by: Daniel Fox
Event: AIA New York Chapter 2007 Design Awards Winners Symposium: Interiors
Location: Center for Architecture, 05.21.07
Speakers: Kathryn Dean — Dean/Wolf Architects; Andrew Bernheimer, AIA — Della Valle Bernheimer; Martin Finio, AIA — Christoff:Finio Architecture; Nazila Shabestari, AIA — Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Jennifer Sage, AIA — Sage and Coombe Architects
Moderator: Debra Lehman-Smith, Assoc. AIA — AIANY 2007 Design Awards jury member
Organizer: AIANY Design Awards Committee
Courtesy AIANY
From schematics through detailing, consistency and thoroughness were awarded in this year’s AIANY 2007 Design Awards interiors projects, claims Debra Lehman-Smith, Assoc. AIA, one of the jury members. With a wide range of professional backgrounds, the jury had to justify all of the design merits of every entry. With inspiration from Modern icons to light and architecture, the interiors projects spotlighted in this year’s awards examine a wide range of ideas.
Both Dean/Wolf Architects and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) interiors explore the boundary between interior and exterior. The Honor Award-winning Operable Boundary Townhouse Garden in Brooklyn, designed by Dean/Wolf, is a home for two psychoanalysts who love to entertain. Inside and outside integrate vis-à-vis a giant, pivoting steel-framed glass wall and a continuous 30-foot-long table piercing the wall. When they have company, the glass wall can be pushed aside allowing the back garden to become an extension of the interior living room.
Design efficiency and complete integration were possible for the United States Census Bureau Headquarters in Suitland, Maryland, because the architecture and interior design teams were both lead by SOM. Success lies in the fact that not only did the interiors win the inaugural “Interior Architecture of Interest to the Public Realm” award, but the architecture won a Merit Award as well (see last issue’s, “Architecture Awards Look Outward” by Jessica Sheridan, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP). The project is an example of how to employ sustainable methods at a very large scale in order to minimize its impact on the site. The interior explores design strategies making departmental areas more recognizable through a skillfully deployed color palate.
Light was a key factor for Public Realm winner Sage and Coombe Architects and Merit Award-winning Christoff:Finio Architecture. For the Heckscher Foundation for Children in Manhattan, Christoff:Finio completely restructured an existing townhouse designed by Samuel Beck Parkman Trowbridge (designer of the St. Regis Hotel, and Hayden Planetarium, among others), to spatially integrate all of the different aspects of the philanthropic foundation. Light penetrates the entire building making connections among floors through an uninterrupted vertical slice.
Sage and Coombe Architects worked with a very tight budget at The Children’s Room in the Fort Washington Branch of the New York Public Library, the other project to win the “Interior Architecture of Interest to the Public Realm” award. A collection of small “reading gardens” provides light to the once-gloomy Carnegie branch library. Giant yet discrete white lamps with graphic interiors define activities. The overall effect is a collection of small-scale, illuminated zones within the larger space of the library.
Honor Award-winning 23 Beekman Place, by Della Valle Bernheimer, had completely different challenges from the other interiors projects. This Paul Rudolph-designed-and-inhabited NYC penthouse was inherited as an incomplete renovation. Faced with the difficulty of working on a Modern icon that also served as a testing ground for Rudolph’s ideas while he lived there, the architects employed 3-D digital modeling to focus on and highlight the building’s spatial characteristics. Although the kitchen and bathrooms have been completely rebuilt, Della Valle Bernheimer was able to maintain and restore the original feel of the apartment by stripping it down to its original elements staying true to Rudolph’s ideas.
Although every award-winning project shows comprehensive thoroughness, each is unique in its attention to detail. Unfortunately, representatives from STUDIOS Architecture (Bloomberg LP Expansion Floors 17-20) and Asymptote (Alessi Flagship Store New York) were not on hand to discuss their Merit Award-winning projects. To read more about the 2007 Design Awards, click the link.
J. Arthur Liu is a designer with FXFOWLE Architects.