TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;03 - 00;00;05;13

Doug Patt (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;15 - 00;00;36;20

Sussan Lari (SL)

The idea become into doing a L-shape design, and because it was kind of long L-shape, it gave me the opportunity to create the design as there are certain components of structures together with the playfulness of the roof, which is important for Tudor style and also different height and introduction of stucco and introduction of wood paneling, framing, stucco and brick.

 

00;00;36;23 - 00;02;42;08

DP

This is my guest, Sussan Lari. I'll share more about her shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault we’ll highlight Sussan's project, Henhawk House. This project was a renovation and major expansion of an existing 4,100 square foot residence. The new home is approximately 13,300 square feet.

The home features steeply pitched slate roofs, multiple gables of varying size, light red brick facades and half-timbered elevations with stucco infill and light gray wood. The homemade brick is highly detailed, with soldier, diagonal and herringbone coursing. The design also features tall, narrow windows, elliptical masonry archways and red copper gable finials, all of which reference early English domestic architecture and of course, the Tudor style. Although the exterior of the house is a traditional design language, the inside is completely open, functional, expansive, bright and modern.

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

Today we're talking to Sussan Lari, AIA. Sussan is a graduate of the University of Tehran School of Architecture in her native Iran. Sussan continued her studies in America with two master's degrees in architecture and planning from the University of Pennsylvania. She began her professional career with the Eggers group, P.C. in New York, where she was the first woman to be named vice president.

Sussan founded her own firm in 1992. Her businesses have full service, boutique, architectural and design build firm that crafts custom residential and commercial architecture in the greater tri state area. Sussan was elected president of the Long Island chapter of the American Institute of Architects for the year 2000, and her firm is an ongoing member. Sussan Lari, Architect, P.C. is celebrating their 30-year anniversary.

So, let's get into the details. Welcome, Sussan.

 

00;02;42;13 - 00;02;43;12

SL

Thank you.

 

00;02;43;14 - 00;02;51;15

DP

So, Susan, tell us a little bit about your firm. Where are you located? What's the size of the firm and what type of work do you typically do?

 

00;02;51;21 - 00;03;43;22

SL

My firm, located in Village of Rosslyn in Long Island. It's about half an hour drive from Manhattan, is on the north shore of Long Island, Nassau County. The space that we occupy is a very old building that was built in 1796. And we actually are the very first tenant of that upper portion of the building. The building was used mostly for offices, for timber construction. And it's a landmark building.

The owner of the building eventually was changed and turned into medical offices on the lower level. And then the upper portion was like an office space and a magnificent space in the attic that has never been used.

 

00;03;43;25 - 00;03;47;25

DP

And the space worked out in terms of your size and number of people you have.

 

00;03;48;00 - 00;05;05;05

SL

You know, I always wanted to have a smaller firm. I am a bit of a control freak, a bit OCD with perfectionism. So fortunately, or unfortunately, applies to my projects as well. I need to be intimately involved in the entire process, not only design but also selection of material finishes, you know, detailing selection of the trades. So, I thought that we really wouldn't and shouldn't have many, many projects at once.

So, my intention has never been to have a very large office. So, we all kind of involve on purpose intimately with every single project going on in the office. I believe that if I get my staff involved in the life of the project, then they will be more interested to contribute and perform to their best ability and they’re all involved with the client. So, it's like we all together. The number of people working for me at this point are five. So, we are six of us altogether. And at this point and for a while actually majority of our concentration has been on residential projects.

 

00;05;05;07 - 00;05;09;03

DP

So, what is your role in the office? What are you involved with?

 

00;05;09;06 - 00;05;11;01

SL

I put so many different hats.

 

00;05;11;04 - 00;05;12;13

DP

I kind of thought so.

 

00;05;12;15 - 00;06;00;03

SL

It's bringing marketing and bring client in. Although I have help. But then interviewing, accepting the project, preparing fee proposals. Design is all mine. That's what I do. Although right now Riccardo from my office, who is actually on paternal leave, has trained to be very good designer as well. As much as possible, I could make it happen, I let him get involved to have his point of view and he's really getting better and better. Majority I would say the concept is mine, detailing is mine, the bricks should be on an angle is mine, the interior architecture is mine, furniture furnishing... So I do a lot.

 

00;06;00;05 - 00;06;06;01

DP

So, tell me, you do a lot of drawing by hand, a lot of sketching. Is that the way you pass along your information and the ideas?

 

00;06;06;04 - 00;06;17;20

SL

No. Actually, yes, I do hand sketch. I do hand sketch during schematic and when I would like to explain an idea is all hand sketch, but everything else is CAD.

