TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;09

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;11 - 00;00;30;15

Ross Padluck (RP)

What we did on the inside was opened the living room, the dining room and the family room in the back with these pocketing doors so that when the doors are closed, you can have these very private moments in the house. But when they're entertaining, the series of pocket doors opens up. So the property is really open from the front terrace into the living room, dining room and the yard in the back so you can kind of open the house up front to back, or you could close it down from more intimate settings.

 

00;00;30;17 - 00;03;44;04

DP

This is my guest, Ross Padluck. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we highlight an Italian art Deco private residence designed by Ross. The private residence we're discussing today is located on a narrow urban lot in a neighborhood which includes many homes from the 1920s. These homes feature various elements of brick and stone cladding combined with tile roofs and decorative windows.

 

The new home was inspired by the Italian art deco movement, as well as the German Expressionist. It draws from the work of Piero Portaluppi, a preeminent architect of streamlined art deco classicism in Italy in the 1920s and thirties. Other inspirations include German architects Fritz Hogar and Heinrich Muller, well-known for creative and experimental forms constructed with brick.

 

The exterior of the home is composed of details that decidedly complement the vernacular of the neighborhood. The construction palette of masonry includes brick, lilac sandstone, black windows, black slate and copper. Interestingly, the brick shapes, which appear to be custom, are actually all standard Glen-Gery modules. The course work is detailed and unique. The leaded glass panels in the windows are restoration glass and the roof dormers are clad in copper.

 

The details of the house are mannerist yet subtle, and the brick is creatively patterned in coursed to give the house a unique personality. Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Ross Padluck is a registered architect and partner at Kligerman Architecture & Design in New York City. Ross has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from New York Institute of Technology, where he received AIA Henry Adams medal as valedictorian of the School of Architecture.

 

Ross’s passion for architecture started young. Back then, he remembers being fascinated with the historic homes of New England. He joined Kligerman Architecture & Design in 2010. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Lux Interiors, and Gallery. His firm is known for design, rooted in tradition, but modern in its sculptural forms, precise details, material integrity and liberal use of glass.

 

The firm still creates presentations by hand and uses the latest digital technologies, including 3D printers and VR. So welcome, Ross. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about Kligerman Architecture & Design in New York City. So where are you guys located in the city? What size is the firm? How long has it been around and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;44;06 - 00;04;29;13

RP

Well, thank you for having me. Kligerman Architecture & Design, we’re actually just up the street from the Brickworks Studio. We're on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue across the street from the library. We're in 505th Avenue, which is a Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Building which is, I guess, considered the sister building to the Empire State Building. They were built at the same time with the same architect and 505th was completed first before the Empire State Building.

 

And at the time it was the tallest building in the world. Before it was surpassed by its sister, the Empire State Building. We're about a 40 person architecture and interiors firm. We do high end residential architecture, mostly single family. We were known as Ike Kligerman Barkley when I joined the firm. We went through an ownership transition last year when I became a partner.

 

00;04;29;20 - 00;04;39;06

DP

Well, interestingly, as an aside, I do high end residential architecture. I worked with a gentleman named Joe Moore for about 20 years. He's up in the Greenwich area.

 

00;04;39;14 - 00;04;40;27

RP

Okay. That's a great neighborhood.

 

00;04;41;02 - 00;04;48;24

DP

Yeah, that's really cool. So tell us a little bit about yourself. So how long have you been practicing architecture and what's your role in the office as partner?

 

00;04;49;01 - 00;05;20;11

RP

I always knew I wanted to be an architect. Since I was in preschool. I was sort of drawing houses and building them out of blocks when I was in preschool. So it was just a natural career. And I come from a family of architects, so it just sort of all made sense. My first job actually, I started of working for an architect when I was 14 years old.

 

Yeah, I did. After school drafting for an architect in high school and kind of had various internships and stuff from there at Kligerman, as a partner there, I run a studio, oversee probably about a dozen projects at the moment.

 

00;05;20;18 - 00;05;24;27

DP

Tell me about your family. Family of architects. That's interesting. Both mom and dad?

 

00;05;25;01 - 00;05;41;03

RP

No, my uncle is an architect who was a kind of huge influence and resource on me. And I have a cousin who's an architect and one is an engineer. I have another cousin who's a graphic designer. So there's this sort of creative energy in the family. My grandmother was a painter, too.

 

00;05;41;06 - 00;05;43;27

DP

That's really cool. I mean, architects are pretty rare.

 

00;05;44;01 - 00;05;50;05

RP

It's kind of a not a common profession in families, but it sort of comes naturally to us, I guess.

 

00;05;50;12 - 00;05;56;01

DP

Very cool. So let's dig in here and talk about the home. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;05;56;07 - 00;06;05;15

RP

So it's a community that we've done a lot of work in over the years. We have a long history of doing work in that community and it was a referral from another client that we got the project.

 

00;06;05;17 - 00;06;07;09

DP

So you didn't know the clients?

 

00;06;07;09 - 00;06;10;09

RP

Did not know them, but they were friends of one of our other clients.

 

00;06;10;16 - 00;06;13;06

DP

And what about the location? So was there a house there?

 

00;06;13;13 - 00;06;23;24

RP

There was a house there. It was sort of a turn of the century house that had been badly renovated in the eighties. You know, we were growing family and it was time for a new house. So they turned to us to design it.

 

00;06;23;28 - 00;06;32;13

DP

So the location, there are lots of homes from the 1920s era and are they still there and simply getting renovated or is it turning over?

 

00;06;32;16 - 00;07;03;27

RP

There's not many left, the kind of vernacular of that neighborhood. There were a lot of homes built in that sort of 1920s timeframe that were kind of brick and stone and had slag glass windows and tile roofs like you mentioned. And there's kind of very Spanish and Moorish ornate feeling to them. Unfortunately, a lot of them have been torn down.

 

They've been replaced with newer and larger homes, but there's still a few left in the neighborhood. And the neighborhood is sort of maintains that character, even though the homes have been replaced of the sort of 1920s buildings.

 

00;07;04;00 - 00;07;16;20

DP

So that ultimately did impact the esthetic of the home that you design. We'll talk about that in a little bit. So what was the scope of the project? That is, what were the programmatic requirements for the project?

 

00;07;16;23 - 00;07;31;06

RP

It's a single-family home, so it had to have entertaining space and living space on the first floor for them. They do a lot of in-house, entertaining large parties and then enough space for the clients and their children on a very small lot.

 

00;07;31;09 - 00;07;39;08

DP

Yeah. So what were the project restrictions in terms of the height of the building and the size of the building on the lot? Were they pretty stringent?

 

00;07;39;08 - 00;07;55;03

RP

Yeah. The zoning in that neighborhood is pretty restrictive, so you have to fit a lot into a very small envelope. So you have to be really creative of how you use floor space and how you configure the building envelope to fit within the zoning requirements and the floor area restrictions.

 

00;07;55;05 - 00;08;01;13

DP

And you couldn't go over two and a half stories or okay, so I nailed that. That was the restriction. Two and a half stories?

 

00;08;01;13 - 00;08;07;03

RP

There's actually not a restriction of stories, it's a restriction of height. So that's what limits how far you can go.

 

00;08;07;10 - 00;08;10;02

DP

And FAR restrictions, is that what they call them.

 

00;08;10;02 - 00;08;13;02

RP

Yea, floor area ratio, it's pretty tight there.

 

00;08;13;04 - 00;08;41;24

DP

So let's talk a little bit about the building design. Stylistically, we talked a little bit about this already, the Italian art deco influence and of course the reference that I made earlier to the German architects. Interestingly, I was looking at Portal Whoopi's work online. I know it sounds a little bizarre, but it almost seemed like a modern cross between Palladio and Boulay, right?

 

I mean, it's just the symmetry is gorgeous. Some of the buildings that this man designed were unbelievable.

 

00;08;41;26 - 00;09;16;27

RP

Yeah, they're really incredible. I've had the fortune of being in a few of them in Italy, and Porto Lippi was sort of off the radar up until a couple of years ago. And now it's, you know, there's all these books out about them and everyone's sort of looking at it. But he just did really incredible sort of forward thinking work in Italy in that timeframe that was still sort of rooted in tradition, not too dissimilar from the work that we do at the firm.

 

So it sort of just seemed like a natural influence for us. A lot of his work was urban, a lot of it was in Milan, so it sort of had that urbanity to it like this house does.

 

00;09;17;04 - 00;09;22;27

DP

So tell us a little bit about the building plan. Looks relatively straightforward, like a large rectangle.

 

00;09;23;05 - 00;09;52;11

RP

Yeah, the sort of narrow rectangular lots. So there's not much you could do with it. What we did on the inside was opened the living room, the dining room and the family room in the back with these pocketing doors so that when the doors are closed, you can have these very private moments in the house. But when they're entertaining, the series of pocket doors opens up.

 

So the property is really open from the front terrace into the living room, dining room and the yard in the back so you could kind of open the house up front to back or you could close it down from more intimate settings.

 

00;09;52;14 - 00;10;00;17

DP

That's a really nice idea for a relatively narrow house. Who came up with that idea where the client's like, Whoa you guys showed it to them and they thought, Wow, this is really neat.

 

00;10;00;24 - 00;10;05;14

RP

You know, they were really kind of happy with it. We sort of hit it on the first shot, I guess you could say.

 

00;10;05;21 - 00;10;08;28

DP

So how large was the team that was working with you on the.

 

00;10;09;00 - 00;10;11;25

RP

It was me and at the time, John Ike.

 

00;10;11;27 - 00;10;19;17

DP

So let's talk a little bit about the facade, which is very interesting. All brick, who decided on brick?

 

00;10;19;23 - 00;10;31;19

RP

It's the vernacular in that neighborhood. Just about every house uses brick or stone or a combination of them. The natural choice to use. So we wouldn't recommend anything else in that neighborhood.

 

00;10;31;26 - 00;10;33;02

DP

And what about the color?

 

00;10;33;05 - 00;10;39;26

RP

So we wanted to create something that was a little richer, a little darker, a little moodier. And that's how we ended up with that color.

 

00;10;39;28 - 00;10;59;28

DP

I want to back up a little bit. I always ask our guests about the town reviews, like how long that process took was a challenging historical neighborhood, that sort of thing. What did you guys go through in terms of presentation? So you meet with the client, you show more schematic design. Then ultimately you've got to go to the town and get this thing approved.

 

00;11;00;07 - 00;11;05;15

RP

There wasn't any sort of historic or architectural review board there, so it was just the building department.

 

00;11;05;21 - 00;11;12;22

DP

And in terms of zoning requirements, the building had to be relatively narrow rights for the setbacks. Were they restrictive or?

 

00;11;12;25 - 00;11;24;10

RP

Restrictive on the sides? The biggest challenge is the floor area, which is very restrictive. You kind of have to fit a lot into a very small footprint. So there's very little wasted space in the floorplan.

 

00;11;24;12 - 00;11;42;01

DP

So let's talk about the facade. What I loved about this house was the figuring in the brick, right? So there were all stock sizes and shapes used by your company and was that intentional? You didn't want to spend extra money having these custom shapes made?

 

00;11;42;04 - 00;12;16;04

RP

Yeah, we wanted to have that in mind of trying to do this with stock shapes. We wanted to do an all-brick house, which is inherently a little more expensive. And instead of doing custom shapes, we looked through the Glen-Gery catalog to see what was available, sort of quote unquote in stock that wasn't custom made. And then we took these different shapes and create a different patterns and modules with them.

 

And that's how we created those sort of columns that are between the windows. And we created that corduroy texture that's on the chimney all out of Glen-Gery shapes.

 

00;12;16;06 - 00;12;27;19

DP

Yeah, I found that really beautiful. The piers in between the windows are figured, right? So when you guys design that, did you ultimately do mock ups in the fields to see what these things looked like?

 

00;12;27;25 - 00;12;40;03

RP

We 3D printed the brick shapes and then sort of put them together almost like Legos to see what makes sense and what makes an interesting shape. And we did mockups on our 3D printer with those brick shapes to kind of lay it out.

 

00;12;40;10 - 00;12;52;27

DP

And what about some of this interesting coursing that I found as I looked around the exterior elevations, for example, at the entrance, right? The coursing above that entrance is almost done in a star shape or a crown like shape.

 

00;12;53;04 - 00;13;16;03

RP

Yeah, it's sort of a star shape or a crown, as you say. And we had originally designed that in stone, and the owner had wanted the house to feel a lot more monochrome. So I said, Well, why don't we do it in Brick? And it sort of created that crown shape out of, it's just modular standard brick that's laid at different angles and it sort of radiates around the arch to create that pattern.

 

00;13;16;10 - 00;13;19;06

DP

To remind me some of the other details on the house.

 

00;13;19;13 - 00;13;58;12

RP

The house is about that arch. It's the entrance. It's very subtle because it's all done out of the brick. It doesn't really stand out, but it's a detail that you notice right away just the way the mortar joints are run to create that pattern. And then we have, as I mentioned, the special piers between the windows, which are created of three different pieces of brick special shapes that create that.

 

And there is the chimney, which is the corduroy texture. We also used some of the sill pieces to create a water table or sort of base around the house. And then we experimented with different patterns of brick running bonds and stock bonds to create different patterns and sections of the house to break up the mass of it a little bit.

 

00;13;58;19 - 00;14;01;11

DP

And the dormer is done in copper, which is really cool.

 

00;14;01;16 - 00;14;15;03

RP

I like when Dormers feel like objects on a roof. I don't like when the metal roof comes out. So we created them to feel, you know, like these copper boxes sitting on the roof, which is a very German kind of mannerism of going about that.

 

00;14;15;05 - 00;14;23;16

DP

So on a project like this, it's obviously really important to find a good mason. So you guys clearly found somebody liked. What was that process like?

 

00;14;23;22 - 00;14;37;18

RP

We worked very hand-in-hand with the Mason to create that. You know, we're very specific about all these different patterns and layouts. So it was a lot of site visits and working one on one to make sure our vision came to reality on the house.

 

00;14;37;20 - 00;14;47;28

DP

So you were talking about having a 3D printer and making these that must have been a really fun process, right? I mean, that's like the awesome stuff that architects get to do.

 

00;14;48;01 - 00;15;02;08

RP

Yeah, it is. The 3D printer itself is kind of a pain to use. It's finicky, but once you get it to actually do what you want it to do, being able to just sort of create these shapes and put them together was really satisfying. That's sort of how we create our vision.

 

00;15;02;08 - 00;15;04;20

DP

Did you guys do the building in Revit?

 

00;15;04;26 - 00;15;09;13

RP

The building was actually done in CAD, believe it or not, all 2D.

 

00;15;09;17 - 00;15;11;00

DP

So no 3D renderings?

 

00;15;11;02 - 00;15;12;27

RP

Nope. Except for hand renderings.

 

00;15;12;29 - 00;15;14;29

DP

Is that pretty typical for your office?

 

00;15;15;02 - 00;15;38;11

RP

Most of our projects are in Revit now. For me, the intricacies of the house, I felt more confident doing it in 2D. It's just the way my brain thinks. I still think of old school drafting and that's kind of what CAD does. And the house was small enough that it was manageable. A lot of our other houses that are much larger than this, it makes sense to do them in Revit, but I felt kind of old school doing it in CAD, but it worked out.

 

00;15;38;19 - 00;15;42;14

DP

And did the clients get to see these little models, the little modules or?

 

00;15;42;18 - 00;15;50;21

RP

Absolutely. We showed them, you know, this is the pattern and these are the different shapes of brick and they got a kick out of it, but they were excited.

 

00;15;50;24 - 00;15;59;05

DP

Yeah, very cool. So, we talked about the size of your team. There were two people that worked on the project essentially and start to finish. How long does that take for your office?

 

00;15;59;13 - 00;16;19;23

RP

Search to finish a house of the skills is about three years. We're about a year for design from when a client first hires us to get through schematic design construction documents, permitting, all of that. And then construction is about two years, which seems like a long time. But our houses are very custom and we're doing very one off sort of things.

 

00;16;19;28 - 00;16;22;05

RP

It takes time, but it's worth it in the end.

 

00;16;22;07 - 00;16;31;08

DP

Yeah, you know, that process can be pretty interesting for people that haven't done it before, the clients. Have these clients been through a custom home before?

 

00;16;31;14 - 00;16;38;06

RP

Not to this scale. They had renovated a home before, but they hadn't built a home like this before, so it was a first time for them.

 

00;16;38;09 - 00;16;40;17

DP

Well, I'm sure that we're very happy, the house is beautiful.

 

00;16;40;24 - 00;16;44;01

RP

Thank you. They were very happy. So we did our job.

 

00;16;44;03 - 00;16;50;10

DP

Awesome. So the column in the front. Very cool. Reminds me a lot of Frank Furnace.

 

00;16;50;16 - 00;16;50;28

RP

Yes.

 

00;16;50;28 - 00;16;53;11

DP

Whose idea was that? Where did that come from?

 

00;16;53;17 - 00;17;15;21

RP

That was mine. We wanted to create something special on that corner. Since it is the main entrance to the house. And it was inspired by a lot of the work that Portaluppi did, where he uses more classical elements and we didn't want to do another piece of brick there. It was time to do some stone. It is solid lilac sandstone that's supporting that brick arch.

 

00;17;15;24 - 00;17;18;00

DP

So was that difficult to have made?

 

00;17;18;02 - 00;17;25;01

RP

We had it custom made, unlike the brick, we did have the column custom made. It was milled in Canada.

 

00;17;25;03 - 00;17;36;04

DP

Did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process? It's clearly a pretty unique home, so there were a few new things for you guys, I would assume.

 

00;17;36;11 - 00;17;55;25

RP

Yeah, I think working through the brick shapes and the course thing, we try and get Windows to line up with brick coursing or if the windows are off, you adjust the stone sills to make up for the difference in brick. And I think we learned a lot about just making sure that the brick lines up everywhere.

 

00;17;55;28 - 00;18;06;19

DP

So were there any instances of we drew it this way, but then you get in the field and you're working with a mason, They're like, no, you know, we're not going to be on course here and we're going to have to adjust things.

 

00;18;06;19 - 00;18;32;16

RP

There were a few instances where the cursing under the windows was ever so slightly off, but we were able to adjust that with the stone sills and make it work. I was very exact when I drew it to make sure that everything mathematically worked out just because the design was so important to us and to the clients, we really wanted to make sure you could actually build it the way we intended it.

 

The drawings were pretty precise, and that led to a fairly smooth construction process.

 

00;18;32;18 - 00;19;03;09

DP

That's great. It is one of the most important things to me. After the house has been designed, we sign up the GC, we get rolling on the project, the project managers get to know one another. This would be the architect and the project manager for the general contractor. Those first couple meetings between those two people are really important because at that point you get to spend a lot of time explaining, okay, this is why I drew it this way and I need you to keep this in mind when we build it, right?

 

00;19;03;16 - 00;19;25;09

RP

Yeah. We were fortunate to have a really good contractor. He was really a craftsman. Very hands on approach, like we have with design and construction. He understood our design goals for the house and the quality goals, he really paid attention to the details and worked with us throughout construction to make sure the vision was carried out.

 

00;19;25;11 - 00;19;37;20

DP

So Ross, before you go, you've been an architect for a little while now. Based on what you know about being an architect today, do you have any words of advice for your younger self or even young architects getting started?

 

00;19;37;22 - 00;20;11;11

RP

I do. You know, the advice is to stick with it. A lot of people that I went to school with did not end up pursuing a career in architecture. For me, it's something I love doing. I'm very passionate about it and it's not an easy educational process. It's not an easy career. I think a lot of people get discouraged by that, but if you love it and you care about it, just stick with it because it's very rewarding and we get to do really unique and special things.

 

There's not a day that goes by that I don't regret my career choice.

 

00;20;11;16 - 00;20;24;07

DP

Well, that's really cool. Being a high-end residential architect can be extremely challenging, but also very rewarding long term because you're working on a singular typology and you can get really good at it.

 

00;20;24;11 - 00;20;56;25

RP

Yeah, well, you're designing for the end user and you're spending their money. So it's a high stakes process, but it's also very creative and you get to work with unique materials and work with craftsmen and people who are really good at what they do. So in that respect, yeah, it's really rewarding and we're creating things that people and families are going to use for the rest of their lives.

 

They're going to live in them. They're going to have their friends over. As challenging as it can be to work in that environment, we're just creating such special things. It's wonderful.

 

00;20;56;27 - 00;21;02;03

DP

Yeah, I like to say that we've got to know a lot about a lot to be a high-end residential architect.

 

00;21;02;05 - 00;21;13;16

RP

Yeah, you have to be an architect. You've got to be a plumber. An extra installer, a lawyer, an accountant, a marriage counselor. You have to be everything. A materials scientist.

 

00;21;13;17 - 00;21;27;01

DP

I like that. Marriage counselor. Marriage counselor, for sure. My goodness. So Ross, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Kligerman Architecture & Design and yourself?

 

00;21;27;03 - 00;21;31;21

RP

Check out our klingermanad.com. And you can also look at our Instagram account [@kligerman.ad].

 

00;21;31;24 - 00;21;34;00

DP

And do you have your own Instagram account as well?

