Building Tours

Join us for a 90-minute tour of Rockefeller Center’s recently renovated rink concourse, designed by New York-based INC Architecture & Design. The tour will be led by Adam Rolston, Creative and Managing Director and Founding Partner of INC. A New York City icon since the1930s, Rockefeller Center recently underwent a major renovation in a bid to make it more accessible while preserving its Art Deco integrity. The tour will include a tour of the rink concourse and a discussion about the firm's approach to the project, including democratizing access, connecting the rink from the concourse interior, bringing in natural light, and developing a new architecture for the concourse that supports clear wayfinding.

Tour Guide:
Adam Rolston, AIA, Creative and Managing Director and Founding Partner, INC Architecture & Design

Join Archtober for a two-hour tour of the newly renovated David Geffen Hall, home to the New York Philharmonic, at Lincoln Center. The project reimagines David Geffen Hall's full interior within its existing historic shell, creating a more welcoming and intimate audience experience. With the concert hall as the building’s centerpiece, all public spaces have been re-conceived to provide greater opportunities for people to gather with a more intuitive circulation throughout both its public and back-of-house facilities. The building's public spaces are designed to be inviting, comfortable, warm, and adaptable to an array of programming opportunities. These spaces include a re-imagined grand promenade, a lobby, a welcome center, donor lounges, a restaurant (Tatiana), and the “Sidewalk Studio”. The tour will be led by Sybil Wa, Olen Milholland, Jonathan Garnett, and Preeti Sriratana.

Speakers:
Jonathan Garnett, Creative Director, Founding Partner, Modellus Novus
Olen Milholland, Project Architect, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners
Preeti Sriratana, Managing Director, Founding Partner, Modellus Novus
Sybil Wa, RA Principal, Diamond Schmitt Architects

Notable Guests:
Joshua Dachs, Principal, Fisher Dachs Associates
Robert Campbell, Principal, Fisher Dachs Associates
Christopher Blair, Principal, Akustiks

About the Speakers:
Jonathan Garnett is the Creative Director and a founding partner at Modellus Novus, where he oversees creative direction for a range of the firm’s architecture and design projects, as well as its external and internal initiatives. He is responsible for establishing, evolving, and tailoring the firm’s design processes, priorities and principles in coordination with business development, financial, and organizational strategies. Garnett was fundamentally shaped by summers working with a non-profit design firm in Detroit that provided design-build services to underrepresented communities and community organizations invested in improving quality of life in that city. After spending years overseeing the construction of projects he designed, while also making furnishings and objects with his hands, Garnett learned what kind of creative leader he wanted to be. He imbues those values in his daily work with the project teams at MN.

Olen Milholland joined Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners (TWBTA) in 2019, and was a project architect on the renovation of David Geffen Hall’s public spaces. Milholland was heavily involved with the project’s design and construction phases from Concept Design through Construction Administration, with particular attention to the Restaurant and Grand Promenade spaces. Throughout, Milholland’s coordination of the design and construction teams was an integral part of the successful delivery of the project, which completed two years ahead of schedule, and on budget. Prior to working with TWBTA, Milholland was a Project Architect for Weiss Manfredi on the 28 acre campus of the New U.S. Embassy in Dehli, India. Set in a historically significant compound, the project balanced the complex needs of one of the most highly visited US embassies in the world with rigorous security issues and the desire to provide the most welcoming environment for all those who use the building.

Preeti Sriratana is Managing Director and a founding partner at Modellus Novus, where he provides strategic direction and manages growth. He is committed to shaping communities and creating access, from non-profit work to MN’s efforts to create spaces for the many in all of their projects. Beyond MN, he is board chair for Apex for Youth (for which he received an Official Commendation from the City of New York), co-founder and board member of national renovation marketplace Sweeten, a member of the Entrepreneur Board of Venture for America, and sits on the Advisory Board of Asian American Policy Review at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also co-founder of Central Queens Academy Charter School, the highest-performing public middle school in Queens.

Sybil Wa is a principal at Diamond Schmitt. She brings a playful and insightful design approach to a broad range of project types, with particular expertise on civic and performing arts buildings. Wa manages the firm’s New York Office, and recently worked on the comprehensive transformation of David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which opened in October 2022. Her design work for the performing arts also includes the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts and the Meridian Arts Centre Main Stage Reconfiguration in Toronto, the Mariinsky II in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines. Her advocacy on urban issues has been a professional and personal focus, attracting media coverage across Canada. She has written op-eds on accommodating families in downtown condominiums, providing park and playground space in urban centers, and shaping a rapidly growing city.

AIANY Building Science Committee is excited to bring you a tour of the Rheingold by Magnusson Architecture and Planning at Montieth St, Brooklyn, NY, 11206. Located in a rapidly changing, mixed-use area of Bushwick, Brooklyn, this all-electric, first-round NYSERDA Buildings of Excellence award winner will offer 94 units of affordable senior housing and meet Passive House design standards. While the development will not certify due to a now-reconsidered technicality around density, the project team will perform all required modeling and testing and has committed to strategic material choices to lower embodied carbon.

On this tour, we will delve into the importance of testing regardless of certification, explore building components related to Passive House including the enclosure and mechanicals, discuss cost and tradeoffs associated with the systems choices, talk about material selections with lower embodied carbon, and highlight amenities and other design moves aimed at improving the quality of life for future residents.

This will be a hardhat tour and attendees must bring their own personal protective equipment (hardhat, safety boots, goggles, and construction vest). This program will have extremely limited registration so please do not hesitate to register as soon as possible. After the tour, attendees are invited to a nearby location for networking (location TBA).

Tour Guide:
Sara Bayer, AIA, CPHC, LEED AP, Associate Principal, Director of Sustainability, Magnusson Architecture and Planning