it looks in plan, in the site plan, it kind of looks like the state of Georgia and the Atlantic coast of Georgia, which just a little bit to the northeast of Florida is what's on the cul-de-sac. So, there's a very small entrance circle for the cul-de-sac, very small entrance onto the site, and then very steep as it goes up in the back.

And then these two angles that almost describe 60 degrees from the two property lines that go away from the cul-de-sac. And so, my first inclination was, well, that's almost 60 degrees. And so, a hexagonal plan would work on a plot like that. So, then I started looking at precedents for that. I know Frank Lloyd Wright had done the Hanna house in California that was based on the hexagon. He had done a whole series of projects based on geometry. So, I had looked at those, but it was through that less hexagonal forms and more towards three axes rather than we normally think of two axes that X and Y. But this now has these 120-degree rotation that with a hexagon you have three axes that are involved in describing that geometry and that was essentially the same geometry we had on that site. So that became the basis for the design.

And there were three geometries. We've got three programmatic elements of getting the cars on and off the semipublic and then the private. And then we also have this dramatic rise in height. So, we could also do the same thing vertically. We had the garage at the lowest level so the cars can get on easily. The semipublic now faces the street on this very narrow frontage and then the private is up highest and essentially resting on top of the semipublic block and runs back. But because the site is so steep, it touches ground. It's a grade at the back of the property, even though it's sitting on top of the lower level at the front.

 

00;12;18;06 - 00;12;35;05

DP

So, you did a lot of thinking about this project. The clients must really love that. I mean, you sit down with them, and you start talking about these three axes and three levels, three buildings, three heights, you know, the whole thing up there must have been like, “wow, man, this is really cool. This guy knows what he's doing.”

 

00;12;35;07 - 00;13;15;20

PV

You had mentioned that I teach, and one of the things that I find the easiest way to engage with clients is to talk about ideas rather than just areas and square footage costs, because everybody wants to be on board with that because thinking is the fun part of the design. The best compliment I get is somebody says, I never thought of that. I feel like, well, so I'm bringing value to this.

I have proposed several different designs. I think I had three different options. I had pinned them all up in the office and had wine and cheese for some people come in and just talk about it, and the design that is there right now was not my first choice. But then someone had said, “well, you know, this has all these things going on with these three axes.” And then it was like, ‘yeah, I think that is the best one.’

 

00;13;15;26 - 00;13;18;12

DP

When you're talking about people, is that the clients or other people?

 

00;13;18;12 - 00;13;20;18

PV

No, no. Other people in the office.

 

00;13;20;21 - 00;13;27;19

DP

Oh, that’s so great. So, you had a kind of design charrette in the office. Everybody's looking at it. You stand back and you kind of go through all the design options.

 

00;13;27;26 - 00;13;36;09

PV

And then the same thing will happen with the client. This was a speculative house, so it wasn't dealing with the final client, with the person who's going to move into the house.

 

00;13;36;11 - 00;13;42;15

DP

Oh, it was a spec house. Interesting.

So, local zoning codes and issues there.

 

00;13;42;18 - 00;14;08;29

PV

Fairfax County isn't that onerous. The usual, there's lot coverage. There's no aesthetic review. They do have those in Georgetown, in D.C., and in Old Town, in Alexandria, Virginia. But most of the other jurisdictions don't have an aesthetic review. And so, we didn't have to worry about that. The FAR, which happens in Alexandria, but not in Fairfax, we didn't have that. It's just lot coverage. It's rarely a problem.

 

00;14;09;02 - 00;14;10;25

DP

There wasn't anything too challenging.

 

00;14;10;28 - 00;14;11;17

PV

No.

 

00;14;11;19 - 00;14;12;15

DP

And building codes, IRC?

 

00;14;13;11 - 00;14;19;18

PV

Yeah, well, it's - Virginia has a uniform state building code, which is based on the IRC, and they have a couple of tweaks in there. But yeah.

 

00;14;19;24 - 00;14;26;27

DP

Right. Of course, they do. So, describe the building plan for us. What did you end up with?

 

00;14;27;00 - 00;16;50;09

PV

Well, one is getting the cars on and off the lot. They can't – just the nature of cars – they can't be going up and down hill. So, we need to get them on the shortest route and the lowest route so that if you think about the site as a state of Georgia, the Florida borderline was where the cars came in. The semipublic faced the cul-de-sac. It addressed through there and then we had stairs going up this series of stones, because one of the concerns was that's a long way up to get to that first floor just because it's so steep. So, we have these stones on the site that are shifted. So, you're sort of walking across these lily pads and then a diagonal that goes up and then a set of stairs. So, there's a variety of experiences moving towards the front of the house.

We also had the office portion and that was right inside the front door. So, if someone in the house decides to set up office there, they have a client come by. They don't have to go into the main house just in and out the front door, take care of business.

And then from there, a few more steps go into the main house. So that opens up in a very large open space. There's the fireplace, dining, living, kitchen are all in that area. And then behind the kitchen is sort of the pool deck area for showers and changing and so on. And then there's a large circular stair that's the pin.

So, if you think about the semipublic and the private, they splay out at 120 degrees and the stairway is the pin that holds us together to do that rotation. So, there's a very large grand sculptural stair up to the second level, and it comes up between the master bedroom and the additional bedrooms so that when you move towards the cul-de-sac, you're now in the master bedroom suite that is like this big diving board looking over. It's a tremendous site of this that was very challenging. But being in that master bedroom and looking out over the trees, away from the site, it's a dramatic view. Going the other direction, there are the other bedrooms, as I said, eventually gets back to grade because it gets so steep in the back. And then there's also the stair continues down.

So, there's a family room in the basement, a large television there as well. And then on the other end, we have that same rotation with the garage, and that's a much more modest stair coming from the garage into that living space. But it's based on those three axes and those two hinges to turn it on to the site, both in plan and in section.

 

00;16;50;15 - 00;17;00;28

DP

Yeah, that's really cool. So, tell us a little bit about the building materials. We’ve already discussed the house is modern and you use a series of different materials for the house.

 

00;17;01;01 - 00;17;31;29

PV

Right. There's fiber cement boards for the bedroom space and then the semipublic was a brick, and then the garage was - I think there's a wood on there. So, we have a couple of different faces. There's a brick facade for the semipublic. I think there's some brick as well on the garage. And we also brought some of the brick inside in the living spaces. We wanted to have a variety of materials to represent because everything's now being divided into threes with the garage, semipublic, private spaces.

 

00;17;32;01 - 00;17;38;19

DP

So, tell me a little bit about why you guys chose to use brick and in particular the dark brick.

 

00;17;38;22 - 00;17;55;25

PV

The dark brick. That was not my selection. I did not select the colors on that element, but it would also be contrasting. You could see the dramatic change in color because as I said, it's about these three elements and so they read differently everywhere you cut it.

 

00;17;56;00 - 00;18;02;21

DP

And it would seem to me that you chose to use brick as a differentiated design element, right?

 

00;18;02;23 - 00;18;13;08

PV

Right. It's also very common in this part of the country. In Old Town, Virginia, and just all up and down the East Coast, brick was the way to do durable construction and still is.

 

00;18;13;10 - 00;18;17;13

DP

Are there any houses around this one – are masonry as well?

 

00;18;17;17 - 00;18;36;11

PV

Yes. So, the houses that were there in the neighboring lots, most of them were split level with a lower with brick on the first floor and siding on the second floor. The houses that have come in their place, the two I can think of are stucco, but there's a lot of brick in the neighborhood.

 

00;18;36;14 - 00;18;53;12

DP

So, this is, as we discussed, it's contemporary. I wanted to talk a little bit about the unique construction details. I'm looking at these two facades that come together at the corner, and we've got two completely different building materials. That must have been a challenging detail. And you got a window, you got a corner window there. So how did you guys do that?

 

00;18;53;20 - 00;19;59;16

PV

There's steel in there to handle that opening on the corner. The reason why that angle is the way it is – something else that we hadn't discussed is that I used to play the drums, and still do. And for a long time, I used to play actually, in a bagpipe band. More sophisticated than you think – but, so, rhythms is something that I've been dealing with since I was ten years old.

And one thing that came up is what called polyrhythms, where you have overlaying rhythms. You take two rhythms that may not be so interesting on their own, but when they're overlaid with each other, then it creates something more interesting than either of them were to begin with. And that's how I view this project that this overlay, the reason why that window angle is there on the corner is because the geometry of the private portion has been thrust through the semipublic and so there's an angle that goes through. The chimney was rotated along that as well, and the contractor turned that back. But it was that slot that pushed through that mirrors the same access that the private portion is on.

 

00;19;59;19 - 00;20;05;03

DP

Is the chimney also masonry? And that's supported by steel. Doesn't run straight through the building.

 

00;20;05;06 - 00;20;07;19

PV

Right. There are portions of it that are supported with steel.

 

00;20;07;19 - 00;20;11;06

DP

Did you guys end up using any brick on the interior?

 

00;20;11;08 - 00;20;29;24

PV

Well, there is you can see it on the lower portion there. There's brick for the fireplace surround, which is in the lower left photograph there.

And there were also two trees on the site where we ended up pulling those up, but the contractor had those milled and use them for the trim. The wood that's above the fireplace there is from those trees.

 

00;20;30;00 - 00;20;31;13

DP

Do you remember the species?

 

00;20;31;15 - 00;20;34;16

PV

My recollection will be black locus, but I'm not sure.

 

00;20;34;18 - 00;20;47;06

DP

I was going to ask you what some of the historical precedents were for the for the architecture, but clearly were into much more modern architecture here. However, as you said, we see brick in the area.

 

00;20;47;08 - 00;20;52;08

PV

Yeah, there's brick. The material is common in Northern Virginia. The building forms.

 

00;20;52;15 - 00;20;54;02

DP

Yeah. I was going to say we've got gables here.

 

00;20;54;02 - 00;21;01;21

PV

Yeah, that's pretty common as well. So, the basis of it is traditional, but the implementation has become modern.

 

00;21;01;24 - 00;21;12;26

DP

And tell me a little bit, what I call this modern Tudor aesthetic. Where did that come from? And I know it's not modern Tudor but describe that for our listeners.

 

00;21;12;28 - 00;21;22;15

PV

So, from this view, the division of the fiber cement is accomplished with these vertical elements that come proud of the exterior finish.

 

00;21;22;18 - 00;21;28;16

DP

Okay, so they're not set back into the fiber cement. They're actually proud. So, it's applied.

 

00;21;28;18 - 00;21;44;00

PV

Yeah. And so that could be considered a reference. It was not the intention, but the half timbers that was common with timber houses would use expressed wood materials and then with stucco in between those and then the angles for the roofs are fairly standard.

 

00;21;44;05 - 00;21;44;24

DP

Are those 12:12’s?

 

00;21;45;07 - 00;21;51;25

PV

Tudor style, yes, they are. The contractor ended up putting living space up there as well. So, you made good use of that space.

 

00;21;51;25 - 00;21;59;28

DP

Oh, of course, that's great. And you had no issues with having a third or fourth story there, right? So, were there any height restrictions on the site?

 

00;22;00;04 - 00;22;06;12

PV

There are, but Fairfax County, you add up, it's an average the way it was in the back. We were okay on the front.

 

00;22;06;13 - 00;22;10;19

DP

Right. You said the third story, which was the basement was set down into the site.

 

00;22;10;22 - 00;22;18;04

PV

Yeah. You can see it on the left, the lower right image there you can see the window for the basement below that large corner window.

 

00;22;18;08 - 00;22;23;25

DP

So, did you learn anything new about brick dealing with these details, even with this cantilever?

 

00;22;23;27 - 00;22;37;29

PV

Well, no, it's just with steel implemented in there, it's fairly common. If you go through D.C., the urban renewal period of Georgetown in the seventies and eighties, there’s brick everywhere. And so, everybody knows how to work with brick in D.C.

 

00;22;38;03 - 00;22;55;19

DP

Well, it's clear it solved a design issue for you guys because you were looking for a series of materials that all went together, and I love the color. It goes so well with everything else. It really just works. I think it looks great. Now, who did the drawings for the job and did you do them in 2D and 3D, 3D, BIM?

 

00;22;56;11 - 00;23;14;28

PV

No. Well, we did a sketch up model. I was renting some space with the firm down, and Alexander at the time had a woman helping me out to do most of the construction documents in AutoCAD. And then we had the sketch up models for presentation just to talk about the design. There was originally, that's when I used to draw with my hands. I used to do it on sketch paper.

 

00;23;15;04 - 00;23;33;05

DP

You and me both. It's so great. I got so lucky, I worked in an office in Baltimore, and they got so slow that they trained me on CAD. This was 97, 98. Thank God. I would have been completely unemployable for the rest of my life had I not learned how to draw and, you know, how to use sketch up, which is great.

 

00;23;33;05 - 00;23;39;09

PV

Well, yes, I do. When I started though, we had a product called GDS, and it was McDonnell Douglas.

 

00;23;39;11 - 00;23;42;03

DP

Okay, So airplane software. You’ve gotta be kidding me. That’s great.

 

00;23;42;03 - 00;23;49;24

PV

It was their software. And there was a manual that was about two inches thick. And yeah, once you read it, you were fine, but it wasn't that friendly.

 

00;23;50;01 - 00;23;54;10

DP

Oh my gosh. So, sustainability and this house.

 

00;23;54;12 - 00;23;55;07

PV

Not a concern.

 

00;23;55;12 - 00;24;01;03

DP

Not an issue with the GC? Just wasn't something that you were going to push as part of the design build aspect of the house.

 

00;24;01;16 - 00;24;03;15

PV

No, that wasn't a concern for this project.

 

00;24;03;16 - 00;24;08;03

DP

No, I get it. I always ask all our guests; did you have any trouble finding a good mason?

 

00;24;08;05 - 00;24;11;22

PV

They're easy to find in Alexandria. If you see – I tell you what-

 

00;24;11;22 - 00;24;12;25

DP

Right. There’s so much brick in Washington.

 

00;24;12;27 - 00;24;26;16

PV

There's one project I can think of where they didn't get a good mason. I was down in Key West one time and they said, “you know, Hemingway did this wall.” And I said, ‘it looks like a drunk author did it.’

 

00;24;26;19 - 00;24;33;03

DP

That’s great. Oh, my gosh. So, before you go, I'd like to ask people, what's your favorite part about being an architect?

 

00;24;33;06 - 00;25;18;21

PV

It's in two phases right now. So, I used to teach full time. When I was teaching full time, I would say, I'm not making anything and I'm - that's what I'm trained to do. When I'm making things, often times I'll say, but this isn't about ideas. And so right now, the balance between those two is very gratifying. And being able to talk about ideas, which I like to think, is one of the benefits that I have in the office, because we'll talk about this stuff. I think everybody's more energized when that happens.

So, it's the camaraderie of the office. I know a lot of people are doing the remote work. We're in place and the studio. It's a fun place to be. The schematic design is my favorite part. You know, when I get close to retirement, everything else is going to go to somebody else.

 

00;25;18;21 - 00;25;19;02

DP

Oh, that's great.

 

00;25;19;10 - 00;25;21;19

PV

But I continue doing the schematic design.

 

00;25;21;21 - 00;25;27;13

DP

Yeah. So, I was going to ask you, what's the one thing you like least about being an architect? And it's probably all the other stuff.

 

00;25;27;13 - 00;25;32;03

PV

Site surveys. Yeah.

 

00;25;32;05 - 00;25;34;29

DP

You don't mean like existing condition stuff.

 

00;25;35;05 - 00;25;36;25

PV

Yeah, I haven't done that. We’re small enough, I’m not still doing that.

 

00;25;36;25 - 00;25;52;05

DP

It’d drive you nuts. Yeah, I get it, man. I've done many at home. Peter, you talked a little bit about Frank Lloyd Wright. Are there any architects that are usually in the back of your mind when you're designing that you really admire their work?

 

00;25;52;08 -00;26;35;17

PV

It more has to do with admiring the ideas because that's an inexhaustible font of information, whereas the projects they've done, they're done it does these certain things, but they're ideas that live inside of there that can apply to whatever project. So, depending on materials, depending on geometry, depending on what the site is telling me, that will determine then who I'll look to for references.

Like, for instance, as I mentioned, Frank Lloyd Wright did a series of houses based on a simple geometry that grew from one element that expanded. Corbusier, there was a lot of ideas in how he dealt with space, sort of the modern aesthetic, but it wasn't so much just this look. It had to do with accomplishing something he wanted to do intellectually.

 

00;26;35;20 - 00;26;41;29

DP

Yeah. Interestingly, Wright used brick in some of his work. Pretty effectively.

 

00;26;42;07 - 00;26;43;13

PV

Indian red.

 

00;26;43;15 - 00;26;52;26

DP

Yeah. Indian red. Well, Peter Vanderpoel, it was very nice to meet you today. Could you tell me how we can find out more about you and your architectural firm?