 

00;21;34;01 - 00;21;38;06

RP

Yes, that's @RossPadluck.

 

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;07

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;10 - 00;00;30;11

Daniela Holt Voith (DHV)

Part of our design philosophy is to really make more of a home, both in terms of individual buildings, but also in terms of the context. And this design really is right up our alley in the sense that we love to combine mission and image. There is a strong mission to get the dining hall, which is for the fifth formers, a chance to rebond.

 

00;00;30;13 - 00;03;05;12

DP

This is my guest, Daniela Holt Voith. I'll share more about her shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we highlight Voith and MacTavish Architects Abbott Dining Hall in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. The Abbott Dining Hall is located at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. The renovation of the 1960s era dining hall exclusively serves senior or fifth form students in their last year on campus.

 

The project responds to the style of the adjacent upper house dorm and other Peabody and Sterns architecture and reminds one of both Shingle Style and Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. VMA’s reconfiguration blends seamlessly into the Lawrenceville esthetic with new brick facades, pitch slate roof and vaulted interior ceilings supported by glulam hammer beam trusses. In addition to a complete redesign of the kitchen and servery, custom white oak furniture and booth seating clad the interior, white oak paneling, terrazzo floor and over scaled fireplaces complete the vision.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Daniela Holt Voith is an architect and founding principle of Voith and MacTavish Architects and Director of Design. She holds degrees from Yale University School of Architecture and Bryn Mawr College. Since the early 1980s, she's taught at Yale University as a TA, University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, and has developed and taught Bryn Mawr College's Design Studio program.

 

Mayor Michael Nutter appointed her to serve on the city's award winning 2008 zoning code Commission, which revised the city's 50-year-old zoning code. Danielle is currently president of the Institute for Classical Architecture and Art, Philadelphia Chapter director of the Carpenters Company of Philadelphia and Board member of the Design Leadership Foundation. Daniela has dedicated her career to promoting the advancement of design for educational environments.

 

Her client-focused practice supports leading edge pedagogical thought and encourages mindful ways of living and learning. Daniela loves to travel, bike and ride trains. She speaks French and German, travels frequently and collects early 20th century train lithographs. So welcome, Daniela. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about Voith and MacTavish Architects or VMA in Philadelphia.

 

So where in the city are you guys located? What's the size of the firm? How long has it been around and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;05;15 - 00;03;41;14

DHV

Our firm has been celebrating its 35th year this year. We are located just on the edge of Center City on the Schuylkill River. So we have fabulous views of the river and city skyline. We are about 40 people, I think maybe 41 just this minute. And our primary focus is on design for education from pre-K to post-collegiate. But that encompasses a wide range of services, preservation, planning, architecture, as well as we have an interior studio and a wide range of projects, which is why this client type is so exciting for me.

 

00;03;41;19 - 00;03;45;14

DP

Interesting. So the firm size has grown over the years, I would assume.

 

00;03;45;17 - 00;03;55;08

DHV

Yes, we started off as two people and now our, as I said, almost 40. We actually grew during the pandemic. I have no explanation for it.

 

00;03;55;11 - 00;03;58;08

DP

That's incredible. And was that mainly in school work?

 

00;03;58;13 - 00;04;33;09

DHV

Almost exclusively, we do architecture planning, interiors and preservation, and we service school work primarily, but we do other work for other institutions, primarily nonprofit. For example, we're just completing a almost 100,000 square foot renovation of some factory buildings for an organization called Philadelphia Youth Basketball. So it has seven basketball courts, classrooms, leadership training, those sorts of facilities up in one of the more disadvantaged areas of Philadelphia.

 

00;04;33;11 - 00;04;35;10

DP

And do you guys do any residential work?

 

00;04;35;14 - 00;04;45;27

DHV

We do, actually. Thanks for asking. We just brought on three new partners, one of whom is Scott O’Barr, and he is heading up our residential studio. It's fairly new for us.

 

00;04;46;00 - 00;04;48;11

DP

Well, that's great. That's actually my, that's what I do. I do.

 

00;04;48;11 - 00;04;55;25

DHV

All right. Well, we started off doing residential but grew out of that and now we're coming back to residential again with the addition of Scott.

 

00;04;56;02 - 00;05;04;22

DP

That's great work. Good for you. So tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been practicing and what's your role in the office as a principal and director of design?

 

00;05;04;24 - 00;06;15;06

DHV

Well, my first job in architect's office was when I was 19 at the Architects Collaborative. I got an internship between my sophomore year and junior year at Bryn Mawr, and I loved it so much I took a year off and stayed there. Sadly, that firm doesn't exist anymore, but it was a great introduction to very high level design.

 

I graduated from architecture school in ‘81 and I've been working pretty much since I formed a partnership with my first employer, Toni Atkins. So it became Atkin Voith and Associates. So that existed for sadly only about three years. We were doing great, but somehow the relationship just wasn't going as well as it should have been. So I broke away and formed a new firm with one of the people that was an employee at the previous firm.

 

So Cameron MacTavish, who is a wonderful human being and very talented person, and I just bought him out about five years ago because he wanted to do other things and we're still great friends. That's amazing. And just this January took on three new partners. One of the people who was a partner previously, John Cluver, heads up the Preservation Studio.

 

So there are now five of us, the VMA five.

 

00;06;15;08 - 00;06;28;12

DP

Well, it sounds like your firm clearly has grown and you do wonderful work. I've been on your website and we'll talk about that a little bit later. So let's talk a little bit about this project. How did your office get the project?

 

00;06;28;15 - 00;07;12;00

DHV

Well, just as we usually do, it's a competitive business. I think we won it at the interview. The RFP was one of the most unusual ones that we've ever gotten because the brief was written about love and loyalty and how can architecture help young students form a really strong bond with a place. There is also a lot of humor involved at Lawrenceville.

 

There are a funny bunch, they love to joke, and so in our visual response that we sent in with our portfolio, we photoshopped the head and face of the CFO, who had written the RFP into almost every photo that had people in it. So he only found five of them.

 

00;07;12;02 - 00;07;13;04

DP

Where's Waldo?

 

00;07;13;07 - 00;07;28;24

DHV

It was exactly like Where's Waldo? But we tried to approach the interview in responding exactly to that. How do you create a sense of belonging and a sense of fascination and otherness in a place?

 

00;07;28;27 - 00;07;30;25

DP

So you didn't know the clients and you got the job?

 

00;07;30;26 - 00;07;31;17

DHV

That's correct.

 

00;07;31;17 - 00;07;38;05

DP

That's wonderful. Good for you. So let's talk a little bit about the history of the location you said is kind of special.

 

00;07;38;07 - 00;09;17;03

DHV

So Lawrenceville is one of the premier boarding schools in the country. It has a long tradition. Its original campus was laid out by Olmstead, and a lot of the architecture was done, as you mentioned, by Peabody and Stearns. Originally, it was laid out in a circle as many older boarding schools are. And as it grew, the planning paradigm became more oriented around quads.

 

This dining hall was built as an addition to a Peabody and Stearns dormitory. It had a flat roof, a pretty unsympathetic brick, big glass curtain wall that faced West, which you can only imagine was sun beating in at dinner time. So they pulled the curtains. So it was almost always dark. And so there was a lot to improve, but they didn't really want to diverge too much from the footprint of the building.

 

But essentially we took the building down to its foundations. We left the steel, took off the roof and kept these two side wings that are almost square and planned and put a new roof and new structure. As you mentioned, the big glulam trusses that look like heavy timber and then made a basically a six foot addition on the Western facade to create some really deep windows so that that West facing sun would get mitigated as it comes in and then really responded to the facade of the original dormitory on the other side.

 

So the facade is characterized by a round tower which forms the entry and six Romanesque arched windows, three on either side. So it has this very heavy look about its sense of gravitas.

 

00;09;17;06 - 00;09;23;05

DP

So this building really looked nothing like what it does today. Is that correct? The facades are completely new.

 

00;09;23;09 - 00;09;25;00

DHV

Completely new.

 

00;09;25;02 - 00;09;41;01

DP

So what's interesting about that, as I'm reading about your renovation 1960s building, I'm thinking this was clearly a very talented architect in the sixties. Now, that's amazing, right? So this building, he just took it down to the foundations. Okay, Now it all makes perfect sense.

 

00;09;41;01 - 00;09;41;19

DHV

Pretty much.

 

00;09;41;19 - 00;09;44;16

DP

My goodness.

 

00;09;44;16 - 00;09;47;00

DHV

It was a flat roof, 1960s building with a curtain wall.

 

00;09;47;06 - 00;09;53;05

DP

Yeah. Wow, that. Okay, that's pretty cool. So you guys know what you're doing? This thing is beautiful.

 

00;09;53;05 - 00;10;36;19

DHV

Thank you. Thank you. Well, part of our design philosophy is to really make more of a home, both in terms of individual buildings, but also in terms of the context. And this design really is right up our alley in the sense that we love to combine mission and image. As I said before, there is a strong mission to get the dining hall, which is for the fifth formers, their culminating year at the school, a chance to rebond. The school is organized so that there's a freshman dorm, but then they divide up into houses and they're in those houses for two years and then they come back together again as a class. So it's a chance to rebond.

 

00;10;36;21 - 00;10;41;22

DP

So tell me a little bit about the scope or programmatic requirements of the project from the beginning.

 

00;10;41;29 - 00;11;53;02

DHV

Right? So the dining hall seats about 250 to 300. The servery was a very old fashioned cafeteria line, which is way outdated in terms of food service. So the kitchens had to be upgraded, the servery completely renovated, the loading dock assisted and that sort of thing. So they also wanted to be able to use the room as an event space.

 

So it needed to handle various different seating configurations, a lot of AV component ends, video, that sort of thing. And they wanted to be able to clear out the room, as I said, for some events like dances. So I worked very closely with Thomas Moser. There's a fine mill worker up at Maine to develop a table. It looked like a very heavy wooden table.

 

It is a very heavy wooden table, but the top flips and you can put it up onto skateboards essentially and move them away. So it's now called the Daniela table, and it's available on their contract side if you're looking for a nesting trestle table. And that was really about it. It serves three meals a day other than the events that they do.

 

So one of the first was a wedding for the head of school, his daughter.

 

00;11;53;05 - 00;11;59;26

DP

So they must have had a decent budget for the project, right? They ended up making some custom furniture.

 

00;11;59;28 - 00;12;15;24

DHV

I think by most standards it was decent. The project in the end all in was $8 million. It's a 13,000 square foot building, so it's not incredibly expensive by residential short, but a lot of value I think, for what they invested in this building.

 

00;12;16;00 - 00;12;29;03

DP

So let's go backwards a little bit and talk about the building stylistically. So you mentioned, I mentioned earlier, Peabody and Stearns Architecture. I guess they may have been well known for shingle style architecture.

 

00;12;29;09 - 00;12;44;00

DHV

They were they were a firm of big reputation. And so I think the board members must have nabbed them from New York and brought them down to Lawrenceville. Shingle style definitely. But also this kind of masonry structures as well.

 

00;12;44;02 - 00;13;06;21

DP

So let's talk a little bit about project restrictions. So I don't know a whole lot about how to get a building built on a boarding school campus. What was that like? And are you working with the town and zoning ordinances there? And you're also working with the school and with esthetic issues. And are there any historical challenges other than trying to match certain architecture?

 

00;13;06;28 - 00;14;22;12

DHV

The zoning was easy because we were really staying pretty much within the same footprint. We're not adding impervious coverage. The construction logistics were tricky and we essentially cut a new entrance road onto the campus, a construction entrance, and fenced off the construction area. Obviously, student safety is a huge concern. Embedded into our specification are behavioral guidelines, no smoking, shirts on, no swear words.

 

There's a lot of that sort of thing that's required by most school campuses, actually. The construction needed to happen within a year. They only took that dining hall offline for just one school year, basically a real tricky part of the project was that the original contractor was somebody that we had done maybe 15 to 20 projects with, went out of business in the middle of the project.

 

So that was heartbreaking because they were such good contractors and caused a huge hiccup and because they were having such trouble, there was construction work that was done that wasn't necessarily supervised, and the school wanted some work to continue. So there was a lot of logistical issues that happened in transferring to another contractor.

 

00;14;22;19 - 00;14;27;29

DP

Did you have to hire like a construction manager to come in and help put it all back together?

 

00;14;28;01 - 00;14;48;15

DHV

No, the school, you know, was fairly sophisticated in terms of construction. Many schools are not, but there was insurance involved. And so there was insurance oversight. There was banking issues. There were a lot of things in transferring all that knowledge from one contractor to another. Not having the backup was challenging, but they did an amazing job in the end.

 

00;14;48;18 - 00;14;52;03

DP

So how long did the planning and design process take?

 

00;14;52;06 - 00;15;28;09

DHV

Probably just about a year, maybe a smidge longer. There's always that moment. We go through the design. We made models, we did beautiful drawings. There wasn't, like there often is, a hiatus for fundraising because the project was fully funded from the get go, so a single donor basically anteed up. So it was a fairly smooth process from the beginning of concept through the construction documents, the construction documents were a thing of beauty.

 

The Millwork was so detailed, the brickwork is so detailed. There is a lot to that set. I'd love to show them to you at some point.

 

00;15;28;12 - 00;15;34;22

DP

I'd love to see that. So what was the size of the team that you had working on the project?

 

00;15;34;24 - 00;15;47;17

DHV

Core team of myself, the project manager, Sennah Loftus, the architect, Andrew Lipschitz. And then there were probably two other people who were helping. So that's 5.

 

00;15;47;17 - 00;15;51;06

DP

And did you guys work in 2D and 3D?

 

00;15;51;08 - 00;16;03;20

DHV

This is a project that was done entirely in CAD so much detail that it not a lot of repetition and so many one off kinds of details that working in Revit would have hindered us.

 

00;16;03;20 - 00;16;11;29

DP

I think and you guys presented I'm assuming, drawings and ultimately maybe even models to the clients along the way. Did they enjoy that?

 

00;16;12;01 - 00;16;24;23

DHV

Of course, there's nothing like a model. So we actually made a model where we could take the roof off. The client could actually understand the roof structure and then see the space inside and then put the roof back on.

 

00;16;24;25 - 00;16;27;01

DP

Did you guys hire that out or did you make them?

 

00;16;27;01 - 00;16;43;09

DHV

We did it in-house. We have a great shop where we can do both woodworking, we have a laser cutter and also 3D printing. I think we're in the midst of phasing out the woodshop, sadly. But the other aspects of it is that prototyping is really important to us.

 

00;16;43;12 - 00;16;55;01

DP

So that's a good segway to the building esthetics. So I'm looking at some photos of the architecture. Did you guys replicate some of the archways that you found on campus and other buildings?

 

00;16;55;09 - 00;17;44;11

DHV

The main arches that are on this facade are derived directly from the front of the original dormitory. It's called Upper House. So from the upper house facade. But the curved tower entry was something that, you know, we studied Peabody and Stern a fair amount and we thought that would be appropriate. It, of course, was very tricky construction and detailing wise because not only is it curved, but we also put an arched top over the main doors.

 

So that arch is curving in elevation and in plan. Interestingly, if you flatten it out, it's actually and ellipse and the underside of the arch as you get into the door itself actually expands from the doorframe to the door head. It gets steeper because the curve is coming around.

 

00;17;44;13 - 00;17;46;09

DP

So they built formwork for that?

 

00;17;46;11 - 00;18;34;12

DHV

No? Well, I'm sure they did in terms of having an arch to lay everything up on. But the arches are actually true arches and we wanted that really deep window recess. So the brick is laid up on a facing block. So it's actually an eight inch facade on top of the structural law we have that depth really makes those arches read.

 

The arches have a stone arch on the outside. Then there's another arch on the inside that's made up of a header and a stretcher. So it's that deep. And then there's a hinge brick underneath that has a molded shape on it, basically, not quite a full round, but I guess a three quarter around section. And then it goes back into the return, which as I said, varies in depth as it goes around.

 

00;18;34;14 - 00;18;38;11

DP

Did you have any trouble finding a mason to do that work?

 

00;18;38;14 - 00;19;20;00

DHV

So we didn't find the mason, the contractors did. And the Masons on this job were really good, so we were happy. The brick is kind of a orangish red. The way we've laid it out has a very, almost monolithic feel because we picked a mortar that blends with the brick. It doesn't highlight each individual brick. So the mortar itself has that a similar coloration to the brick.

 

There's not much of just facade and it's laid up in running bond. In between the arches we have round medallions that are also made of brick. And then the center those medallions are a herringbone pattern. So there's an incredible amount of richness in the brickwork and it's highlighted by these masonry elements.

 

00;19;20;02 - 00;19;25;09

DP

I would imagine you did a lot of drawings in house of what this, ultimately, the facades were going to look like.

 

00;19;25;09 - 00;19;28;04

DHV

And then the shop drawings were amazing.

 

00;19;28;06 - 00;19;31;01

DP

And did you do many mock ups in the field?

 

00;19;31;04 - 00;19;54;24

DHV

So we did a mock up of the wall and a return. We did not do a full on mock up with the window inserted. We often do, but in this case we didn't. Tricky part was putting one of these arched openings into the existing brick of those sidings that I mentioned To start with. The brick actually is slightly different than the 1960s brick. That's the only bit of facade that remained.

 

00;19;54;27 - 00;19;59;01

DP

So the brick facade remained on those wings and then you matched?

 

00;19;59;07 - 00;20;04;06

DHV

Now we didn't match their contrasting sixties. Brick has more variation in it.

 

00;20;04;10 - 00;20;06;13

DP

It looks a little redder in the photos.

 

00;20;06;16 - 00;20;21;19

DHV

Yeah, it's just has a little bit more variation in the brick. But we tried to choose a brick that would blend both with the original Peabody and Sterns and those existing pieces of wall. I mean, in the end we could have just taken them down and started over, but we didn't.

 

00;20;21;21 - 00;20;36;24

DP

Right. You always, at least in my experience, you kind of pick and choose what you're going to keep and what you're not going to keep. And you look back, you're like, man, we probably spent more money keeping things than just tearing it down to the foundation gradually.

 

00;20;36;25 - 00;20;50;17

DHV

Absolutely. But part of the transformation of this building was not only this incredibly detailed facade, but also the very, very steeply pitched roof that's all slate. The dormers have copper on them and the tower itself has some copper on it.

 

00;20;50;19 - 00;20;55;14

DP

They must have loved that, the peak roof, the idea that they were getting rid of this flat roof.

 

00;20;55;14 - 00;21;04;21

DHV

Absolutely. I'm still hearing, I mean this was finished a number of years ago, and I still hear from people who've been on campus how amazing the space is.

 

00;21;04;24 - 00;21;13;14

DP

Let's talk a little bit about the trusses on the interior, even though they're not masonry. So in my experience those are called hammer beam trusses. Am I incorrect?

 

00;21;13;16 - 00;21;51;24

DHV

No, but basically this is a modern building and the span was fairly large. And so our engineers wanted this to be self-supporting. So they're made up of glulam pieces and then bolted together. There is a lot of concern actually by the client when they first saw the trusses go up because they weren't stained yet. And it has these heavy bolts in the plates and they're really worried that this is going to get too industrial looking.

 

And we painted the steel bits in a color that kind of calms down the contrast between the steel and the wood. And by the time the roof went on and everything else was going on, everybody's in love.

 

00;21;51;26 - 00;21;57;02

DP

You would never know. And I looked at those photos online. You'd never know there was any steel.

 

00;21;57;04 - 00;22;07;02

DHV

Yeah, it's just the balls. Sometimes we've done roofs that look like they're heavy timber but are actually steel clad. But in this case, the wood is actually self-supporting.

 

00;22;07;05 - 00;22;08;23

DP

Yeah, the interior's stunning.

 

00;22;08;26 - 00;22;09;10

DHV

Thank you.

 

00;22;09;10 - 00;22;14;21

DP

Is that one large rectangular space on the first floor other than the wing?

 

00;22;14;21 - 00;23;21;18

DHV

Yeah, other than the wings, it's not quite rectangular because the ends have sort of apses. They're angular. And so in the middle of each and there's an enormous fireplace, we pulled the base of the fireplace up off the floor so that you could see in to the fireplaces from the seated position. And then we had these incredible carvings done that are representative of themes on the campus.

 

And then, they're not wood burning their gas, but they certainly give this incredible warmth to events and the floor is made of terrazzo. And we carefully made a pattern of the terazzo. So but I said, these people are jokesters, right? And so one of the things that you can do with terrazzo, so it's imbed brass shapes into it.

 

We found a number of shapes again of animals and other things that are kind of spread through the Lawrenceville law. And then we put cockroaches on the floor. That's so there's like five or six cockroaches. So there's the question always is, well, where's the cockroach?

 

00;23;21;20 - 00;23;23;03

DP

I'd love to see that.

 

00;23;23;05 - 00;23;25;04

DHV

I can send you a photograph.

 

00;23;25;12 - 00;23;31;03

DP

Please do. So, did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process? Anything kind of new for you?

