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.

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

Doug Patt (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;14 - 00;00;34;08

Paul Neuhaus (PN)

They wanted a full archive with plenty of space for growth into the future. The storage has different requirements depending on the kinds of documents. So, we needed to create spaces that allow them to continue to collect. And a lot of the people who come in to do research, which is another big part of what they do, they collect and preserve. But they also provide these documents to the public for access, for research, or just for curiosity and to learn.

 

00;00;34;11 - 00;02;55;10

DP

This is my guest, Paul Neuhaus. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we’ll highlight Paul's project, the PA State Archives. The new Pennsylvania State Archives Facility collects and preserves valuable paper documents while making them available to the public for viewing and research. The building is a state-of-the-art archival facility with an enhanced building envelope and HVAC system for the optimal environment to preserve historical paper documents.

The street facade features a linear, steel framed louver structure which surrounds a two-story high glass enclosed pavilion. The pavilion is connected to the main building, which accommodates the two public research rooms and staff spaces. While much of the building requires a windowless approach. A wide assortment of colored Norman size bricks were used to give the facade a varied and playful appearance.

The building used 350,000 brick equivalents in a blend of five different glazed brick colors. The building is three city blocks in size on three acres of land. The total storage area on three floors is 50,000 square feet and includes oversized, cool, cold, secure, and digital archives.

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

Today we're talking to Paul Neuhaus, AIA, LEED AP. Paul has a bachelor's degree in art from California Lutheran University and a master's degree in architecture from UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Paul is a Senior designer for HGA. Paul is in their Minneapolis office and has been practicing for 30 years, working in their arts community and education practice group. Paul's project work includes studio arts and performing arts facilities, science labs, student centers and life science classrooms for higher ed, as well as libraries, a church and very recently, the building we will be talking about today, a paper archive for the State of Pennsylvania.

Paul strives to engender a sense of community and belonging for those who visit and work in the buildings his teams design. So welcome, Paul.

 

00;02;55;14 - 00;02;56;28

PN

Thank you. It's great to be here.

 

00;02;57;01 - 00;03;08;11

DP

It's great to have you with us today. So, before we get started, tell us a little bit about HGA architects. We know you're in the Minneapolis area. What's the size of the firm, the type of work you guys do?

 

00;03;08;14 - 00;03;26;05

PN

HGA is a national interdisciplinary design firm committed to making a positive, lasting impact for our clients and communities through research based holistic solutions. We’re a collective of over a thousand professionals in 12 offices nationwide.

 

00;03;26;08 - 00;03;30;21

DP

Wow. That's incredible. So how long has HGA been around?

 

00;03;30;23 - 00;03;51;26

PN

Oh, boy. We go back to the fifties. The office here in Minneapolis was the first office and Hamel Green and Abramson, the founders, started the firm. They were a well-known firm in the state for many years and grew over the years and became a dominant force here in the state. And today, they're the largest firm in the state.

 

00;03;51;29 - 00;03;54;09

DP

Do you have any other locations outside the state?

 

00;03;54;11 - 00;04;03;13

PN

Yeah, we have 11 other offices, so East Coast and West Coast mostly. We also have two offices in Wisconsin.

 

00;04;03;20 - 00;04;12;17

DP

That's a really big architecture firm. Tell me a little bit about the role that you play at HGA. How did you end up there and what are you doing now?

 

00;04;12;20 - 00;05;08;10

PN

I've been in the city practicing since 1992. As a matter of fact, I wanted to work for HGA when I first moved to the city from Los Angeles. Interviewed here a couple of times, and it just worked out that I got an offer from another firm in town and work for them. That was back in 92. And then I didn't end up working for HGA until 2014.

I was really attracted to the firm because of the high quality of the design they do. Even though they're a large firm, they really practice like a small boutique firm. There's a lot of collaboration and independent thinking here. They allow architects to really pursue individually on each project what they think the vision of that project should be. So, when you look at HGA’s work, you don't see a pattern of design that looks a certain way. Buildings and projects can go in a lot of different directions, and there really isn't a style for our firm, which is really the way it should be.

 

00;05;08;16 - 00;05;26;03

DP

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty unique. Most offices, you look at their work and you can spot the thread that works its way through all of the architecture, and I'm sure that's the same way with your office. And yet many offices, stylistically they're just churning out the same thing, one building after another. So that's interesting.

 

00;05;26;05 - 00;05;44;00

PN

There definitely is a commitment to modernism and contemporary architecture. We do that well, but we also do historical preservation. And so, we have people who are working on buildings that are hundreds of years old - that occurs too - where we have to tie into historical buildings quite often with the new additions.

