Event: Designs for Living: Historic Buildings — Back to the Future
Location: Center for Architecture, 07.14.08
Speakers: Samuel White, FAIA — Partner, Platt Byard Dovell White Architects; Michael Gabellini, FAIA — Partner, Gabellini Sheppard Associates; Caterina Roiatti, AIA — Principal, TRA Studio; Morris Adjmi, AIA — Founder & Principal, Morris Adjmi Architects
Moderator: Robert Tierney — Chair, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission
Organizer: AIANY Historic Buildings Committee
Sponsors: Champion: Studio Daniel Libeskind; Supporters: Gensler; HumanScale; James McCullar & Associates; Friends: Benjamin Moore & Co.; Costas Kondylis & Partners; Forest City Ratner Companies; Frank Williams & Associates; Hugo S. Subotovsky Architects; Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti; Mancini Duffy; Magnusson Architecture and Planning; Rawlings Architects; Ricci Greene Associates; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Syska & Hennessy; Trespa North America; Universal Contracting Group

(l-r): 16 West 21st Street; Poly Prep Lower School; Jil Sander Boutique and Showroom; 44 Mercer Street.

(l-r): Morris Adjmi Architects; Lester Ali, courtesy Platt Byard Dovell White Architects; ©Paul Warchol, courtesy Gabellini Sheppard Associates; TRA Studio

Historic preservation projects tend to take on one of two forms: mimicry and transformation. Architects on a recent panel agreed that successful projects are a result of the latter, and in each of their practices, they strive to reduce a building to its essence, relate it to its context, and preserve its remains yet develop practical uses for the future

For Caterina Roiatti, AIA, principal at TRA Studio, architecture does not exist without its context, yet, according to Morris Adjmi, AIA, principal of Morris Adjmi Architects, it is equally important for it to create a new interpretation of that context. At TRA Studio’s 8 Bond Street, for example, the future building is sited on the corner of quiet, residential Bond Street and highly trafficked, eclectic Lafayette Street. The Bond Street elevation is smaller in scale and the window patterns reference fire escapes prevalent in the neighborhood, while the Lafayette Street façade curves and kicks out with the site making its presence known to cars passing by. The 14-story residential 16 West 21st Street, designed by Morris Adjmi Architects, is located in the Ladies Mile historic district, an area influenced by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. In response, Adjmi wanted to make the building “whiter than white.” Its façade is comprised of frosted glass columns and with silver-colored aluminum-framed windows, yet the tri-parti proportions are similar to neighboring buildings.

“Preservation is burnishing history and channeling modernity,” stated Michael Gabellini, FAIA, principal of Gabellini Sheppard Associates. He attempts to create “harmonic tension” between old and new and interior and exterior, using minimal means. The Jil Sander Boutique and Showroom in Paris is located in a 19th-century French Beaux-Arts home in which the exterior masonry was preserved but the interior had been destroyed. Gabellini used this to juxtapose old and new through elements that are weighty and weightless, respectively. The vacant interior became a large atrium, and walls made with stark white Bath limestone relate to the exterior bearing walls in a reductive way. The existing walls are massive, but floating stone benches create a sense of weightlessness.

Platt Byard Dovell White Architects has been working with the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission since 1978, and partner Samuel White, FAIA, compares the relationship to that of “an old married couple.” He has found that the process of collaborating with clients, communities, and Landmarks improves the product… with a few exceptions (such as the infamous Wood Allen building on 91st Street and Madison Avenue, where public outcry led to a shrunken, stumpy, mediocre building, says White). When the firm was awarded Poly Prep Lower School in Park Slope, the project had already faced public rejection. Platt Byard Dovell White learned from criticism faced by the previous firm and designed an addition to the 1892 Hulbert Mansion that incorporates characteristics of the existing building as well as the local low-rise neighborhood in scale and material.

While Poly Prep is also the first NYC school to be awarded LEED Silver certification (See “NYC School Passes the LEED Test,” In the News, e-Oculus, 06.24.08), LEED for historic preservation projects are still rare. Panelists agreed it will become more common in the future, but going green is still too expensive and clients are slow to be convinced of its merits. However, Adjmi responded that sustainable materials are more available, increasing the possibility to go green. At Poly Prep, White was surprised that sustainability did not change the project’s design at all. What changed was the reduction in construction waste, and that alone is the best excuse to consider going green.

Event: Experimental Architecture Series: Jeanne Gang
Location: Center for Architecture, 07.16.2008
Speaker: Jeanne Gang, AIA — Principal & Founder, Studio/Gang (Chicago)
Moderator: Saf Fahim, AIA — Design Principal, Archronica Architects, & Chair, Architecture Dialogue Committee
Organizers: The AIA New York Chapter and the AIANY Architectural Dialogue Committee

The Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theater (left) and Marble Curtain (right).