 

00;23;31;05 - 00;24;04;08

DHV

One of the things that we were very interested in anyway was the issue of the Western exposure. And we're a firm that is oriented towards sustainability. It kind of is part and parcel of every project that we do. And so the light mitigation was a big piece of it. So we did a number of lighting studies to see how deep we needed to make the niches to really be able to cut off the direct glare to the inside.

 

That was an interesting piece of work for us. The combination of computer modeling, lighting, simulation and facade design.

 

00;24;04;11 - 00;24;18;24

DP

Very cool. So, Daniela, you've been an architect and educator for some time. Based on what you know today about being an architect, do you have any words of advice for your younger self or maybe for young people coming up in the field today?

 

00;24;18;27 - 00;25;06;09

DHV

So everybody has to find their own selves. And I mentor a lot of women. Our office is more than 50% women. Being an architect on the job site is always a challenge. I found my own way, partially because I played a lot of basketball growing up and I played a lot of basketball with men. I already had this kind of knowledge of both teamwork, competitiveness, defensiveness, all of that all plays out in sports and then into real life.

 

But most people don't have that experience. They're not as big as tall as I am. I try and say, You're going to have to find your own way. But ultimately on the job site anyway, the person who signs the requisition for payment has the power. So I think my biggest piece of advice is learn to trust yourself and stand on your own two feet.

 

00;25;06;16 - 00;25;23;26

DP

It's great advice. When I think about myself as a young architect, a young human being for that matter, I was always looking for answers from someone else, always asking someone, How do I do this or How do I get to where I want to go? Or what do I even want to do with my life.

 

00;25;23;28 - 00;25;25;09

DHV

That only comes from inside.

 

00;25;25;15 - 00;25;36;22

DP

But it takes a long time to figure that out. And it's really nice that there are people that come alongside you and say, Hey, you know what? You have to look inside. The answers are actually all there already.

 

00;25;36;24 - 00;25;37;27

DHV

Correct. Nice way to put it.

 

00;25;38;00 - 00;25;47;18

DP

Well, I'm glad you've been there for lots of other women. So, Daniela, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about VMA and yourself?

 

00;25;47;20 - 00;26;08;14

DHV

Our website is cumbersome in terms of its name, but its VoithandMacTavish.com. There's lots of information. If you want to know more about me, search Daniela Voith I think will get you there. You don't have to add my middle name, Holt. I even have a Wikipedia page. So there's a lot of information out there to be had about me.

 

00;26;08;20 - 00;26;12;18

DP

That's pretty cool. Well, thank you very much for your time today.

 

00;26;12;25 - 00;26;15;11

DHV

It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me.

 

00;26;15;14 - 00;26;42;05

DP

Our pleasure.

 

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;12

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;14 - 00;00;30;24

Will Quam (WQ)

The Fulton Market area, I think, is the place where some of the best brick architecture in Chicago is currently happening, because it's a place where you have a lot of these historical buildings and you have a lot of people coming in there building offices, residences, restaurants, and they want to make it feel like it's part of that history.

 

And so they're using brick. And then you have a lot of architects who are really pushing the limits on what they're able to decoratively do with the brick.

 

00;00;30;26 - 00;01;42;04

DP

This is my guest, Will Quam. I'll share more about him shortly in this bonus episode from the Design Vault. We talked to Will, an architecture photographer, writer, researcher and man who was fascinated with brick.

 

Hi. I'm Doug Patt and this is Design Vault. Will Quam lives in Chicago. He's currently writing a book for the University of Chicago Press on the history of brick architecture in the city.

 

He documents brick as a way to pay more attention to the world around him and encourages others to do the same. He believes it's been like learning a whole new language and a means to discovering great texts hidden in the buildings that surround him in his own words. Everything built is designed and has impact, good or bad. It's easy to walk by something like a brick building and pay it no mind.

 

But the world is so much more interesting when you ask the question, What is that and why is it the way it is? Above all, he believes nothing is boring and everything can be interesting and exciting, even bricks. So welcome Will, it's nice to have you with us today.

 

00;01;42;07 - 00;01;43;29

WQ

Thank you so much, Doug. It's great to be here.

 

00;01;44;02 - 00;01;50;09

DP

So tell us a little bit about where you're from and how you became so interested in brick and brick architecture.

 

00;01;50;16 - 00;03;52;24

WQ

I became interested in bricks through a very circuitous route. I am from Saint Paul, Minnesota, originally, which is a good brick town, a smaller brick town. I studied theater, I directed, I did set design. I acted, and I moved to Chicago originally to be a theater teacher, and that's what I did for about nine years. I taught middle school theater.

 

I taught afterschool programs, in school residencies. I wrote and directed plays with middle schoolers. The great thing about that work, besides just, you know, it was so fulfilling working with kids is my work brought me all over the city in the suburbs of Chicago, and Chicago is massive. The south side of Chicago alone is the size of Philadelphia.

 

And so coming from a place like Saint Paul, it was an introduction to a much larger built world. And so through my work, I was, you know, on the north side in the morning, the south side in the afternoon, the west side, in the evening, the suburbs the next day. And going around Chicago, you start to see that there are these very repetitive building types, the bungalow, the two flat, the courtyards style, the apartment hotel, and they're all made of brick pretty much exclusively.

 

You get some stone, you get the very occasional wood, but brick is the defining material. And I started to notice that it was the brick and specifically the face, the bricks on the front of these buildings that made them all unique. And they weren't just these red rectangles that I'd always thought of a brick as being. There's texture, there's color, there's pattern, there's usage.

 

And so I started taking pictures on my phone. And then one day in the basement of a theater where I was running a middle school theater camp, I started Instagram and posted them and people started asking me questions. And so I said, Well, I better research this, dove down the rabbit hole and then seven years later, here I am.

 

It's become my full time job, taking pictures for architects and suppliers and engineers. And then I lead these brick tours to such a natural spinoff of my earlier work. Taking that excitement and giving it away. I think that's the biggest thing about my work is I'm not trying to gate keep anything. I don't have a background in this.

 

I'm just a very passionate learner. And then on, my goal is just to give everything away in the most interesting and exciting way possible.

 

00;03;52;26 - 00;03;55;08

DP

Do you ever think to yourself, I should have been an architect?

 

00;03;55;14 - 00;04;36;20

WQ

I'm very lucky in that my great grandfather was an architecture journalist and instilled a lot of that in my dad. My great grandfather's the great John Entenza, who did the case study houses. I never met him, but my dad knew him well. So we grew up going on a lot of architecture tours, a lot of historic home tours.

 

And really the importance of the built world was instilled to me as a young man, but it was always something I thought, you know, I would just enjoy. And maybe that is I'm very lucky that I grew up playing trombone and singing in choirs, and I went to space camp and I was encouraged to have all these very multifaceted interests by parents who had these very multifaceted interests as well.

 

And so I was very lucky to be able to feel like I could explore things.

 

00;04;36;25 - 00;04;58;26

DP

It sounds really cool. I mean, it's almost like you're walking down the street and you see a building and it's made of brick, and it occurs to you, you get this thought like, Hey, that's kind of cool. I wonder why that looks like that. And then the next day gets a little more important. The next day gets a little bit more fascinating, and all of a sudden you've got this interest in something that sits so far outside of your wheelhouse. In a way, it's amazing.

 

00;04;59;02 - 00;05;37;16

WQ

Exactly. You know, it starts with somebody asking, What's that pattern? And me, I guess I'll look on Wikipedia and then I'm emailing a brick dealer, and then I'm finding books on the history of brick architecture to the point where now last week I spent a whole day at the University of Illinois Library reading through old copies of the brick and clay record from the 1970s.

 

And what makes it so great in Chicago, too, is you truly can walk down any street and you'll find great brick architecture, any residential street anywhere in this entire city. And the city is so big and changing so much so constantly that you can go down the same street again ten years later and you can have so many new things to discover.

 

00;05;37;19 - 00;05;41;03

DP

Yeah. As an aside, have you been to the Monadnock Building?

 

00;05;41;10 - 00;05;42;19

WQ

Love the Monadnock Building.

 

00;05;42;26 - 00;05;59;14

DP

Right? When I was in architecture school and I learned about that building and the fact that the base is six feet thick of brick masonry as the load bearing structure. The first thing I did when I got to Chicago was go to that building. I'm I just couldn't believe it. Right. It's amazing.

 

00;05;59;17 - 00;06;40;15

WQ

It's an unbelievable it's one I found has such lasting power as well as I interview architects. So many times, I'll ask them, what's your favorite brick building in the city? And I'd say 50% say the Monadnock Building. It's so honest with its material and so inventive at the same time. You know, one of the things as I've looked at it and photographed it, I've noticed is there's no hard lines on the building.

 

It's all using this molded brick made by the Chicago Anderson Brick Company. You get the sort of the plinth that rises up and then curves into the building and that it's not a sharp edge from a brick to another brick that's turning; there's a rounded brick to bridge that gap at every point. So the lines are kept incredibly smooth throughout the whole thing through this really intentional use.

 

00;06;40;17 - 00;06;41;27

DP

Yeah. Now, how about the cornice?

 

00;06;42;03 - 00;07;31;18

WQ

Oh, tremendous. Every piece of that was intentionally planned that way. There's nothing was done on accident, and that's still true today. You know, one of the things I try to push back on a lot is, you know, in my work, I'm a lot of times focusing and studying and photographing historic buildings and they're amazing. But people sort of feel that permission to say, oh, well, we just don't make them like we used to.

 

And there's only crap being made today and it's just not true. There's a lot of really amazing buildings being built today. The way we make them is different. The style we make them is different, but that's because so much has changed in the materials we use, making things efficient, making labor safe. And there's a lot of really great design out there that if we just say we don't make them like we used to, we neglect the work that architects and designers are still doing today with the same intentionality they were doing in the 1890 and the man was built.

 

00;07;31;25 - 00;08;38;20

DP

Well, it's a great segway. So we're going to talk about a few pieces of architecture today, two Chicago pieces and one New York City and then maybe some other buildings. So let's dig in here and learn a little bit more about brick architecture. First, let's talk about the Chicago Park District HQ Building by John Ronan Architects in Chicago.

 

The Chicago Park District headquarters is a 78,000 square foot building comprised of headquarters office space for the Chicago Park District Staff and Field House on a 17 acre park. The headquarters building is a two story circle in plan, with two courtyards. The building has a unique facade with individually curved metal panels, curtain wall glazing and a light brown brick facade with brick patterning.

 

An interesting fact that Will points out about the building, and in regard to the brick masonry set, the bricks used are all Chicago common bricks which were made locally. So Will, let's start out with that. Tell us a little bit more about the bricks of this building.

 

00;08;38;23 - 00;12;56;07

WQ

Yeah, they're made of Chicago common bricks which are the bricks made locally in Chicago and most cities in the 1800s and for part of the 1900s were producing their own brick, both common brick and face brick, face brick being the nicer, more intentionally made brick used on the fronts of buildings and common brick, the cheaper stuff to go in the guts.

 

What made Chicago unique is that we only made common brick. Our clay, which we had in massive abundance thanks to this glacial lake that you cover all of this dry land in Chicago, Lake Michigan used to extend far over what's now dry land. The still waters of that lake allowed all this clay to settle, but all this other stuff settled in that clay as well.

 

The perfect mix for making bricks. But it made bricks that were, frankly to those architects of that era, very ugly. They weren't predictable in any way. The levels of mineral in them were really varied, but one batch might come out yellow, one brown, one pink, one red, all these chunks of limestone in them. But the clay was right there and it was super cheap to make.

 

And so we made a ton of that and threw it in our buildings. But then we would import other bricks, nicer bricks from Saint Louis or Milwaukee or Pennsylvania or Texas to put on the fronts of buildings. But Chicago kept making these common bricks, and we made a massive amount of them. In 1871, the year of the Great Fire of Chicago, Chicago produced about a hundred million of them a year.

 

And part of what makes the timing of the fire so good, a little ironically, is that the year of the Fire, 1871, the Chicago brick industry had really finished mechanizing pretty much by that year. And so when the city burned down, the city was in, the brick makers of Chicago were in a unique position to help rebuild the city out of brick.

 

So that fire code, a new fire code could be met in a way that other cities like Boston, Boston's burned down several times because they kept having to rebuild out of wood. Chicago had this local brick making machinery to make it possible to rebuild with brick. So the year the fire reproduced about 100 million of them a year.

 

Ten years later, Chicago was producing 200 million of these a year. And by 1916, Chicago was producing just shy of 1 billion common bricks a year. And that's the year Chicago actually surpassed the Hudson Valley of upstate New York, which provided all the common brick for New York City. By 1916, Chicago's producing more common bricks than the entire common brick area of New York City.

 

About 11% of all the brick made in the United States in 1916, face brick or common brick was Chicago, common brick and more by about 100 million than all the brick made in Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa and Indiana combined that year. So we made a ton of brick in these surface plants all over the city, and we kept it all local for the most part.

 

And so you go around Chicago into alleys and sides of buildings, and this is the brick that you see, this messy looking brick. And it was always covered up because it was considered too unpredictable, too ugly. But what happened was, starting in the 1960s, as we're entering this era of bright glazed bricks or these sort of sleek, smooth, sort of noisy and modern bricks, you get a generation of architects who start to be really drawn to the antique accidental look of these bricks, the variation on them.

 

This is the time as urban renewal was sort of ravaging Chicago, when all these buildings are being torn down all over the place and people start to save these common bricks and put them in new buildings because they can add the sense of antique ness and age to buildings in a way that a modern market and this new market of reclaimed brick is born.

 

And then by the 1982, when the last Chicago common brick manufacturer shuts down, there's suddenly this massive market for these reclaimed bricks. First for an antique look to a building in the seventies and eighties as people are really drawn to these earth tones, browns and rough sort of creamy whites of brick. But then today, especially, and in the case especially of this new Chicago Park district headquarters, these bricks, they've embodied carbon in them and so they get you a lot of lead points and they're much more eco friendly material to use.

 

And so you start to see a lot more use of this reclaimed material because of the way it ties in to a greater focus on ecological buildings. And it's perfect for this building. It's a gorgeous building sitting on this massive park and having this really earthy brick that's full of color variation, full of all these stones, full of all this stuff.

 

It makes it feel like it really is growing out of the park and a part of the park rather than a lot of park buildings that feel like they’re just placed down into the park.

 

00;12;56;09 - 00;13;07;03

DP

So I'm curious, just to back up, why did Chicago stop producing common brick? Was it because brick masonry was no longer load bearing? We were using steel and iron.

 

00;13;07;10 - 00;15;23;04

WQ

Yes. So Chicago and the country stopped using common brick, mostly after the Second World War when cavity wall construction became prominent. Concrete block is just a lot larger and a lot cheaper. In 1952, in Chicago, a 77 square foot wall of Chicago commons would cost about $120 to lay parts and labor. The same size wall out of concrete block was about $45.

 

And so this cost savings were huge. As labor then became more and more expensive and concrete became more and more affordable, people started moving away from the common brick. Then what happened is in 1970, Congress passes the Clean Air Act, forms the EPA and brick plants all over the country are putting tons of sulfur dioxide and ozone and smog into the air.

 

And for a lot of those companies, it was not too difficult to get into compliance. You know, you have a big beehive kill or tunnel kill, and you could put a scrubber on your vents and start to clean up your operation. These common brick manufacturers, by that point, there were just two left in the Chicago area. They were using what are called Pskov kilns, which basically you take a bunch of unfired bricks, make them into this massive pile with channels running through it.

 

You cover it in fired bricks and set it on fire from the inside. It's a super cheap way to make bricks that don't need to look nice but are effective. But the comparison I like to make is a traditional kiln works like an oven. You take your turkey, you put it in the oven, you close the door, you turn it on.

 

A Pskov kiln that the Chicago commons were made in. You take that same turkey, you put it on your countertop, you stick a gas jet in the butt you cover it in deli meat and light it on fire. It's a lot more messy. It does the same job, but it's a lot more messy and it's a lot harder to clean up.

 

And so the Chicago common plants looked at the economics. They were losing market share. They looked at the clay. They had left the Illinois brick company in Blue Island decided, we've only got about three years clay left or just shut down. And then they looked at the environmental impact. One of these companies in Muncie, Indiana, on days that they were burning there were certain intersections you just couldn't drive because they were so smog filled. To the credit of the American beer company who was in that last company, they spent tens and tens of thousands of dollars trying to find ways to come into compliance and to make it a cleaner operation and continue this business.

 

But it ultimately just wasn't economically viable.

 

00;15;23;10 - 00;15;34;11

DP

So back to the Chicago Park District headquarters building, did you ever read anything about why John Ronan Architects ultimately used common brick for the exterior of New York?

 

00;15;34;14 - 00;16;42;04

WQ

Yeah. A friend of mine supplied those reclaimed bricks for him. A big part of it was that environmental impact using that embodied carbon, using a local material, not needing to create any new emissions through the creation of material, and also the fact that it's a reclaimed material taken from demolished buildings nearby. It's taking that local material and using it for a local purpose, making it something more true to that place.

 

Then a different kind of imported brick. And John Ronan is an architect who really loves brick and has used brick in really creative ways. In Chicago, he did a high school at South Shore International Academy where he was very specific about these different colors or slightly different tones of brick, sort of a creamy white and a little bit more of a beige and figuring out exactly where he wanted these bands to go on the building.

 

He had a house on the north side that uses these super long format bricks in a really interesting way to enliven up this very geometric or rectilinear facade. So someone who's super intentional about brick and so the Park District headquarters is another example of him using brick in that really intentional way.

 

00;16;42;07 - 00;17;36;17

DP

Yeah, the building's really unique and it sounds like a very thoughtful office. So next, let's talk about McDonald's HQ in Chicago. The architect of record was Gensler. When I sat down to do a little bit of research online, I really couldn't find a whole lot of pictures which describe this building. There are many exterior pics that are kind of further away shots.

 

The interior photos that I did find on a variety of websites, really quite stunning with wood clad interior, gracious curves and a very contemporary feel. The exterior is also quite interesting. The building almost seems inverted with a steel and glass base and square glass curtain wall openings framed in brick above. So these brick frames are really actually quite beautiful.

 

And you sent me a couple of photos of these. Let's talk about those.

 

00;17;36;20 - 00;19;44;07

WQ

Yeah. So it's a big steel and glass building, but it does have these large brick frames that surround two stories of windows each. It's all precast thin brick made by a company in Germany. And to get to the importance of what that brick is on the building and why it's there, I think it's important to talk about the neighborhood it's in.

 

It's in an area called Fulton Market, part of the West Loop of Chicago, which a lot of people have probably heard of as sort of Chicago's new restaurant and tech hub. It was an area of meatpacking and warehouses and manufacturing for many, many years. In the last 15 years, it's become this massive area for some of the best restaurants in the city.

 

Google has a building there now, and so it's full of all these big brick buildings, these big old brick warehouses or storage buildings with large windows. And so I think it's so wonderful that this new steel and glass building made the intentional choice to embrace that brick material. But the other thing I love about it is that we talked about with Chicago common brick brick is no longer really being used as a structural material in the United States.

 

And so buildings like this that take that nature, that brick is no longer a structural material. They take it and use it instead as a purely decorative material. And I think they do such a wonderful job on this building because it's the thin brick that runs around these windows, sort of blue ish and golden and orange colors with a rolled edge and a little bit of sort of a knock or sort of bumps and stuff on the face of it.

 

It describes this herringbone and zigzag pattern through these spandrels and these mullions that run along the building in a way that serves no structural purpose at all. But it is beautiful to look at and tie in through the use of that brick. It ties it into the neighborhood. I think that's just such a wonderful thing to do at a time when a lot of new construction and here I've said earlier, there is a lot of great new construction, but there is a lot of construction that's using brick and really uninspired ways it's just slap at a bunch of structures up on a wall or between windows. And so to see a building like this, a really prominent building in a really prominent location, in a historic location, I love that they're using brick in such an interesting way.

 

00;19;44;09 - 00;20;03;15

DP

Yeah, I'd love to see the studies in the architect's office for all of these or for the variety of brick patterns where you get soldier coursing. You've got stacked herringbone, as you stated, you almost have something that looks close to a Greek key as well. It's really quite beautiful and the color is stunning in the sun.

 

00;20;03;22 - 00;20;29;01

WQ

It really is. I captured it in those photos I sent you. It faces the north side of the street. And so you get this beautiful raking light on it in the summer evenings and in the shadow, it's still got this sort of lovely warm orange to it. So it really is very present and there's so much going on.

 

It's the sort of thing where you look at it and you trace it along and you to start to, like you said, start to find all those little details, different details scattered throughout the brickwork.

 

00;20;29;08 - 00;20;54;03

DP

You know, it's really nice too. It's almost as though they're expressing the structural system on the exterior with these super tall piers which frame these windows. One starts to think, okay, well, maybe the structural steel system is hidden within that. I don't know whether or not that's actually the case, but it does remind one of an industrial building in Chicago 80 or 90 years ago, right?

 

00;20;54;09 - 00;21;49;09

WQ

Yeah. And those are the buildings that surround it there. And another little twist. I like that they idea is that those brick frames are not surrounding every single window or they don't run on every single story that you do get these big frames that surround two or three stories I can't quite remember. And so it still gives it this very light feeling, this very open feeling, while having that strong brick tie into the neighborhood.