 

00;06;17;22 - 00;06;20;03

DP

Okay, so what CAD system are you guys on?

 

00;06;20;10 - 00;06;57;29

SL

Your basic CAD. Actually, because we are too detailed. I checked all different advancements of CAD, and I kind of thought that what we have, which is really basic CAD, has been incredibly helpful for us to provide us the possibility to go detailed. We detail everything. Like our set of construction drawing is close to maybe 30 drawings, just architecture. And when it gets to interior architecture is another like 30 drawings. We detail like cabinetry and bathroom tiles, that kind of stuff.

 

00;06;57;29 - 00;07;04;16

DP

Yeah, you get into everything. So, let's talk about the Henhawk house. So, tell me how your office got the project.

 

00;07;04;18 - 00;07;07;05

SL

Well, as usual, they find us-

 

00;07;07;07 - 00;07;07;26

DP

Word of mouth?

 

00;07;08;03 - 00;07;36;26

SL

Word of mouth. And they came to us. And it's a young couple. Very young. And the house was - they fall in love with the land. Location is really a fantastic location. The tree lined boulevard type street in Long Island. The house itself was Tudor style, brick, relatively small. Zoning wise, we were allowed to build close to 8,000 square feet and the existing house was close to 4,400 square feet.

 

00;07;36;27 - 00;07;38;13

DP

So, there's an FAR there?

 

00;07;38;15 - 00;08;06;10

SL

Yes. Yes. Everything we do is full force zoning and rules and that kind of I've learned them really well as much as can be played with, we have learned it all. But the house had character. But the house was dim, like typically Tudor style houses from outside are just stunningly gorgeous piece of structure. And when you go in, it’s just sad, dark.

 

00;08;06;15 - 00;08;11;23

DP

I love the way you describe that. It's so true. So many Tudors really feel that way. Absolutely.

 

00;08;11;29 - 00;08;47;14

SL

You know, in a way, it gives this kind of fear of people to the Tudor because they think Tudors are supposed to be dark interior and that is not going to happen with my approach to design, because I like the style of Tudor and I don't like the style of sad inside spaces. So, it's bright and happy and is open, is spacious. You know, lots of windows. And in this particular case, the expansion of the house was extensive because I needed to keep a chimney.

 

00;08;47;21 - 00;08;50;00

DP

Was this a functional chimney or boiler flues?

 

00;08;50;02 - 00;09;09;17

SL

Yes, functional chimney. And then we wanted to keep a fireplace. We wanted to keep a chimney and they wanted to keep the ceiling - plasterwork ceiling of a dining room - so I said, okay, if we keep all those three, but we get rid of everything else and that's what we-

 

00;09;09;18 - 00;09;12;10

DP

Wow, Right. I'm sure the contractor loved that.

 

00;09;12;14 - 00;10;27;23

SL

I work with a contractor. I absolutely love him. I'll get to the stories of my contractors because we are very involved in the construction process. So, my knowledge of construction is very high. And the contractor on this job was incredibly knowledgeable man who loved to do stuff like that but didn't care much to deal with clients and with everything else, paperwork,

So, it worked perfect. The idea become into doing a L-shape design, and because it was kind of long L-shape, it gives me the opportunity to create the design as there are certain components of structures together, section by section with the playfulness of a roof, which is important for Tudor style and also different height and also introduction of stucco and introduction of wood paneling, framing stucco and brick, and also playfulness of a brick. I think we were good in accomplishing that because it has its playfulness, and although it is relatively large, but it is not overwhelmingly massive.

 

00;10;27;29 - 00;10;29;18

DP

Yeah, I'd say it's well scaled.

 

00;10;29;21 - 00;11;23;02

SL

It is small scale, right? And then at the end we realized that there's no way we could match the old brick. So, I know Glen-Gery very well, because if I ever have done any brickwork, has been Glen-Gery. And why? Because the quality of the material, and I get service. So, I am fussy enough to worry about the size and also worry about the color of the grout. And I want to have two samples of it made before I even decide what color bricks. So, a rep does that service for us. And due to color, we provide the color to what brick and between those is what I chose. And eventually – and I have awesome mason that are Italian and five brothers and they’re one better than the other. They're local. And they do a magnificent job. And also they built a good size.

 

00;11;23;05 - 00;11;25;18

DP

They did a mockup for you.