 

00;26;53;02 - 00;27;04;12

PV

Well, I have a website pvanderpoel.com P-V-A-N-D-E-R-P-O-E-L dot com. That has some samples of my work. And other than that, I'm pretty quiet.

 

00;27;04;14 - 00;27;07;00

DP

Well, great. The house is beautiful. Congratulations.

 

00;27;07;00 - 00;27;07;09

PV

Thank you.

 

00;27;07;16 - 00;27;09;13

DP

I'm sure it's been a big success.

 

00;27;09;15 - 00;27;13;22

PV

It's very gratifying to see that - to see ideas that happen.

 

00;27;13;24 - 00;27;15;18

DP

Yeah, I think it's the best part about being an architect.

 

00;27;15;18 - 00;27;18;14

PV

Marriage of the two things – having an idea that actually gets built.

 

00;27;18;21 - 00;27;45;25

DP

Yeah, that's great. Congratulations.

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;05;16

Doug Patt (DP)

Let's go inside the vault. The design vault.

 

00;00;05;19 - 00;00;34;08

Todd Poisson (TP)

They wanted to expand the building, and a vertical expansion is taboo for individual landmarks. So, in order to get them any significant square footage additions up there, we wanted to go bold. Why not propose a more robust, bold roof scape? And given the history of Chief Tamanend being the namesake of Tammany and with this desire to really honor the Lenape, why not be inspired by the Lenape's origin story of a rising turtle coming out of the water, shedding water?

 

00;00;34;11 - 00;03;33;28

DP

This is my guest, Todd Poisson. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we’ll highlight Todd's project, 44 Union Square.

44 Union Square sits at the northeast corner of Union Square Park in Manhattan. The project includes a remarkable contemporary steel and glass dome addition to the storied landmark building on Union Square's northeast corner for Redding International Ink.

The new building expands the usable square footage of the historic building and adds an iconic anchor to Union Square. The building's former life was as the last headquarters for the political machine, Tammany Hall, an American organization founded in 1786, famous for controlling New York City and state politics for a time.

The restoration and expansion of the building includes preserving two facades, new bronze storefronts in the likeness of the original 1928 design and a three-story rooftop addition. This wild steel and glass building cap is composed of a self-supporting free form shell grid dome atop a reconstructed hipped roof with gray terracotta sunshades.

If you're wondering, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved this incredibly creative design.

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault.

Today we're talking to Todd Poisson. Todd received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University. He became a partner at BKSK in 2007 and has over 30 years of experience in the architecture profession. Todd has been responsible for the design and construction of some of the firm's most ambitious projects, ranging between residential mixed use and institutional works. Recent award-winning projects include the Gansevoort Row redevelopment for Aurora Capital and 44 Union Square, which we'll discuss today.

Other notable recent projects of Todd's are 200 East 21st Street, a 20 story, highly sustainable residential tower in Gramercy for Alpha Development and 470 Columbus, a passive house, multifamily development on the Upper West Side for the Rowe Corporation. Todd is currently a volunteer with the American Youth Soccer Organization and a long-term coach of regional athletic leagues.

In addition, Todd is a lecturer and volunteer interviewer for Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. So welcome, Todd. Nice to have you with us today.

We're going to talk about 44 Union Square. But before we do, I should mention that we recently interviewed one of Todd's peers at BKSK, David Kubik. He told us a bit about the firm. But for those who haven't listened to that episode, tell us a little bit about BKSK in New York City. Where are you guys located? What's the size of the firm and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;34;01 - 00;04;31;07

TP

Sure. So, thank you for having me. BKSK Architects is headquartered in New York City in Manhattan, not too far away from your center here on West 38th Street in the garment center of Manhattan. We've been in business since 1985 celebrating 38 years. David and I are kind of second-generation partners. We've been in business about 38 years. We have over 200 built projects. David and I both joined the firm about 20 years ago plus and were made partners about the same time.

BKSK specializes in many things. We like to say if you know New York, you know our work. Our work is kind of separated between, generally speaking, cultural, institutional work, libraries, religious structures, parks, and commercial buildings and residential buildings. Residential projects ranging from new condominium buildings, towers or private residential projects, combining units or renovating someone's home.

 

00;04;31;10 - 00;04;34;01

DP

Do you guys do residential projects outside of New York City?

 

00;04;34;07 - 00;04;45;21

TP

We do. In fact, we have a little annex office out in Oklahoma City that we had so much Midwest work. Now we have private residential projects, upstate New York and in Connecticut and in New Jersey.

 

00;04;45;23 - 00;04;53;11

DP

So, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you end up at BKSK? How long have you been there – I believe you just said that. What's your role in the office?

 

00;04;53;13 - 00;05;49;13

TP

Well, I joined back in 1998. So, 25 years ago I answered a New York Times wanted ad – remember those, actually where you had to get the newspaper Saturday, the Sunday paper? You got to subscribe to get them a day early to rifle through the want ads. And I answered a want ad for a project manager at an architecture firm called Burns, Kendall, Schieferdecker, with this crazy name. I thought it was a law firm. Back then there was no websites. You couldn't look up the firms. You had to go to these places, and you'd open the front door and you'd be disappointed but had to sit through the interviews to see what kind of work they did.

But the moment I met George Schieferdecker – he interviewed me 25 years ago, he's still there, one of the founding partners – knew immediately that I had found the mothership. You know, these guys knew each other from school way back. They were so intellectual. They all had lives outside the office. This was not a sweatshop kind of architecture firm that one sometimes encounters. And I've just had just a great time with them.

 

00;05;49;16 - 00;06;05;23

DP

It's funny, when you were saying that, all these awful memories started flooding in of making one phone call after another and going through the phone book and then showing up and knowing nothing about the work of that architect, and endless interviews. So where were you working before BKSK?

 

00;06;05;25 - 00;06;23;21

TP

I was here in Manhattan already. I was working for Stephen Jacobs Group, an architect who specialized, at the time, in new construction residential work. So, I really cut my teeth as a young architect in the field, hardcore development construction experience in Manhattan, which has paid off a great deal.

 

00;06;23;24 - 00;06;28;20

DP

So now you're partners. So, what's your role like now? Has it changed significantly?

 

00;06;28;22 - 00;07;48;02

TP

Sure. So over time, our roles change as partners as we grow in the firm. David and I and Julie Nelson, the other second-generation partner. Julie, David, and I really grew up there and our roles have evolved from being in the trenches and drawing every line and every detail for projects that get built. Lucky for us, our sites tend to be in Manhattan.

We're also a little bit regional. We have some work in New Jersey and Philadelphia and Connecticut, but still about 80% in Manhattan. So, we are very lucky. We could visit sites very easily to get hands on experience. And so, our roles really evolved quickly into project management, into client facing roles, consultant coordination, field work. When we were promoted to partners, our roles shift gradually into more finding work, finding new work, finding repeat clients, developing those relationships to continue getting new projects, setting the design direction for new projects, and then just kind of being the face of the project.

We pride ourselves to being involved with every phase of design as partners. We don't just disappear after landing a new project. We really stay involved in the trenches at meetings. I just came from a mechanical coordination meeting for a new hotel project we're doing. I really love that stuff. I really love the details – love the field work as well as the design and the client facing opportunities.

 

00;07;48;04 - 00;07;51;00

DP

I'm curious how big was BKSK when you joined them?

 

00;07;51;07 - 00;07;54;08

TP

So, they were about 15 people, I think, in 1998.

 

00;07;54;12 - 00;07;55;15

DP

And now you're 50.

 

00;07;55;15 - 00;07;57;19

TP

We're about 50, 52 people. Yes.

 

00;07;57;26 - 00;08;03;24

DP

Interesting. I love the field stuff, too. I love the people stuff. It's just the best part of the job.

 

00;08;03;26 - 00;08;21;19

TP

The soap opera arcs during it, like a seven, eight year project are just terrific. We refer to them at project meetings or say previously on this project in season two, you might recall that the elevator consultant said the opposite of what you just said. Like years later, it's a way to keep things light at these construction meetings.

 

00;08;21;23 - 00;08;22;20

DP

That is really funny.

 

00;08;23;04 - 00;08;43;02

TP

We try to keep it light and funny, and the construction industry has changed a great deal, as you could imagine, along with everything else. But in the last 35 years since I've been working, you know, sites are tech savvy. It seems to be it's a much more civilized kind of operation, and there's opportunities to really develop great relationships with the builders and consultants.

 

00;08;43;09 - 00;08;50;28

DP

Great insight. Totally true. So, let's dig in here and talk about the building. Tell us about 44 Union Square. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;08;51;00 - 00;17;44;06

TP

So back in 2012, the phone rang. It was Michael Buckley calling from Edifice Real Estate Partners. He invited us – because of our strength of our record of getting very challenging approvals through the Landmark Commission of New York City – invited us to join, I think it was a group of five firms that competed in a competition that lasted a month of design work, and then we each presented our work to the owner, Margaret Cotter of Redding International that month.

The design happened to coincide with when Hurricane Sandy hit Manhattan. So, our office, like many offices in Lower Manhattan, lost power. So, I brought the competition work home with me, and at the time I had a five-year-old daughter, and she sat in my lap, and we drew together. It really resonates with me to this day because fast forward ten years and there we were finishing the project during a global pandemic where we all had to work from home again. So, this project really bookended two kind of catastrophes in New York City, starting with Hurricane Sandy, working from home and then ending with the pandemic and closing out the project in 2020, using my daughter's big scooter to scoot down to Union Square. During the height of the pandemic, as work was finishing up.

So anyway, Michael invited BKSK to join this limited design competition. I dived into the history of the building. We're all students of history. We feel that every project, even if it's not a landmark project, has its history, has context to learn from. And immediately I learned the story of Tammany Hall that was different from what we're all taught in school, at least in the Northeast. We're taught that Tammany Hall is synonymous with greed and corruption and graft. And while that's all true, Tammany Hall is not named after an Irish politician of the 19th century, which you might think given the Boss Tweed stories and the background of Tammany Hall, that's in the social conscious. But in fact, the namesake of Tammany Hall is an indigenous 17th century chief, Chief Tamanend of the Lenape, who signed a peaceful coexistence treaty with William Penn in 1680, an event that's documented in our Capitol's rotunda in Washington, DC, rules that really held in place for quite some time.

Chief Tamanend was revered and legendary to the European settlers as a native representative who welcomed visitors and who wanted to listen to all voices. And listening to all voices became kind of the theme of these early social clubs, which became known as Tammany Societies. We were surprised to learn that there were dozens of these Tammany societies that dotted the East Coast from New York to Cleveland in the early days of the Republic, and I think they even predated the revolution. I think they, maybe, formalized themselves after the revolution, but the clubhouses began even before the American Revolution, where people joined and sat around talking about what ideals the New Republic should represent. And they chose Chief Tamanend to represent them as a symbol of listening to all voices. Over the centuries that story was lost. The only Tammany society to make it into the 20th century was ours here in New York, only to become known for craft, greed and corruption.

So right from the beginning we thought it was an opportunity to rebrand the building in Chief Tamanend’s name – kind of erase this idea that Tammany is associated with just greed and corruption, but is associated with the indigenous population of North America, of the Northeast, especially of the Lenape. Given that background, looking at this Neo-Georgian red brick and limestone building at the corner Union Square, which was designed originally to emulate Federal Hall downtown. Federal Hall is where George Washington was inaugurated on the balcony. Federal Hall was demolished in 1812, but it looked like Tammany Hall does today, except Federal Hall had a much more robust roof line, had a big hipped roof and a cupola, whereas Tammany Hall and Union Square chose the architects Thompson, Holmes, and Converse out of Philadelphia in 1928 – chose to replicate the federal Hall facade quite literally, but they gave Tammany Hall here in Union Square a much more tepid roof.

And so, the thought was, given the brief from Edifice for Redding International, they wanted to expand the building, they wanted to rebrand the building, but they knew it was a landmark. They knew it was an individual New York City landmark. So, demolition was out of the question. And a vertical expansion is taboo for individual landmarks. Typically, the New York City Landmarks Commission approves maybe a handful each year, but they're very difficult to convince the commission that it's an appropriate addition to the base landmark. Union Square is such a vast public space that we knew immediately that even if you put like a shampoo bottle on top of the roof, it would be seen from across the square. So, in order to get them any significant square footage addition up there, we wanted to go bold. We felt that, given this Neo-Georgian base that used to have or was modeled after a building that had a bigger roof, why not propose a more robust, bold roof scape?

So, the question is what form should that take? And given the history of Chief Tamanend being the namesake of Tammany, and with this desire to really honor the Lenape, why not be inspired by the Lenape’s origin story of a giant turtle rising from the sea, creating land to give this Neo-Georgian building the dome that it would have, could have, should have had if Tammany Hall perhaps was more honest with its intentions in 1928, when Thompson, Holmes, and Converse designed this building, which really cloaked them in kind of quasi-governmental garb at this very federal style red brick and limestone building with a pediment, portico, but a tepid roof.

So, we decided to model a very contemporary glass and steel dome modeled after a rising turtle coming out of the water, shedding water as the kind of volume to hold, to house three additional floors. And the landmarks, as you mentioned, Landmarks Commission unanimously approved it. We only had to go back once to tweak the height of the dome and some of the details.

The dome kind of erupts from a reconstructed hip roof. So, we removed the slate hip roof and recreated it in the same inclined plane with terracotta sunshades that intermittently cover the beginning of the glass and steel dome. So, the glass and steel dome starts off as in the form of a hip roof, but then quickly transforms into this parametric shell that looks like classically proportioned when one stands in front of it in Union Square. Looks like any other dome on a classic building, in terms of its proportion. But when one turns the corner and looks more obliquely on it, its organic source kind of becomes more apparent. You kind of sense something is going on there and it's turtle like as it faces north over this arched pediment that was top of the Tammany Hall's balustrade in the middle of the East 17th Street North facade.

 

The original building had this odd arch pediment that was kind of just vertically cantilever in there. We didn't quite realize what it was until we looked more into the history of Tammany Hall. And sure enough, they used to – before this building was built in 1928 – they occupied a clubhouse on East 14th Street down at the other corner of Union Square. And on top of that building is a giant arched, decorative element with, in fact, a 15-foot-tall statue of Chief Tamanend. That building was demolished for ConEd’s expansion in the 1920s, and that's what spurred Tammany Hall to move to this location on the northeast corner of Union Square. Chief Tamanend is only recalled on our facade in 1928 with a headshot, a limestone medallion that faces, on the north facade, over what was Tammany Hall's front door. So, the classical portico facade that faces Union Square was really always a commercial facade. The ground floor was always a retail store location. In 1928 was a manufacturer's trust bank, for example. And now just last week, we celebrated the grand opening of Petco as the new national headquarters giant, 30,000 square foot new store in the ground floor cellar and second floor of the building.

So, it's still a retail presence. And then the upper floors are remodeled to be open office space. So Tammany Hall's front door used to be below that arched pediment facing northeast 17th Street and that's where we decided to kind of turn the turtle's head on the roof. So, the glass dome takes on a little bit more of a turtle-like form as it turns its head to give that arched pediment a little bit of a home. And we think it gives it a little bit more of a reason to exist than it ever did before. And it signals that that was Tammany's front door, once upon a time.

 

00;17;44;08 - 00;18;00;17

DP

Wow. Some great information. There's so much to talk about here, you know, it reminds me of - I'm still a big fan of Coop Himmelblau, it's far more organized, right – but it reminds me of that kind of approach to architecture. So, there were five entries. Did you see the entries?

 

00;18;00;23 - 00;18;39;25

TP

We never saw the other entries. We presented our work to Margaret at Redding, like December of 2012, after a bit of a delay because of Hurricane Sandy. We were awarded the project. It took about a year for contracts and everything to be negotiated to become their architect, but we were awarded the project so roughly late 2013. We brought it to the Landmarks Commission in, I believe in 2014. We received final building department and Landmarks approval in the following year or so, and then it took a few years to build. It was interrupted a bit by the pandemic, but we finished. Construction was finished in 2020.

 

00;18;39;28 - 00;18;42;16

DP

So, start to finish, how long was it then?

 

00;18;42;19 - 00;18;54;08

TP

From the day the phone rang in 2012 to 2020. So about eight years. We've stayed on call as the landlord's architect to help coordinate work for the tenants looking at space inside.

 

00;18;54;13 - 00;18;58;17

DP

And this was mostly a renovation project, but there was some new construction?