 

And the Fulton Market area, I think is the place where some of the best brick architecture in Chicago is currently happening because it's a place where you have a lot of these historical buildings and you have a lot of people coming in there building offices, residences, restaurants, and they want to make it feel like it's part of that history.

 

And so they're using brick and then you have a lot of architects who are really pushing the limits on what they're able to decoratively do with the brick. And the McDonald's was a pretty fairly early example of that. But there are many more that have come in since they're in the area.

 

00;21;49;11 - 00;21;58;24

DP

That's an interesting point. So early McDonald's structures across the United States, do you know if they utilize brick pretty heavily?

 

00;21;58;26 - 00;23;58;26

WQ

You know, I've researched this. I have emailed with a fast food historian to find some answers. So, yeah, the early McDonald's drive ins were clad in ceramic tile, whites, bright whites, bright red, and then they made a very intentional choice. In 1975 or so, they did a big redesign sort of as the baby boomers who were driving there are now buying homes.

 

And what they did was they started putting these dark brown bricks. They redesigned their restaurants using this very dark, earthy brick and adding that classic McDonald's double mansard roof. And this is the era when like Wendy's ads for solariums, the restaurants become these very earthy buildings. The first one of those was in Matheson, Illinois, in the south suburbs.

 

And that was the time too where McDonald's actually built their first corporate headquarters in Oakbrook, Illinois, designed by Dirk Lohan. Mies van der Rohe's grandson, like those restaurants, is a building very much, it's covered in this wonderful sort of earthy iron, spotted brick and surrounded by a manmade lake and all these trees and very much engaging with nature at a time when they're trying to push away from that kind of bright colors, machine age, looking stuff into a more earthy thing.

 

And then you get into the 1990s and McDonald's does another major rebrand, adding these sort of pastel colors or a lot of painted white brick that I think a lot of people my generation are familiar with as well. And then now a lot of those McDonald's, they've torn them down. They've rebuilt them using smooth grays and blacks and whites.

 

And so McDonald's, you can really follow you know, one of my big passions is following how people have used brick throughout every decade of history that you can look at a building and based on the color, the texture, the use of the brick to tell when it was built and McDonald's in specific is a great way to do that.

 

You can look at the restaurants and see how they've changed the restaurants, and that gives you sort of a bellwether of how ideas about what purpose bricks should serve has changed. That's a very long answer to say, yes, McDonald's has used a lot of brick in their restaurants throughout the country.

 

00;23;58;29 - 00;24;08;04

DP

The building is really interesting because it's also kind of flipped, right? I mean, so the base should be masonry and the upper portion should all be glass and windows.

 

00;24;08;07 - 00;24;41;18

WQ

I hadn't really noticed that until you brought that up. It is pretty unusual in that way. It's about a two story big steel and glass expressed base story within the brick rising up above, and I don't know why that choice was made, but it is pretty striking and it creates maybe a much open feeling based story. And the base story, they have a restaurant where you can order, you know, all the traditional McDonald's things, but you can also they have a rotating list of items that you can get at McDonald's around the country. So you can get sometimes like a curry burger or something like that that they'd have in McDonald's, India, or I guess it wouldn’t be a burger, a curry chicken sandwich.

 

00;24;41;25 - 00;24;43;02

DP

The McRib, maybe.

 

00;24;43;02 - 00;24;46;12

WQ

Yeah, the McRib. All year long. Who knows? We can dream.

 

00;24;46;15 - 00;25;57;18

DP

Oh, you know, can dream. Oh, that's great. The final building that I'd love to talk about is the Grand Mulberry in New York City by Morris Adjmi Architects. I got to meet Morris Adjmi in the city. We talked a little bit about the Grand Mulberry that evening. The building is absolute stunning. It's incredibly creative. This is paraphrased from their website.

 

So traditionally, Italianate tenement buildings featured a tripartite white facade that consisted of a base, middle and top with different details and brickwork. The Grand Mulberry facade consists of banding at the building's base, pediment windows at the middle and arched windows and a cornice at the top with coin details defining the base. While the facade pattern is traditional, the application of the hand molded domed bricks is modern, the molded bricks representing an offset window pattern to the real ones.

 

The red orange color pays further homage to the red brick buildings found in the neighborhoods. So this building is really unique, not only because of its aesthetics, but because they used some custom brick.

 

00;25;57;20 - 00;28;13;22

WQ

Yeah, it's one of my favorite new brick buildings in the United States and one that I had on my radar for a long time. And I took a trip to New York this summer specifically to go photograph several buildings, and it was one of the first ones I hit because it's just such a striking building and I think a perfect use of brick as a modern material in a couple of ways.

 

One is that color, that beautiful reddish orange color, and talking about, you know, the history of what kind of bricks are people using in areas and those Italianate tenement buildings, that was an era where they were using this very smooth pressed red brick, and that was sort of the predominant material. So first, that color pays homage and two, like I mentioned before, embracing the brick as a decorative material in an age when it doesn't need to be structural anymore, it could have very easily just been a red brick punched opening building, but then using those specifically hand molded bricks to create that design on the building is such a simple, yet unbelievably inventive way to create design across the facade.

 

It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite buildings here in Chicago. There's a church, many Chicagoans, they know it. It's Saint Stanislaus Kostka. It's right next to the expressway. It's a big brick church right next to the expressway that you've probably driven by. It's built in 1881 for what came to be the largest Polish Catholic congregation in the country, maybe even the largest Catholic congregation in the country at the time.

 

It's a huge church made entirely of Chicago common brick. So using the cheapest brick they had available. But what the architect, Brooklyn based architect named [Patrick] Keeley, did, the front of the building, the main central window is very small and it's got wood tracery. But he took that common brick and by pushing it out and turning it created this much larger arc that surrounds it with smaller round sort of bull's eyes and these bands of densely and creates on the facade just through the movement of the brick, the illusion of a much grander central window, a much grander central design using that same material.

 

And I'm seeing the Grand Mulberry. That's what it immediately ties me back to, it's using that same material in just a slightly different way to create the appearance and the remembrance and the reminder of something different all through the use of the same material, but just in a slightly different way.

 

00;28;13;25 - 00;28;54;06

DP

Yeah, the building essentially has two facades, right? It has a facade that's made out of brick, and then it has a facade or a facade that's articulated in brick and then the real facade with glass and metal windows. It's a really creative piece of architecture. You know what I love? There are some really great shots of this building online from further away and up above, and the building matches all of the other architecture and yet is completely set apart.

 

It's like this little wonderfully articulated orange red cube which sets itself apart and yet kind of fits into everything around it. It's a really wonderful building.

 

00;28;54;09 - 00;30;25;04

WQ

It absolutely is. And the other thing I want to praise about it is the use of those hand molded bricks. They could have done any other sort of thing. They could have, you know, done a projecting header or something to create that design. But again, in this era when brick can be sort of freed as a purely design detail and it is a ceramic material that is made of earth sculpted by people and fired in fire.

 

We see more and more these days projects taking advantage of specifically that hand process. There's a couple projects here in Chicago, a couple of homes like in Lincoln Park that are using these sculpted hand sculpted bricks that brick companies have these artisans who will take that same material and apply this more sculptural treatment to it in all sorts of different ways, and bring the handmade process back into the fold.

 

You know, you don't have to get rid of your extruded modulus, but we now have the ability to use brick more decoratively. And let's bring a little bit of the handmade process back into it. And I think that's what is so great about this tool. Also, one of the thing is it could have been so easy for them to have those two facades line up the real and the false.

 

And it's just so spectacular to me that there is that offset, that offset to them also that the building has you know, it's this tripart, the tenements, but they're sort of the two pushed together and then there's it's almost as if another one kind of got built in later with a thick party wall. Again, it's not a perfect repetition of the same form over and over again.

 

It looks more realistic to how the city would have organically been built.

 

00;30;25;07 - 00;30;28;00

DP

Well, you talk just like an architect.

 

00;30;28;02 - 00;30;32;26

WQ

Listen, I'll take it. I'll take it. This is what you get if you don't have hobbies for many, many years.

 

00;30;32;29 - 00;30;40;02

DP

That's great. So I know you give tours. Do you do any teaching? Because you'd be an amazing teacher if you're not already.

 

00;30;40;08 - 00;33;10;13

WQ

I appreciate that. Yeah. So I don't do any teaching. I have taught photo classes and I have given a lot of talks with groups on the history of brick architecture, both for you know, architecture classes but also for things like various interest groups. But then I give these tours. I started about five years ago. A friend of mine who runs a great tour company here in Chicago called Chicago for Chicagoans basically slipped in my DMs and was like, You've got to do tours, you got to do it.

 

And I was like, okay, I guess I will. It's been perfect. I love doing it. It takes advantage of the teaching background I have. And like I said, I'm a guy who I like to see things and I like to tell people about them. I never want to and similar, you know, I do all this research for these two words using all these databases and newspaper archives and things.

 

And whenever anybody asks me how I do my research, I just can't wait to tell them I don't want to keep anything. I want you to be able to do all this research and dive into your own things as well. And the great thing about the tours is, you know, when I first started them four years ago, they were very solely brick focused.

 

You know, I'm teaching you about rowlock, soldier, shiner and all these things, but now as they've grown to eight different neighborhoods around the city and hopefully ten by next year, I treat brick as the beginning. If I can get you excited about a brick, I can get you to look closer at anything. You're going to look way too close to the brick, but you're also going to see the other ways in which the built environment or even the invisible environments change our city.

 

And Chicago's this amazing city because it has so much history and so many generations of history with 77 official neighborhoods. All of those are Brooklyn sub neighborhoods, and all of those have had several different generations of people and stories there. So every single place you go, you can find all this depth to dive into. If I can give one of my favorite examples that ties to brick when I tell people about Chicago common brick, you know, I talk about these clay pits that were all over the city.

 

There's a big one on the north side here. There's three small clay pits, these three small companies, and by 1900 they had formed into one large company, mining one big pit. By 1915, they moved out to Blue Island in the south suburbs. The city bought that pit from the city, filled it with garbage to get it back to ground level, paved it over.

 

And in 1929, they built Lane Tech High School on top of it, which is one of the largest high schools in the country and one of the most prestigious high schools in Chicago. It's this huge, beautiful gothic revival, high school built on this former clay pit that you wouldn't even know was there. And that's a wonderful example of all these things that are just hidden all over Chicago.

 

And you really don't have to look too hard to find them.

 

00;33;10;16 - 00;33;44;17

DP

Well, it's been a real pleasure to have you here today. You know, as much more than any architect or architectural historian about the subject of brick. And you're incredibly intelligent and articulate and what blows me away is that you do talk just like an architect. So it's been a real pleasure to have you here before you go, you're a guy with many varied interests.

 

Do you have any advice for someone who's passionate about so many things or maybe just about one thing and doesn't really know where to start?

 

00;33;44;23 - 00;34;22;16

WQ

I mean, I would say it can be hard. It can be difficult to start, but just the thing to do is start small and start somewhere. I'm someone who very much once I find something I want to know about, I can get way in my own way of like, Well, this can be too hard to learn everything, so it's not worth it.

 

You start somewhere. You know, for me, it was Wikipedia. It truly was just Wikipedia. And I started getting answers to questions. And then I start getting more questions. And that let me keep asking more questions and keep getting more answers and keep getting more questions and more answers. So I think it's just choose to start in a way that is simple and accessible to you and to dive down as deep as you can.

 

00;34;22;22 - 00;34;37;24

DP

Yeah, I think what's challenging for most people is they overthink it and wonder where everything's going. And it would seem to me that your experience has been so organic that it's worked out for you in many ways that you never really anticipated it.

 

00;34;37;26 - 00;35;09;21

WQ

Exactly. And something that is also really important to me is saying when I don't know the answer to something, you know, if someone asked me a question I don't know, just saying I don't know, because I think so often the instinct is to if you are want to be an expert in something, to try to pull things together, to create an answer to something you don't necessarily know.

 

But I think from my teaching days and working with kids and young people, it's so valuable not to do that, to be able to admit when you don't know the answer. And that often will lead people to their own curiosity and finding those answers for themselves. And then you can go off and do your research, too.

 

00;35;09;28 - 00;35;17;11

DP

Will, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Could you tell us about your websites and how people can find you?

 

00;35;17;17 - 00;35;53;22

WQ

Yeah. So my website is BrickofChicago.com. And that's where I have information about, you know, you can learn about brick bonds, you can learn about the history of Chicago common brick and my tours and I make a calendar as well and my website WillQuam.com, and that's for my architecture photography work.

 

I take pictures for architects and engineers and landscape architects and all sorts of people and organizations are around Chicago, so you can see my work there. And then I'm on Instagram, @bricksofchicago, posting different bricks from around Chicago, and then my travels every single day.

 

00;35;53;27 - 00;35;54;17

DP

Thanks, Will.

 

00;35;54;24 - 00;35;59;14

WQ

Thank you so much. It's been a delight.

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;08

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;10 - 00;00;22;07

John Hutch (JH)

One of the missions was to continue to keep the character of Broadway, of Fell's Point through those storefronts and set back the building's mass so that it was not present or felt when you're walking along the sidewalk.

 

00;00;22;14 - 00;02;25;12

DP

This is my guest, John Hutch. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from The Design Vault. We highlight John's Project Marketplace at Fell's Point. Marketplace Fell's Point is located in historic Fell's Point, Baltimore, Maryland. The new urban lifestyle apartments feature open rooms that maximize exterior daylight and the views. The bulk of the units in the marketplace project open onto private courtyard space, complete with firepits and water features.

 

Many of the units are rehabbed historic buildings from the late 1800s with large windows and special features. The apartment buildings have direct access to over 100 community retail and entertainment venues on Fell's Point waterfront. In addition to the private courtyards, the project also features a club room, lounge, fitness center and secure parking for the residents.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. John Hutch, one of the founding partners and a principal at JP2 Architects in Baltimore, Maryland. John has a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati. He plays an active role in the professional development and awareness of sustainable design within his firm. He brings 30 years of experience leading the design process of employing project management with an emphasis on project delivery.

 

He has a background in both public and private sector work, which provides diverse experience for all of the projects the office takes on. John has an international portfolio of mixed use projects which include corporate hospitality, retail, multifamily and entertainment facilities. So welcome, John. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about JP2 Architects, where you guys are located in Baltimore? What's the size of your firm? How long have you been around and what kind of work do you do?

 

00;02;25;14 - 00;03;00;16

JH

Great. Thanks, Doug. We are about a 20 person firm, and we're located in the Canton area of Baltimore, which is adjacent to Fell's Point, where this project is located. We founded JP2 Architects in 2006 and I have two other founding partners, Jamie Pett and Gordon Gaudet. The three of us have been working together for almost 30 years now.

 

When I moved here in 1995, I got to know the two of them and we've been friends and colleagues and now partners ever since.

 

00;03;00;18 - 00;03;02;12

DP

Wow, That's really cool. How did you meet?

 

00;03;02;13 - 00;03;19;23

JH

So we all met at the large international firm of our RTKL, and we were each in the commercial group. Although I tended to bounce around between groups, which gave me a diverse experience. But we were still young, rising up through the ranks and learning a lot.

 

00;03;20;00 - 00;03;23;19

DP

That's really interesting. Did you guys always know that you wanted to start a firm together?

 

00;03;23;21 - 00;03;54;10

JH

No. We each probably had different starting points. I'd say it was always my dream to start a firm and I can thank my parents for saying hold on, hold on, hold on, you need more experience. So when I moved here to Baltimore, met the two of them, I spent about ten or 12 years there prior to the three of us starting, and I couldn't ask for better partners.

 

We each fulfill a different niche and role in the firm and bring different experience and complement each other very, very well.

 

00;03;54;13 - 00;04;05;00

DP

That's wonderful for our listeners. Sean and I were talking before we got rolling here, and I used to work in Baltimore, Maryland for Zeiger Sneed. I guess I'm wondering if you ever ran into them.

 

00;04;05;06 - 00;04;11;06

JH

I haven't met them in person, but we still run into them every once in a while, competing on a project.

 

00;04;11;11 - 00;04;19;27

DP

I'm sure you do. I'm not sure how involved they both are in the firm at this point, but they certainly did something really wonderful in Baltimore.

 

00;04;19;29 - 00;04;37;14

JH

They have and they've won a lot of awards in the area. And why I plan to my roots here in Baltimore was because the design and architectural community is strong, thriving. It's a livable city. And I really love the passion that everybody brings to their projects and profession here.

 

00;04;37;17 - 00;04;45;04

DP

That's great to hear. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How long have you been practicing and what's your role in the office as a partner?

 

00;04;45;06 - 00;05;38;09

JH

Sure. So I graduated from Cincinnati in ‘91. That was probably not the best time to be graduating and looking for a job, but I struggled through those first few years gaining experience. And so when we started JP2, as I mentioned, as I think it's always been my dream to start a job. So a lot of the business planning, the oversight of the firm in general, my background is probably more design delivery heavy.

 

But I think one of the beauties of the practice we've established is that we have an amazing group here that all overlaps and has a terrific sense of projects and project management and design from beginning to end. So I will take on some master planning and some design roles, but I can tell you that my partners can draw circles around me.

 

00;05;38;11 - 00;06;22;00

DP

We talk a lot about this with our guests, our university experience. So you go to college and you learn about design, you know, structures and HVAC equipment and all those kinds of things. But you never really think about everybody's going to be good at something different, right? Or they're going to be good at a few things and then somebody else is going to be.

 

And so you really need that if you're going to have a partner, if you're not going to run your own office, you're going to have partners. It's really important to overlap. It's important to complement one another and then allow those people to do a good job in the areas that they're good at. Right? It's not something that anybody ever discusses in college. You get out and it becomes reality where you got to run a business and make money.

 

00;06;22;02 - 00;06;50;20

JH

Exactly. It's amazing how many hats and projects I may touch in a day, but having a team around us and having colleagues that I work closely with allows that overlap. What it does is it extends those initial ideas of a project and allows the whole team to be on board throughout the process so they know the vision, they know what we're executing when you go from a design concept to actually detailing a project and how to deliver it.

 

00;06;50;26 - 00;06;58;09

DP

So true. Okay, so let's dig in here and talk about Marketplace at Fell's Point. So how did you guys get that project?

 

00;06;58;11 - 00;07;58;06

JH

It's a wonderful, wonderful history. And we actually made contact through an ex RTKL employee who was in the landscape department and he got out of the design profession and started purchasing and renovating a lot of row houses here and Fell’s Point and Canton area. And he and another developer, David Holmes, the person I was speaking about is Dan Winter, and the two of them started realizing that they had properties near each other.

 

So that became a genesis amongst the two of them. They were pursuing a strategy of basically a garage with office above it, and it was seven or eight stories tall and the community fought them all along the way. And Dan, knowing that we had just started our practice and respecting our design skills, said, Hey, can you guys give me some advice?

 

Take a look at this. What should we do here? That was how we landed the project.

 

00;07;58;06 - 00;08;00;07

DP

And essentially the function changed?

 

00;08;00;09 - 00;08;51;22

JH

There you go. So I'd say I'm probably a frustrated developer because I love to look at something and say what belongs, what fits, and also how do you make it financially viable? The project, as initially conceived, wasn't penciling out from a financial standpoint, and it was a lesson of less is more. Why fight what should be here, which is a dense, residential neighborhood of two and a half, three and a half story tall row houses.

 

There are lot lines throughout, so we being old school, put pencil to trace and started sketching some ideas and they started to look at it and lo and behold, they started to peak their interest. They started to put some performance together and look at it and said, You know what, this works. That was a big change.

 

00;08;51;25 - 00;08;55;09

DP

Yeah. So the architect sold the developer in a way.

 

00;08;55;10 - 00;08;59;07

JH

Exactly. We brought an idea.

 

00;08;59;10 - 00;09;06;17

DP

Yeah, you brought in a great idea. So give us a little history of the location because you guys use some of the existing buildings, correct?

 

00;09;06;19 - 00;09;59;11

JH

That is correct. The site is fantastic. As you know, Fell’s Point is rooted in history going all the way back to the late 1700s and early 1800s. It's a waterfront community here on the harbor in Baltimore. And is known for shipbuilding sales, it's a port. So the establishments, bars, restaurants, all of that catered to folks who were in that industry.

 

Fell’s Point at the time, which would have been 2008, was what you probably hear about Baltimore, boarded up windows and storefronts. And a lot of these properties were not worth much. And so as Dave Holmes and Dan Winter were purchasing these, they had to have some kind of hope and vision that they could transform them.

 

00;09;59;13 - 00;10;05;18

DP

Okay. So tell me a little bit about the scope of the project and the client's programmatic requirements.

 

00;10;05;20 - 00;11;05;28

JH

Sure. The scope of the project, the buildings have historic storefronts, even though many of them, think about it is the 1800s, they were not historic, they were new. And so over time, they go through a transformation that was anything but historically sensitive. So one of the missions was to continue to keep the character of Broadway, of Fell's Point through those storefronts and set back the buildings mass so that it was not present or felt when you're walking along the sidewalk.

 

I'm starting from a massing standpoint to tell you about the program because the storefronts then would still be, and there's about 28,000 square feet of retail and and entertainment. And then there are in total, there are two blocks. There's one on the east side and one on the west side of Broadway. And they total 160 apartment units.