Studio/Gang

Along with her own designs, Jeanne Gang, AIA, juxtaposed a seashell’s patterns with a computer-generated graph showing how the growing shell emits its pigments. This mathematically regular “relation to material and time,” she explained, was inexplicable until today’s technology allowed for precise analysis. Such close attention to the properties of natural materials and the power of ideas yields Studio/Gang’s approach to architectural processes that moderator Saf Fahim, AIA, identified as “the triad of materials, ideas, and process.”

Like Rem Koolhaas and other provocateurs at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, where she worked before forming Studio/Gang in 1997, Gang devotes intense attention to analyzing program requirements in the early phases of a project, and she delights in proposing solutions that others may consider impossible. Her firm’s first independent project, the Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theater at Rock Valley College in Rockford, IL, is an outdoor theater sporting an operable roof with six triangular panels that open like an origami flower, allowing open-air performances while remaining weatherproof. Backlit porthole windows help maximize the building’s profile on a small-college budget. For some viewers, the 12-minute sequential opening of its six overlapping “petals,” repeated at the beginning and intermission of each event, often upstages the performances.

Gang was one of four architects selected for the National Building Museum’s Masonry Variations Exhibition in 2003, and curator Stanley Tigerman, FAIA, assigned her the charge of working in stone. A floor with limited weight support complicated the structural requirements. Gang’s solution was to hang from the vaulted ceiling a network of catenary-curved chains of translucent, 3/8-inch-thick marble, cut by water jets into 660 different puzzle pieces designed to distribute stresses. Along with dissolving the conceptual border between rigidity and fluidity, the Marble Curtain tested how stone behaves in tension rather than compression, an area where data had been scarce.

Expanding into larger-scale projects, Studio/Gang has used baseball as a heuristic tool: investigations of Chicago’s stadiums, Wrigley Field, and U.S. Cellular Field (New Comiskey Park), led to both a study of urban density for the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004-05, and a new stadium plan for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2004 Venice Biennale. The design suggests informal rooftop viewing structures just beyond Wrigley’s outfield (a feature now sanctioned by Chicago’s building codes). The sporting facility would fragment its seating into separate angled-tier components distributed through an urban neighborhood.

Gang’s breakthrough project may be the hotel/residential tower Aqua, whose 82 individually sculpted floor plates will give occupants various views of Chicago while offering a topologically varied profile suggesting the Great Lakes region’s limestone outcroppings and its pools and eddies. Scheduled to open in 2009, Aqua aims to remind observers that “water and time are processes that act on the building,” as Gang noted, and that good design begins with close, thoughtful readings of the Earth.

Bill Millard is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in OCULUS, Icon, Content, The Architect’s Newspaper, and other publications.

Event: Reception Program for 2008 Bike Share Demonstration Project
Location: The City Bakery, 07.14.08
Keynote: Janette Sadik-Kahn — Commissioner, NYC Department of Transportation
Organizers: Forum for Urban Design; Storefront for Art and Architecture; The City Bakery

Four bike share stations attempted to connect existing transportation networks during this year’s NY Bike Share Demonstration Project.

Courtesy nybikeshare.org

While the scope of the New York Bike Share Demonstration Project may seem small in relation to programs established in some European cities — Paris currently has over 20,000 cycles in rotation — this short test run was intended to be one step in convincing NYC to invest in a more comprehensive program on a citywide scale. This year’s four-day program expanded its pilot effort conducted last summer, offering more cycles and more stations in Lower Manhattan to exchange cycles.

The concept of bike sharing provides short-term bicycle rentals, offered either free or at minimal cost, and is intended to complement existing transportation networks. Designed to bridge gaps in subway and bus lines with point-to-point rentals, renters are not required to return cycles to the same stations. This year’s demonstration proved that commonly perceived shortcomings, like the need for significant labor to redistribute cycles at the end of each day, could be overcome by strategically locating stations. Forum for Urban Design Deputy Director Loreal Monroe reported that the group “never experienced a redistribution problem” this year.

At the program’s wrap-up reception, NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan spoke alongside the demonstration project organizers about the importance of bringing increased cycle access to the roads. “Biking can be a transformative element in NYC’s transportation design,” said Sadik-Kahn. A week earlier, the DOT released a Request for Expressions of Interests for experienced groups interested in implementing a program for the city. A more comprehensive bike-sharing program may be in NYC’s future.

Carolyn Sponza, AIA, LEED AP, is an architect with Beyer Blinder Belle Architects and Planners, and the AIANY Chapter Vice President of Professional Development.