 

00;11;25;20 - 00;12;06;23

SL

Mockup. Absolutely. And one other thing that I was almost kind of experimenting on this project was that I love the style of Tudor on the outside. I don't like the inside. So that was one issue. Second issue, I like the playfulness of how we could create interesting textures and playfulness of the laying of the brick, but Tudor would allow me to do that because we are compartmentalizing pieces, here and there. Other styles don't do that. And then that herringbone style has to be compartmentalized. Right?

 

00;12;06;26 - 00;12;08;23

DP

Yeah. And between the boards, I think at one.

 

00;12;08;23 - 00;12;55;10

SL

And between the board would work. We shouldn't do too much of it because too much of accessory, not good. So it allowed me to experiment and do detailed work and also choosing of the color of the brick and the color of the stucco and the freedom I had in detailing and designing and working also with the roof and with the roofer - I’m friend with the roofer, I'm friend with the Mason man, I’m friend - and to make sure that we get eventually a beautifully detailed house on the outside. And then when it come to the inside, our life is modern. We are living in this time. Our space should be representing our era.

 

00;12;55;17 - 00;12;57;29

DP

Did you guys use any brick on the interior?

 

00;12;58;06 - 00;13;00;14

SL

Not on this project.

 

00;13;00;16 - 00;13;08;06

DP

What were some of the historical precedents we were talking about? Details. Were there any local buildings that were Tudors? Was this the only Tudor locally?

 

00;13;08;06 - 00;13;27;22

SL

Yes. Actually, no. No, it's not. In this particular street, there are many other brick buildings. Typically, I would drive out on and look at the center and say, ‘Oh, this is so gorgeous.’ And, you know, it's one more beautiful than the other one. But I think mine, right now, it's really complete, in good level.

 

00;13;27;26 - 00;13;42;27

DP

I love – I love it. It's so great. Were there any significant setback issues? So, we were talking about the size of the existing houses almost three times smaller. Were there a significant number of zoning issues other than FAR, setback things?

 

00;13;42;29 - 00;13;51;21

SL

Yes. The chimney that I wanted to keep, which was right above the fireplace, was outside of skyline exposure.

 

00;13;51;22 - 00;13;54;09

DP

Okay. There was a height restriction.

 

00;13;54;11 - 00;15;41;16

SL

Yes, we always have height restriction. In this case, I said this an existing building. This is not a new house. This is a renovation of an existing house. So, I'm allowed to keep the chimney. And that chimney the end up to really change the inside of the chimney and outside of the chimney and all the bricks and everything.

But we kept the height – now, the zoning, building department going to hear that – fortunately, we had no issue of the setback because we had plenty of space from the front of the house in Kings Point, the setback requirement for front yard is 60 feet and we had way more than 60 feet. It was deep enough that I was able to create a parking courtyard in front of the house and the garage. We have one two car garage on the upper level and then three car garage in the lowest level. The garage is actually coming further out from the front of the house, but I don't think we had any other zoning issues.

But one other feature of the house that I thought it’s kind of important, as I was driving around and see all these Tudor houses, Tudor is not a box. Tudor is never a box. Tudor span, and that is one beautiful feature of when these all expand. We had a lot of width. Plenty of available width. The size of the property was very large, and we had enough room on the site and I thought that if I could add an extra width to the house we’ll be introducing a brick wall extending from the garage and that will be the access from the front of the house to the garden.

 

00;15;41;18 - 00;15;45;06

DP

And then you did a series of small windows along the garage, correct?

 

00;15;45;10 - 00;16;03;14

SL

Yes, because a simple wall without any detail in the front elevation was not a good idea. If I can introduce fenestration into the wall and breaking it because this is, again, the style of Tudor.

 

00;16;03;16 - 00;16;08;21

DP

Did you guys get to do any new details on this project that you hadn't done in the past?

 

00;16;08;23 - 00;16;23;28

SL

Yes. That brick herringbone is new. The playfulness of the brick above the entrance hall in the front and back. Front and back are identical in what they represent, and we don't repeat ourself. Literally, none of our projects are the same.

 

00;16;24;00 - 00;16;29;11

DP

I love the red copper finials on the gable ends. Does that double as lightning protection?

 

00;16;29;17 - 00;17;19;16

SL

Yes. And our roofer is just a master roofer. Unfortunately, he retired after pandemic. We loved him. Just spend a lot of time together coming up with ideas. And he performed beautifully.

And the door - there's also some - another feature we kept many of the existing trees. Trees are valuable. Don't like to cut trees. Doesn't matter if the tree is close to the house or tree is in front of the house. What’s wrong? Tree wants to be where tree wants to be. So, it was a tree that was really beautiful and wouldn't end up to be right in front of that passage to the garden. I couldn't cut the tree, said ‘let it be.’ And actually, in some of the pictures, you could see that the tree is right in front of the passage.