 

00;11;06;00 - 00;11;16;17

DP

I'm trying to picture what this looks like because we got some existing buildings down here and we do have some new architecture as well in plan form. What am I looking at?

 

00;11;16;20 - 00;11;59;23

JH

You're looking at like an amoeba. Unfortunately, apartment units don't like that shape, but the West block touches all four streets around it, so it almost has tentacles and reaches out. So along this storefront were basically 2 to 3 stories and we were able to do that and then set back. But the setback piece is more of a U-shape so that you didn't again have a mass of a building just lurking behind these.

 

You only had the ends of the U-shape. A lot of the use of brick and color and materials in that area was so that they felt like they fit in.

 

00;11;59;25 - 00;12;03;02

DP

So the retail space, is that all new architecture?

 

00;12;03;04 - 00;12;52;10

JH

It is. So the whole block has new storefronts, but they're restored. So they're restored to the historic significance. We went through many photos and did a lot of research. The Historical Society was incredibly helpful in that front. The depth of this storefront or what was behind those is new. When you go out into, say, the suburbs, you're used to a concrete podium with, say, four levels of stick frame construction above it.

 

That is essentially what we did in this project. We have a concrete podium that separates the retail use from the residential use above that's needed by code, but also makes laying out the apartments above much more easily.

 

00;12;52;12 - 00;13;03;09

DP

So let's talk a little bit about stylistic choice for the new architecture and then what you guys ultimately did to restore to the exteriors of some of these existing buildings.

 

00;13;03;12 - 00;14;21;23

JH

Terrific. Yeah, we had a good dialog with the Historic Preservation group here. One of the concerns is always when you create new are you competing or you're trying to match the historic facades. And we literally had on the west block two missing teeth that were non contributing and it was obvious they were not contributing to the historic fabric of the community.

 

So our challenge was how to blend in. And this is where Glen-Gery was incredibly helpful with the brick choices, the brick style and how we detailed it. So we went with a more simplistic detailing of soldiers and roll locks than a brick facade on both of the missing infill pieces. So you had a character that was still there but not trying to replicate, and that's how we worked on the Broadway facades. Around the perimeter, if you want to look, there are two alleys on either end of the buildings. Those are brick buildings. They fit in, but took the same approach where we use bricks so that it became part of the urban fabric without trying to mimic the historic aspects of the existing.

 

00;14;21;26 - 00;14;28;02

DP

Did Glen-Gery have bricks that matched the original bricks from that long ago? From the 1800s?

 

00;14;28;05 - 00;14;55;02

JH

No. But we had some that fit really well. There were molded bricks. We use the Catawba, which is a Cushwa line on the Broadway faces. In the back, we used 56-DD brick, which is more of a monolithic brick. So that one, it's still molded, but it was more uniform. So you did have a little bit more of a contemporary feel or use to the brick than you do on the historic facades.

 

00;14;55;05 - 00;15;10;13

DP

Interesting. So back to the planning process for a second. So you guys, you sit down, you do some sketches, you got some ideas, you talk with the developers, and then when did it turn into a project and how long did it take from beginning to end?

 

00;15;10;20 - 00;17;56;28

JH

How long do you have? I think the process started in early 2008. We started our firm in 2006, so this was a significant project for us. We worked very close with Dan Winter and Dave Holmes through this process. They had been working with the neighborhood groups, listening then what they want. So we took these bum wad sketches and floor plans and stuff like that, and then it started to become real.

 

And then we could start to put together some imagery of the facades. We could start to look at how we were affecting adjacent neighbors and start showing them a reduced massing than what was proposed before we started this project. And that started to win over some converts. And so that process and going through, which you may have heard in this area called CHAP, which is the Commission for Historic and Architectural Preservation, was that historic piece probably took a year.

 

So we were still in a design process for a good year after we started and then I'd say about another nine months to a year after that, we got into construction documents again, history, right? So now we're into 2009 and we all know what happened in that era with the real estate market. So we had finished construction documents as a recession, The Great Recession was happening and the thought process was, let's file for permit. So again, I'm glad you're sitting because it is a long story. I'll try to keep it somewhat short and there are details to fill in that are fascinating. We did file in 2009. It sat for years for a number of reasons. For one, they couldn't get financing.

 

You can imagine paying 2006, 2007 prices and then suddenly the bank takes a look at your property and says it's worth a 10th of that so you don't have equity in the project anymore. And so they were running up against hurdles for this. So the project sat and they were then looking for partners that could help with the project.

 

So enter Klein Enterprises and Dolben is out of Boston, Massachusetts, and Kline is a local developer here. So they came in and basically took over the project with a little bit of revisioning. So it was probably two years after that. And the construction wound up, I think it was 2012, 2013 when we finally had substantial completion.

 

So you're looking at four or five years.

 

00;17;57;00 - 00;18;05;18

DP

Yeah, that's a long time to hang with the project, especially when you're done with the drawings and then everything just sits here like, what am I going to do now?

 

00;18;05;19 - 00;18;44;19

JH

Right, right. It was interesting. I learned a lot about developers along the way as we took the plans, took the idea to a number of other developers to partner with. Some of them didn't want anything to do with the retail piece. They love the residential, but they don't do retail. And I think that's where this partnership and where it landed was a great fit.

 

Dolben has tens of thousands of apartment units. Klein, there's a lot of mixed use, and so they were not afraid and they know the neighborhood and started to have a vision for what they could create in terms of an atmosphere and a buzz in that part of Fell's Point.

 

00;18;44;22 - 00;18;57;22

DP

So back to construction. So you're under construction. Any unique construction details that you guys came across using brick or anything else, especially with all these existing buildings out there, right?

 

00;18;57;25 - 00;20;23;26

JH

It was probably one of the most challenging projects you’re going to look at. I'm sure you've talked to a number of architects that when you do an urban infill, it's a challenge. We touch over a dozen property lines on the west block and over a dozen on the east block. Each one of those neighbors needed to be notified.

 

You had to figure out how you're going to close the gap on those property lines, how you're going to flash onto other people's party walls. Essentially, as boring as the back of the place was. We had wall sections at every property line because each one was a unique condition on the west block, where we have almost 100 apartment units, we also have an underground parking garage.

 

So we have about 60 parking spaces underground and all the initial readings or that we have a water table. So here you're creating a bathtub, you've got a water table. And I think it was Hurricane Sandy that had a storm surge that pushed water up to that block as well. So now you're thinking, okay, how do I prevent water from above and below from filling this garage?

 

And so we had to create under-floor and remediation for the ground water as it swells and being able to pump it, that water table rises and lowers. So when it rises, you're pumping 24/7.

 

00;20;23;28 - 00;20;31;06

DP

So how did you guys resolve this? You're still pumping water out of there. When the groundwater rises up and it's like a bathtub that you built.

 

00;20;31;11 - 00;20;33;07

JH

Exactly. You are.

 

00;20;33;09 - 00;20;35;17

DP

Unbelievable. That's expensive.

 

00;20;35;19 - 00;21;07;07

JH

It's expensive. And again, you can imagine, I mean, now we're 12 feet below all the properties around us as well. So there was an incredible amount of documentation of the properties adjacent to this project. To be sure these 1800 structures don't settle, don't crack, and then making deals with each one of them that if that happens, we'll repair it.

 

So there was an incredible amount of liability on the contractor owner and architects and engineers as well.

 

00;21;07;09 - 00;21;30;06

DP

Wow. You guys have a real constitution. I don't think I could handle that. Just way too much responsibility. You know, interestingly, I did some work with Habitat for Humanity when we lived in Baltimore. And I remember these brick buildings, these row homes, they were crumbling. When the brick is that old, did you guys run into issues like that?

 

00;21;30;09 - 00;22;27;06

JH

We did. The interesting part of this was finding a right contractor that could deal with this. You weren't looking at a suburban stick frame guy. They'd look at it and were scared. So we needed somebody that had some chops. We ended up with Lendlease and they did a terrific job supporting the historic facades during this time. And so we had every ten feet, a steel column going up the front of the facade and then being supported laterally with other beams and huge cement blocks to keep them from falling as things were excavated behind it.

 

So it was painstakingly slow at that point. But then also the timing had to be right in order to get the concrete slab there to then reinforce and support those walls and to tie them back in to the concrete slab so that they wouldn't, you know, fall out or fall in.

 

00;22;27;08 - 00;22;52;19

DP

It takes a special kind of person and firm to do this kind of work, to be involved in that stuff. Architects do all different kinds of jobs, right? And this is one of them working with historic architecture. So what about drawings? What kind of drawings did you guys put together for the architecture? Was it 2D, 3D, lots of details? And then of course, you had to hire engineers and do drawings for the existing condition work.

 

00;22;52;25 - 00;24;05;19

JH

That's correct. And early on there's a bit of surveying that you do. I would say that it was also incredible working with a civil engineer, because if you think each one of these properties also has utilities coming in and out of it, making sure that we're staying away from all of these. So the underground piece of this became incredibly complicated. The three dimensional aspects, my partners and I are not old, but, you know, we still do a lot by hand. So a lot of the three dimensional stuff in order to get information out there quickly was by hand a lot of two dimensional facades around the project to see how it would relate to the adjacent properties. A lot of wall sections. This would have been wonderful if we had the technology today and, you know, have a drone or something scan the existing conditions in three dimensions. There was a lot of back and forth. Fortunately, it's only a half a mile from our office, so it could be down there in a heartbeat as soon as they discovered things during construction. And that was a vital way of solving some of the problems that came up because so many of them you can't anticipate.

 

You can only suggest a solution until things get uncovered.

 

00;24;05;21 - 00;24;14;11

DP

Yeah. Instead of getting in your car and driving a half hour, you walk right out onto the street and walk down the street and you can take a look at whatever challenge you face that day.

 

00;24;14;14 - 00;24;15;08

JH

That's correct.

 

00;24;15;15 - 00;24;23;27

DP

So did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process? That's a loaded question.

 

00;24;24;00 - 00;26;07;16

JH

It is. And I'd say, you know, even just this discussion, you can see I mean, all of these things are something new. And I think that's the beauty of the profession. As you mentioned, you work on so many different types of projects. And what I love about how we work as a firm that we don't have these vertical silos, we work across different typologies and bring that knowledge base to each project, which lends itself to something like this where you have mixed uses.

 

So the retail spaces on the ground floor needed to have If I'm going to put a kitchen in there for a restaurant, I need exhaust. That's got to go up through a couple stories of apartment buildings. So that kind of coordination, anticipating the needs of each component so that each of them stood alone and was able to be successful on their own rather than handicapping one.

 

One of the things we were not able to do is create what would be normal for a retailer today in terms of ceiling heights. We had to hit the second floor windows of the facades. So sometimes that meant that a retailer could only have maybe a nine or ten foot ceiling in there in order to get all the ductwork and lighting and everything else below the concrete slab.

 

I'd say what we really learned was from a design perspective, how to work with the community. I think that was the big success here, that we were able to revitalize an area of Fell's Point, bring life to it, bring housing for people, for more activity, and to do that successfully where the community was extremely happy with the end result.

 

00;26;07;18 - 00;26;24;04

DP

So I'm curious, some of these brick buildings, the existing brick buildings, how did you guys handle the new interior wall systems insulation and how did that work and did that decrease then the interior space? Because some of these buildings are probably pretty narrow.

 

00;26;24;09 - 00;27;18;17

JH

That's correct. Working with a different module that you're basically given was different and you ended up with almost a wall within a wall in order to get the proper insulation and which made for some unique conditions out the windows where you notice how, you know, like suddenly you've got a big inset that's about a foot and a half to the window.

 

There were some cases where we had to bump up the ceiling or bump down the floor a little bit where some of these windows were as as much as we tried. There were some things we just couldn't change. So this section is what was fascinating on these projects in that front facade along Broadway, we had to ramp down a couple of feet in order to get to the level that was needed for those apartments.

 

So it was both in section and then also horizontally in terms of laying out apartments that utilize the existing facades.

 

00;27;18;19 - 00;27;30;22

DP

Yeah, a lot of site specific challenging conditions. I can see why being out there, being in person was really important because every building's going to be just a little bit different.

 

00;27;30;29 - 00;27;31;28

JH

That's correct.

 

00;27;32;00 - 00;27;46;16

DP

Before you go, John, you've been an architect for some time. Based on what you know today about being an architect, do you have any words of advice for either your younger self or maybe young architects coming up in the profession?

 

00;27;46;18 - 000;29;02;11

JH

I'd like to just call it dumb luck, but I was really, really fortunate to land in a dream job in the late eighties, and it set me on a course for a career that was, this has been phenomenal and a journey. Going to the University of Cincinnati, having a co-op program was fascinating. Your third year, you're going to work for a firm for three months and nobody wanted to work in New York City.

 

And so I said, I'll go. And that firm happened to be KPF. So I cut my teeth in college with six months working at Kohn Pedersen Fox working on international high rise structures. That set me on a course that took me from there to Disney Development to the West Coast, then back to Ohio before I even graduated college. So I tell that story because that's my advice to folks.

 

Go for it. Don't be shy. Try to find a path that speaks to your heart. And you know, it's one of the beautiful things about the United States is you can travel, you can go to another location where the jobs are, where you want to be, where you fit.

 

00;29;02;18 - 00;29;07;04

DP

Well, that's a really interesting point. I think we forget that. I certainly do.

 

00;29;07;06 - 00;29;11;03

JH

Got a little international connection that reminds me of it quite a bit.

 

00;29;11;05 - 00;29;18;18

DP

So, John, it's been great to have you here today. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about JP2 Architects and yourself?

 

00;29;18;21 - 00;29;37;17

JH

Well, we are active on social media, so your normal spots of LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Our website is JP2architects.com. And as with a lot of folks, we're looking for people to grow with us. It's an exciting time right now.

 

00;29;37;20 - 00;29;41;11

DP

That's a great little plug. Awesome, man. Well, it's been great to meet you, John.

 

00;29;41;17 - 00;29;51;29

JH

I'll do one more plug. Part of this project is an isolated corner of the 600 block of Broadway, and that is where Brickworks is located.

 

00;29;52;00 - 00;29;53;04

DP

Get out of town.

 

00;29;53;07 - 00;30;27;18

JH

So that is one of the main reasons we wanted to use this project, not only because of the incredible history and everything else associated with it. We thought for sure that corner was made for a Starbucks, a first floor and a second floor seating. But that is not going to happen in Fell's Point. Fell's Point is about local businesses, local restaurants and Brickworks Studio there is phenomenal. I love it. It is such a great fit and we love having them a resource that's just down the street.

 

00;30;27;25 - 00;30;52;07

DP

Yeah, it's kind of perfect.

TRANSCRIPT

 

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;12

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;14 - 00;00;30;13

Peter Miller (PM)

Gentrification is always an issue in New York City, and trying to deal with that in a responsible way as an architect is something we often think about. Some people, you know, have a problem with larger buildings, but we're not talking about towers. The most bulk is on avenue is where I think people are a bit more comfortable. And because we're bringing residential into the neighborhood, that's usually something that's appreciated.

 

Everyone in New York believes rents and housing prices are too high and we need a greater supply.

 

00;00;30;18 - 00;01;00;18

DP

This is my guest, Peter Miller. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault we highlight Peter's project 625 Rogers Avenue. 625 Rogers Avenue is the site for a new mixed-use building with a primary use of residential ground level, commercial and community facility uses with a below grade enclosed parking lot. The architectural design for the building divides the overall mass into two distinct volumes a lower and upper.

 

The lower is a rectilinear form that relates to historic buildings in the area. This volume is meant to create a more contextual streetscape and a friendly residential feel. In contrast, the higher recessed form is articulated to relate to the new character of the neighborhood. It steps back and recedes as it rises, making it more private and less visible from the street.

 

The lower form is brick, the upper is stucco, the lower is dark, the upper is light. A side yard is included along the south elevation for more daylight glass and a restaurant terrace. Hi, I'm Doug Pat, and this is Design Vault. Peter Miller is a partner of Palatte Architecture, which he co-founded in 2010. He holds a B.S. in architecture from Washington University in Saint Louis and a master's degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.

 

Peter is a director of the Executive Board of AIA New York and a Design for Freedom Working Group member. He's a registered architect with 20 plus years of experience focusing on designing and implementing innovative building systems and components. His notable projects include Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut, The National World War Two Museum in New Orleans, The Revitalization of Forest Park in Saint Louis, the Confluence Masterplan of Missouri and NYC HPD's Small Lots Development Program.

 

Peter's work has won many design awards, including several AIA National Honors Awards and the Mies Crown Hall America's Prize. His work has been featured in Architectural Record, Elder Corps, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He's originally from rural Indiana and is from a family of craftsmen, engineers, entrepreneurs and tinkerers. He treasures the creative process of turning ideas into physical form.

 

So welcome, Peter. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about Palatte Architecture in New York City. So it was founded in 2010. Where are you guys located In the city. What's the size of the firm? What type of work do you do?

 

00;03;17;08 - 00;04;01;09

PM

So we're located in the, I like to say the Union Square area. We're on 16th Street and Sixth Avenue. We are 11 people in total, three partners and eight architects. The work that we primarily do is residential in nature. It spans from multifamily, residential in the mid-sized range. 50 dwellings is probably an average size for a mid-sized development to custom residential townhouse projects within the city and custom houses ground up outside of the city.

 

In addition to the residential work, we do a variety of other things early education is a big part of what we do. Preschools, daycares, things of that nature, and some other commercial projects spanning from retail to restaurants.

 

00;04;01;12 - 00;04;02;08

DP

How's business?

 

00;04;02;14 - 00;04;30;04

PM

Businesses up and down. You know, when you own your own business, it's always a rollercoaster. I would say we're busy. There is a lot of work being constructed right now. We have a lot of projects in construction. Design work continues to come in. It's not quite as strong as it was a year ago. I think interest rates are affecting particularly the custom residential side of our business, but the multifamily business continues to be booming. We stay busy.

 

00;04;30;07 - 00;04;31;28

DP

Has the firm grown?

 

00;04;32;01 - 00;04;52;08

PM

We try very hard to stay the same size. We have a team of people that we really like and we trust them. And I think a big part of who we are is the consistency within our office. So when times get slow, we find ways to keep those people productive, and when times are busy, they go the extra mile for us and they put in the extra work.

 

00;04;52;10 - 00;04;59;17

DP

So tell us a little bit about yourself. So how long have you been practicing and what's your role in the office as a partner?

 

00;04;59;20 - 00;06;10;10

PM

So I've been practicing since early 2000s. I attended Columbia University for graduate school and finished in 2006 and spent a better part of a decade working for well-known firms, doing international projects, particularly of like museums and high end residential. We formed Palatte Architecture. I had two business partners, John Sunwoo and Jeff Wanders, and then we met at Columbia in studio, and there was always an idea that we wanted to work together.

 

It took a while. We had our own careers in other firms for a while and came back together and formed the office in 2010, but it took a little while to get off the ground. Within the firm my role is partner. We are fairly equal. It's one of our core elements at Pallet architecture, the three partners. We have complementary skills, but we all can perform anything within the office.

 

Projects are organized where each partner is in charge of one, and then beyond that, we have some other roles. One of my roles is sort of business management and human resources, so I do that in addition to all the design work, the construction administration.

 

00;06;10;09 - 00;06;15;17

DP

All right, so let's dig in here and talk about 625 Rogers Avenue. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;06;15;19 - 00;07;07;25

PM

So this is with a client we've been working with for a while is a little bit of background on Palette Architecture. We really started this firm fairly early in our careers. As such, we didn't have as many connections. A lot of things started out as they do in sort of those classic ideas of architecture. You're doing somebody's bathroom, somebody's kitchen, and then you do a good job and you end up doing their house and eventually you work your way up.

 

So it's been that way. We met this client when we were doing a lot of houses and they were looking to turn a house into a residential building, a multifamily four. So it was to turn like a big townhouse into a four family. And so we did that project for them and we built a relationship that's led to, I think, ten different projects with them now.

 

And this is the latest one. And so they've grown in scale each time. And this one's, I think, 25 units.

 

00;07;08;02 - 00;07;14;29

DP

The project is considerable size. So give us a little history of the location and what was there prior.

 

00;07;15;01 - 00;08;17;11

PM

This is in the Prospect Lefferts neighborhood of Brooklyn. So that is on the northeast side of Prospect Park. We've done a number of projects in this area. The site before this was largely vacant, there was a couple of dilapidated houses in that area. It was mostly a small demo and clearing the project is near the corner of Parkside and Rogers Avenue.

 

Rogers is the major thoroughfare through the Prospect Lefferts neighborhood. We do not have the actual corner lot, which was kind of an unusual situation in terms of design. There is a small brick building on the corner that has a bodega in the ground floor. Adjacent to them there was an easement in place for them to have access to the back of their building.

 

So we have a minimum of eight feet that we needed to keep open between us in their building. So we ended up with a building that had two facades, even though it wasn't on a corner because of the easement.

 

00;08;17;13 - 00;08;22;24

DP

So tell me a little bit about the scope of the project and the client's programmatic requirements.