 

00;18;58;24 - 00;20;29;26

TP

So that's great that you ask that because it appears from a lot of photographs and even as you walk around it and even when you're in it, it's hard to realize that it's actually a new building behind the 100-year-old street walls. Everything was removed except the two street-facing walls. So, we think that's a real success, that people think it is a rooftop addition with maybe a little renovation inside, because that really was the intent to be as deferential and respectful of the historic landmark as possible. But, in fact, everything was removed. The historic masonry walls were decoupled from the structure. They were braced in place by tower braces that had their own foundation systems through the sidewalk, including through a giant vault that lines the 17th Street side that has a giant ConEd steam pipe running through it. So very complex coordination that the structural engineers at Thornton Tomasetti coordinated with our construction managers at CNY to develop this very intricate tower bracing system.

I should mention Buro Happold also as engineers of the project. So, the facades were decoupled from the structure. Everything was removed inside, including the foundation. A deeper foundation was dug to give the building a very deep cellar and six new stories. So, what was a three-story building with the little caretaker's apartment hidden behind the hipped roof at the front is now a 70,000 square foot class-A commercial building, growing from about 35,000 to begin with.

 

00;20;29;29 - 00;20;32;23

DP

So, you had to match the existing brick.

 

00;20;32;26 - 00;24;16;27

TP

So yes, finally we could talk about brick. Big part of the project was restoring those two street walls, the two 100-year-old historic street walls that are red brick and limestone, modeled after Federal Hall downtown. We researched the brick. Our design partners at Buro Happold gave us a roadmap – and the restoration contractors at Pullman – very detailed road map of the two street facades of which parts needed to be replaced. But remarkably, not a lot of the brick had to be removed. We did repoint 100% of the brick, meaning partially removing, breaking back the mortar joints and replacing the mortar. The front about three-quarters-inch of mortar on all the joints, but only replaced maybe about 15, 10%, maybe less of the brick.

The brick we found; we researched where the brick was in 1928. It was from the old Virginia brick company in Salem, Virginia. And we found an advertisement in 1929 after the building was completed, and they are bragging about their new building on Union Square, and they are linking it – as a Virginia company, they’re proud of this project for many reasons – but including the fact that Tammany Hall was linked to Thomas Jefferson's ideals and Thomas Jefferson, of course, is from Virginia and is famous for designing his home at Monticello. So, the old Virginia brick company has this advertisement that we found in the Archives of Public Library here in New York that they link the brick here at Tammany Hall to the brick used at Monticello. But if you read the fine print, it's not literally the same brick, it's not from the same kilns. They say it's, quote, “in the same size and made in the same kind of cherry and maple molds as those of Jefferson's beloved Monticello.” So even though Salem, Virginia, which is right next to Roanoke, Virginia, still is about, these days, even a two hour drive from Monticello, they wanted to connect themselves to the legacy of Thomas Jefferson with this new building for Tammany Hall, which was pretending to be or, you know, acting as a quasi-governmental building.

They were really a social agency too. We shouldn't forget that even though that they were known for terrible greed and corruption and fixed elections and did all kinds of bad stuff, they really operated as a social service organization for newly arrived immigrants here in New York City. So, they, however, used Lenape iconography in ways that weren't so appealing to us, from our point of view, looking back. They didn't care for the land of a people. They use their imagery. They used Chief Tamanend's name, but they didn't necessarily care for the Lenape people. And we wanted to reintroduce the Lenape authentic voice into this project. So early on, right after we won the competition, we reached out to the Lenape center here in Manhattan. We wanted to make sure that we weren't offending people by the use of Chief Tamanend’s clan's symbol of the rising turtle. We met with Joe Baker and Hadrien Coumans, some of the co-founders of the Lenape Center here in Manhattan, and they were thrilled. I was so relieved with their reaction when we showed them this design, a good ten years ago now. And they've been friends ever since. They've been great proponents of the project. They supported it through the regulatory process, writing letters to the Landmarks Commission, appearing with us side by side. So, they've been a great partner with this, and we've shared the design as it developed with them. So, we like to think of them as one of our collaborators in this project. It wasn't part of the brief, it wasn't part of the commercial real estate project, but we kind of thought it was very important to bring an authentic voice to this project from the Lenape point of view.

 

00;24;16;29 - 00;24;28;08

DP

So, we know that you guys had to match the existing brick out there. Was it challenging to find a brick that you could use, and what was that process? What did you ultimately go with?

 

00;24;28;10 - 00;25;50;02

TP

So, looking at the existing conditions of the brick walls, they were in remarkably good shape, considering it was 100-year-old building. We removed maybe five, ten percent of them. We used our construction manager partners at CNY, hired Pullman, incredibly talented folk at Pullman to restore the brick. They used, I think it was like a four-inch diameter grinder blade to remove the first, say, three quarters of an inch of mortar out of all the joints. 100% of the joints were repointed with mortar that we selected to match the original mortar.

The bricks themselves are an incredible mixture of Glen-Gery molded brick, and Heathcote, and spec sand DD-58, and Catawba, and a Roanoke Original. So that is all mixed in to create the dappled, dark red, velvety, rich red brick that are dappled with a very dark rowlock. Some of the rowlocks are very dark, so there's many bricks that are mixed into this, specifically chosen for each moment, each part of the facade that was being replaced. It's only about ten or twelve bricks at a time, in little clumps, that had to be replaced where there was a crack that was going through them. So that's how we restored the Flemish bond of the building. That bond of the landmark has a beautiful Flemish bond pattern to it that we restored.

 

00;25;50;05 - 00;26;02;13

DP

So, let's go back to the roof for a little bit. Was there any discussion internally when you were working on the design that it was just way too contemporary? This was not going to fly?

 

00;26;02;15 - 00;27;41;12

TP

Sure. So, we looked through history at examples of iconic, bold, contemporary rooftop additions onto landmark or historic structures. We looked at, specifically, for example, the Reichstag in Berlin. Lord Foster designed a striking, bold, contemporary glass dome onto the government building in Berlin. Of course, they lost their dome through war and bombing, and it was reconstructed in a contemporary fashion. But, interestingly enough the original Reichstag Dome did have glass in it. That's a fascinating case study for us.

We also looked at other freeform shell grid structures. That is the technical name for this structural system that can span over vast spaces without any vertical supports. So, the entire dome, the entire roof is not supported by any internal column or wall. It rests on new perimeter concrete walls that go all the way down to the new foundation. The loads are distributed down columns that are in between all the windows, in the historic facade, down to the new foundation in the cellar. So, we looked at Foster's courtyard cover at the British Museum, for example, that utilizes the same kind of system of freeform shell grid, which is also boldly, iconically, contemporary against a landmark base. The thought here was by restoring the base, by restoring all the brickwork and the limestone, we strengthen the landmark base in order to allow it to have a contrasting style on the roof, that the roof could be strikingly contemporary as long as we paid attention and were respectful to the restoration of the base.

 

00;27;41;14 - 00;27;55;03

DP

So, I read a little bit about the solar insulation, light infiltration. You were concerned glare clearly was going to be an issue. Could you elaborate on the probability studies you did investigating those elements and how they impacted design?

 

00;27;55;03 - 00;29;31;14

TP

Our partners at Buro Happold did fascinating studies with daylight. We directed them and wanted to make sure that we weren't going to cause reflection problems with this parabolic to other buildings. There are some case studies around the world of curved glass buildings causing problems to their neighbors, including there's one in London that focuses heat to the degree that it was causing fires on the sidewalk across the street. So, we certainly did not want to be known for that. So Buro Happold helped us study the probability of reflection on to the neighbors. We pinpointed the pieces of glass that would be the culprits – the whole selection process of the type of glass, with Buro Happold's help and all their studies – it was determined that a combination of tint and clear glass was the solution to inhibit reflection, but also to prevent too much solar heat gain and also to prevent too much internal glare.

So, from the outside, the glass appears a bit dark. On sunny days, it's reflective just enough to give it a shiny kind of silvery tone, and you can see the clouds, but it doesn't reflect rays of sunlight directly, like laser beams into the neighbors. And while you're on the inside, even though the glass on the outside has a darker appearance from the inside, your eyeballs adjust and it's all color corrected. Your eyes don't see dark. They see blue sky. They see the beautiful terracotta details of the neighboring historic buildings. It was, in the end, success of glass selection to inhibit all those potential problems.

 

00;29;31;16 - 00;29;40;17

DP

So, did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process doing something this unique? I would imagine you've never done a roof like this in the office before.

 

00;29;40;21 - 00;30;52;21

TP

We haven’t. It's our first freeform shell grid. It was New York's first freeform shell grid. There is a similar covering at Moynihan Train Hall to their barrel vaults, but they opened six months after we did, so we are happy to say, after an eight-year design process and construction, we kept saying we're going to be New York's first freeform shell grid. We're the first one to enclose internal space. I think there's a similar system that might be on some like entry canopies. There's one for like the seven-train extension to Hudson Yards and there's one out in Yonkers, but those do not enclose covered space and they're not nearly this large. So, we're proud to say we're New York's first freeform shell grid.

They use acres of this system in Asia and Europe. It's a very common system to span large swaths of space. It is used here in this country. For example, we visited the Smithsonian Institute down in Washington, DC. The Portrait Gallery has a courtyard cover that's similar to the British Museum cover. Foster came here and did kind of an encore for us in 2007 with the Smithsonian cover. We studied that system too, in terms of how it let light in, and in our studies of glare, etc..

 

00;30;52;24 - 00;31;05;21

DP

Yeah. What I find so interesting about the roof is that you could have simply created a typical Mansard roof and then added glass to the top. But the whole thing is glass, which is so unique.

 

00;31;05;21 - 00;31;52;26

TP

And a mansard roof, of an appropriate proportion, wouldn’t enclose nearly this much square footage. So, we wanted to get our client as much square footage as possible on top of this historic building. And it needed that extra oomph. The dome portion in the middle, which would never be able to be really enclosed by a mansard of any kind of historically accurate proportion. So that's what led us to both the form and the structure to enclose it, because the freeform shell grid is kind of the perfect device to span such great distances so the interior can be super flexible.

We built three floors within it, but those could be removed, they could be remodeled, they could be reconstructed to serve any purpose because all the loads from the roof system just go down the side perimeter walls.

 

00;31;53;02 - 00;32;18;06

DP

It's a great project for architecture students to look at in terms of learning how to develop an idea to make form, right. It's just so clear. And yet if you knew nothing about it, you just say, “Wow, they just put a glass dome on top.” But there's so much more to it that created so many unique details and so many beautiful things and facets, and I'm sure that space on the interior is wonderful.

 

00;32;18;09 - 00;32;25;04

TP

It's really terrific. There's opportunities to connect all three floors interconnecting and the possibilities are endless in there.

 

00;32;25;06 - 00;32;40;23

DP

So, you've obviously been an architect for quite some time, over 30 years. So, what career advice would you give your younger self, looking back after practicing for all this time? What have you learned? What's an idea that you've really locked on to that you'll never forget?

 

00;32;40;25 - 00;32;53;00

TP

One of the founding partners at BKSK, Joan Krevlin, said to me 25 years ago when I joined the - one of the things that she always kept with her as a young architect is do your job and tell the truth.

 

00;32;53;02 - 00;32;55;22

DP

What great advice! I love that!

 

00;32;55;29 - 00;33;42;02

TP

It's a great profession. And as you said, students of architecture have a great time in design studios. And this is a project that is really right out of studio in a way. I love showing it to students because like you said, it's super accessible in terms of the visuals, but it has a great connection to social history and the importance of context, the importance of research that you just don't come into a vacuum and design a building. You look at the context, you look at history, and you look at what you can learn from it. Because this could have been, like you said, just a flat top mansard roof. But discovering the history of the Lenape connection to this building was just remarkable and a great opportunity. I've met the Lenape Center folk. They've asked me to join their advisory steering committee. It's just been a wonderful experience.

 

00;33;42;04 - 00;34;03;22

DP

I love what you said. You don't just come into a vacuum and design a building. You don't. You don't. And that's what you learn in school. And hopefully you get to use that information, use that process, use that paradigm when you graduate, and you become a real architect. Right. So, Todd, it's been great to have you here. Thanks so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about BKSK architects?

 

00;34;03;27 - 00;34;09;06

TP

We can be found at www.bksk.com

 

00;34;09;08 - 00;34;11;09

DP

Todd, it’s been great to have you, man. That was really cool.

 

00;34;11;25 - 00;34;16;12

TP

Thanks. This was really fun.

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;14

Doug Patt (DP)

Let's go inside the vault. The design vault.

 

00;00;05;17 - 00;00;33;16

John Woelfling (JW)

We looked at that rectangle and where the opportunity was to expand the building horizontally, and then really started to figure out where the best units would be located, where the best apartment layouts would be in the existing building. It was actually a challenge. We were not going to change the fenestration where the windows are located or the size of the windows.

 

So that really dictated a lot of the apartment placements and the size. So I think we were pretty clever about putting all the like fundamentals and figuring out how the floorplan would come together.

 

00;00;33;23 - 00;03;17;20

DP

This is my guest, John Woelfling. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we highlight John's project 50 Nevins Street. 50 Nevins Street is located in downtown Brooklyn. It literally appears to be two buildings in one. The approach was to reinvigorate a century old building through gut renovation and addition, which provides affordable housing, housing for formerly homeless individuals and mental health services.

 

The historic site, with its new ten story addition, features 129 new apartments. The building was originally designed by famed Brooklyn architect Frank Freeman, opened in 1913 as a YWCA. In the early 1930s an extensive portion of the building was shaved off to enlarge. Schermerhorn Street and make way for the subway line. That adjustment resulted in an imbalance to the original Colonial Revival building.

 

The new couple design ascribes value to the existing building and helps restore the balance it had lost. The existing red brick building remains shorter with a classical cornice. The new building sits slightly taller, flush and adjacent with a recessed connector which visually separates the architecture. The contrast in masonry color, dark connector and stylistic changes to the forms and facades set the two buildings apart esthetically, though clearly their co-combined.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. John Woelfling is a partner at Dattner Architects in New York City and holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Virginia Tech. John leverages his broad experiences working across project types like education, recreation, health care and infrastructure to inform his leadership of the firm's mixed use residential projects.

 

John is a recognized passive house expert. His focus on sustainable design practices is guided by proactive education of evolving green technologies and incorporating them into his work. John's committed to creating sustainable, efficient designs that use an integrated, holistic approach. He frequently lectures about affordable housing and sustainability. Speaking at the Center for Architecture, the New York State AIA, Urban Green and Green Build, Forum for Urban Design, Reimagine Conference and the Phius Passive House Conference.

 

So welcome, John. Nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about Dattner Architects in New York City. Where are you guys located? What's the size of the firm and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;17;22 - 00;05;20;11

JW

So Dattner Architects is a firm that's been around for close to 60 years. We are located in Midtown Manhattan, just like a ten minute walk from the studio, so it's nice and easy to get over here. We've been there for a little over a year and a half, but our offices have been in New York City for our entire life of the firm, we’re about 110 people now.

 

I just met with a few people and we're looking at hiring some more people. So it's a good time to be practicing in New York City and working on housing and the wide variety of work that my firm does. We do a mixed bag of cornucopia of project types. We do housing, which is what we're going to talk about today.

 

We do subway stations, we do marine transfer stations for garbage, we do a salt shed here or there, medical health care, schools, libraries, a whole mixture of projects. I'm going to talk about some of the advantages that gives us a little bit further on if we can.

 

One of the projects that you or maybe some of your listeners know is a project that's on the West Side Highway at Spring Street. It is a salt shed. These types of projects that you might normally see that are a salt shed are very utilitarian domes, and they just protect the salt from the elements. But our project, we did something kind of clever, which was we created this shell that was inspired by the crystal and shape of the salt. So it's this kind of crystal that sits along the water along the West Side highway.

 

So if you're going up and down the West Side Highway, you've probably seen this. Keep your eyes open for it now. But that's an example of how my office has this sensibility of taking these very civic things that could be very plain and very understated and look for those opportunities. And sometimes we hit a home run, sometimes, you know, we get on base.

 

But each one of those projects is a real opportunity to take a civic piece of architecture, which is what we do. We do civic architecture, and we look to make the city, the city that we live in the best that it can be. So I'm very proud to be part of the work that we do. It's a large group of people, as I said, 110 people. It's inspiring every day to be able to go into the office and work with such a great group of people.

 

00;05;20;14 - 00;05;37;25

DP

That's so great. I mean, you're doing exactly what you're taught to do in architecture school, right? You're taking advantage of the project at hand, you're being creative, you're being thoughtful, you're impressing the client, you're making beautiful things for people that live in the city. It sounds fun and it's a good time to be working. You said you're busy.

 

00;05;38;02 - 00;06;15;19

JW

Yes, we are busy. We've had some ups and downs. But I do think one of the advantages of our firm is that we have this mixed group of typologies. So, you know, when housing was like going gangbusters a couple of years ago, we were really busy and a lot of our work was housing. But as things have shifted over to more infrastructure, which is actually what we're seeing, we're seeing a lot more investment in infrastructure.