 

00;17;19;18 - 00;17;28;18

DP

So, this is a traditional home, but this question is kind of top of mind for most people today. Does sustainability come up with your clients at all, and materiality that you guys are using?

 

00;17;28;18 - 00;18;51;12

SL

Not with the client, but with my – with me, my office. We always do that. I've learned that maybe I've been kind of lucky here and there, having people who really care about sustainability. Sadly enough, majority don't, or they do not necessarily connect building material to sustainability. So, my office does for years. We do it without naming it because then they're concerned about the cost.

There are many different areas that we could really think about building the quality of heating and cooling system, the energy conservation insulation system. Those I do with that saying. My clients often who would not be bothered with that. Selection of the windows, undoubtedly. Using windows with the UL rated that transform the least amount of light, not brightness, but UV into the house we do. When it comes to insulation system, all spray foam. This goes without saying in every project we do. Selection of the material, natural, as much as we can. Selection of materials that are not biodegradable. I fight for that, to not do it.

 

00;18;51;15 - 00;18;53;27

DP

Did your clients want to use brick from the very beginning?

 

00;18;53;27 - 00;19;14;28

SL

Yeah, because their house was already brick. So, I thought that they liked the house, they loved the ceiling of the dining room. So fine, that was. And then I said, what else do you like? “We like the fireplace.” Okay, I like the chimney, but they like the fireplace. Fine. What else? “Brick.” And I said, okay, because Tudor style is brick.

 

00;19;15;04 - 00;19;23;24

DP

Well, I'm thinking it's solved so many design challenges for you guys. I mean, you got to be really playful with brick, but it also solved a lot of problems.

 

00;19;23;26 - 00;19;39;20

SL

Well, with brick, needless to say, is an amazing material. And it has been used for centuries and centuries and centuries, and still doing well. So, I don't quarrel when it comes to selection of brick.

 

00;19;39;23 - 00;19;44;00

DP

Did your team learn anything interesting through the process of building this building?

 

00;19;44;07 - 00;19;46;08

SL

We do on every building, actually.

 

00;19;46;10 - 00;19;53;22

DP

Isn't that interesting? It doesn’t matter how long you've been practicing, every one of us seems to learn something new every - every job. More than one thing.

 

00;19;53;28 - 00;19;57;26

SL

Undoubtedly. Information constantly changing.

 

00;19;57;27 - 00;20;00;09

DP

Yeah, that's a good point. It really does. Yeah.

 

00;20;00;11 - 00;20;30;09

SL

And what is available in the market constantly change. I think we become obsolete if we do not pay attention to what's happened. If we become comfortable in doing the same thing on and on, then our curiosity also lacks. And then we become so proud in what we do because we are successful and we are, you know, making money and we made it and we repeat the same thing. That is kind of the end of creativity.

 

00;20;30;11 - 00;20;35;18

DP

Off subject, have you thought at all about A.I. and what it means for our profession?

 

00;20;35;20 - 00;20;59;05

SL

Yes. I kind of love the idea. Yes. And I know that so much of worries there is there of AI to replace human beings. At the end, we are using the AI either to our benefit or not, but I think the benefits that AI could do are so amazingly high.

 

00;20;59;07 - 00;21;00;18

DP

So, using it as a tool.

 

00;21;00;22 - 00;21;01;27

SL

Like everything else.

 

00;21;02;04 - 00;21;20;23

DP

Well, I just wonder at what point, how much control are we going to have over how we're using AI, how our clients who aren't coming to architects are using AI, whether or not architects will ultimately use it as part of their services? It's a huge can of worms, but it's definitely something I've been thinking about.

 

00;21;21;00 - 00;21;24;01

SL

Let me tell you something. When I was graduating from UPenn-

 

00;21;24;02 - 00;21;25;11

DP

I went to Penn, by the way, too.

 

00;21;25;12 - 00;21;26;15

SL

Did you?

 

00;21;26;19 - 00;21;27;21

DP

I did. For graduate school, yeah.

 

00;21;27;26 - 00;22;02;19

SL

Okay. So same with me, graduate school. When I was graduating, they had a lecture, a farewell lecture. And the lecture was kind of gloomy because now you're done, graduated. We're sending you off to practice architecture, but we want to let you know the number of percentage of American buildings being designed by architects – I don’t remember exact number, but it was between nine and 11 – and then they said, compared to European – that I remember very well – 45%.

 

00;22;02;19 - 00;22;03;14

DP

Wow.