 

00;05;44;02 - 00;05;45;23

DP

So, what is your role in the office?

 

00;05;45;29 - 00;06;26;00

PN

I'm a senior designer. I lead projects, teams that can be anywhere from just me to four or five architects, depending on the size of the project. And then we have interior design. HGA really is a full-service firm. We have architecture, interior design, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, structural, security, and AV. So, we can do it all, but we often will team up with other architecture firms around the country because we have an expertise that we can bring, which is in this case, museums and archives. So, we'll team up with locals and go after projects together, and that's what we did here in Pennsylvania.

 

00;06;26;02 - 00;06;30;14

DP

So, are you guys the architects of record or the design architects, or do you switch roles?

 

00;06;30;20 - 00;06;48;10

PN

Vitetta Architects is the executive architect, and we were the design architect. So, we had the upfront part of the project. We team together. We were always together working together, but we emphasized the front end of the project, and they were construction drawings and CA.

 

00;06;48;13 - 00;06;53;28

DP

All right, so let's jump into the building here. So, could you tell us a little bit about how your office got the project?

 

00;06;54;01 - 00;07;52;29

PN

You know, I wasn't there when we went after the project, but it's a typical story, I'm sure, which is there is a proposal out from an owner. They want a building, so they publish a proposal that anybody can submit to. And we looked for someone to team up with locally or they approached us, perhaps the local architect, Vitetta, and we've teamed up as a team and submitted a proposal. And then we were shortlisted, interviewed for it, and we were selected as the team to do it. We had experience doing museums and archives very recently before that, so that made a big impact on our selection.

I think it goes back to 2014 when we were selected for the project there initially was a different site. They went all the way through schematic on a site that was a green site on the edge of town. After schematic, they decided, no, we want to have a site that's closer to our capital complex in town. So, they found a different site and started design over, and that's when I joined the team.

 

00;07;53;01 - 00;07;59;04

DP

Wow. There's an original archive building, right? And that is done, I think in the brutalist style.

 

00;07;59;07 - 00;08;40;27

PN

Yeah, you could say that. It doesn't have many windows, so I could see how that would feel Brutalist. It's limestone, however, it's got a concrete structure, but the structure isn't expressed on the outside like you would typically see for brutalist architecture. It's at the Capitol grounds. It's 21 stories tall. And the problem with it is it's a low floor to floor, by today's standards. They considered upgrading it and expanding it, but they determined that the low floor to floor wouldn't allow them to create the updates they need for mechanical systems. Plus, there just wasn't enough space around it to move laterally. So, they decided the thing to do was to find a new site.

 

00;08;40;29 - 00;08;53;07

DP

So, I'm curious, when they came to you and this was their original building, did they talk at all about style? Clearly the floor heights were an issue. Did they say, “Hey, we don't want to do this again. We want something that's a little more contemporary”?

 

00;08;53;12 - 00;09;38;12

PN

Good question. Yes, they wanted a contemporary building. They wanted something that reflected today and the way we think about architecture today, which is great. The building that was built originally was a modern building, too. It was of its time. The History Museum is right next to it that will continue to be used. It was great that they wanted to look forward and be progressive about style, and I don't know if we ever talked style per se.

We just had already gone through schematic design. Like I said on this other site with another team. So, I think there was some sort of way of working that had already been established so that when I started on the new site as the lead designer, they had already had some confidence in us and were on board with the way we work.

 

00;09;38;15 - 00;09;43;13

DP

So, tell us a little bit about the programmatic requirements they came to you guys with.

 

00;09;43;15 - 00;11;52;13

PN

They wanted a full archive with plenty of space for growth into the future. So, of 146,000 square feet of this building, about 50,000 square feet is the archive storage spaces. The storage has different requirements depending on the kinds of documents it might be worth saying that the Pennsylvania State Archives collects, preserves, and makes available for study the permanently valuable public records of the Commonwealth, with particular attention given to the records of state government.

And as the Archives director, David Carmichael, once said, “they collect everything from parchment to pixels.” As a matter of fact, William Penn, who founded the Commonwealth in 1681, used a charter that gave him the right to establish the Commonwealth. And that charter is at the archives in Pennsylvania and as well as hundreds of millions of other documents that are important to the Commonwealth.

So, we needed to create spaces that allow them to continue to collect. So, it's important the whole process of how documents arrive at the site are brought in, brought into processing rooms, and then eventually put into storage. Quite often they're also photographed so that they can have a digital record of the document and a lot of the people who come in to do research, which is another big part of what they do, they collect and preserve, but they also provide these documents to the public for access, for research or just for curiosity and to learn.