 

We're having those subway type projects, those marine transfer stations, those types of utilitarian transportation and infrastructure projects are taking over a greater percentage of our work. So we're continuing to stay busy. So the old adage of diversifying your portfolio applies to many, many things.

 

00;06;15;21 - 00;06;20;29

DP

So you are a principal in the firm. How long have you been there and what's your role in the office now?

 

00;06;21;01 - 00;08;13;19

JW

So I have been a principal there for 20 years. I've been practicing as an architect in the city for 30 years. So I landed at Dattner relatively early in my career and found it to be a great place to stay and work. So I've been there for that long. One of the things that I focus on now is our housing work, our housing studio.

 

As I mentioned a few minutes ago, the housing work has been a great source of workload in the past decade, 15, ten years. As that work became more and more important in the office, we needed to have leadership to take over and really guide that practice. And one of the things that me and others in the office have been focusing on is integrating really innovative, sustainable design strategies into our housing.

 

And this, I think, has its biggest benefit in affordable housing. The way housing often gets developed in dense urban environments like New York City is that it is the harder to develop sites that are most likely to be affordable housing because they are the less desirable sites, the sites that are either adjacent to a highway, adjacent to a subway, difficult geometry, a lot of rock, some sort of challenging situation, which thank you for the recognition that my firm and me personally are doing what architects are trained to do looking at these challenges and finding the opportunities.

 

So that's what we do. We often are faced with challenging sites that maybe are right near infrastructure that is really adding to pollution and environmental degradation. So this idea of sustainable, affordable housing I think is really in our work translated into environmental justice, taking people who might normally live in these underserved communities that have this infrastructure and a real inequity for environmental considerations and trying to make that better. And one of the ways we do that is through Passive House.

 

00;08;13;21 - 00;08;20;04

DP

So let's dig in here and talk about our building. Tell us a little bit about 50 Nevins Street. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;08;20;06 - 00;10;13;14

JW

So one of our clients, ICL, which stands for Institute for Community Living, and they are a not for profit organization that does just tremendous, phenomenal work in the city, serving really at-risk underserved people in New York City. They owned this building. They purchased it in 1986. As you mentioned in the intro, it was originally designed as a YWCA as an SRO, a single room occupancy building.

 

So all the rooms were like single bedded rooms. There was a common cafeteria and kitchen and common bathing facilities. So it was like really stacking people in. And this was like an old model of housing people that was, you know, appropriate at a certain time in the city's history. But not really contemporary residential standards, what we would expect today.

 

So that was kind of the history of this building. You also mentioned the shaving off of the north end of the building, which actually we suspected that through some research, but we didn't really get it confirmed until we got into the building and started doing the demolition and saw, oh, this is where they replaced this column with a different type of steel that was in the original building.

 

It was riveted steel. In the new portion it was rolled sections. We'd see the back up wall or actually the composite wall. And the original building was all brickwork. It was all bonded brick wall in the new building in the modified part that happened when they widened the street, it became a terracotta block back up with then the finished brick in front, the window details were different. So it was actually really interesting to have that kind of confirmation and see it once the demo all happened. The building has this legacy of being modified and I think serving the greater good, the widening of the street and the shaving off of 20 feet of the building was done so that there would be this greater public amenity of the subway station that would be improve the life of all New Yorkers.

 

00;10;13;16 - 00;10;18;24

DP

Yeah, interesting. It's all related. So what was the building next to your building?

 

00;10;18;27 - 00;11;33;13

JW

The building next to our building was a recently constructed hotel, which was a very different building type, superstructure type construction techniques, and much taller than the existing building as well. So it was a really dominating presence. So one of the things that we tried to do and I think we were pretty successful is kind of mitigate that presence.

 

It was just to the west of our site. But yeah, we wanted to kind of bridge that more contemporary with the traditional classic building that was retained on the site. The strategy that we employed for the redevelopment was to expand the building both vertically and horizontally. The horizontal piece was easy. You just, you know, you build next to the building.

 

There was a parking lot. Basically a service area for the existing building, which is, you know, very handsome pre-war building. But that pre-war building kind of vintage came with a lot of burdens or a lot of legacy issues that made the building more difficult to use as a contemporary building that needed to be handicapped accessible.

 

The systems were out of date really at the end of their service life. So we had to do some major kind of heroic things to this existing building to keep it.

 

00;11;33;13 - 00;11;34;14

DP

And you wanted to keep it?

 

00;11;34;21 - 00;12;03;18

JW

Yeah, absolutely. It was such a handsome building also, I've mentioned sustainable design, but one of the most sustainable things that you can do if you're doing a project is to keep an existing building, keep the shell, keep as much as you can. Now, obviously, you've got to like do some demolition and throw some materials away. But if you can keep that building out of the landfill, keep that building from having to be shipped to the landfill and all the energy that goes into that retaining that energy that was originally used to build the building, that's one of the most sustainable things that you can do of all.

 

00;12;03;24 - 00;12;06;09

DP

So tell me, is the subway system still there?

 

00;12;06;11 - 00;12;21;03

JW

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. We don't quite feel it rumbling in the building when it goes by, but there were some really special supportive excavation considerations that we had to do. We had to be really concerned about settlement. So there was a lot of thought put into the foundations of this building.

 

00;12;21;03 - 00;12;22;27

DP

Yeah, the new foundations.

 

00;12;23;00 - 00;13;57;28

JW

So the new foundations were complicated. The existing building foundations were also complicated. When we did this vertical expansion above the existing building, I mentioned earlier the term heroic, and it really was heroic. I mean, when I look back on this, I think, Oh my God, what was I thinking? And we actually convinced somebody to do this. We convinced a contractor to do this.

 

We convinced our client, which, you know, there are great clients. I don't want to make it sound like I've deceived them, but it was a really courageous project to both undertake by all parties. In the existing building we built above, there was additional load that we were superimposing on the existing superstructure in that building. We had to brace one of the columns so that we could lower the footing and increase the size of the footing.

 

And the way we did that was and when I say we, I mean it's really the contractor that did this. We came up with the concept, but they executed it. There was a huge beam that was spanned from one column to another that supported this column temporarily, that we were going to lower the footing on, and they jacked that beam up and supported that column so that the existing footing that was undersized could be pulled out, excavated further down, and then a new footing could be introduced and an extension of the column.

 

So gutsy acrobatics to do this. And the way they tested whether that beam, a temporary beam that was put in, whether it separated the footing from the column, was they took a piece of paper and they slipped it between the footing and the base plate of the column to see if it was actually separated. So they wanted to test that to make sure there was daylight before they pulled out that existing footing. Phenomenal construction sequencing and logistics. It was a gutsy project I'm very proud of.

 

00;13;58;01 - 00;14;00;21

DP

So what were the project restrictions like for you guys?

 

00;14;00;26 - 00;15;33;11

JW

So there were a couple of restrictions. When we first started looking at this, we wanted to increase the density of the project because it was a rare kind of once in a building's lifetime opportunity to increase the amount of affordable and supportive housing that could be provided in downtown Brooklyn. So our client ICL, knew that this was kind of their one chance.

 

So we looked at a couple ideas, a couple of options, and to get to 129 units, we had to bend, maybe break the rules of the New York City zoning resolution. And the way you do that is you go through something called a ULURP. It's a process that involves community engagement. It involves talking to city planning, New York City city planning departments, and doing something that is not as of right.

 

The current zoning resolution and building code allow you to build certain things. As long as you get approval from the Department of Buildings, you can build those. But we needed to bend the rules here or break the rules to make this actually happen. So we went to the various city agencies, went to community boards and made this proposal to expand the building vertically, to increase the floor area ratio, the amount of floor area that you can build on the site.

 

And we were successful in that because I think a lot of these stakeholders recognized that this project was going to really make a difference to so many people's lives and be a community asset. So normally we've all heard the term NIMBY, not in my backyard. Normally. That's one of the things that we bought up against when we do these types of projects and there was some of that, but I think it was much more toned down because people recognized the benefit of this project.

 

00;15;33;18 - 00;15;37;18

DP

So did you guys have the building completely designed when you went to the people?

 

00;15;37;21 - 00;15;48;12

JW

No. We had the vision. We kind of had a good idea how many units were going to go into the building. We knew what the program was going to be. We had some of the renderings completed because that's really important to making that pitch to stakeholders.

 

00;15;48;18 - 00;15;51;24

DP

What about height requirements for you guys? What limited you?

 

00;15;52;00 - 00;16;15;09

JW

I'm going to try not to get too much into the weeds and the zoning resolution, but this is it actually falls into a limited height district in downtown Brooklyn, which we adhered to, but we needed the increased floor area. The height was somewhat limiting, but there were other limitations on the building as well. We could only add so many floors onto the existing building before we kind of maxed out on what we could really feasibly do with the existing foundations and the existing superstructure.

 

00;16;15;11 - 00;16;24;13

DP

So let's talk a little bit about the building plan. So the existing building is like a long rectangle. So what did you guys do with your additions?

 

00;16;24;15 - 00;17;55;23

JW

So one of the really critical things for affordable housing in most housing, all housing is efficiency. And the efficiency was really driven by the desire to maximize the number of units that we could put here so we could serve the most people. So we looked at that rectangle and where the opportunity was to expand the building horizontal lean and located our cores, our elevator and our stairs in a spot that worked best for that, and then really started to figure out where the best units would be located, where the best apartment layouts would be. In the existing building, it was actually a challenge. We were not going to change the fenestration where the windows are located or the size of the windows. So that really dictated a lot of the apartment placements and the size. New York City has something called light and air requirements for the apartments, you need to have a certain size window for a certain size room, and you can't go below that for both light daylight and ventilation.

 

So the existing building’s layout was determined largely not completely, but largely by the existing fenestration layout. And then we had more flexibility in the new building portion, but that was also a challenge because it was a very limited floor plates and it really had to integrate with the existing building. We had corridors that we had to figure out.

 

We placed the elevator in the inside corner where the two buildings meet, because that's a place where you can't really put apartments because there's no windows there. So I think we were pretty clever about putting all the, like, fundamentals and figuring out how the floor plan would come together.

 

00;17;55;25 - 00;18;01;04

DP

How did the apartment sizes compare from the old building to the new building? Are they exactly the same?

 

00;18;01;06 - 00;18;57;09

JW

No, it is dramatically different. The original SRO, the single room occupancy, I mean, the rooms were eight feet wide, ten feet deep. So really puny and not in any way contemporary or fair housing model for the residents that were going to come back. So we basically blew out all those interior partitions and relaid out the building interiors.

 

The original building was actually a double loaded corridor. And when I said below the corridor, I mean there's a hallway down the middle and it's got apartments on either side, fairly efficient way to do it. But it was such a narrow building and the site is so narrow that when we redid the building in this more contemporary model of apartments, we couldn't fit a double loaded corridor in there.

 

So it's really a single loaded corridor in the existing building. In the new building, we had more flexibility in the site dimension, so we were able to do a double loaded corridor in that portion. But it was, yeah, a real challenge to adapt the existing building. But as I said, you know, it's one of the most sustainable things you can do.

 

00;18;57;16 - 00;19;01;06

DP

Are the apartments a lot larger in the new building and the windows taller?

 

00;19;01;12 - 00;20;38;07

JW

I would say in the new building, no, they're not significantly larger. They're just kind of what they are. I think the windows are maybe a little bit taller, certainly wider. We wanted to have some affinity between the two buildings. We didn't want to have like completely different fenestration sizes, which really I think would be inequitable to the people who would move into this building.

 

But we did in many ways, we made the new building distinct from the existing building. You go around New York City or any other city that's been around for a while and you see these buildings that are historic and have been adapted. You know, there's a couple of ways you can do it. You can either be matchy matchy about it and try to replicate in new construction and new materials a very similar thing.

 

And that's usually pretty apparent. It's never seamless, even if you could make it perfectly matching, I just don't think that's genuine. I don't think it's a truthful representation of where we are in the construction and it's not necessary. There may be times when it's merited, but it shouldn't be your knee jerk reaction. It shouldn't be the starting point.

 

So one way is to be absolutely seamless about it. One is to put a cap on top of the building. But we wanted to make this building really tell a story about the history of it. So we basically wrapped this new piece of contemporary construction up in around the existing building and allowed it to kind of finish off the existing building.

 

You mentioned earlier some of the adaptations that have happened to the building that I think really compromised the original integrity of the design, the symmetry and the way the building ended. So I think we kind of rectified that with this new construction that comes over the top and helps finish the building in a way that I think looks more appropriate.

 

00;20;38;12 - 00;20;42;27

DP

So tell me about the cornice on the existing building. Is that new or was that there?

 

00;20;43;02 - 00;20;51;14

JW

That's actually a really interesting question. The cornice we thought from the street level. Oh, that's the original cornice. It looks very detailed and looks contemporary on the building.

 

00;20;51;16 - 00;20;52;11

DP

It's gigantic.

 

00;20;52;11 - 00;21;05;12

JW

It's gigantic. Yeah, it's probably four feet tall and overhangs three feet. It's yeah, it's enormous. But we got up there and when we started to do that demolition that I mentioned earlier, it's made of fiberglass. So it was actually done some time, I think in the…

 

00;21;05;12 - 00;21;06;06

DP

Sixties or so?

 

00;21;06;06 - 00;21;27;27

JW

I think it was actually in the eighties. I think after ICL originally bought the building, they did a couple modifications to make it better suit their needs, not to the extent that we'd most recently renovated, but they, I think, replaced the existing cornice with a fiberglass one. The fiberglass one is in great shape. We kept it. We like took it off where we had to for construction sequencing and logistics, but then put the thing back and just re-caulked it. It's done now.

 

00;21;27;28 - 00;21;40;09

DP

But it's a great cap to the existing building and it really sets the two buildings apart. And when you look at the additions, it all kind of makes sense. And that cornice I think does a lot to do that.

 

00;21;40;14 - 00;21;53;23

JW

Yeah, it's a very formal gesture, that retaining it and then allowing that to be part of this kind of bridge. In this reveal that you also mentioned earlier, the reveal is very intentional to help make that separation very visible and legible.

 

00;21;53;29 - 00;22;01;25

DP

So did you guys have to make many structural changes to the existing building? You gutted it and it's steel? On the interior?

 

00;22;01;25 - 00;22;06;18

JW

Steel frames, multi exterior wall. We did do window replacements.

 

00;22;06;20 - 00;22;08;26

DP

Changed the way the walls are insulated?

 

00;22;08;29 - 00;23;14;11

JW

We did, yeah. We did a spray-on insulation. I know there's some critique of spray on insulation, but it really was the right material for this because it gave us our vapor barrier and our improved insulation all in one shot. But yeah, we did that on the inside of the building. One of the principles of Passive House, which is a system to really decrease the building's energy requirements, you significantly drive down the energy loads in a building using the system.

 

And the way you do that is a high performance building exterior. That's one of the strategies, is you make a high performance building exterior, which is both your windows and your insulation and your continuity of the insulation and your air vapor barrier. So in historic buildings you're somewhat limited with what you can do with that continuous insulation because you've got your slabs coming in, the slabs are buried on the exterior wall or the steel, but there's thermal bridges that just can't be avoided in these buildings of this timeframe.

 

But we did the best we could. And on balance, with the insulation on the inside and the new building’s envelope, we were able to get a building that could easily comply with the energy code. So yeah, we had to insulate the existing buildings walls and that's how we dealt with that.

 

00;23;14;18 - 00;23;22;17

DP

You guys had to replace some of the existing brick. So talk a little bit about that and then tell us what kind of brick you used on the new addition.

 

00;23;22;20 - 00;24;41;25

JW

Sure. Yeah. The existing brick, we had to undo some sins of the past at lintels the repairs that were done previously. Not quite sure when they were done with maybe a little bit less sensitivity to matching the brick and the mortar. So that was some of the repair work that we did at the existing building. The existing building also has a base, a very formal base.

 

It's a very classical design to have that base. So we wanted to, that was another one of these affinity points that we wanted with the new building. So we created this base, which was a dark grounding brick that's a Glen-Gery product, it's a Black Hills velour. The velour is the finish on the brick. So that kind of established the base of the building.

 

Then above that, we did a much lighter, more contemporary brick, also a Glen-Gery product, White Plains velour. Again, the velour is the finish of the texture of the face of the brick, and we did similar coursing, the mortar is very different. The mortar in the White Plains is its own mortar. The existing buildings, mortar repairs were their own mortar, so they would match that building's texture and coloration.

 

But through a combination of the same brick size, the same coursing, and also picking up on that limestone detailing that's in the existing building we did kind of create this affinity between the two buildings. So they're definitely distinct from each other, but they're also kind of of a family.

 

00;24;42;01 - 00;24;48;23

DP

Yeah, it's a nice touch. It ties the two buildings together. So how long did this whole process take from beginning to end?