 

00;08;22;26 - 00;09;08;03

PM

So the scope of the project is largely multi-family residential. As with any case, working with a developer, you know, it's maximizing units and floor area for the residential use. However, because it's on Rogers Avenue, which is a major thoroughfare, there was an overlay for commercial. So there was a desire to try to put as much commercial in here as was viable in terms of sales. On the ground floor we have two commercial spaces. One is designed to be a restaurant and the other is a bit more flexible, likely to be more of a retail establishment. And then in addition, there is a small community facility space on the ground floor. There is a lobby also on the ground floor that leads up to the residential spaces. And there is five floors, two through six, that is residential apartments above.

 

00;09;08;05 - 00;09;12;03

DP

So building plan. Could you describe that on the site shape?

 

 

00;09;12;05 - 00;09;27;04

PM

Yeah. So it's L-shaped, I would say, with one of the major legs being across Rogers Avenue and the other leg running parallel to this easement that I mentioned before. And then there is a courtyard in the back portion of the L.

 

00;09;27;06 - 00;09;33;10

DP

So project restrictions, zoning codes. What were you guys dealing with out there other than the easement?

 

00;09;33;12 - 00;10;21;05

PM

One of the things that has generated a lot of our work in Prospect Lefferts Gardens is there was a zoning change probably about a decade ago that allowed for larger bulk in the area. So a lot of the buildings along Rogers Avenue and in other parts of the neighborhood, are suddenly getting a lot bigger. And in some cases you're seeing full tear downs.

 

In some cases you're seeing vertical enlargements. In our case, it was important to have this contextual approach that some of the smaller buildings were going to remain for decades and others were going to instantly become larger. So we wanted something the span between those. That meant having a form that followed the context of those smaller buildings. So it's larger up to a setback, and then it sets back at the height of our neighbors and then becomes something a bit more fanciful above.

 

00;10;21;07 - 00;10;28;09

DP

I'm thinking about the neighbors, right? And I'm thinking about the neighborhood. And you said these buildings are getting bigger. Is that driving anybody crazy?

 

00;10;28;12 - 00;11;09;05

PM

Oh, certainly. It's a mixed neighborhood and gentrification is always an issue in New York City. And trying to deal with that in a responsible way as an architect is something we often think about. And it's certainly an issue in this neighborhood as well. Some people, you know, have a problem with larger buildings, but we're not talking about towers.

 

The bulk has risen from like four stories to six or seven stories. So it's a bit bigger. The most bulk is on avenues where I think people are a bit more comfortable with it. And because we're bringing residential into the neighborhood, that's usually something that's appreciated. Everyone in New York believes rents and housing prices are too high and that we need a greater supply. So there isn't a lot of tension, I think, on that.

 

00;11;09;08 - 00;11;17;22

DP

What is the city do in terms of review, esthetics and building height? Is there an open meeting and you guys are just about to go into construction?

 

00;11;17;29 - 00;13;21;19

PM

We are in construction. We've been in construction for almost a year. The superstructure is in place. A lot of the interiors are framed out and the building is fully enclosed. At this point, we are about to clad the exterior, so we're pretty far along in construction in terms of the city's take on the shape and the zoning of the building.

 

New York City is fairly as of right city. If you are following the zoning code, zoning text in the building code, you can largely do what you want, but it is fairly constrained, especially if you want to maximize the floor area, maximize the amount of units. So you often find yourself into these rectilinear envelopes if you're trying to maximize, but there's room for play.

 

And I think that's really what we were trying to do with this lower mass, is to build that out, make it very tight and taut and follow the context of the neighborhood. It was a bit more challenging on our site because we also had to deal with this easement. And so the easement is a whole swath of the property that you can't use.

 

You're probably aware, but in New York City, the amount that you can build is a factor of the lot size. So the larger the lot, the more you can build. However, if you're not allowed to build on a portion of the lot, then that same amount of area has to fit into a smaller envelope and so it gets tight.

 

That's kind of what led to the L-shape, is that we couldn't simply do it in a bar building across the main avenue. We had to put some sort of extension on to the back. But we were fortunate that that extension could follow the easement. So we get a lot of natural light and air from that. It's not legal light and air, which I think people from New York will be familiar with, which is something is a requirement for all apartments.

 

But we were able to get that through our courtyard and through our rear exposure. And so this was really like bonus windows and bonus light and air that we could get because of the easement. In addition, this corner building is quite a bit smaller, so we are afforded a lot of wonderful views over the top of it.

 

00;13;21;21 - 00;13;37;24

DP

So tell us a little bit about the design process. I just typed in 625 Rogers Avenue and there's a nice website that comes up and there are some great three dimensional images there that tell me a little bit about the design process. How does that work in your office and how long did it take for this project?

 

 

00;13;37;27 - 00;14;19;02

PM

The design process is usually quite rapid in New York City. I would say the actual meat of the process, which is kind of something that a lot of times you learn in school, you spend some time, you make some models, try out a few renderings and you come up with something and then you say, Well, we're not going to do this part.

 

Let's change it like that. That part of like coming to a form and a floor plan was probably an 8 to 10 week process. And then, of course, there's many stages after that coordinating with structure and mechanical and doing all the fine details and then that sort of thing, Then that's probably another couple of months.

 

00;14;19;04 - 00;14;21;21

DP

So were the clients excited about the project?

 

00;14;21;23 - 00;16;41;07

PM

Yes, they do value design a lot and so they were quite excited about it. I think there was always a question of how were we going to deal with this easement? And I think they were very excited about this idea of this lower box that is contextual. We weren't formally contextual. I think that's also probably important to mention.

 

It is a black brick, so it's not your traditional New York red brick or yellow brick that you might find in there. It is a black brick, so it is meant to pop a bit. What was important to us as a firm was to make something that was formally contextual, didn't look bigger than the neighbors didn't look imposing.

 

We're not interested in a building that like sticks out like a sore thumb. I think a lot of architects think that you need to make something flashy in order to be noticed, and then for people to come and want you to design another flashy thing that wasn't necessarily what we were after. We wanted something that had a calm facade to it and felt a bit like the neighborhood.

 

But this isn't the early 1900s, like the context was built in, so we can't do exactly that. So we were looking for something that was formally similar but materially different. And so we went with this black brick along the lower volume. And then of course we had more area to use and we had to put it somewhere. So we set it back and we gave it more articulation.

 

 

It's a bit of push and pull of rectangular volumes above, but it's a very light color and the idea was always to be set back enough to where it wasn't initially visible. It was more of a second look sort of thing that when you see the building, you're like, Oh, that feels like the size of other buildings in the neighborhood.

 

And then when you look a second time, you’re like actually it is not. And what's going on up above is really articulated and interesting. And why did they do this sort of thing? And the reason why we did a lot of that on the upper volume was to create outdoor spaces. This was a project that was conceived during the pandemic and then finalized throughout that process.

 

There was a lot of interest in our office about making outdoor spaces, particularly private outdoor spaces, beyond the size of balconies, spaces that were more of room size so that you could actually spend time outside with others and you could work outside when the weather is good. So a lot of the articulation on this upper volume was about trying to create private outdoor spaces for each of the interior units.

 

00;16;41;10 - 00;16;45;07

DP

So were there any unique construction details throughout the project?

 

00;16;45;09 - 00;18;20;15

PM

Certainly. And we are talking about brick, I'm sure, today. So I think that has a lot to do with it. We've been finding that thin brick has been really advantageous to us throughout the process. New York City is all about every inch. Every inch matters. Real estate agents will tell you that. So the thin brick does afford us a thinner wall thickness, which allows every unit to be a little bit bigger, the sales area to be a little bit bigger.

 

So that's something we'd like to do. But what we found great about the true brick system, which is what we used, is that it's a mechanically fastened thin brick which affords us new types of details. When you see the classical full brick, you can do corbelling, you can have some bricks, project out from others to create shadow lines and other types of articulation, which wasn't initially available in thin brick because everything just had to sit inside of a tray and anything that projected out would become too much of a load and either pop out.

 

And so what we were really excited about with this thin brick system, the true bricks, is that we could have a variety of brick depths while still saving these inches. And so there was a lot of thought about that in terms of details. We used different depths of thin brick to articulate slab edges and also areas of pattern and texture.

 

So within this brick volume on the base, there are strip windows. In between each strip window. We do have a textured brick that creates a bit of interest. It creates a patterned shadow on the facade, and then that is all captured in between these sort of expressed slab edges.

 

00;18;20;17 - 00;18;24;29

DP

So could you go through a wall section for me? Exterior to interior.?

 

00;18;25;01 -  00;19;29;12

PM

So we have on the exterior a variety of different depth thin bricks that snap into the true bricks tray system, which is sort of like a channel shaped system that is then attached into a kingspan karrier panel. So this is sort of an all in one cladding waterproofing insulation panel. I believe it's an XPS insulation that's wrapped in a metal panel.

 

And these are tongue and groove panels that come together and they're flashed at their tongue and groove. So the metal panel on the outside acts as waterproofing, especially when the joints are flashed. Then there is this completely separated other metal panel on the interior, the separated by this XPS installations that provides your insulation and then that interior panel allows you to attach to the studs.

 

So there's no need for sheathing or waterproofing layer or another set of insulation. It's all in one. So we have that karrier panel and then that is attached to the stud. And then on the interior of the stud we have our finishes, which is general sheetrock.

 

00;19;29;14 - 00;19;33;06

DP

And the installation values of the walls?

 

00;19;33;06 - 00;19;36;24

PM

Two and a half inches. So I'm guessing that's probably about R 14.

 

00;19;36;26 - 00;19;46;17

DP

That sounds really interesting. And using thin brick, I mean it's a veneer like anything anyway, so whether or not you're going to use something that's three and 5/8 thick or it's a half inch thick, it’s still a veneer.

 

00;19;48;19 - 00;20;22;13

PM

100% agree. We live in a world now where energy code and sustainability issues are vitally important. And for the most part we know Brick classically is like a veneer as a cladding and a structural system, but it's just really not done that way anymore. It's mostly a cladding system now because we need to have this rain screen where where air can move behind the facade, and we need continuous insulation.

 

So if it's going to be mostly a veneer. Now I'm a fan of the thin brick systems because it saves you that extra couple of inches.

 

 

00;20;22;16 - 00;20;40;15

DP

Yeah, I totally agree. And you touched on this a little bit. Just back to the esthetics. So tell us about the style choice. The building is contemporary. When I read about the architecture you guys talked about as statically trying to work with the existing architecture in the neighborhood. Tell us a little bit about that.

 

00;20;40;17 - 00;22;28;22

PM

I think it's largely about scale. So as I mentioned, we are trying to create a datum that matches with the neighbor. In terms of height. I think the concern back to what you mentioned before is that people are going to feel like their neighborhood is growing rapidly and that it feels much more urban than it used to. And so that was really important to us in terms of context to make the scale feel as if they had always known this building.

 

Beyond that, we felt that Brick was an important choice. There's a lot of brick in the neighborhood. We felt that other materials might feel too distinct from the rest of the context. I don't think it's important that we try to look exactly like the neighbors because we're in a different era, a different technology. But there needs to be some tie to the way it is.

 

And it was also sort of important to us that the windows had some sort of gridded logic to it to match the neighbors. So there's a nod to that. Beyond that, we felt freedom to go a different way. And so we relied on sort of a color choice as one way to do that, to create this darker volume on the lower part would sort of emphasize the height of the building that it matched the others because it's so present in its darkness.

 

The other thing we liked about the darkness is that it made all the details a bit more subtle. It gave us a little more freedom to do things like these patterned bricks and these shadow lines that indicated that this was a newer building and that it has some innovative techniques and details to it. But wasn't flashy to the point of look at me and forget everyone else in the neighborhood.

 

00;22;28;25 - 00;22;39;02

DP

That's well explained. So when you guys did drawings for the architecture, for the construction process, all 2D, 2D and 3D, Revit, what are you guys working out?

 

00;22;39;02 - 00;23;05;06

PM

Yeah, well, Revit. Our office is 100% BIM. We are an office that was founded since 2010. So the partners, all the employees, we all grew up in this, so we're 100% BIM. We use Revit as our software. So everything is done in Revit from beginning to end. We found this really beneficial with some of our clients too, because we can get the visualizations a lot quicker and that just makes them feel comfortable.

 

00;23;05;08 - 00;23;16;07

DP

Yeah, clients love that. Yeah, for sure. So do you guys learn anything interesting through the design in what you're currently in construction process? Anything new for you as you've been working on the architecture?

 

00;23;16;09 - 00;24;17;03

PM

Well, let's see things that I would want to talk about. Usually the lessons are the things that like you didn't see coming or you feel like you could have control. I think one thing that we really learned on this project is moving to this Kingspan panel that I mentioned before is a new thing for our office. We're doing it on two projects or two simultaneously.

 

We knew a lot about the details going into it and we really believed in it and we love it, but our contractors were not familiar with it and so there was definitely a lot of lessons in how to communicate these details because a lot of them came in and were like, They see these new Legos for the first time and they're like, Oh, they must go together like this.

 

And then you arrive at a site and you say, No, actually you put that piece on wrong. It should be like this. There was a lot of back and forth and learning about how to communicate, when to come in in the process with somebody that hasn't used the technology before and really get them up to speed on it.

 

00;24;17;06 - 00;24;42;15

DP

That's funny, yeah, GCs love that when you walk out into the field and you tell them they're wrong. Yeah, sure. Before you go, Peter, you've been an architect for some time based on what you know today about being an architect, do you have any words of advice for your younger version of you, or maybe for some students or young architects that are just getting rolling?

 

00;24;42;17 - 00;25;03;01

PM

Well, that's a great question. It's easier for me to advise my earlier self than advise a generic architect in school, and I hope this advice applies for me. I was always an introverted sort of person. I come from a very conservative rural background and it took me a while to learn how to really speak my voice to people.

 

And I think in school there's this sense that your work is always out there for critique and that you should be careful about everything you do. I think I've learned over time that as long as you follow your own voice and your own beliefs, that those things will fall in place. And so I would advise myself, when I was younger, to not be concerned about whether or not your voice is going to land perfectly amongst your audience.

 

I think as long as you believe in it passionately and you talk about it strongly and you think about it all the time and you critique yourself, that that will lead to stronger work and it will lead to people wanting to see your work and interact with your work and make sure that it gets built in the way that you had always imagined it.

 

00;25;03;02 - 00;25;51;16

DP

Yeah, I think that's a really beautiful way of looking at things right that it will land in the right location. You're just responsible for finding your voice and expressing it as best you can within the framework of the work that you do. That's great. So, Peter, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Palette Architecture and yourself?

 

00;25;51;19 - 00;26;13;22

PM

Well, certainly you can go to our website, PaletteArch.com, or they can follow us on Instagram also @PaletteArch.

 

00;26;13;24 - 00;26;29;26

DP

Well, Peter, thank you very much. It's been great to have you.

 

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;13

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;15 - 00;00;34;07

John Zimmer (JZ)

And they had this requirement for the black box theater. You know, the project came with this with its approval, but it got a zoning bonus for having the theater in the base of extra height. It was a give back to the community that was written into the zoning. And we always knew it was going to be a theater and we always knew it was going to be for a nonprofit arts group.

 

And that arts program, as part of the building was in the DNA of the project from the very beginning and informed a lot of the decisions moving forward became part of the personality of the building throughout, not just the theater itself.

 

00;00;34;10 - 00;02;37;20

DP

This is my guest, John Zimmer. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from The Design Vault, we highlight John's project in Jersey City, New Jersey, called The Lively. The Lively is a mixed use 18 story tower in Jersey City's Powerhouse arts district. The building features residential living situated above retail and public art spaces. The entry portals at the base define the black box theater and residential portions of the building.

 

Double and triple height lobbies open up to the street through curtained glass walls at the base. The building's deep and varied openings and bronze windows and frames give a wonderful complexity to an otherwise familiar building form. The structure features a custom white brick with darker mortar, which gives the edifice a warm residential appearance. The bricks well scaled modularity complements the organized and complex facade.

 

The project's esthetic and exterior elevations are reserved yet elaborate, familiar but novel, unpretentious, yet elegant. Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. John is a partner and director at Fogarty Finger Architecture and Interiors in New York City. He's a graduate of Cornell University's School of Architecture. He's been practicing for over 20 years. He focuses on design, construction technologies, building codes and project management at the firm.

 

John spent the early part of his career in San Francisco. He later moved to New York City, where he worked for architectural firms and owned a small practice. He designed a wide variety of award-winning public and private sector works that range in size from studio apartments to city blocks. His resumé includes dozens of cultural, educational, commercial and residential projects and is balanced between new construction and renovations.

 

So welcome, John. Nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about Fogarty Finger Architecture in New York City.

 

00;02;37;25 - 00;03;42;16

JZ

Sure. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. So Fogarty Finger was founded just 20 years ago, pretty much on the nose. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary, and it was founded by two SOM alumni, one of whom Chris Fogarty was a kind of ground up corn shell guy at SOM. And the other Robert Finger was commercial interiors.

 

They got together and that basic structure has kind of defined the DNA of the firm ever since. It's very much a firm that offers both ground up architecture and interiors, and you'll find many firms that offer one or the other, but not both and not both in equal proportions. So our firm is very serious about both. The firm is about 130 people right now, has grown a lot in the last ten years.

 

The size of the projects has grown a lot, and I think that's a testament to the work we've been doing, but also the attitude of client service that comes initially from Chris and Robert and from SOM. just trying to deliver for our clients the product that they need while at the same time creating an architecture that satisfies us.

 

00;03;42;23 - 00;03;44;13

DP

And what kind of projects do you guys take?

 

00;03;44;19 - 00;04;19;25

JZ

On the ground up side? We're happy to take a look at anything. Most of our portfolio is multi-family residential, although we have a handful of commercial office buildings as well. We do building repositioning on all the ground up stuff. We also offer the interiors as well on the commercial interior side, and I don't work on that side of the office, but they do work for some of the largest landlords in town and do both test fits and build the suit spaces.

 

There's a strong hospitality element developing, so really a multi-disciplinary practice looking at a lot of different project types.

 

00;04;19;27 - 00;04;21;12

DP

And you guys have more than one office.?

 

00;04;21;19 - 00;04;27;06

JZ

We do. There's an office in Atlanta and also a small office in Boston as well.

 

00;04;27;10 - 00;04;29;11

DP

And where are you guys located in New York City?

 

00;04;29;17 - 00;04;35;23

JZ

We're in Tribeca on Walker Street. Been there for ten years or so. Eight years, something like that.

 

00;04;36;00 - 00;04;38;09

DP

So what's your role in the office currently?

 

00;04;38;11 - 00;04;53;05

JZ

So I'm a director. We are divided into somewhat of a studio system, a loose studio system, and there are two ground up studios. I lead one of them. I have a team of about 20 people. I'm involved in all aspects of the projects from day one to CFO.

 

00;04;53;07 - 00;04;58;14

DP

Basically, I would imagine your hours are pretty long with people working for you.

 

00;04;58;16 - 00;05;05;12

JZ

They still are, although obviously there is a team of very hardworking people with me that put in even longer hours than I do.

 

00;05;05;14 - 00;05;12;08

DP

So let's dig in and talk about the building. Tell us about The Lively in Jersey City. How did your office get the project?

 

00;05;12;10 - 00;05;50;20

JZ

The project had gotten a preliminary approval with a different owner and a different architect. The people that became our client, when they took on the project, looked at the planning and also the facades. But I would have to say more than anything, the planning of the building and thought it was problematic. It's a difficult site to do residential floorplans and it's got an acute corner there at one.

 

So, challenging site to get efficient residential layouts and we put an alternative plan in front of them that really increased the efficiency of the building and the commodious ness of the residential layouts, basically.

 

00;05;50;23 - 00;05;52;28

DP

So it wasn't a competition to get the project?

 

00;05;53;06 - 00;05;59;16

JZ

It wasn't a competition, it was an invited RFP, But I think it was the strength of the proposal that we put forward that got us the job.

 

00;05;59;18 - 00;06;02;08

DP

So could you give me a little history of the location?

 

00;06;02;11 - 00;06;55;27

JZ

Sure. The Powerhouse arts district in Jersey City is so named because there is a somewhat iconic Powerhouse there. It had been an industrial area that was targeted for redevelopment, and they had design standards for the entire district that were meant to maintain that character, not necessarily industrial, but loft style focus on the arts. The entire district has a strong focus on the arts, which is part of the reason we have the black box theater in the lively.

 

It's experienced a lot of new development over the course of the last decade and it's pretty great today. When I first started going over to the Powerhouse ten years ago. I get out of meetings and the sidewalks would be deserted. And today it feels like Brooklyn. It feels like the East Village. I mean, it is incredibly, for want of a better word, lively.

 

So it's a great neighborhood now, and it's all happened in the last decade. It's an exciting thing to have been a part of, honestly.

 

00;06;56;04 - 00;07;00;27

DP

So scope of the project, what were the client's programmatic requirements?

 

00;07;01;00 - 00;07;57;24

JZ

Well, 180 residential units. Lennar is one of the biggest home builders in America, but they were mostly doing suburban subdivision work. They got into the urban markets. I can't tell you exactly one, but they were still a little bit new to it when we took this project on. And they were ambitious. They wanted to be at the absolute top of the market for a residential building in Jersey City.