So, there is this whole system of how documents are moving in and how they're being brought to the public to use and then put back into storage. The documents can be anything from large documents in flat files like maps. They can be eight and a half by eleven size. Some of the rooms need to be cool or even cold. So, there are different climates, let's say, in some of these rooms based on the type of media it is. For instance, film that they'll collect needs to be in a very cool environment. So, they have different climates in each space.

 

00;11;52;16 - 00;12;05;03

DP

Well, that's really interesting. So, let's go back a little bit. Tell us a little bit about the site. Are there any unique topographic features? Is it completely flat? Was it a pretty simple thing to put a building on it?

 

00;12;05;05 - 00;13;08;18

PN

Yeah, it's a three-acre site and there are two main streets on the west and east side. Sixth Street on the west is about one story above Seventh Street, which is on the East. And Seventh Street is a main feeder artery that comes into town, while sixth is more of a residential neighborhood or semi commercial residential. So, we put the public entry on Sixth Street, which is up a level which means of the four level building, there's a lower level that's a walk out, let's say on the east side.

And then the public enters on what we call first floor, which is one level up from the lower level. The site is also L-shaped, which sounds like it could be a problem, but it really isn't because it's a large enough site that it provides for the building and public space. So, we were able to create a nice plaza out front and lots of landscaping in front of the building to provide a public amenity, let's say, to the people who live in the community and anyone who's visiting.

 

00;13;08;21 - 00;13;11;23

DP

Did you guys have any challenging restrictions, in terms of zoning?

 

00;13;11;26 - 00;14;22;26

PN

There were challenges with infrastructure. We had some issues needing to connect the archive with the state capital complex with fiber optics. So, there was a fiber optic line that had to come underground all the way to our site and that was done on a different contract. But we also had a lot of flexibility. For instance, there were streetlights and so on around the site and in some cases, especially on the front where we met the public, we were able to move the streetlights across the street from us because we just didn't think it would be nice having all the lights and lines right out in front of the building.

So, there was some infrastructural work that was done more on a urban scale level to help accommodate this building. Also add that at the same time that we were doing this building, there was a federal courthouse being put in, which is just about completed now too, at the same time. So, these two large buildings that are within a couple of blocks from each other going in at the same time was interesting.

And we actually worked – we had one meeting with the local architect, the design architects of that building, so that we could coordinate a little bit on what some of the public lighting would look like.

 

00;14;22;28 - 00;14;44;05

DP

The building stylistically, you've got this large glass atrium space and you've got this metal framed armature that wraps that. And then I'm assuming going off in the other direction, you've got a very large block that is made out of masonry. Is that correct?

 

00;14;44;07 - 00;16;25;19

PN

That's right. We took that stated purpose, the mission statement of the archive, which is the archive collects, preserves, and makes available for study. We took those three ideas, and we turned them into form and gave each form its own material. So, for instance, “collects” is the storage of the archives. That became a form that you just described as masonry.

They preserve, and mechanical systems are an important part of preservation. We have the unique situation of all of the mechanical systems needing to be off to the side of the archive that couldn't be on top of the archive because we couldn't risk any sort of liquids leaking out of mechanical systems into the archives. So, all of the mechanical systems are in their own bay off to the side. That's the preservation part. And we use metal panels to describe that bay.

And then finally, “making available to the public,” there was a public element of it, and in this case, we made it a glass pavilion and we used an aluminum extruded solar shade custom made to protect people from direct sunlight but provide lots of daylight. So, it's very open, very visible. You drive by it on Sixth Street and great views in and out to the street and from the road in. But it's got its own expression from the other elements. And so those three elements look very different from each other. They each really have a different personality, but they're all neutral in color. They're grays from white to medium gray, nothing - it's a very tight range of neutral tones.

 

00;16;25;23 - 00;16;35;09

DP

Yeah, for a storage facility, it's pretty welcoming. The elevation with the glass and this metal armature is really quite lovely.

 

00;16;35;15 - 00;16;36;07

PN

Thank you.