 

00;24;48;25 - 00;26;00;29

JW

That is a good question. So the ULURP is something that you don't normally undertake. The ULURP is a discretionary approval process, so that added about a year to the design time. So I would say it took about 18 months to design the building, and the construction of it was also really complicated. It took, I think, 30 months to build it, and that included demolition, it included the excavation, and a global pandemic.

 

So it was one of these projects where, you know, we had to figure out how to do this, how to work remotely, work with the contractor, with all these site safety considerations. So we were fortunate enough that in the city there was a program that allowed for affordable housing to proceed. So it was told to the Department of Buildings that this is an affordable housing project and they give you a special permit that you post on the construction barricade.

 

And that allowed us to proceed. Now, it doesn't mean that we could proceed business as usual. Before the pandemic, there were all sorts of hand-washing stations and protocols for staff to be, you know, separate. And we would show up on site, we'd have masks, we wouldn't walk between crowds of people. So the fact that it got done in two and a half years is kind of a real testament to the partnership between ICL, the contract and the design team.

 

00;26;01;05 - 00;26;21;21

DP

So you'd mentioned the unique construction detail with this steel column that you guys had to alter the foundation for. What about some of the masonry on the exterior? Were there any unique construction details that you guys had to come up with? For example, for the connector, how did you guys end up doing that? I mean, is it all pretty straightforward?

 

00;26;21;23 - 00;27;03;24

JW

Well, yeah, I guess straightforward is a real simplification of what's involved. But yeah, we had to figure out where the steel was going to go, where we were going to break that new steel versus the existing steel. There's got to be some tolerances for movement and construction tolerances. That bridge was really made through that recessed metal reveal that you see separating the two buildings.

 

So we made it easier on ourselves by doing it in that different material that allowed for a lot of tolerance. It could be pushed back 18 inches and if, you know, was 16 inches in one place and a little bit different on the other side, you couldn't really tell because it was a very different material. So I think we're smart about making our lives in the contractors' lives a little bit easier.

 

00;27;04;01 - 00;27;08;11

DP

And how does the new additions touch the building next to it?

 

00;27;08;11 - 00;27;12;07

JW

There is a seismic joint.

 

00;27;12;07 - 00;27;13;06

DP

Really? Is that pretty typical?

 

00;27;13;06 - 00;27;41;21

JW

It's pretty typical, yeah. And it's based upon the various heights of the building. For every 50 feet it's one inch. So I think we had a setback from the property line three inches because we were just over 100 feet. So for every 50 feet you got one inch. So if you're 110, you got three inches. So we had something called an MCO joint, which is just a squishy finished joint that you kind of stuffy in after everything else is up and constructed. And that allows for any sort of seismic movement in case there's an earthquake.

 

00;27;41;23 - 00;27;45;28

DP

So tell me a little bit about the Enterprise Green Communities Program.

 

00;27;46;00 - 00;31;03;17

JW

It is a program that any affordable housing project that is going to be using public funds needs to adhere to. It's a little bit like LEED, LEED is a very broad system. So Enterprise and LEED are broad. They talk about community connected communities, recycled materials, water usage, energy usage, healthy interior environments. So that system is really helpful and I think it helps there be a consistency through all of the affordable housing that's being built now that there is this level of sustainability that is not only about carbon, it's about water, it's about interior indoor air quality.

 

So that's a really important system. The Passive House system that I've touched on a little bit earlier takes one piece of that, the energy piece of it and really ramps it up. So Passive House is about investing in that building exterior. You have a high quality envelope with continuous insulation, continuous air barrier that allows for very little air to come in or out of the building.

 

And that continuity is also part of the windows. And the windows are usually high performance windows that are either triple glazed or just high performance glazing. And what that really allows the envelope of the building to do is to be almost like a winter jacket. I think a good analogy aside from the winter jacket analogy, is like a thermos, an insulated cup versus just the standard deli coffee cup.

 

Your deli coffee cup is going to lose the heat in the coffee pretty quickly. If you've got the thermos, it's going to retain that heat for a lot longer. So what that allows you to do in the building is retain interior internal heat gains. And the internal heat gains are lighting, appliances, people occupying the space. So those internal heat gains that you can gain passively and retain in the building allow you to really drive down those heating loads in the building.

 

So in a building built in New York City, similar to 50 Nevins on its scale and its size and its number of occupants, you can heat the apartment with a hand dryer, so you really drive down those heating loads. You've got to cool the building too. So that high performance envelope also helps keep that cooled air, that energy that's invested in the air, keep that inside the building.

 

It's not leaking outside the building. You're not getting hot, humid air bleeding into the building when you're exhausting the bathrooms and the kitchen. So Passive House is really taking the energy component of any affordable housing building and really ramping up the stakes and making it a much more high performance building. There's more to it than that. The mechanical systems need to be designed and balanced for that.

 

There's domestic hot water that needs to be taken into consideration, but it's an area of practice that we are really pushing for and advocating with our clients for not only just being democratic and equitable for the buildings and the environments that they're often located in, but there's also regulatory pressures that are coming down the pike. There's something called Local Law 97, which is going to fine buildings if they don't have certain energy performance, if they emit too many emissions, whether it's carbon or sulfur dioxide or whatever, there's metrics for buildings of certain types and their sizes. And if you are not meeting those standards, there's going to be penalties to pay.

 

00;31;03;19 - 00;31;04;26

DP

So that's coming down the pike.

 

00;31;04;26 - 00;31;42;01

JW

That's coming down the pike. I think 2025 is the first threshold or maybe it's 2026. But we're designing buildings now that are going to take a year to design, two years to build. So by the time they're operational, we're in Local Law 97. So we're advising clients to not put your heads in the sand on this. You know, a lot of people aren't doing this.

 

The intense heat that we've been feeling, the wildfires in Canada, the fires and migration, we're starting to see the stuff hit the fan. So our clients are reading the writing on the wall. Local Law 97. There is a Local Law 154 that's banning gas usage.

 

00;31;42;04 - 00;31;43;20

DP

Natural gas.

 

00;31;43;20 - 00;31;53;10

JW

Yeah, natural gas. And you've actually done something that I want to check you on. Yeah, sure. It's natural gas, but who told you it's natural gas? It's fossil gas. The idea of that, it's natural. Okay.

 

00;31;53;10 - 00;31;55;02

DP

I was distinguishing from propane.

 

00;31;55;06 - 00;32;17;11

JW

Okay, well, it's kind of all the same stuff. It's all carbon that goes into the atmosphere and affects our climate. So I don't mean to be a jerk about it. And I find myself kind of being programmed by certain, you know, sales pitches and how they want you to perceive these things. So, yes, there's a natural gas ban, however nice you want to say it. So there's all these regulatory pressures.

 

00;32;17;11 - 00;32;20;23

DP

When you say local law. So this is New York State, New York City?

 

00;32;20;26 - 00;33;06;12

JW

Local law is just New York City. There's state legislation that's also banned gas fired equipment. And California's doing a similar thing. So it's amazing how much the landscape is shifting under our feet. There's a building in New York City not too far from where we are right now that was designed six or seven years ago. And one of the really innovative, cutting edge technologies that they used was to use a gas turbine to produce all of their electricity.

 

There was a cogen plant, so on the top of the building on the 73rd floor, they've got a gas turbine. And I believe it's also producing domestic hot water for the building's use, which seems, you know, at the time innovative, were going to be more independent. But I can't imagine trying to propose that sort of strategy now. So it's really amazing how much the landscape is shifting under our feet.

 

00;33;06;14 - 00;33;12;19

DP

So you've been an architect for 30 years. If you could give your younger self some career advice, what would it be?

 

00;33;12;21 - 00;33;55;23

JW

Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have been more thoughtful about sustainability and how important that is, because I think the decisions that we're making now, we're only really going to see the benefits of that or the implications or the results of that down the road and when I think about how much carbon has been put into the atmosphere since, like I think 1992, I think 50% of the carbon that's in the atmosphere was produced I think since the nineties. So it's not climate change, global warming. It's often thought about as something that's occurred in over a century. And a lot of the legacy emissions were from the beginning of the industrial revolution, but it's really not the case. It's really in this compressed time frame that's in the last 30, 40 or 50 years.

 

00;33;55;25 - 00;34;02;22

DP

John, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where could people go to learn more about Dattner Architects in New York City and yourself?

 

00;34;02;25 - 00;34;18;20

JW

It's really easy. We've got a website, Dattner.com, I think we have a good representation of our work there. You'll see that all of our work is basically in the city and we can ride the subway to get to our site. So it's a pleasure to have spoken to you today and glad to be able to share some of my experience.

 

00;34;18;23

DP

Thank you very much and great to have you here

TRANSCRIPT

 

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;10

Doug Pat (DP)

Let's go inside the vault. The design vault.

 

00;00;05;12 - 00;00;37;12

Eric Pros (EP)

The previous facility really just wasn't suiting their needs at all. They didn't have large gathering spaces. They didn't have places for fitness or any kind of wellness. So understanding all of those needs and trying to come up with a layout for the building that made all those spaces very obvious and making circulation to those spaces very easy. So we laid the building out as kind of a big donut.

 

So the circulation pass around the core. You can't get lost if you make a wrong turn, you just do a loop around the building and you're right back where you started.

 

00;00;37;14 - 00;03;04;27

DP

This is my guest, Eric Pros. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we highlight Eric's new City of Westlake Senior Community Center. The new City of Westlake Senior Community Center was designed for senior citizens. The building is quite large at 28,000 square feet, and the building typology is more and more familiar across the United States.

 

With that said, the design team used design restrictions as an opportunity. The City of Westlake, Ohio, adopted a distinctive Western reserve traditional style of architecture. All public buildings throughout Westlake are comprised of a traditional sandstone water table, a blended red brick veneer and a pitched roof with reverse gables over their entries. At the outset, it was strongly suggested by the city that all buildings in Westlake incorporate the same old Detroit red brown blend of brick in a standard modular size.

 

With these stipulations in mind, the finished building reimagines the standard running bond pattern of brick through the lens of an ancient Roman ruin. The team created a unique quarter coffer brick detail to make both the construction process repeatable and the facades uniquely textured. The resulting esthetic is innovative and quite elegant.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault.

 

Eric is Director of Design at DS Architecture in Cleveland, Ohio. He has a bachelor's and master's degree in architecture and MBA all from Kent State University. Eric has also served as a professor at Kent State teaching Design Studio and digital application courses. His focus at DS Architecture is creating accessible and inclusive design, which has led to numerous award winning projects and successful partnerships across the country.

 

He was recently awarded the American Institute of Architects 2022 Young Architect Award at the national level. He was included in the 40 under 40 class of 2022 by Building Design and Construction Network. He was also chosen as the 2022 recipient of the International Masonry Institute's Young Architect Innovator in Masonry Award. Welcome, Eric. Nice to have you with us today.

 

So tell us a little bit about DS Architecture in Cleveland, Ohio. Where are you guys located? What's the size of the firm and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;05;03 - 00;03;31;16

EP

Thanks, Doug. It's great to be here today. DS Architecture is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, and we are growing to be 20 people. We're actually making a hire very soon. We're actually celebrating our 40th year in business this year. So David Summers founded the firm in 1983, and it's been growing ever since. So I've been with the firm for about 12 years now.

 

August was my 12-year anniversary at the firm, and it's just been really incredible to see the growth over that time and to be a part of it.

 

00;03;31;19 - 00;03;34;25

DP

Had you worked at any other firms before DS Architecture?

 

00;03;35;01 - 00;04;13;18

EP

Yeah, I had an opportunity to intern as a high school student for a small design firm out on the west side of Cleveland in Vermillion and learned a lot there. They were a little bit more of a traditional firm in hadn’t fully embrace technology, so even had a chance to draw by hand and run blueprints the old way.

 

So gave me a great background into the design profession. Then as I went into college, you know, I had an opportunity to intern at a couple different firms and get a good experience learning about the industry, learning about different typologies. When I graduated, the opportunity to join DS Architecture presented itself. I've been there ever since.

 

00;04;13;20 - 00;04;16;12

DP

So what's your role in your current position?

 

00;04;16;15 - 00;04;58;26

EP

I'm the Director of Design at DS Architecture. That means a lot of different things. I have some influence and some input on all the design decisions we make at the firm. Some projects I get a lot more involved with and run through some of that project management as well. On other projects, I'm a little less involved and just there to provide feedback or to be a sounding board for the team.

 

So every project is a little bit different. The Westlake Senior Community Center Project is one of those projects where I was embedded in the team throughout the entire project. So the interview process to the ribbon cutting ceremony, I was there for the whole step. That project presented a lot of opportunities for us. It was the right one to really get involved with. So it was a pleasure.

 

00;04;58;28 - 00;05;10;21

DP

It clearly did and I'm really looking forward to digging in here. So let's talk about the building. Tell us a little bit more about the new City of Westlake Senior Community Center. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;05;10;23 - 00;06;06;25

EP

So it's a public project. Obviously, our client was the City of Westlake, so we went through a typical RFQ process where we submitted our qualifications. We put together a great team for this project. We had two engineers that we partnered with quite often on these public projects. We also brought in a subject matter expert, a firm called Lifespan Design out of Cincinnati, to serve as our senior center design consultant.

 

So they have a wealth of knowledge on designing senior centers and all the details that go into that. So that team is the reason why we won. I think our passion for design and the team we had built really gave us a chance to win that one. So again, went through the interview process, was awarded the project. The City of Westlake was our client and we had the end users.

 

A win by anybody. Agad is the director there. So she was sort of our client in a way. But we're working with the City of Westlake is our point of contact.

 

00;06;06;28 - 00;06;10;23

DP

So you guys did not know the clients before you submitted the RFQ?

 

00;06;10;26 - 00;06;31;11

EP

That's correct. This was our first project with the city. Like so brand new client. That's part of the fun with the public projects. We always meet new people, and even though it's a similar project to maybe another community, every community has a different character. They have a different vision for how they'll use the space. So it's always a new relationship that we get a chance to build.

 

00;06;31;14 - 00;06;34;11

DP

So how far was the location from your office?

 

00;06;34;14 - 00;06;45;25

EP

Not too far. About 20 minutes. Just near west side of Cleveland. So there's a highway that connects the two pretty closely. So very easy to get there, and we're proud to be working in our community.

 

00;06;45;27 - 00;06;48;28

DP

Could you give us a little history of the location?

 

00;06;49;01 - 00;07;27;01

EP

Sure. The senior center is located in the recreational campus for the City of Westlake . They have a parking space that they've designated for the public to use. It has a rec center. It has baseball fields, pickleball courts, a fishing pond, even sledding hills. So it's a place for the community to gather. This project wanted to be a part of that overall campus, but have its own identity.

 

Before this, the senior center was located in an old golf clubhouse and it really wasn't suited to their needs, wasn't designed for the uses there. So they wanted to be a part of that overall civic campus. What have their own space?

 

00;07;27;04 - 00;07;33;05

DP

So the scope of the project is pretty obvious. Could you give us a little bit more about the client's programmatic requirements?

 

00;07;33;07 - 00;09;09;09

EP

Absolutely. Working with the senior center and understanding the users and the types of spaces that they would be using there gave us an opportunity to really get an insight into the daily operations of the senior center and learning all of the wonderful programs that they have. The previous facility really just wasn't suiting their needs at all. They didn't have large gathering spaces.

 

They didn't have places for fitness or any kind of wellness. So understanding all of those needs and trying to come up with a layout for the building that made all those spaces very obvious and making circulation to those spaces very easy. So we laid the building out is kind of a big donut. So the circulation pass around the core, you can't get lost. If you make a wrong turn you just do a loop around the building and you're right back where you started thinking about visibility and in views through the building from the building to the building were really critical for us. The wayfinding that we did for the project made it so that anyone who was coming to that building for any of the programs they have has a very clear path to get from the parking lot to the building and to the program safely.

 

We located the administrative offices right in the front of the building near where there is a drop off and clear view of the parking lot. So in Cleveland, our winters can be pretty rough and we wanted to make sure that there was visibility out into the parking lot in case a car were to get stuck or someone would have trouble getting from their car to the building.

 

So thinking about the views and that connection between the staff and the patrons was really critical.

 

00;09;09;12 - 00;09;19;18

DP

So let's back up a sec and talk a little bit about the site. It seems to me there were no unique topographic features for the building. The land is relatively flat other than the sledding hill.

 

00;09;19;18 - 00;10;09;18

EP

Correct. It's a very flat site and because of the users with possible mobility issues, thinking about making the site as level and as flat and is easy to navigate as possible was critical for us. We did introduce some landscape elements, some kind of mounting to provide some interesting views to the building, provide a little privacy from some of the other users in the recreational campus, and also to provide a bit of a buffer between this facility and the neighboring residences because it's in this park, we have a lot of activity on one side of the building.