 

And obviously, as any developer does, they wanted to maximize rentable square footage and get the most bang for their buck. And they had this requirement for the black box theater. And the project came with this with its approval, but it got a zoning bonus for having the theater in the base of extra height. It was a give back to the community that was written into the zoning, and we always knew it was going to be a theater and we always knew it was going to be for a nonprofit arts group.

 

And that arts program, as part of the building was in the DNA of the project from the very beginning and informed a lot of the decisions moving forward became part of the personality of the building throughout, not just the theater itself, really.

 

00;07;57;26 - 00;07;59;13

DP

How long's the building been finished?

 

00;07;59;20 - 00;08;00;21

JZ

It's about two years.

 

00;08;00;24 - 00;08;02;07

DP

Is the theater getting used?

 

00;08;02;09 - 00;08;03;10

JZ

It does, yeah.

 

00;08;03;13 - 00;08;10;11

DP

That's great. So let's start with a site. I would imagine there are no unique topographic features. Relatively flat or. Or not?

 

00;08;10;17 - 00;08;36;02

JZ

Well, it's relatively flat. The unique topographic feature would be that it's below the 100 year flood elevation. That's always a big deal. And the sidewalks there, I think, are about five feet above sea level. So flood protection, resiliency, ground floor uses. How do you enter the building? How do you avoid nuisance flooding when it's not a 100 year storm?

 

Those were all big aspects of the design of the ground floor of the pedestrian experience.

 

00;08;36;05 - 00;08;37;17

DP

So break away walls?

 

00;08;37;24 - 00;09;07;04

JZ

There are deployable flood barrier systems designed in. So the flood elevation is seven feet above the sidewalk. In the event of a massive, take a Hurricane Sandy kind of thing. They would deploy these flood barrier systems. Don't know if you're familiar with them, but they keep them in storage and they come out and they both enter the building or they spread them around the building.

 

They can be self-supporting and they have to be deployed in a certain amount of time because it's an emergency response system. So a big part of all the projects in this area.

 

00;09;07;09 - 00;09;11;20

DP

And what about zoning code? You had mentioned you had a height issue.

 

00;09;11;22 - 00;09;54;13

JZ

Yeah. So the building got, I think, 65 additional feet for having the black box theater in it. That was one zoning aspect. You can see the cantilever here over the sidewalk. There was a sidewalk widening requirement in the zoning, so that made it obviously challenging. You've got 17 stories of residences coming down over a cantilever that allows the sidewalk to be wider at the base.

 

That was an interesting challenge. There's a little bit of parking in the building that came from the zoning. So obviously some structural challenges there as well. Whenever you're putting that many residences over the top of a parking garage. The second floor here that you see through the window, that is also designated art space in the zoning, also a requirement.

 

00;09;54;16 - 00;09;59;26

DP

So I don't do tall buildings. How many extra floors does 65 feet get you?

 

00;09;59;29 - 00;10;26;28

JZ

I think it was basically five because the top floor amenity space, rooftop amenity, which was specifically permitted by the zoning bonus, I think it really made the building, the massing and the expression of these mid-range buildings is a little bit tricky. They're not as tall as they want to be, to be a tall building, and they're not as low rise as they want to be, to be a low rise building.

 

And I think the extra stories really helped to give it a little bit more verticality. It's a better piece of architecture for it.

 

00;10;27;01 - 00;10;30;19

DP

So tell us about the building plan. You said there's a sharp corner.

 

00;10;30;21 - 00;11;14;06

JZ

Yeah, very acute corner. There's two lot lines and it has a corner lot. So right where you have your corner window with two exposures, there's a very acute corner and I can't remember the actual degrees, but anytime you have a building and it's not just a corner that's a problem. And in fact the corner isn't really a problem.

 

You may not be able to put a sofa in that corner, but the corner per se is not a problem. It's kind of a cool room to be inside of. But what it means is that the apartments on each of those two different streets are on different geometries. And so if you're going to have a rectilinear apartment on streets that are at such different geometries that all crashes into each other at the corner and at the corridors and at the courtyard.

 

So it becomes very challenging to plan buildings that feel sensible and projects that have this kind of site.

 

00;11;14;09 - 00;11;21;01

DP

So how long do the planning process takes? So City Review design to construction, what was kind of start to finish?

 

00;11;21;04 - 00;11;31;17

JZ

I would say it was probably 14 months, maybe 15 months from RFP to groundbreaking, something in that range, which is kind of typical for a building this size.

 

00;11;31;19 - 00;11;33;17

DP

And construction. How long did that last?

 

00;11;33;22 - 00;11;37;10

JZ

That was about 24 months, I think.

 

00;11;37;13 - 00;11;49;12

DP

So let's talk a little bit about esthetics style. What did the client say to you? Did they have any ideas? Were they showing you images that they'd like, buildings that they wanted you to look at?

 

00;11;49;14 - 00;13;38;12

JZ

Our main client point of contact was also an architect, so he didn't want to impose a specific sensibility. He wanted to see what we would come up with in our office does this kind of work. We don't really do much historicist work. It's all modern. And in fact, a contemporary design is part of the zoning in the Powerhouse Arts District.

 

They're not looking for a recreation of a 19th century Main Street because that's not what this part of town ever was. From its get go, there was never any question it was going to be a contemporary building as far as where we drew our inspiration from and what we were looking at. You know, I mentioned the difficulty of the massing for these midnight buildings.

 

I think the gathering together, the window openings into these vertical slots helps to emphasize the verticality of the building. We have this prominent gold portal for the black boxes here and the building entrance. And that became an idea that we repeated throughout the facade frame, these moments on the facade. And I think generally we try to be pretty rigorous about how the facades are designed.

 

Obviously you've got structural continuity, but then you've got what always happens in residential design is you've got living rooms that are one width and you've got bedrooms that are a different width. And so a strictly rational grid is probably not going to serve you well for a residential building the way it does for a commercial building. So you're often trying to find a way to manage that if your interest is fundamentally in having a kind of rigorous and rational facade, you're trying to find a way to manage those partitions hitting the wall.

 

And what does that mean? And at the same time, I think creating a facade with movement and interest and dynamism and that play on the facade I think was always an important part. And you could say it is part of the emphasis on the arts and the theater and dance, but also obviously just an interest in creating something fresh.

 

00;13;38;15 - 00;13;40;27

DP

So was there a city review of the esthetic?

 

00;13;40;29 - 00;14;04;29

JZ

There was, yeah. They loved it. They loved it from the get go. Honestly, it was great. I think the planning board there has seen a lot of different things and was quite happy to see a building that was elegant and carefully composed and well-made. I'm pretty sure we got a uniform unanimous vote of approval at the Planning Board and there were no negative comments about the esthetics.

 

00;14;05;01 - 00;14;08;20

DP

What did you guys bring in? Did you bring in boards with images or 3D?

 

00;14;08;22 - 00;14;40;18

JZ

They weren't set up to have digital presentations back when this was going through. They are now obviously everyone, all of the local jurisdictions became fully digital because they had to. Back then it was easels and boards and you sat there with a couple of easels and flipped the pages and described what you were doing. And we had renderings certainly full 3D visualizations of the building that we presented and a palette of materials.

 

They're very interested. In fact, in Jersey City, they require you to bring the actual physical materials you intend to build with to the planning approval.

 

00;14;40;25 - 00;14;46;24

DP

So why did you guys choose Brick? You probably could have used another material for the exterior facade.

 

00;14;46;27 - 00;16;37;10

JZ

We could have certainly. You know, there's many things we do do facades out of lots of different materials, obviously. But for residential buildings in particular, I think the scale and the intimacy of brick are a sure way to give the building a residential character. It makes people both potential tenants and non tenants on the street and everyone have a very warm response to Brick almost instinctively.

 

It's one of those things that the mind already knows, right? People respond to it quite well. I think the flexibility of brick was part of it for this. Obviously that acute corner right there is a custom shape. You can just do that in brick, right? You can just say, okay, I've got a corner that is 72 degrees and you just do it.

 

You just make it. So that part of it I think is pretty great. And the flexibility, the color in this particular case, this is a custom colored brick, semi-custom. We had a lot of flexibility. It's a coated brick. So we had a lot of flexibility with the coating and coming up with the exact color that we wanted, which was a lot of trial and error.

 

There were actually months of back and forth and getting it just right. And, you know, I do think color is incredibly important and you can spend a year and a half designing a building and two years building it, and then you get the color wrong and all anyone sees is the fact that the color is wrong. So it's incredibly important to get right.

 

It allowed us to do that. You know, if you're going to do a porcelain, here are the three porcelain, you know, and this is what you're going to get. It also helps in the way brick turns corners. We wanted to have these gold shrouds in some areas and not in others that frame certain openings Doing returns in window openings in brick is incredibly easy because it's a brick.

 

You just turn the corner in porcelain or terracotta or other materials. It becomes quite difficult. Is it just a shadow gap at the corner or is it two flat panels coming together to meet? So I think having that ease of turning corners supported the design concept of these intermittent gold shrouds.

 

00;16;37;17 - 00;16;40;18

DP

Now, was that correct? The window frames are bronze?

 

00;16;40;21 - 00;16;43;24

JZ

With a painted aluminum, but yeah, they're bronze colored.

 

00;16;43;26 - 00;16;46;29

DP

There are a series of framed out window openings as well.

 

00;16;47;01 - 00;16;47;17

JZ

Yeah.

 

00;16;47;18 - 00;16;49;01

DP

And what material is that?

 

00;16;49;03 - 00;16;53;27

JZ

That's also aluminum. Okay. Yeah. We have yet to do a building with actual sheet bronze.

 

00;16;53;29 - 00;16;56;12

DP

When I read it, I was like, Is that just the color?

 

00;16;56;16 - 00;17;06;01

JZ

Which is the great thing though, actually is color is usually free if you're going to do something out of aluminum, the one thing you can afford to do is change the color.

 

00;17;06;03 - 00;17;20;23

DP

That's a great point. Colors free. What I really like about this and the use of masonry is it afforded you the ability to make some of these window openings really deep? Yeah, it's really beautiful, especially with curtain, wall, glass. I mean, it's really pretty.

 

00;17;20;26 - 00;17;48;09

JZ

I think you get that play of light and shadow, you know, in a curtain wall building, you're struggling to get a couple of inches of depth, right. The economics of that and the construct ability of that are unrelenting, but between the depth of a brick cavity wall automatically gets you seven or eight inches and then he shrouds project, I forget, but let's just say it's another six or seven inches. Now you've got 15, 16 inches of depth, which creates a wonderful shadow on the facade and really helps to punctuate the facade.

 

00;17;48;11 - 00;17;54;06

DP

That kind of plays into my next question. So what were some of the unique construction details on this building?

 

00;17;54;13 - 00;18;20;10

JZ

Yeah, certainly the shrouds, I think you see them more now. I think they were less common when we first did them. They are quite deep, which made the attachment to the building. I'm like say more difficult, but it had to be done differently. A lot of times these will be clipped on to the window extrusion and the window manufacturer can simply provide them.

 

You know, obviously the wind wants to tear these things off of the building. So there's a decent amount of load on these that required some careful detailing around the attachments of them.

 

00;18;20;13 - 00;18;23;15

DP

So there's some structure on the interior that gets tied back.

 

00;18;23;17 - 00;19;13;03

JZ

Yeah. These buildings basically go back to structural studs as opposed to the window and there's a heavy-duty anchor clip extends into the shroud that helps to make it rigid and attach it to the building. These deep soffits at the overhangs, you know, obviously something that had to be looked at fairly carefully. Generally speaking, a brick cavity wall is a well known thing.

 

Builders know how to build it, architects know how to detail it. But when you start introducing these kinds of deep shrouds, the corner windows in order to make those successful, what the window manufacturers want you to do is take a big square window and put it next to a big square window and all of a sudden your corner window has 12 inches a middle in the middle of it, and it looks like a column instead of a window.

 

And so detailing that to make it keep the sightlines narrow and keep it elegant, that was a detail in challenge that took a lot of time making sure the flood protection doesn't become too intrusive. That's a detail challenge. There were a handful of things.

 

00;19;13;05 - 00;19;15;21

DP

And what about sustainability for the building?

 

00;19;15;23 - 00;19;49;09

JZ

Well, it's a P-TECH building, P-TECHS are the the through wall air conditioners. They're environmentally not great. So starting from that, you have a difficult time making it the most sustainable building in the world. Unfortunately, electric P-TECHS, but there are other green features in the building. Certainly you see this in a lot of buildings at this point, but a super efficient lighting, formaldehyde free, no off gassing materials, locally sourced brick, natural material, locally sourced green roof, significant stormwater management features. It's not a leader in environmental design.

 

00;19;49;09 - 00;19;53;09

DP

Sure it is. I was I guess I was wondering if it was something that the city was looking for.

 

00;19;53;15 - 00;20;00;06

JZ

It was not a requirement, but I think there's enough consciousness about it at this point that people want to incorporate these features if they can.

 

00;20;00;09 - 00;20;03;24

DP

So when you consider the building, you're working in 2D and 3D.

 

00;20;03;29 - 00;20;08;14

JZ

Yeah. So this was drawn in AutoCAD. We weren't working in Revit back when this was first drawn.

 

00;20;08;14 - 00;20;09;15

DP

Are you now in Revit?

 

00;20;09;18 - 00;20;22;07

JZ

We are, yeah. We model absolutely everything, but we would do that mostly in SketchUp, Google, SketchUp, and that would be a parallel. You know, you would be doing both. You'd be modeling it SketchUp and drawing it in 2D AutoCAD at the same time.

 

00;20;22;09 - 00;20;24;26

DP

So you guys haven't been in Revit for a long than?

 

00;20;24;28 - 00;20;25;07

JZ

Couple of years.

 

00;20;25;07 - 00;20;34;25

DP

The more people I talk to, I'm an ArchiCAD working in 2D and 3D. I never learned Revit. I was lucky to learn how to use a computer, frankly. I mean.

 

00;20;34;28 - 00;20;44;23

JZ

Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know Revit, but the team does. I certainly learned AutoCAD along the way and micro station randomly enough. I don't even know if that's still around, to be honest.

 

00;20;44;26 - 00;20;49;25

DP

I don't know either. But most of the people that come through here are on Revit.

 

00;20;49;25 - 00;20;51;23

JZ

Yeah, it feels like a done thing.

 

00;20;51;26 - 00;20;54;08

DP

So do we see any masonry on the interior of the building?

 

00;20;54;13 - 00;21;28;21

JZ

Not in the interior walls. I will say one thing, since this is Brick works, the client led the decision that anything people could see from their windows would also be brick. So the interior courtyards, a lot of times what you see is brick on the facades and EFIS or something like that, something cheaper on the interior elevations or the lot line elevations, the courtyard facades are brick.

 

We have like, well, that's all brick because the client wanted to make sure that any time someone was looking out a window, what they saw was brick and they were happy to pay for it. They felt quite strongly that that's what it needed to be.

 

00;21;28;24 - 00;21;42;29

DP

So John, you've been in New York City for quite some time. You worked for a number of firms, including having your own office at one time. What advice might you give a younger version of yourself now that you know it?

 

00;21;43;01 - 00;22;07;09

JZ

Now that I know everything, I think you go, your heart leads you. There are so many ways to be an architect. There's not just one way and there's not one right way. And I see over and over again that people find ways that make them happy to do this job. And I do my thing. Other people do their thing.

 

There's not one answer. And don't be afraid to not pursue that other answer for yourself.

 

00;22;07;11 - 00;22;33;02

DP

Yeah, it's interesting too, what you learn in school and then what you learn as a practicing architect. You can take those skills and do an awful lot of things that aren't just architecture. I say that a lot. I have a teaching YouTube channel and I've been talking about that for years. We learn how to do so many things and you got to do so many things well and you've got to know so many things about so many things, right? It's a really challenging business and you're always learning.

 

00;22;33;02 - 00;22;59;06

JZ

The synthesizing of a lot of different pieces of information, I think is a skill that has broad application, and looking at things from a design perspective is an exceedingly rare quality out there in the world that I think has broad application. So it's great to be trained as an architect even if you don't stick with it. And look, I've always loved it.

 

I would encourage young people to stay in the profession because it's a great thing to do with your life, but people make their own choices.

 

00;22;59;08 - 00;23;07;13

DP

Well, John, it's been great to have you here. Thanks so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Fogarty Finger Architecture and Interiors and yourself?

 

00;23;07;16 - 00;23;20;04

JZ

Go to our website for sure. FogartyFinger.com, and look at our portfolio and there's all kinds of interesting information there. Of course, we have an Instagram page and every other thing that's available out there in the world to learn about a firm. You can find it online.

 

00;23;20;06 - 00;23;22;02

DP

Well, great, John, thank you very much for being here.

 

00;23;22;08 - 00;23;26;26

JZ

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

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;28;26

Christa Waring (CW)

It's only exterior work. Right now, we've just mobilized to start the brick restoration. We had great assistants getting a perfect match to the original white glazed brick that they have there. You want to make sure when you're doing this much brickwork that your spackle is right, and it doesn't stand out in the end. And Landmarks approves the work very easily.

 

00;00;29;03 - 00;03;30;29

DP

This is my guest, Christa Waring. I'll share more about her shortly in this episode from The Design Vault. We highlight Christa's project in New York City, 650 Park Avenue. 650 Park Avenue is located in the Upper East Side Historic District, built in 1963 and designed by Emery Roth and Sons Architects. It's a 21-story apartment building with a white glazed brick facade and setbacks above the 16th floor.

The base of the building maintains the building line of Park Avenue. Recent façade examinations revealed a deficiency in the wall tie system that connects the face masonry to the backup concrete block masonry. CTA designed a program of facade repairs that include face masonry pinning in addition to the restoration of all shelf angles across the façades. The original construction features have finished glazed edge over all the window lintels, which has an impressive impact on the esthetic of the building. Thus, the project entails an extensive masonry rebuild where matching the existing brick is of paramount importance.

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

Christa Waring is a principal at CTA Architects, P.C. in New York City. She's been with the firm since 1994. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute. She's passionate about sustainable design and has a keen understanding of building code and zoning issues.

Christa drives her office's environmental research and implementation of green technologies, which includes adherence to lead and certified passive House design standards. She's worked on some of CTA's largest projects, including the 90,000 square foot mixed use Lower East Side Girls Club, Arabella 101, and the Grand Street Guild. Her recent projects include the award-winning exterior Preservation of the Cast Iron Facade at 54 Bond Street.

She also recently oversaw the completion of the conversion of an illegal SRO into low-income housing on the Upper West Side. One of her current projects includes a building rehabilitation project that's part of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority's Retrofit New York pilot program. Christa taught at Pratt Institute and lectured for the New York City Urban Green Council and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.

She's also a member of the New York City Department of Buildings Construction Requirement and Materials Committee, and the New York City Energy Conservation Code, Commercial Advisory Committee. So welcome, Christin. It's nice to have you with us today. So, tell us a little bit about CTA architects, P.C. in New York City. So where are you guys located in New York. What's the size of the firm? How long have you been around and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;31;02 - 00;04;46;14

CW

Well, thank you for having me today. CTA Architects. We're located down in the Flatiron District, just a couple of blocks from the Flatiron. We have 60 plus employees at this point, including support staff. We do a variety of work in New York City. All of our work is focused in the five boroughs, frankly, mostly Manhattan. We do have Brooklyn and Queens, some in Staten Island, a couple in the Bronx.

But we originally started out in 1987 or so. We came into being around the time that the first facade laws came into effect. And so, it was something that we naturally fell into. And we have been doing that work ever since I've been there since 1994. Our founding partner, Doug Cutsogeorge was my professor at Pratt and hired me as an intern in my second year there, and I have been there ever since.

So, I was an intern. I typed envelopes that when we had typewriters, I fax things and then went out and did field measurements and climbed around on ladders and hung on scaffolds. And 29 years later, still there. And I've been a partner since 2014.

 

00;04;46;17 - 00;04;49;16

DP

Real quickly, tell me about these façade laws. What is that?

 

00;04;49;23 - 00;05;55;20

CW

You know, my business partner Dan, could give you, like, every single date and iteration, but I'll give you the gist, which is that terracotta fell off a building at Columbia University and that initiated a city response, which was at that time called Local Law ten, which mandated that all buildings over six stories have to be inspected every five years by a registered professional and a report submitted to the Department of Buildings.

So, at that point, all of the buildings submitted on the same day, February 21st, every five years, and as the law developed, it keeps developing based on things that have happened in the city. At that point, it was just the street elevation and you just had to look at it with binoculars. Now it's the entire building and you have to look at it from a hanging scaffold or a bucket truck. And depending on the construction type, you have to open probes through the face masonry to expose what's in the cavity.

 

00;05;55;25 - 00;05;59;20

DP

Wow. So, the incident at Columbia was that in the early eighties?

 

00;05;59;21 - 00;06;09;27

CW

That was in the early to mid-eighties. So first it was Local ten and then it was local Law 11. And now it's called the Façade Inspection Safety Program.