 

00;16;36;10 - 00;16;51;15

DP

So, I saw some really interesting studies in your emails back and forth with Glen-Gery in regard to the colors that you ultimately chose for the facades. There's really a lot there. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

 

00;16;51;17 - 00;20;13;16

PN

That's a great part of the story. We knew that the archive wing would be enveloped by a long expanse of wall. Archives don't want to have windows, so there were not going to be many windows and this building was going to be up to four stories tall. So, we wanted to make sure that what we put on the building would be something that would be out of the ordinary. And we didn't have the budget for limestone. The Capitol complex is limestone. The original building was that way, but we wanted something durable and where we could allude in some way to what was going on at the Capitol. We thought brick is durable. It's a good candidate for an archive because of that, and we wanted to make some connection to the limestone.

We began looking for a light-colored brick, very neutral, something that could echo that limestone. But clay doesn't come in neutrals like we wanted it. You know, Clay typically is in the Browns, yellow reds. You can get it to be black or very close to black. But everything we found seemed to be a little bit too warm. The closest we could get was a very light-yellow brick, and even then, it just felt a little too warm. So, we started considering clay slip coatings that are available on the market for bricks that could be applied to the brick to get a lighter and more neutral look. And that's when we came across Glen-Gery. We found some buildings on the Internet that traced us back to Glen-Gery. I don't remember how, but we were able to find them. And then Glen-Gery could make custom colors in the matte, but they also could make glossy glazed finishes. So that's when we started to consider that. And from there we began a conversation with them about brick colors and finishes.

Eventually I took a trip to their plant up in northern Pennsylvania. One time I landed in Pittsburgh, rented a car, drove up to their plant, and then from there I went to a client meeting in Harrisburg. It was really a fun visit just to see that plant work and meet with the artist. They had like an artist lab or chem lab where they can mix custom colors. And we had really good conversations and that really convinced me that this had a lot of potential. It wasn't a shoe in, it wasn't sure yet that we could go this route, but I just felt like there was a path to get there.

And eventually we went the route of glazed brick over the matte finish. We found the shine and reflectance of the wall surface potentially very appealing, especially on a large building with so few windows. Second, there was a side benefit with the glazed brick, and we believe that it would help resist graffiti and make it easier to clean because we were in an area where graffiti could be an issue. So that was another selling point for going that direction. It certainly worked in terms of getting the state to back that idea of going with a glazed brick, because I think it just seemed very unusual that a building would be entirely covered with glazed brick, and it helped that we were using very subdued colors like grays. We have five colors. It's a range of grays. And when you stand back, they kind of blend together. It creates what I like to call a heathered look. You know, if this were a knit sweater, it would be using heathered gray yarn and it kind of all blends together.

 

00;20;13;16 - 00;20;22;16

DP

Well, when the bricks glaze, does it reflect images or light or is there anything special about the facade when you stand back and look at it, other than the color?

 

00;20;22;23 - 00;20;51;12

PN

In a surprising way, that was very pleasant, once it got put up – especially on that north side where it's a long wall of brick – we were really surprised and pleased to see that on a cloudy day as the clouds are going over, it reflects the sky and the clouds, enough really to - it's not like a mirror, but it gives you a nice feeling that this building is somehow relating to the sky. So we really like that part of it.

 

00;20;51;14 - 00;21;01;19

DP

It all sounds really cool. Before we wrap this part of the conversation up, tell me about the mockups you guys did for the colors of the brick. They're really cool. It was a great idea.

 

00;21;01;22 - 00;22;22;18

PN

Yeah. Thanks. We started just by getting Sherwin-Williams paint chips. They make eight by ten paint samples. We pulled out a whole bunch of neutral colors with little bits of warm and cool associated with them and had them sent to us. Then we took the ones that we found most appealing, and we created a brick shape with using chipboard, glued them down, and then we started to assemble different quantities and proportions of different colors and just started mixing things until we saw something that looked appealing.

So, we created this mockup model where we could try different proportions. We kept records of how many of this color, how many of that on each set up that we did. And we created a whole series of these that we could first show ourselves and figure out which ones we liked the best. And then we took them to the client and showed them to them and tried to find where the sweet spot was for this blend.

From there we started to work with Glen-Gery to actually come up with samples, glazed brick samples. They weren't full bricks right away. They were just pieces of clay, small, maybe four by three inches, for starters, until we could come up with something closer to the actual colors we'd want to consider.

 

00;22;22;21 - 00;22;45;28

DP

You know, what's so surprising to me is you take five colors, put them together on a board. You've got 30 or 40 bricks. Each one of these samples, you stand back, and you look at, I'm just blown away that you can do that on a facade, and it never looks busy. You stand back and it becomes like another color. It becomes the color in-between all the colors. How did you even know that was going to happen?