 

On the other side, there are people's homes. So we wanted to make sure we were good neighbor. The nature of this building, it's not loud, doesn't stay open late, but we did want to make sure we had that proper separation between the uses here and people's backyards.

 

00;10;09;20 - 00;10;21;10

DP

And what about project restrictions? You've got the job. Now you've got to look at the zoning codes and building codes, etc. Anything unique or special regarding like ADA, for example?

 

00;10;21;15 - 00;11;16;20

EP

With this project, because we were designing for seniors that may or may not have mobility issues, we took ADA compliance very seriously and even went into more of a mindset of universal design where we didn't want to have any slopes more than 20%. We wanted to make sure that we had handrails around the perimeter of the building for someone who's walking, it may need to take a break between two locations.

 

So we really thought a lot about the types of people using the space, how to give them dignity while they're using it, and to make it a space where people feel comfortable. One of the biggest challenges is getting seniors to come out, connect, feel comfortable, create those relationships. And that was one of the challenges that this building had, was finding ways to make all that happen without making it look geriatric or like a senior home or a hospital, but having those features there when you need them.

 

00;11;16;27 - 00;11;24;23

DP

So I'm sure the city reviewed the design. How long did the planning process take the City Review and design and construction kind of start to finish?

 

00;11;24;25 - 00;12;37;02

EP

Yeah, that's a good question. The city was very involved as our client, obviously the city engineer, were our main port of contact, so they helped us through the process. They were there to sort of lead that design because it was a high profile public project for the community. We got a lot of feedback from the community, especially those that the neighbors that abutted the property had concerns and we certainly wanted to address all of those.

 

So the process was involved. We got a lot of feedback. We had many, many public meetings trying to find the right way to position it on the site, trying to find the right way to make sure respecting the neighbors, making the building visible. A lot of parameters there to navigate. Ultimately did we got through and even the style of the building was something that people felt very passionate about.

 

As you mentioned at the beginning, it's in this campus that has a Western Reserve style to it. We wanted the building to fit into that campus, but also have its own identity, and that gave us certainly a design challenge. How do we make something that feels traditional but doesn't feel too dated or has new energy in life, which is what the seniors need out of this building? So it was a challenge, certainly was.

 

00;12;37;04 - 00;13;36;06

DP

So the City of Westlake set up some restrictions, obviously, what material the buildings made out of, but they didn't say how to form those brick modules on the exterior. Correct? And so you guys decided we've got 28,000 square feet in the buildings, a giant donut. So we have these large facades and you're thinking about what the heck can we do with a building that most architects would simply probably not spend a lot of time thinking about these exterior elevations?

 

When I saw these photos, I got to tell you, I was blown away. This is a gorgeous series of details and it must have taken quite some time for the office to put these together. So let's talk a little bit about start to finish. Who came up with this idea and how did you guys start thinking about the fact that we're going to use an ancient Roman ruin?

 

And where do you go with that and how do you articulate that in the office and how many different passes did it take, etc.?

 

00;13;36;08 - 00;15;26;14

EP

Thank you for appreciating the challenge that that presented. As you mentioned, you know, we sort of inherited a kit of parts, the tools of the materials that we needed to use for the project. But as you indicated, how they come together is really what's interesting. As an architect, you can take a brick and detail that a number of different ways and get a lot of other results out of it.

 

Then what might be expected. So as you indicated, the Pantheon was sort of our inspiration for this project. The layout of the building is focused around this courtyard, which brings natural light into the building, makes it a focal point for people to gather. Even if the weather's not cooperating, you can still go outside and be under these covered canopies, so you can at least get some fresh air.

 

Enjoy the weather in Cleveland when it is appropriate to do so. So the Pantheon became sort of a inspiration for the overall way that the buildings felt, the way that light came into the space, energized that space, created a focal point and really made that volume inspiring. People that are familiar with the Pantheon, the most dramatic spaces when you get into that covered dome and you have the lake coming into the oculus in the way that light spills over those coffers is just incredible.

 

Every time you're there, the light looks differently. The shadows that are cast on those coffers are just truly inspiring. So we took that idea and instead of making it part of the interior, we express that on the exterior. So we took the idea of a coffer and developed a detail out of bricks that accomplished those shadows, the as light across the surface and detailed it in a way that we could get as much drama out of those details as possible.

 

So as you indicated, the quarter coffer we kind of took that coffer detail and took a corner of it and use that as the inspiration for the exterior.

 

00;15;26;21 - 00;15;32;17

DP

For those that are listening who don't understand what a coffer is. Could you describe that to people?

 

00;15;32;20 - 00;16;06;15

EP

Yeah. So a coffer, particularly in the pantheon, it's a concrete dome and these are recesses that are carved into that mass. The Pantheon has a series of kind of steps to their coffers too. So there's even more shadow, there's more depth to that material. And the massiveness of that concrete is really celebrated in that way. You can get a sense of how much depth and how much mass there is to that form.

 

And then the way that light interacts with that space just really energizes it and creates that dramatic effect we wanted to capture.

 

00;16;06;18 - 00;16;26;22

DP

If I recall correctly. So the coffers create a kind of structural grid. And there also the concrete is thinned out toward the center in order to make the concrete lighter so that it actually works. So it's a really interesting idea. I can't wait to get into how these masons and you guys work this whole thing out.

 

00;16;26;25 - 00;17;52;15

EP

But again, yeah, using the idea of the coffered dome as a way to catch light, in a way to show the passage of time, but also to create something that's massive and feels permanent and feels welcoming in a way too, because of the volume of the space that became sort of our inspiration for the exterior, we made many iterations on exactly how we can capture so depths out of an otherwise flat wall.

 

Some of the spaces of this building are large. There's an auditorium space that has a very tall volume of space, and we didn't want any windows on the exterior of that. So what do you do with an 18 foot high brick wall? We had some ideas. We had some great ideas on how to make some depth, how to make the building feel enticing, and to take light differently in the morning than it would in the afternoon.

 

The colors change as light conditions change across it. So we took that detail and wrapped the entire building with it. Once we came up with the one that we liked, we just used that module in a number of different ways. It gave us a chance to explore the depths of the wall. There's was only four inches from the outside base of the brick to the back, but the subtlety of how we either could build the brick or slope them and step them back gave us opportunity to get nuances out of the shadows that you wouldn't think were possible out of a four inch gap there.

 

00;17;52;17 - 00;18;02;29

DP

So there's a lot to talk about here. I guess my first question is, did you have to make the exterior walls four inches deeper in order to accommodate that four inch dimension?

 

00;18;03;01 - 00;18;43;15

EP

We did, yeah. We took our typical brick cavity of maybe an inch to two inches and pushed that to more like four inches. So we had the ability to still have that drainage plain, still have proper brick detailing, but we also then had that depth to work with. So the base of the building is a calcium silicate sandstone looking product.

 

And behind that we just had some for CMU to help build out that mass, the typical Western Reserve style, you'd see a sandstone base. We embraced that idea kind of let that be the place that everything else would be housed on and then use that brick to start to articulate the facade and explore that depth.

 

00;18;43;18 - 00;18;47;19

DP

So when you guys drew this, did you draw it in both 2D and 3D?

 

00;18;47;22 - 00;20;01;13

EP

We sure did. And in fact, we went a step further and actually built a physical model. We were still in lockdown from COVID at this point, so maybe had a little more free time on my hands than I normally would have. But I thought it would be a great opportunity to take our digital models, our sketches, some of our inspiration images, and actually build a physical mockup of what that detail could look like.

 

So I went on Amazon and bought some small little bricks that I think are used to build dollhouses or maybe model train environments and actually built it. I built a whole panel of the quarter coffer detail and I had fun with it. I learned some ideas about how to detail it more appropriately. I think the Masons laughed a little bit when I brought it out on site to show them what I was thinking, but I think they also respected the fact that I took the time to try to communicate our ideas in that way.

 

But we use building information, modeling software called Revit that helps us visualize the materials in our digital environment. But building it in a physical sense, gave us opportunity to really kind of see the way light shines on it in a real world. So we built it at one inch to a foot scale. So it was about two feet tall, not a small model, but they had a lot of fun with that.

 

00;20;01;15 - 00;20;22;01

DP

It sounds really cool. You know, one of the things that's really elegant about this detail, I don't recall how many steps are in the coffers at the Pantheon, maybe two or three, but this has many as a series of steps. And each one of those what's the distance on each one? A quarter of an inch or a half of an inch?

 

00;20;22;03 - 00;20;23;29

EP

It's about a quarter of an inch. Yeah, you're right.

 

00;20;24;02 - 00;20;26;18

DP

Yeah. So it's super subtle.

 

00;20;26;21 - 00;20;55;16

EP

Yes, exactly. And then certain points the day you don't even appreciate the fact that they are going up, other times a day when the sun's more an oblique angle, you get lots of shadow, lots of kind of linear lines that come out of that that completely change the look of the building and that's what we really enjoyed is from the morning light to the evening light, sort of subtle and soft.

 

And then by the afternoon you really get some stark shadows and some really striking depth out of that detail.

 

00;20;55;23 - 00;21;21;27

DP

What I love about this show is the guests that we have, they're architects, but they're doing what we're taught to do in school, right? I mean, that's really think about what you're doing. So another architect in my mind, most architects would take this project and do, as I said earlier, something very straightforward, right? They just take the easy way out and do a really simple facade. But you guys really thought through this to an absolutely beautiful detail.

 

00;21;22;01 - 00;21;22;13

EP

Thank you.

 

00;21;22;19 - 00;21;26;13

DP

So was sustainability an issue ever for the building's design?

 

00;21;26;15 - 00;23;32;11

EP

It was. We didn't pursue LEED certification for this project, but we certainly wanted to be mindful about sustainability, the longevity of this building, hopefully being in service for many decades. We wanted the building to be an asset to the City of Westlake and something that they can be proud of for the long term. So as I mentioned before, you know, accessibility users had to come first, but we saw it a lot about natural light.

 

For instance, how do we bring light into all those spaces in ways that enhance the user experience and avoid glare and make the building kind of energized in that way? So lighting was one of the really great tools that we used in this project to just flood the spaces with light in different ways that make the spaces more exciting and at the same time more sustainable.

 

We have a light harvesting, daylight harvesting system in the building. So if there's enough natural light to the exterior, the interior lights dim automatically. So in the evenings obviously the lights come back up to provide the lighting the way we needed to. You know, thinking about resiliency, Masonry is a wonderful product for public buildings. This building, as I mentioned, will be in service for 50 years, hopefully.

 

So throughout that time, we really hope that the bricks will serve them well and be a good investment in the future in that building. So the envelope of building behind the masonry veneer, we really invested in a fluid wall system that provides that thermal barrier that we need. We had a sheeting product that has a factory applied weather barrier, so the whole system came together great.

 

We had a rigid insulation continuous around the entire building and even filled the cavity of the metal studs behind it with spray foam. So we have a really tight envelope there. We have a lot of masonry in the buildings, kind of these two flanking bars that are mostly masonry. And in the middle of the building is very transparent, very open.

 

So we have a lot of glazing through the middle of the building. We found a glazing product that had high energy performance for us there to mimic the performance in the masonry.

 

00;23;32;14 - 00;23;41;07

DP

So you guys clearly learned a little bit more about using brick masonry. Have you guys used this idea again in other projects or something similar to it?

 

00;23;41;14 - 00;24;18;20

EP

That's a good question. We try to be unique. We try to have each project be a new challenge and a new opportunity to try to use Masonry in a new way. So in some ways we learned some detailing, we learned some constraints, we learned some construction methodologies that we've certainly taken forward. But I don't know that we'll use this exact same detail again.

 

I think we'll find a way to continue to innovate. For me anyways, I'd like to do something a little new. Each project. I think that's what architects can do for a project too. If we did another senior center, I think we would take a completely new look at it. I don't think we would try to replicate really anything. It's a new adventure.

 

00;24;18;25 - 00;24;24;17

DP

That's great to hear. Spoken like a true architect. So did you guys have any trouble finding a good mason?

 

00;24;24;19 - 00;25;45;08

EP

The contractor we worked with had a mason that was under their umbrella. They self perform masonry. So when they were building the project, they had a lot of questions and we had a lot of good conversations with them very early on. And really happy with the product. We got Mason's insight. They were passionate about their craft, they were excited for the challenge.

 

We had a lot of good collaboration back and forth. They were calling me throughout the day asking me, Are we doing this right or understanding what you're looking for? Or even, Hey, you know, we've got an idea that can make it even better. Or what about this? So having that energy, having that connection with the craftspeople that are doing the work I think is really important.

 

You know, a lot of times as architects, we do our drawings, they go out the door, somebody else builds it, and there's really never that opportunity to kind of interface with the folks that are actually doing that work. In this case, though, we built a great relationship. I'd be very happy to work with those guys again. They were wonderful.

 

They were even some younger apprentices that were on the job that I think had never really done any projects before, let alone something with this amount of care. So I think they learned a lot. I think the foremen on the job had a chance to teach a lot, so I hope they were inspired by the project and would move forward with a renewed passion for the profession.

 

00;25;45;11 - 00;26;01;27

DP

I hear a lot about how difficult it is to find people to learn masonry, so it's good to hear that there are people out there learning the craft. So back to the mock up real quickly. So you clearly did a mock up. Did these guys then do one giant panel for you before they got rolling?

 

00;26;01;29 - 00;28;05;16

EP

That's a great question. So the International Masonry Institute, first of all, they are wonderful resource. The people. There are just a wealth of knowledge and they're there to help you answer questions, help you work through details. So I engage with them quite often when we're looking at some of these details, it's always good to get a second set of eyes, or many of those people actually were Masons or worked in the trades in some capacity.

 

So they may have some wisdom on other means and methods of how to install that. But in this particular project we engage them and asked if we could build a mock up very early in the design process to test out some ideas. We had some thoughts about can we make precast lintels with bricks formed into a concrete beam to accomplish some of those steps that we had?

 

Could we run stainless steel rods through the brick cores and kind of build a structure that way? But we ended up doing a little more traditional lintels to accomplish that goal. But we did have a chance to explore those ideas. And so the great thing there they have apprentices that are coming through the training program that are available to help build mockups.

 

So as an architect, I get a chance to interface with the future of the masonry profession. They get a chance to work with an architect very early in their trainings and look at drawings and start to understand how to read drawings and how to interface with design professionals. So very thankful for that resource and it's actually very close as well.

 

It's only maybe a half hour away. So we had the Masons that were building the job look at some of the photos we did of the mockup. We had some diagrams of how those bricks could come together and we had the trainers out there at the center available to answer any questions about how big do our anchors need to be or how are we detailing the flashing at some of these connections or interfacing with the international Masons, who is just a wonderful opportunity.

 

I don't think they're sick of me coming out there yet and borrowing their apprentices. So I'll keep taking them up on the opportunity.

 

00;28;05;23 - 00;28;17;27

DP

Great to hear. So switching gears, Eric, you're a young and successful guy. Do you have any advice for young architects out there that's been helpful to you along your journey?

 

00;28;18;00 - 00;29;41;27

EP

Boy, how much time do we have? I guess, you know, for me, I think you brought up a good point earlier that sometimes the easy thing to do is kind of what's expected. We always have budgets, we always have schedules. We have all these constraints that seem to limit our ability to create and be creative and innovate on, you know, brick.

 

We used a modular brick unit and got a really different result out of it than maybe otherwise could have been possible. So I think it's important to remember what we passionate about and trying to find the time to make that a priority in the project. You know, the client didn't come to us necessarily and say we want a really cool brick detail. We want something that's different. We had to kind of convince them that this building is worth investing in. It's worth doing something a little bit different. It wants to have its own identity and it also wants to fit into the context from a couple thousand feet away. You wouldn't really notice some of those details as you get closer to the building and more intimate with the spaces, that's when you really start to appreciate some of the richness.

 

And the end users of the building are what it's all about. They're the ones that are going to this building, hopefully being inspired by the brick by the other details of the project. To me, that's what it's all about. So we certainly could have taken the easy road and just made it a flat brick wall. But we wanted to do a little better for those people.

 

00;29;41;29 - 00;29;50;11

DP

There are going to be people that want me to ask, Did it cost more because you ended up making the exterior detailing more challenging?

 

00;29;50;14 - 00;30;47;03

EP

I would have to say that the material cost was about the same. We still use the same quantity of brick as we otherwise would have. The labor that went into it, I think was a little more time consuming. So again, having that early opportunity to collaborate with those Masons explained to them the goals, explained to them that he once you do this detail, once it repeats around the building, figure out a methodology to accomplish this and then just keep doing it.