 

00;06;10;05 - 00;06;14;05

DP

So, it sounds like a good thing. They're now inspecting buildings for this very issue.

 

00;06;14;12 - 00;06;25;23

CW

Right. And now they broke up the buildings. There are three sub cycles, so not every report for every building in the city is due on the same day. So now it's broken up. So that makes it a little easier.

 

00;06;25;26 - 00;06;32;12

DP

So, tell us a little bit about yourself. So how long have you been a practicing architect and what's your role in the office as principal?

 

00;06;32;19 - 00;06;53;26

CW

I got my license in 2003, But, you know, obviously I was working for the nine years before that. Currently, as principal, I do a lot of things. I wear a lot of hats. I yell at contractors, I hold clients’ hands and bring in work and put out fires where I need to.

 

00;06;53;28 - 00;06;55;02

DP

Do you like your job?

 

00;06;55;04 - 00;07;08;05

CW

I do. It is challenging. It's a lot. You have to really want to buy into it and invest. My partners, I've been with them almost 30 years. They're family and it's a good place to be. They're good partners.

 

00;07;08;12 - 00;07;11;15

DP

That sounds like a really interesting niche market.

 

00;07;11;17 - 00;07;33;01

CW

It is. And it's funny because, you know, there are a few firms in the city that do this, and we all know each other, and then we all get offshoots from employees have left and hung their own shingle and proceeded to sell focus and exterior restoration work. I would say it's about 70% of our work is exterior restoration.

 

00;07;33;06 - 00;07;38;04

DP

Gotcha. Let's talk about 650 Park Avenue. So how did you guys get the project?

 

00;07;38;06 -00;08;21;11

CW

So, I think, like everything in my history at CTA, it was word of mouth. It's kind of a tangled web. So, we use a consulting engineer who was working on a project out and Garden City, Long Island, and they needed an architect. So, he referred me to the owner, and the owner liked us and then brought us on to some of the more buildings that he owns in Brooklyn.

And then they were going around and around with their facade issues at the building that he lives in. And so, then he brought me in over there. So, it was all this chain. I always say, you never know who you're talking to when you're going to run into them again, who they are, who they end up being. To you and professionally. So that's how we got brought into the building.

 

00;08;21;18 - 00;08;29;07

DP

That's really interesting. So, could you give us a little history of the location? So, what was there prior to 1963, if you know?

 

00;08;29;13 - 00;08;43;23

CW

I do not know what was there prior to 1963, but it is a typical white glazed brick building of that era with the wedding cake setbacks. Also, during that construction period, the kind of problems that you find typically in that construction.

 

00;08;43;26 - 00;08;50;06

DP

So, the scope of the project then was only exterior work. Do you guys too any renovation work on the interior?

 

00;08;50;13 - 00;09;05;21

CW

It's only exterior work right now. We've just mobilized to start the brick restoration and we are going to visit with landmarks, redoing the ground floor, the base of the building as well.

 

00;09;05;23 - 00;09;07;20

DP

So, the project is currently underway.

 

00;09;07;26 - 00;09;08;24

CW

It's just started.

 

00;09;08;24 - 00;09;09;06

DP

Just getting rolling.

 

00;09;09;06 - 00;09;11;04

CW

Just getting rolling. It's exciting.

 

00;09;11;11 - 00;09;18;05

DP

So stylistically, the setbacks on those building that's due to the new laws in New York City at the time.

 

00;09;18;09 - 00;09;21;25

CW

Yes, those were due to zoning.

 

00;09;21;28 - 00;09;35;22

DP

Project restrictions - so when you guys are working on an exterior facade, what are the rules of the road? How do you guys end up doing a project like that? I would imagine that the exterior is all scaffolding at some point. What does the city make the contractor do?

 

00;09;35;24 - 00;11;06;28

CW

Okay, so first we started this project with, I would say, upwards of a hundred probes through the face masonry to really define what the issues were, because there was some debate over the extent of the repairs that were necessary. So, I spent a lot of time on the scaffold in the summer of 2022 looking at all the probes and really identifying the same repetitive problem over and over again.

We're just getting mobilized with hanging the rigs and part of all that entails is we had to file drawings at the Department of Buildings to get our permits and landmarks. Landmarks has to approve first, and we had great assistance getting a perfect match to the original white glazed brick that they have there. You would be surprised at how many iterations of white glazed brick there can be, but you want to make sure when you're doing this much brickwork that your speckle is right and it doesn't stand out in the end.

And Landmarks approves the work very easily. We didn't have any issues. I submitted to them the chip that we had custom made for the building. So that was great. To mobilize, the contractor has to pull scaffold permits, so he has to file with the city to install hanging scaffolds. There was already a sidewalk shed in front of the building to protect the pedestrians on the street. It's a corner building, so a lot of sidewalk shed that's been there for a while.

 

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

DP

So, let's back up. How did they know they had a problem? There were bricks falling off the building.

 

00;11;11;26 - 00;11;24;06

CW

It originally came up in a small exterior restoration project before our time that someone identified that they had a problem, and then it just kept developing from there.

 

00;11;24;10 - 00;11;29;05

DP

And how many sides were that exposed? Two or three. I understand it's a corner. Does it have a back side?

 

00;11;29;10 - 00;11;35;18

CW

Actually, it's L-shaped in the back. It has a number of large façades. It has the two large corner facades.

 

00;11;35;20 - 00;11;39;26

DP

So, the building's L-shaped and plan to then open up to a courtyard and-

 

00;11;39;26 - 00;11;40;05

CW

It does.

 

00;11;40;06 - 00;11;44;26

DP

Okay. How long does the project then take? Start to finish on a building this size?

 

00;11;44;28 - 00;12;12;26

CW

So, we're looking at completion in February of 2025. So, it's going to be about a year and a half on the ground. We have to install all of the pins. We have to pin the face masonry back to the backup block, which is a retrofit wall tie and first they pin and then we're going to strip all the shelf angles above and below the shelf angle and address the flashing and repaint the shelf angles.

 

00;12;12;26 - 00;12;22;12

CW

And sometimes we'll have to replace some of the angles and rebuild the masonry. And we have some parapet work to do, parapets that are not in good shape.

 

00;12;22;14 - 00;12;35;16

DP

So just so I understand that. So, they put up the scaffolding. Then you end up spending a bunch of time out there. I would imagine your partners are also out there. What I'm getting at is who identifies the structural issue? Who's the expert? Is it the architect?

 

00;12;35;24 - 00;12;36;27

CW

Oh yes, I did that. Yep.

 

00;12;37;03 - 00;12;45;06

DP

Interesting. You then document those issues in drawing form, like two dimensional drawings or 3D drawings and present them to somebody.

 

00;12;45;11 - 00;13;13;02

CW

Yes. Two dimensional drawings and photographs. I think the photos really speak a thousand words on this one. I presented it to the board. It's a condominium, so they have a board of directors and we met with them. I went over what I saw and the resident manager there was also very helpful, and he understands the situation and saw some of the probes that were open, that were closer to the ground and could confirm what we were telling them.

 

00;13;13;05 - 00;13;25;13

DP

So, you put together a set of drawings and is that priced like a typical architectural set of drawings by a GC? Is it then bid out and the lowest bidder is chosen? What's that process look like?

 

00;13;25;19 - 00;14;52;03

CW

So, we put together a set of drawings and construction details because we had opened so many probes, there were no questions. A lot of times when you work on a building and there are no existing drawings, which is probably 90% of the time for us, you're making assumptions about how things were built in the period of the building, right?

So inevitably you open it up and there's a surprise, sometimes a minor surprise, sometimes not so minor surprise. But this one, because we had had so many probes opened, we were able to really pin down what was behind the wall. So, we put together elevations, construction details and written specifications. We put them out to bid like the architects having a niche market in exterior restoration in New York City, there are also contractors who are a niche market for exterior restoration in New York City.

So, we bid to five or six or seven of those guys, the majority of whom I've known for many, many years. You know, we all work on the same stuff, and they select the bidder. Because it's private, it doesn't have to go to the lowest bidder. You know, we usually have an interview process so that the board can meet the contractor and get their feel for if they're a good match, that they're going to be a good match with building staff. So we go through the bidding process and then the contract is awarded and they do all that legal stuff on the side that I don't have to worry about.

00;14;52;08 - 00;14;58;04

DP

So, you guys do two dimensional drawings, details, any 3-D stuff? Not really necessary.

 

00;14;58;04 - 00;15;00;03

CW

Not really necessary for this type.

 

00;15;00;03 - 00;15;03;21

DP

And how many people end up working on one of your projects like this one?

 

00;15;03;24 - 00;15;11;00

CW

So, on this project, it was myself, our project manager, Freddy, and his staff member Arefa.

 

00;15;11;06 - 00;15;24;25

DP

So, let's get into the details. How does this work? Like, how do you do what you're doing? Are you just replacing bricks in specific areas? Are you replacing entire facades? And what does that detail look like?

 

00;15;24;28 - 00;15;33;29

CW

So, in the scope that we settled on, we are replacing the bricks along every shelf, angled the building, and this building has shelf angles that every floor.

 

00;15;34;02 - 00;15;36;11

DP

Explained to us what that is, a shelf angle.

 

00;15;36;13 - 00;16;11;02

CW

This is a concrete framed building. So, it has a concrete structure, and a shelf angle is a continuous steel lintel basically that holds up the masonry at every floor and it's bolted back to the concrete slab at regular intervals. There are shims and bolts, and it holds the slab in there. It holds the brick at every floor, provides the gravity support, and the wall ties provide lateral support. So, the shelf angles that this building were in very good condition. There are a few issues here and there, but nothing terrible.

 

00;16;11;02 - 00;16;11;20

DP

They’re all steel?

 

00;16;11;25 - 00;16;18;08

CW

They are steel like three by three, 4x4 angles. Some of them were shallow. So, we're making them a little deeper.

 

00;16;18;14 - 00;16;20;04

DP

Were they galvanized or painted?

 

00;16;20;09 - 00;16;46;03

CW

The original ones were not. They were painted. But when we go back, we go back with galvanized and stainless-steel bolts, and then we replace the shims and the bolts, obviously. And where we find a length of deteriorated shelf angle, we will replace that. We have an allowance for that in the contract to deal with that because there were some areas higher up on the building where they get, you know, more weather exposure that we're in worse condition.

 

00;16;46;05 - 00;16;49;10

DP

Tell us a little bit about the brick. How did you get the matches?

 

00;16;49;17 - 00;18;25;21

CW

Fortunately, this building hasn't had any huge projects on it, so it was fairly easy to identify which white glazed brick was the original brick, which was good because there were maybe three different bricks on it, different color, white base. You know, one was a little pink, one was a little white, or some had a brown speckle, some had a fine speckle, some had a varied speckle.

So, because there are so many setbacks, we were able to go to somebody's terrace where there hadn't been any work high up on the building because at the base at stone. So, I'm not comparing it at the base of the building. We also walked along the sidewalk shed because that gets you up higher. And we selected - we were like, okay, this is the original brick.

And then I reached out to King's. They are brick distributors in New York City, and the folks there were super helpful and made me all sorts of custom samples and they have little brick chips and brought the brick chips up to site and went through everything with the resident manager and decided on our brick. And then you mentioned in your intro the finished underside of the brick at all of the window lintels.

So, when you have a shelf angle you don't see in the field of the masonry, you don't see the underside, the clay body of the brick. But over the lentils you can see like the little yellow clay body of the brick. And I really got into the fact that it was finished on the underside. I think it's just a little bit like a perfect little thing that I really liked. So, we asked for that as well.

 

00;18;25;23 - 00;18;29;11

DP

Is that like a space that's about a half hedge, three quarters of an inch wide?

 

00;18;29;14 - 00;18;43;10

CW

Yeah, it's about a half an inch. If you have the right amount of bearing. And so, they put the glaze on the underside. So, the Masons have to be aware, obviously, when they're rebuilding to look for that. I'm sure I'll catch some in the beginning before they get used to it.

 

00;18;43;18 - 00;18;45;13

DP

Is it going to be hard to find a good mason?

 

00;18;45;19 - 00;18;51;10

CW

We have the contractor on board, and he has good masons on hand, so I'm not very worried about that.

 

00;18;51;16 - 00;19;01;08

DP

So, did you guys learn anything interesting through the construction process, through the inquiry process, anything unusual, Anything you'd never seen before?

 

00;19;01;14 - 00;20;11;10

CW

Not anything I've never seen before, thank goodness. Because those are never good surprises. I was happy, given the lack of wall ties, that I was happy to find that the backup masonry was still in good condition. We didn't have to worry about the backup masonry because that can also be an issue. We decided to pin the columns, which I was surprised actually worked because I had never pinned columns before because you're pinning into the concrete.

So, when you do the retrofit wall tie, you can call the manufacturers rep and he'll come out and do a test. He'll drill in the wall tie, and then he has like a crank to see what the force is, to see if the tie actually holds. And I had originally planned to strip all of the column locations in the building and rebuild that as well.

But on another project of mine, we had had pull tests done for retrofit pins on that building and they went into the columns, and I was like, wait, what? I didn't think that could happen. So, we called them out. We had had him do the tests in the field, in the masonry before, but we had him come back and do the pull tests and the columns and the pins drilled right in. So, it was great news.

 

00;20;11;17 - 00;20;15;13

DP

So, these are columns on the exterior facade behind the brick masonry.

 

00;20;15;16 - 00;20;31;04

CW

Right there, directly behind one wythe of brick behind the masonry. So, the backup concrete block goes right to the column. And then if you were to take all the face masonry off the building, you would see a grid of the columns with the backup block in between.

 

00;20;31;06 - 00;20;38;00

DP

And all the residents there. Do they get to live through the construction process?

 

00;20;38;02 - 00;21;04;06

CW

They do...Yeah. It's never pretty. It's just not. I feel bad, but there is going to be a lot of saw cutting, which is dusty. There is going to be a lot of drilling, which is loud. So, I hope that people at 650 Park, if you're listening, maybe you go back to working in the office for a while. What we do is loud and not anything that anyone wants to have to hear all day long if they're home.

 

00;21;04;08 - 00;21;08;02

DP

Back to the building for a second. I'm really surprised there were no drawings.

 

00;21;08;03 - 00;21;13;06

CW

We did have some the building super. The resident manager had some drawings.

 

00;21;13;08 - 00;21;21;10

DP

Yeah. What's always amazing. I mean, to go back further than that, people-built buildings from so little information, right? I mean, it's crazy.

 

00;21;21;14 - 00;22;05;26

CW

Yeah. So, we didn't really find any wall details. We had elevation drawings and then there's always elevation drawings, probably some plans and lots of plumbing drawings and mechanical drawings, which I don't need and are never accurate because they never built it that way anyway. And it was sixty years ago. So, lots of things have changed. So, we did go through the resident manager's giant bin of drawings in the beginning and got what we could use and it was helpful.

I mean, it helped us locate all of the columns along the facade, right? We wouldn't have had that if we didn't have the original drawings. It would have been more of a guess. But like in this project I said was knock wood a lot of guesswork so far.

 

00;22;05;29 - 00;22;16;02

DP

Yeah. And you talked a little bit about existing conditions and drawings. Is that something that you still do, do some existing condition sketches when you're out there and then somebody'll draw it up for you or.

 

00;22;16;09 - 00;22;56;00

CW

Oh absolutely. That's part of the process. You know, I went to site one day with my notebook and my pen and the contractor said, well, the girl who came last time had an iPad. And I said, I don't have an iPad. I have a notebook and a pen. They tried to give me an iPad, but I'm just more comfortable sketching it.

I feel like there is a connection between pencil and paper that makes you understand what you're looking at and what you're drawing. I don't know. When you go to architecture school, you don't really know anything when you start. And I started to understand through drawing, and I went to school in the era where there was no computer drafting.

 

00;22;56;00 - 00;22;56;16

DP

Yeah, I experienced the same thing.

 

00;22;56;21 - 00;23;13;25

CW

Yeah, I feel like there's a real connection and I think, you know, a lot of times there's an assumption that the computer program is the be all, end all. Not that just a tool and people don't really sometimes don't understand what it is that they're drawing because the computer's creating the detail.

 

00;23;13;28 - 00;23;15;14

DP

They miss it in the learning process.

 

00;23;15;19 - 00;23;35;24

CW

Yeah. And because we do what we do, that's not something that they teach. They don't teach that at school. I actually didn't have to take construction documents in school because I got credit for my job because I was doing actual construction documents. I worked full time. I went to school part time. So, it took me a very, very long time to graduate.

 

00;23;35;26 - 00;23;37;09

DP

Wow, that's impressive.

 

00;23;37;11 - 00;23;37;22

CW

Yeah.

 

00;23;37;29 - 00;23;42;20

DP

Christa, was sustainability an issue for you guys when you took on the project?

 

00;23;42;27 - 00;24;46;20

CW

Unfortunately, with this project, given the parameters of the scope, we could not really accomplish the integration of additional insulation in the cavity or something to that effect, moving forward, but in our office, we really focus on the concept of maintaining existing buildings and doing rehabilitations as sustainable practice. We have a sustainability coordinator that we brought on about two years ago.

She's fantastic. She keeps us honest. She's always regulating things, making sure we're composting, taking things out of the garbage can and putting them in the compost. We did a full led switch over on our lighting in the office pushed by her. She's changed our specs, you know, she'll give me and my partner Dan markups on the specifications with suggestions and we integrate that into our specifications. We do have a sustainable component in every job and some jobs, we can take it to a whole other level.

 

00;24;46;27 - 00;25;03;03

DP

Yeah, it would seem to me that have to go to the interior, right, and rip out all of the plasterwork and drywall and then reinsulate. So, I'm curious, a building like that, it gets a new facade, but it's not going to really change the R-value of the walls and it's still probably going to be a cold building.

 

00;25;03;06 - 00;25;28;21

CW

Right, there is that. And then a lot of times people say, well, I can put in these super-duper windows. And I'm like, Yeah, but your walls are not insulated at all. And you have a PTAC unit, which is basically a hole in the wall. So, you have to look at the balance of how to accomplish what it is you need to accomplish. But we look at the materials and the VOCs, and the location where things are made as well plays into sustainability.

 

00;25;28;21 - 00;25;29;29

DP

Yeah, it is what it is.

 

00;25;30;00 -00;26;06;06

CW

Yeah. I was on the Energy Code review Committee, as you mentioned, the advisory committee, but one of the reasons I signed up for that is because it does not answer existing buildings to the extent that I think it should, given that it's the New York City Energy Code and there's still some gaps in there. But, you know, we're conserving these buildings, we’re restoring them, we're not tearing down and building new ones.

And so that's good for the environment. But then how can we make a realistic energy code that you can apply to all of these existing conditions that we can't just change?

 

00;26;06;09 - 00;26;09;13

DP

I think it's wonderful. It's something most people don't think about.

 

00;26;09;20 - 00;26;38;04

CW

They don't know. And I lectured for Urban Green on the Energy Code. I gave a scintillating seven-hour long lecture. I ran out of words, though, during COVID, I couldn't do it on a screen. So, I tell my kids I ran out of words because there are a lot of words, but I think even sometimes the people that I was lecturing to depending on, you know, like you said, a normal architecture firm isn't thinking about this stuff because they're not dealing with existing building. They're dealing with a plot of land.

 

00;26;38;06 - 00;26;59;27

DP

So, Christa, you've been an architect for some time. Based on what you know today about being an architect, do you have any words of advice for either your younger self or young architects coming up? Because what you do is a little different - the 70% of the work that you guys do - is really very different from what many architects end up doing when they get out of school.

 

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

CW

One word of advice is not to be too married to the thought of what you think you want to do and to try different things, and you might really find something that surprises you, that you do. I've found along the way I've done some projects I would never imagine when I was in school that I would do something like that, and I really enjoyed it.

When you go to school, you have a vision, I'm going to do this. I want to do this. And if you just open yourself up to different projects and you might find something that really makes an impression on you.

 

00;27;33;11 - 00;27;35;23

DP

Yeah. What clearly worked for you?

 

00;27;35;25 - 00;28;13;05

CW

Yeah. And to my younger self, I don't know that I have advised my younger self because I don't know how much I've changed, but I always felt like if you're doing what you enjoy and you're with people that you enjoy doing it with, then little things that might be irksome to contemporary youth don't really register. They're not important in the long run, and you have to see the big picture.

I mean, did I think when I was hired, did I think when I was 23, someday I’ll own the company? No, I didn't think that, but it happened. So you never know. Hard work and a lot of luck is what gets you where you want to be.

 

00;28;13;10 - 00;28;19;29

DP

Christa, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about CTA architects and yourself?

 

00;28;20;02 - 00;28;44;21

CW

We have a website. It's www.ctaarchitects, all one-word dotcom where we showcase all of our finest work. Sometimes people look at our website and get a little, oh that's very fancy, but I always say it's your portfolio, it's your best, but there's everything in there. There's all this stuff that we do that doesn't make it to the portfolio level that's necessary.

 

00;28;44;24 - 00;28;46;15

DP

Well, thank you very much. Been great to have you.

 

00;28;46;19 - 00;28;51;09

CW

Thank you for having me. It was nice talking.