 

00;22;46;00 - 00;23;31;00

PN

That's a good question. You're digging into the way we had to think about this. You know, some of our mockups had more contrast. Some of them had less contrast. And I think you need to find that point where the contrast is enough to give some variety and not make it look homogenous. But you don't want it to be so contrasty that it starts to look speckled. We didn't want to speckled looking, building, so it was just a matter of setting things up, looking at them close and then walking away and looking at them from, you know, 100 feet away and just see how well they blend together. It's like pixels, right, on your computer. These were really just physical pixels. And the farther you get back, the more they blend.

 

00;23;31;03 - 00;23;47;29

DP

So, at the end of the day, when you guys were all done with the job, was there anything that you learned that was really interesting about the design or the construction process? Again, as an aside, being the designer architects, it's got to be interesting handing a job over and then coming back to it as it nears completion, right?

 

00;23;48;01 - 00;24;39;20

PN

Yeah. And fortunately, we had a great working relationship with Vitetta, Daniel Wasik, the architect who led the team at Vitetta, who did a wonderful job. We had a good relationship and all the way through construction drawings, we were actively reviewing the drawings with them and participating in meetings. They were leading that process at that point from there on out but we were still involved. And even during construction administration, I didn't get to go to the site until late in the game. However, we were getting pictures from them monthly, lots of pictures. They were really good about it. They would tell us if there were any issues, we'd work it through together. So, it really worked well. And I have to say, I've never worked with a local architect that well before. It was a wonderful relationship and I’d love to work with them again sometime.

 

00;24;39;23 - 00;24;43;03

DP

That's really cool. Did the GC have any trouble finding a good mason?

 

00;24;43;10 - 00;24;45;05

PN

I know that there were issues.

 

00;24;45;05 - 00;24;47;11

DP

It's always an issue.

 

00;24;47;14 - 00;25;23;03

PN

Yeah. I mean, when I look at the building, it was well done overall.

You know, we had some complicated pieces to it too. For instance, we had an overhang at the front entry with brick hanging ten feet out, cantilever out over the entryway, and we designed it so that the brick at the bottom was not supported by an angle. We hid the structure and hung those two courses at the bottom from a structure up inside the wall. So, we were able to glaze even the underside of the brick hanging out over that cantilever, which wasn't an easy thing to accomplish.

 

00;25;23;03 - 00;25;24;17

DP

Yeah, it sounds expensive.

 

00;25;24;23 - 00;25;44;28

PN

It was, but it's a state building and you want it to be done right, and further, I don't know if you've had this experience on your work, but I've gone back to visit buildings sometimes that are years old, ten years old maybe, and some of those angles that support brick can start to rust. So, we wanted to avoid having that happen on a building this important.

 

00;25;45;00 - 00;26;04;20

DP

Yeah. And you know, you're going to make a few statements in the architecture and that's one really big one right at the front of the building. Very cool. So, before you go, you've been at this for 30 years or so. If you could give yourself – your younger self some career advice, what would it be?

 

00;26;04;22 - 00;26;49;17

PN

Oh, boy. Well, I do meet with mentees – we have a mentorship program here at HGA, which is highly valued by the people who are just starting out in their careers. And sometimes what I'll tell them is try to pay attention to everything you do, even the details. And not just focus on the big picture because the more you can know about the way buildings are specifically put together, the more you can understand about the structure and the other disciplines, the better you can be at making those decisions and choices at the beginning of your project. And so, I always encourage architects, especially people who are interested in being designers, to learn every aspect of the project down to the details.

 

00;26;49;20 - 00;26;56;24

DP

Yeah, if you're not interested in being a lifelong learner, architecture may not be the right profession for you.

 

00;26;56;26 - 00;26;57;16

PN

That's true.

 

00;26;57;16 - 00;26;59;28

DP

Right? You're always learning something.

 

00;27;00;06 - 00;27;01;08

PN

I'm still learning.

 

00;27;01;12 - 00;27;08;25

DP

Oh, yeah, I am too. Every day. So, Paul, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about HGA architects?

 

00;27;08;25 - 00;27;18;15

PN

They would go to hga.com, and we've got our projects there that you can look at, and our teams, our people. It's a fun place to go.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

DP

That's great. It sounds like a really interesting place to work.

 

00;27;22;00 - 00;27;34;05

PN

It is. I really enjoy it. There's a lot of smart people here and I'm so glad that I get to play the role I play. But I also admire those people who play all the other roles that we have at this firm.

 

00;27;34;08 - 00;27;34;28

DP

That's great, Paul. Thank you.

 

00;27;35;01 - 00;27;39;18

PN

Thank you. It was a pleasure.