 

So they came up with some pretty interesting ways. It's always fascinating to see the Masons out there in the field working, but using plumb bobs and using some wooden kind of jigs to help establish some of those flat planes that are pushed in. How do we measure the corbels that are coming out? They had built some jigs that would help repeat that pattern, so they got innovative out there in the field as well and found some ways to speed up that process, but certainly was more time consuming than just your typical one on top of two.

 

00;30;47;09 - 00;30;54;12

DP

Yeah, but it didn't break the bank, right? I mean, it was something they thought, hey, let's just do this. And it was well worth it in my opinion.

 

00;30;54;14 - 00;31;27;04

EP

It took a little convincing. I had to prove to them that this effect, this detail, would be something that is worth investing in. And I think, you know, if more people were to put some challenges out there to the Masons and maybe help them make this more the norm, it wouldn't take quite as much convincing. But I think at the end of the day, the Masons went into it with a little bit of concerns.

 

They were a little unsure, but it was really awesome to see throughout the project. They really start to take pride in it and really get excited about the project. It was a great relationship.

 

00;31;27;06 - 00;31;34;05

DP

Eric it’s been great to have you here today. Thanks so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about DS Architecture and yourself?

 

00;31;34;07 - 00;32;50;03

EP

We have our web site, DSArchitecture.com. We're located downtown Cleveland in Playhouse Square on the ground floor. So we actually have the model I was describing to you in our window there. So anybody is walking by downtown, Cleveland, pop by and take a look at it and some other fun details we've developed. Stop in. I'd love to talk with you more.

 

Just a quick anecdote, too. As I was talking earlier, you know, the end users of these buildings are really what it's all about. And someone who goes this facility in Westlake happened to be downtown, saw a logo in our lobby area and actually came in just to thank us. And in this particular detail, he was thanking us for is the way we built in some handrails into the walls of a donut kind of hallway that we built in it.

 

And you don't know that it's a handrail, It's a flat panel. It's kind of rounded top to it and a little bit of a recess. And again, it's to give people dignity. If you're walking from the classroom to the bathrooms and you need to take a break for a moment to catch your breath, you've got a way to do that that doesn't make you feel feeble or like you're meeting assistance.

 

And this gentleman just came into thank us for being that thoughtful. And, you know, it's those kind of details and those kind of moments that just really made this profession so enjoyable.

 

00;32;50;10 - 00;33;02;05

DP

Wow, great story. I can't imagine many architects get to say somebody stopped in to tell them how excited they were about a detail or about something about their building. I'm sure that made you feel great.

 

00;33;02;08 - 00;33;02;27

EP

It was incredible.

 

00;33;03;02 - 00;33;05;23

DP

Well, thank you very much, Eric. It's been a pleasure having you today.

 

00;33;06;00 - 00;33;09;06

EP

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;05;09

Doug Patt (DP)

Let's go inside the vault. The design vault.

 

00;00;05;11 - 00;00;35;04

David Kubik (DK)

From avenue to Avenue across all of these 11 buildings. That was generally programmatically, what was sought after by the client was good commercial space, whether it was retail or office. So then really the next question was, okay, let's look at these buildings, understand which ones were perhaps more intact, more attractive the way they were, which ones could receive some additions, and were there any buildings that just didn't have really kind of great architectural character and warranted demolition and starting over and so we had a little bit of all those.

 

00;00;35;07 - 00;02;59;25

DP

This is my guest, David Kubik, AIA. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we’ll highlight David's project called Gansevoort Row. BKSK Architects made its imprint on the Gansevoort Market Historic District in New York City with a collection of landmark approvals. The redevelopment of a full block of tattered, low rise commercial buildings near the High Line.

Through careful analysis, BKSK made a strong rationale for taller building heights and some new construction along portions of the block. The new development project has a roster of luxury retailers, commercial and office space. The row buildings include existing facades, along with a creative variety of contemporary versions. Interestingly, each new building of various sizes features a unique blend of colors and patterns of brick.

The street facades maintain a turn of the century aesthetic with traditional elements and details, while employing modern windows and expansive metal awnings.

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault.

Today we're talking to David Kubik, AIA. David Kubik holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Architecture degree from the University of Maryland. He joined BKSK in 2003 and was named partner in 2018.

He works on the design of both institutional and development projects and is experienced at coordinating large consultant teams with expansive layers of complexity. He is currently the partner in charge of two new high end multi residential buildings for BKSK, the Keller and 111 Charles Street, both in the West Village and the recently completed 601 Washington Street. He also led the design of two commercial development projects in the Gansevoort Market Historic District, one of which we will discuss today, the Gansevoort Row redevelopment.

David has received an award for Excellence in Design and fellowships at both the graduate and Baccalaureate levels, as well as a thesis citation. David taught Design Studio as an adjunct lecturer in the Architectural Technology program at the City University of New York. So welcome, David. Nice to have you with us today. So, tell us a little bit about BKSK in New York City.

So where are you guys located? What's the size of the firm and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;00;04 - 00;03;30;13

DK

Well, thanks for having me. A little bit more about BKSK Architects. The firm was founded in 1985. We've always, right from the beginning, been a firm focused on ambitious design, really over a broad range of typologies, whether commercial or residential institutional. And as we're going to talk about today, we have many, many projects that have obtained approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. That's a particularly special part of our practice. The firm is located here in New York City. We're on West 38th Street. It's currently led by six partners and we're about 50 people.

 

00;03;30;15 - 00;03;32;12

DP

So how long have you guys been in New York City?

 

00;03;32;19 - 00;03;43;26

DK

We've been here practicing since 1985, and we were down on 25th Street for a number of years. We recently moved up to West 38th Street in 2020, which was an exciting time to move an office.

 

00;03;44;02 - 00;03;46;22

DP

How was that? Was that fraught with challenges?

 

00;03;46;23 - 00;04;12;05

DK

It was fraught with challenges. We literally moved the weekend of the shutdown. So, we moved out of our old office on the Friday and moved into our new office on that Saturday. And if everyone recalls, Sunday was the day that New York City really, effectively, shut down. So, we plugged in our new server, plugged in all of our new computers, and crossed their fingers that everyone could log in remotely on Monday morning. And miraculously, it all worked.

 

00;04;12;12 - 00;04;15;02

DP

That is unbelievable. So, you guys weren't fully remote.

 

00;04;15;04 - 00;04;21;01

DK

Fully remote as many did for a number of months. But yes, all of that came down to literally a day.

 

00;04;21;08 - 00;04;25;19

DP

As an aside, did that last for employees or is everybody back in the office now?

 

00;04;25;22 - 00;04;37;12

DK

We're all back in the office now. We kind of have some flexibility in terms of working remotely like many do. You know, you can have kind of a hybrid week somewhat, but like many companies, for a number of months, we were fully remote, which is tricky for an architecture firm.

 

00;04;37;19 - 00;04;42;22

DP

Absolutely. So, tell us a little bit about yourself. So how did you end up at BKSK?

 

00;04;42;24 - 00;06;07;23

DK

Sure. So, as you noted in the introduction, I was attending University of Maryland. I grew up in New Jersey, so always had kind of a fondness for the New York City area, was really excited by the architecture that was happening there. So, while I was still a student at the University of Maryland, I did have a summer internship with Clement and Holl Span architects, who are really also well-known mid-sized firm here in New York.

After graduating, I worked for about a year and a half at Michael Graves Architect. Most people don't know this, but they did at the time have a New York City branch office. They were not just in Princeton, New Jersey. So, I worked for them for a little bit. And then in 2003, I joined BKSK Architects. And at the time I was really looking for work where I could have a heavy involvement in the creation of the construction documents and during Construction administration.

I loved the work that BKSK had. There was a real high level of design ambition and you could tell there was a real study and appreciation for the craft of what they were making. And I loved the idea that I could be both involved in the design and documentation as well as have the opportunity to be on site while it was being built, which on some of the larger firms, sometimes that's not always in the cards.

So, it was a little bit of a shift for me to go to an office that was a little bit smaller, a little bit more locally focused. But there was something that I recognized I was really interested in and BKSK was able to provide that. So, it was a really rewarding shift and I really enjoyed that practice.

 

00;06;07;25 - 00;06;13;13

DP

So now you're a partner. Has that changed at all your role in the office? Or tell us a little bit about what you do now.

 

00;06;13;16 - 00;07;17;01

DK

Sure. So obviously some things change, and I'm happy to say that many things haven't. Sure, my role has changed. I'm involved in more projects; I'm overseeing those projects in the kind of sort of senior leadership role you'd expect when you hear the term partner. But – and our office is a little bit bigger now than it was when I joined in 2003 – but,  I would say that the ethos has not changed and we still, as architects, as kind of a tight knit group there in the office, were still very much focused on what I was describing earlier, which is high level of ambition in the design work that we do. And we really like to understand how things get built and the craft in which it takes to build them.

So, we enjoy working with contractors. That's not an adversarial relationship. We like to be on site, you know, and communicate directly with the subcontractors and the general contractors. And that's a process that we see can have a lot of opportunity for collaboration. And again, doesn't have to be this sort of adversarial standoff, which sometimes it can unfortunately sort of devolve into. But we try to make sure it doesn't go there and that everyone's working together in the sandbox to create something beautiful.

 

00;07;17;08 - 00;07;24;10

DP

Let's dig in here and talk about our building. Tell us a little bit about the Gansevoort Row project. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;07;24;16 - 00;09;12;02

DK

One of our existing clients, a client that we had already completed a number of projects with us, approached us about this project over our capital. I definitely can go on and on about that. Relationships. We're really happy with that relationship. They're a terrific client. They understand what it means to do a project of quality.

And so, we were honored when they came to us about this opportunity and this site. It's on the south side of Gansevoort Street, stretching from Avenue to Avenue, from Greenwich Street to Washington Street. It's really three pieces of property. But when you look across those parcels, it's really 11 individual historic structures that occupy these three properties. So, it was really quite a collection of buildings and structures that we had to grapple with and understand. They were all a little different. Some were more carefully preserved and intact than others, but the entire site had to be presented into the Landmarks Preservation Commission and whatever we designed, they had to approve.

So, what's interesting about that process, I think right out of the gate is that, if you're working on a site that is not subject to LPC approval, the very first thing you do is understand what the local zoning regulations allow you to build. How tall can I go? How big can I go and plan? What is the bulk that's permitted? How many square feet of floor area can I build? When you're in a landmarks district, you do not have rights to that floor area. You have to present a design that is compelling and as they deem, quote unquote, appropriate. It's often the case that you do not get to realize all of the square feet or all of the bulk that zoning might describe for that particular district. And that happened here, too. We didn't reach the full floor area allowed. We realized a lot of floor area for the developer, which is of course good for them. But we did have to present something that was appropriate for the neighborhood, appropriate for the scale on the street and the specific site context that we were dealing with.

 

00;09;12;05 - 00;09;16;01

DP

So, tell us a little bit about that. So LPC is Landmark Property.

 

00;09;16;06 - 00;09;18;19

DK

Landmarks Preservation Commission, so LPC for short.

 

00;09;18;19 - 00;09;22;20

DP

And you said they had to approve what you guys designed. How does that work?

 

00;09;22;25 - 00;09;50;24

DK

Because they were in a historic district. It's the Gansevoort market district. Anything that gets proposed has to first go in front of the LPC group and they have to review it and approve it before you can get your building permit, before you can get your approval at the local building department. So, it's not a, quote unquote, as of right district where you just follow the local code, follow the local zoning and you're off and running. We have this extra step of scrutiny. Whatever we present, they ultimately have to approve.

 

00;09;51;02 - 00;10;02;25

DP

I saw a great photograph; I think it was on the website from 1938. So, tell us a little bit about the history of the site. Is it interesting and why hasn't it been developed to this point? And what has happened along the way?

 

00;10;02;29 - 00;12;06;24

DK

It is very interesting. It has many chapters which we could spend hours talking about, but I'll summarize it a little bit in the sense that there was different types of buildings that were built here, whether it was a store and loft building or more of a warehouse building or purpose built garage buildings. In this district, you would see many different types of buildings. It wasn't sort of so perfectly monolithic like in some other historic districts. And in, generally speaking, many of these buildings were built to a certain height, often around five stories, six stories. And then when the city kind of really fell into tough economic times, a lot of these buildings were cut down to two stories because it was a strategy for building owners to pay less in taxes.

Unfortunately, a lot of these quite nice historic buildings would get cut down arbitrarily to two stories because that's just what made sense if you had a store and maybe one level of offices or storage above but, they didn't really need more than that. And this area of Manhattan on the far, far west Side, you know, became this sort of meatpacking district. And it just wasn't very desirable real estate in New York City for many, many decades. And then as economic growth has kind of pushed the city in recent years and decades, you know, finally this neighborhood has become a place where it's seen as advantageous to develop. High line, obviously, changed a lot of that. The new Whitney Museum, being literally on the opposite corner from this site, changed a lot of that. And our developer, Aurora Capital, are really responsible for a lot of the development in this neighborhood.

So, they've really boosted the appeal and the economic viability of this neighborhood. So, it was interesting to really understand the history of those buildings and it was sort of time for the next chapter of what could happen with these buildings. And so, your original reference, the 1938 photo, we looked at a lot of that carefully because it was obviously history and context that matters when you're dealing with these buildings. And in some cases there were narratives about bringing some of these buildings back up to their original five story height and in other cases not, which we can get into a little bit more specifically. But yeah, it was a bit of a mixed bag.

 

00;12;06;27 - 00;12;16;16

DP

So, I understand the scope of the project was to create successful retail, commercial and office space. Tell us a little bit about the scope and then the programmatic requirements.

 

00;12;16;18 - 00;15;29;27

DK

Sure. So, from avenue to avenue, across all of these 11 buildings, that was generally programmatically what was sought after by the client was good commercial space, whether it was retail or office. So then really the next question was, okay, let's look at these buildings, understand which ones were perhaps more intact, more attractive the way they were, which ones could receive some additions. And were there any buildings that just didn't have really kind of great architectural character and warranted demolition and starting over? And so, we had a little bit of all of those. So, you know, if you start generally looking at the block on the eastern end, there were more buildings that were pretty intact, had good architectural character. And we got from a sense in the community that they were cherished a bit more than some of the others.

So, you'll see on the eastern end the scale kind of stayed down at two stories. On the western end, there were two sort of blocks of buildings, one which comprised of five store and loft buildings, almost tenement style rowhouse looking type buildings, but more commercial oriented. Those buildings were all cut down from five stories to two. So, we proposed to put a three-story addition on that two story structure and raise that to a five story building.

And then lastly, on the western end of the property, and that piece of property being directly across from the Whitney, was just a one-story garage building kind of purpose-built garage building. It was not an original building in the district and really had no kind of architectural merit or character to speak of in the historic designation report for the neighborhood, it was described as non-contributing, which is also a term they use for buildings that might be in a historic district but were really never part of the original fabric and don't have any real value or they're not adding value to the district. So that was a corner property that was deemed acceptable to kind of demolish, remove that one story structure, and build something brand new. So, on that far western end, we proposed a new six story kind of warehouse loft looking building. And this goes back to the strategy of where is it viable to add bulk and square footage for the developer to kind of realize their investment? And where does it make sense to not do that?

And so, it was in a sort of perfect, even monolithic approach. Let's just add two or three stories across the whole block from avenue and avenue. We didn't do that. We said, you know what, on the western end, it makes more architectural sense to grow the properties and go higher. And on the eastern end, it makes more sense to keep them a little lower.

What was also interesting about this project was, you could imagine the owner could have very easily said, okay, we have three pieces of property here. Let's go to three different architects and just treat them like three individual projects and go to landmarks three individual times. But we didn't do that, and I think that was really smart on behalf of the owner, regardless of who they hired, to treat this as one job because you could treat it almost like an urban design exercise, a master planning exercise, you could look at the whole block and sort of horse trade square footage and decide where was it more appropriate and palatable to pump up the square footage and where was it not. And so, I think that we recognized it as a unique opportunity. We wanted to get our heads around, immediately about, where does the architecture support this intervention and where maybe does it not.

 

00;15;30;04 - 00;15;35;06

DP

So, at the end of the day, were there any project restrictions in terms of the heights of the buildings?

 

00;15;35;13 - 00;16;57;15

DK

Definitely. There was a lot of scrutiny about height, but it wasn't coming through either a code or zoning regulation. It was coming through an in-depth conversation with the Landmarks Preservation Committee and the Community board. So, when the Landmarks Preservation Commission approves your project, their permit has a title, and at the top it's Certificate of Appropriateness. Their measure of, you know, whether or not something should be approved really centers around that term appropriateness. So, it's very subjective.

So, they're looking at the context. How tall are the buildings around you? What are the styles of those buildings? What are the colors of those buildings? Do they have a lot of glass? Do they have a little bit of glass? You know, is all of the architectural language context bulk history. So, it's about storytelling is one way we like to think about it. What is the narrative that justifies your project? Like, what is the big idea of your project? And it has to be rooted in the history of the site, the context of site, and an appropriateness. So, there was a lot of analyzation of what were these buildings.

You mentioned the 1938 photo. That was one photo that was really important. There were many others. And so, you're really crafting a story. You're telling a story. So, what we proposed, we hope, extends the sort of natural evolution of this block like I was referring to earlier. This block has many chapters, and this is just the next chapter. Buildings go up, they come down, they go up again. And this will kind of be an evolution that the neighborhood will probably continue to see.

 

00;16;57;17 - 00;17;06;02

DP

Since the process with the planning commission was so subjective, how many people are on the planning commission? Was that really challenging? Because everybody's got to agree, right?

 

00;17;06;05 - 00;17;34;27

DK

Sure. I can't recall the exact number right now. I think it's around ten commissioners. And so, you know, you have to have a majority of the commissioners to obtain approval. You don't have to have unanimous approval. We went to the Landmarks Commission two times in order to obtain that approval. But we involved ourselves with a lot of kind of community engagement and – and meetings ahead of time because we wanted to make sure that what we were bringing was something that was viable and supportable in any way that we could.

 

00;17;34;29 - 00;17;44;17

DP

So, tell us about the building plans. I would imagine as you run across the facade, some are rectangular, summer more square, but they all fill the entire block?

 

00;17;44;20 - 00;18;47;10

DK

Well, it's actually a little bit different. So, the buildings that are on corners have different requirements than buildings that are mid-block. On both the eastern and western end – on the eastern end is an existing building. That building is built full on its lot because a corner building can be built full, it doesn't have a required rear yard. So, the eastern building was a purpose-built garage building, really kind of special, unique yellow brick house has a really bright image to it and we retain that building because it has some really nice character to it. Hermes is in there right now, as a high-end retailer. That's a special condition.

In the mid-block portion of the project, there is a rear yard, and the ground floor is built full. But once you're above the ground floor, starting at the second floor and up, these buildings do have rear yards. And then our new building that we proposed on the western corner that I was talking about earlier, same situation that it's very common.

The zoning allows it. Most buildings in New York City, when you're on the corner, won't necessarily have a rear yard or a side yard or anything like that. And this building doesn't either.

 

00;18;47;13 - 00;18;54;03

DP

So, tell us a little bit about the style choices, right. I mean, it looked to me like there were at least three buildings that remained.

 

00;18;54;09 - 00;19;46;22

DK

More than that. I would say on the eastern end there are two. And then in the mid-block portion, it's one building. But historically it's really three structures. Then there's this group of five, and then there's our new warehouse building on the western end. So that's why I was saying it's kind of like 11 structures stretching across three pieces of property when you really get into it, in terms of their history. They are different styles. They're all a little different.

The one on the eastern end was kind of a garage building. The ones mid-block are more kind of a store and loft, so they have kind of commercial storefronts at the ground floor and then kind of punched opening double hung window language above that. And then on the western end, our new building was not so much a store and loft had more of a kind of a warehouse look, so much heavier masonry language with much bigger areas of glass kind of departing from the individual punch window language.

 

00;19;46;24 - 00;19;58;24

DP

So stylistically, the newer buildings are slightly more contemporary than the existing buildings. Did you have different architects working on different buildings and coming up with themes?

 

00;19;59;00 - 00;22;06;12

DK

We definitely had a pretty substantial team in this project, and we are very collaborative in the office. So regardless of what level you might be practicing at our office, we're all at the table together. Everyone's contributing ideas, which we think is a great way to work and really fun. Obviously, as you kind of break down the teams, there were certain people dedicated to certain areas of the project. I also worked really closely with my partner Todd on this project. He had a deep involvement in this as well. So, it was really kind of the two of us on this.

What I think is fun, and as a general observation across the whole block, is that once we had a clear understanding of the kind of existing language of the architecture, whether it was garage or store in loft or warehouse, when we had our interventions, we did it in such a way that was quite respectful and kind of playing off the traditional languages of those buildings, but clearly contemporary at the same time.

So, the brick detailing is done in a traditional way, but with modern techniques and modern, you know, sort of expressions that are a little bit different. So, in the mid-block building, the one that has a three-story addition on a two-story base, there we used brick that was very similar in tone to the second floor that existed, but then also came up with a very special window language that involved some terracotta tiles on the transom that allowed for bigger glass windows but a smaller masonry opening. So, it felt appropriate for the scale of that facade. And then on the corner building, we really wanted to bring the sort of large heft and substantialness of the masonry detailing that you would see on a lot of the older warehouse buildings, even some of the buildings directly across the street from us. And so, we used a technique called a concealed lintel system to allow all of our brick returns, whether they were eight inches and in some cases 12-inch brick returns. You had these really beautiful brick returns both in plan and in sections. So, above the window, the window heads, you can really see 12 inches of brick wrapping and returning to the window, which you don't always see in newer buildings now, but we thought was really important for a building like this to be well detailed like that and show that depth of masonry, which is so characteristic for a lot of the historic buildings in that neighborhood.

 

00;22;06;19 - 00;22;17;28

DP

Now, I saw some patterning running vertically along one of the taller buildings. Tell me a little bit about that because that motif appears as a lintel above the windows. What is that?

 

00;22;18;02 - 00;23;52;26

DK

Yeah, so that mid-block building that was five store and loft buildings all kind of put together on its eastern facade because the building next to it was cut down like we talked about down to two stories. It's sort of exposed on that brick facade, the sort of scar of where the chimney would have been. So, there was a very sort of roughly demolished zone on the side of that facade where you could tell by looking at it, ‘you know what? I bet you there was a masonry chimney there and it all just sort of got roughly demolished.’ But it was kind of a signature moment on the side of that building that you would really see in the historic photos, and you would see in that 1938 photo.

So, we kind of wanted to bring back that chimney scar, but we did it with these terracotta tiles and behind those tiles behind that pattern is floor to ceiling glass. So, you're getting this masonry expression on the eastern facade that brings back that very particular circumstance that that building had. But you're doing it in a way that also allows some natural light to come in the building, because this is now a commercial office building. It's not a store in loft. Those upper floors are not used for storage anymore. People are occupying those floors. So, we were looking for ways to bring in a lot of natural light into this new work environment. But we wanted to do it in such a way that again, go back to that word that was appropriate for the sort of architectural expression of the building. So yeah, it was a unique moment. And the transoms, the lintel is basically doing the same thing.

Behind that is a really tall window, but from the street it looks like a smaller window, and it looks like a size window that is appropriate for that scale of building. So, it was sort of how you can have your cake and eat it too.

 

00;23;52;28 - 00;24;00;27

DP

Yeah, it's a really interesting detail. So how long did the design process take, city review, construction, start to finish?

 

00;24;00;29 - 00;24;29;27

DK

Good question. I don't know. I don’t have all of those dates at my fingertips, but I would say that while typically a project like this in our office would take about a year to document from schematic design to 100% construction documents, I think on this project it was substantially longer. Maybe a year and a half, a year and three quarters because of the extra time it took to first seek and get that LPC approval.

Once the approval is in hand, then we can really march forward and finish those construction documents. And then the construction itself, I believe, took about two years.

 

00;24;30;04 - 00;24;31;12

DP

How many sheets were in the set?

 

00;24;31;19 - 00;24;36;22

DK

It's definitely over 200. It's probably approaching 250 sheets or something like that. Yeah, it's a big undertaking.

 

00;24;36;27 - 00;24;38;17

DP

Did you guys model this in 3D?

 

00;24;38;25 - 00;25;00;27

DK

This entire city block is in Revit. It's all one Revit file that can be broken apart because we had to issue it as three sets of construction documents. Going back to the fact that this is three properties, it had to get filed at the Department of Buildings in three pieces to match up to those pieces of property, even though it was conceived as one big thing. So, yes, three sets of drawings.

 

00;25;00;29 - 00;25;04;21

DP

Now, a job this big, do have more than one PM? Project manager.

 

00;25;04;21 - 00;25;18;07

DK

Yes. Yeah, on this project we had two, Will Russell and Evan Singer, who did a phenomenal job really combing through every detail, understanding every nook and cranny. It was a real labor of love for them. I think they enjoyed it very much and they did a great job.

 

00;25;18;09 - 00;25;29;28

DP

So, this question comes up a lot. Did sustainability ever come up in choosing the materials for the project? And clearly brick was already out there. Did you guys just say, “okay, this is what we're going to do; we never even thought about another material”?

 

00;25;30;05 - 00;27;06;14

DK

Yeah. So, this project didn't seek any particular certification, but there were many sustainable elements that we tried to incorporate whenever we could in terms of material selection. I think that was also interesting is this is a conversation about adaptive reuse. One of the most sustainable things you can do when you look at a building project is reuse existing material. If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, reuse what's there, don't bring new material on site.

Many of these facades, you know, we really carefully tried to keep as much as the brick structure, whether it's party walls, you know, load bearing walls, facade walls. We tried to keep as much of that intact as possible. There were cases where, even a little scary times, you go onto the roof and you look at these old brick parapets and, you know, they haven't been maintained or cared for in way too long. And the mortar is at this point dust. And you can literally just take your hand and take the bricks off, which it was time. We are also very grateful that this project happened when it did because, you know, I think it saved these buildings, too. They really needed this intervention. They needed this next chapter in their life.

So, we, in some cases, had to demolish brick walls and keep all the brick and catalog it, put it down on the floor, label it so that the masons could take it and then put it back up and reinstall it. So, we did a lot of that careful work in the restoration and then much of the new either additions or buildings that we designed use brick. And it was a direct sort of reaction to this historic neighborhood. There was just an abundance of it, frankly, used in many different ways, many different colors. And it was really sort of a core ingredient, if you will, to any of the architecture that you might propose here.

 

00;27;06;16 - 00;27;11;21

DP

So, I haven't seen any of the interior photos. But do we end up seeing brick on the interior of any of these buildings?

 

00;27;11;27 - 00;27;35;26

DK

On some of them, again, particularly in the places where they are existing. So, in the existing two-story portion of that store in loft building, every 25 feet was a load bearing brick wall. Many of those are still there and the retailers who took those spaces did not cover them up, which is great. We love seeing that. So, you can really see a lot of that character and some of the buildings on the eastern end. You have moments to see some of that brick, too.

 

00;27;36;03 - 00;27;43;22

DP

It looked to me like there were at least two different brick colors that were really unique to this job. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

 

00;27;43;27 - 00;28;51;12

DK

So, the two brick colors on the project that we're talking about right now is a kind of a standard red brick that went on our three-story addition over the two-story existing structure. And that was kind of a nice interplay between a nice, textured, more modern looking red brick, but clearly still relating to the historic red brick that was right below it. So, you can distinguish the difference, but it's subtle.

On the corner building, there is a more sort of neutral what you might think is a more modern brick color. It's a Glen-Gery glacier gray brick. It has a lot of kind of nice texture and variation to it, which we were really attracted by. And it is perhaps a little bit more neutral, a little bit more contemporary of a tone.

That said, there are many large six story warehouse buildings directly across the street from us on Washington Street on that block facing the river. And many of those buildings had some pretty neutral tones in their brick selection as well. Maybe perhaps a little bit creamier, a little bit warmer, but not that different from what we were proposing there. So, we thought it was kind of a nice sort of interplay between those tones and still felt quite appropriate in the color.

 

00;28;51;17 - 00;28;59;24

DP

And how did you guys ultimately find the right colors for the bricks? Did you guys simply have samples in the office, or did you go out and take a look at them?

 

00;29;00;02 - 00;29;49;10

DK

Yeah, both. So, we really want to gain all those samples in the office and kind of build a library that we can consider. We looked at mockups on site to make sure that we were really happy with it and just walking around the neighborhood looking at these tones and seeing really how they relate. So again, it's nice to feel like the selection is growing right out of the context, but with a little bit of a modern twist, we think is actually quite nice.

And that brick in particular, we really loved the variation in the shading. You get kind of different colors within it. There is a little bit of texture and stippling to the brick finish as well, and we kind of joke around that sometimes if you look at a material sample up close, you think it looks messy, but it's that messiness. When you put it at a building scale or an urban scale that really makes that brick look good and crafted. So having that texture we think is kind of important.

 

00;29;49;12 - 00;29;57;20

DP

That's a really good point. So, did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process? Anything come to light that was like, this is kind of cool?

 

00;29;57;28 - 00;30;55;01

DK

I think what's just fun about designing in brick is it's a particular knowledge set. It's kind of its own craft or game if you want to call it that. You really have to think about the module of brick and how it wants to be used. We know a typical module for brick is either eight inches or twelve inches, quite commonly, and when you start designing your building, you have to be thinking about that brick module from day one, how it courses out vertically, how it courses out horizontally.

There were moments we learned a little bit of the hard way where we thought we had it exactly right and we didn't have it exactly right. And we had to make changes on the fly. Work carefully with the subcontractor, but you can't ignore the module of brick. You have to kind of work with it, don't work against it, and your details should sort of celebrate the natural dimensions of that brick. And I think we learned a lot about that. We had done already a number of brick buildings in our history of the firm, but this one really had a little bit of everything in it, which was really quite fun.

 

00;30;55;03 - 00;31;08;02

DP

Isn’t it interesting that we deal with buildings, but we're really dealing with math, right? Everything has to kind of fit into those modules.

So, did you guys have any trouble finding a great mason to work with on the process?

 

00;31;08;09 - 00;31;56;12

DK

So, we rely very much on our contractors to find those subcontractors. So, we worked with a great general contractor here who did find their way to a mason who you could tell right from the beginning was enjoying their craft. They would constantly ask us questions because they just wanted to make sure that they were getting it right per the design intent. And we thought that was really great.

Again, going back to something I said earlier, it was a good collaborative, positive relationship between everyone because we just wanted to make these buildings, you know, as best we could. And so, I think that mason did an excellent job in this project, and it really shows if you walk the block. And whether you're looking at very careful noodling and restoration on the buildings to the east, or the obviously more expansive, impressive new construction on the west, all the detailing, all the construction is very tight. It looks great.

 

00;31;56;18 - 00;32;03;21

DP

It's good to hear. So, this is the last tough question I've got for you. You've been an architect for some time, I would imagine. 20, 25 years.

 

00;32;03;26 - 00;32;07;14

DK

23. Yeah, depending on when you want to start the clock. But yeah, somewhere in there.

 

00;32;07;14 - 00;32;14;24

DP

Right. Exactly. So, if you could give your younger self some career advice, based on who you are now, what would it be?

 

00;32;14;26 - 00;33;36;07

DK

I guess I would say, and it's something that's been important to me, and I guess it was a bit of a leap of faith, I kind of found my way to BKSK architects for a reason. I feel lucky that I ended up there, frankly. It reinforced an interest I had, which is really to understand what you're making.

I enjoy design very much. You know, we want to blue sky and think very ambitiously about what a project could be. You want to push the envelope. But I always like to couple that with the reality of how something gets built. And I think that constant tension, if you will, about being ambitious, trying something new, being innovative, I always want to couple that with understanding how you build because a lot of times the innovation will grow out of something quite conventional, or an observation about how things get built. ‘Well, this is how we normally do it.’ Well, what if you just did it the normal way, but turned it 90 degrees and now you have a new detail and you can express things differently. So, those two things don't have to fight each other, and they could actually reinforce each other. And I think that's something that I've tried to instill in people who have worked for me or when I've taught at City Tech. I think that is something that I've found to be a kind of rewarding aspect of the practice. I also think that goes back to where I went to school at University of Maryland. That was something that was kind of a core part of their ethos and their pedagogy about what they taught. And I think it's important and I recognize the sort of value of it as a practicing architect.

 

00;33;36;09 - 00;33;55;16

DP

Back when I was in Maryland, working in Baltimore, I was out on set with a contractor and he said, “Doug, do us a favor. Do yourself a favor. Always draw something that can be built.” So, learn construction, right? You may be an architect and you may want to be a designer, but you've got to learn how everything goes together first. That’s great advice.

 

00;33;55;18 - 00;34;20;00

DK

Yeah. And we try to practice this in our office now. Myself and my partners, we all kind of grew up together here at the firm. Once you get through one really big project of consequence, it makes you a better designer for the next project. It's like learning a language. It's like learning a grammar. Once you understand it and can speak the language and know how to form sentences and the structure of it all, it just makes you a better designer for the next one.

 

00;34;20;04 - 00;34;26;16

DP

Absolutely. David, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about BKSK architects?

 

00;34;26;23 - 00;34;35;25

DK

bksk.com Please go ahead and visit. We're also on all of the major social media platforms. Welcome anyone's input, or anyone wants to reach out.

 

00;34;36;01 - 00;34;38;19

DP

Awesome. Thank you very much. It’s been great to have you as a guest.

 

00;34;38;21 - 00;34;42;15

DK

Thanks for having me. This was really fun.