 

00;22;03;16 - 00;23;39;10

SL

So, I left school knowing that. Then I was thinking that that is not the problem necessarily with architect, but the problem of American not know what we do and the importance of our presence for every project. And that is again and again and again, we need to somehow change that level of knowledge of public work, which I think AIA is trying to do the best of their ability to inform public as the importance of architect, because we are not a set of drawings.

If anybody thinks that our work is a blueprint, then they have no clue of the importance of architect in any project. And we should also never try to compare ourself or believe that builders have taken our spot because typically, especially for residential architecture, people go to a contractor sometime before coming to the architect, and that is because contractor has been available and present for years and architects have not been available and present.

And the majority of quality architects, they don't want to even go to residential architecture because to them is just not good enough. And they have left this vast possibilities. We have – our builders build these buildings, by not the fault of themselves, because they don't know better of whatever is left of the world of residential architecture in America is sad.

 

00;23;39;12 - 00;24;14;07

DP

Wow. What I like about your position is that it's very positive, right? You could sit there and say, you know what, we're done designing, AI is going to be able to do it. It's going to have access to every design in the world and it's going to take over the world. And I love your explanation of being in school and hearing that architects – and I think I heard the same thing, that they were only responsible for a very small percentage of what was actually being done out there – and the reality is you still have a job and I still have a job, and although our jobs may change, I think we're going to be busy for a long time.

 

00;24;14;08 - 00;24;59;13

SL

We're going to be fine. We're going to be fine. And I think is gradually shifting. If people are shifting toward being concerned about their well-being, if shifting about being concerned about their health, their eating habit, small percentage, but we are small percentage when it comes to using our services. So, I think architecture and our part of the work, which is the importance of aesthetic, this is something I cannot put more emphasis on than anything else. Even if you don't need my knowledge, fine. But then the contractor’s knowledge – yes, he has knowledge of construction and maybe knowledge of material, but doesn't have knowledge of-

 

00;24;59;13 - 00;25;00;23

DP

Doesn't have the aesthetic training.

 

00;25;00;26 - 00;25;01;22

SL

No.

 

00;25;01;24 - 00;25;04;10

DP

Well, Sussan, it's been really nice to meet you.

 

00;25;04;15 - 00;25;05;28

SL

Thank you so much.

 

00;25;06;00 - 00;25;09;21

DP

So where do people go to find out more about Sussan Lari Architect, PC.

 

00;25;09;21 - 00;25;14;24

SL

I have a website, sussanlariarchitect and Instagram.

 

00;25;15;00 - 00;25;18;04

DP

Very good. Well, thank you very much for being here. It was really nice to meet you.

 

00;25;18;05 - 00;25;19;13

SL

Thank you very much for inviting me.

 

00;25;19;15 - 00;25;20;28

DP

I love your house. It's beautiful.

 

00;25;21;03 - 00;25;24;10

SL

Thank you.

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;30;15

Peter Vanderpoel (PV)

Even though it wasn't important at the moment, but with COVID, the idea of having a prominent place or office in the house also came to the fore during the design process, three car garage, the expectation of a pool, some sort of flattened area for a deck around that pool, and then we've got the very steep hill in the back that turned into this terrace for someone could lay out there and get sun. It's fairly private there in the center of that spot.

 

00;00;30;17 - 00;02;15;21

DP

This is my guest, Peter Vanderpoel. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from The Design Vault, we’ll highlight Peter's project, Guilford Court. Guilford Court is a luxury home in a suburban area of McLean, Virginia. The lot is angular and located on a cul-de-sac with narrow street frontage. It's also quite steep, rising 20 feet as it extends back from the street.

Peter uses three separate virtual axes to inform the floor plan and programmatic organization of the house. The garage, located on the south side of the property, is clad in wood, while the private portion of the house, which resembles a kind of modern Tudor facade, is enclosed in fiber cement siding. The middle semipublic spaces are enclosed in a dark brick veneer.

The landscape also reflects the same three axis grid with sculpted geometry that level out the site.

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

Today we're talking to Peter Vanderpoel, registered architect of Vanderpoel Architecture. Peter is a practicing architect, licensed in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. His practice focuses on residential and small commercial projects in and around Washington, D.C. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kansas and a Master of Architecture from Virginia Tech.

He's a certified Passive House consultant and has taught architecture at the university level for over ten years. He's currently an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech's Washington Alexandria Architecture Center, located in Alexandria, Virginia. So, let's get into the details. Welcome, Peter.

 

00;02;15;26 - 00;02;16;14

PV

Thank you.

 

00;02;16;16 - 00;02;27;21

DP

Thank you very much for being here. So first, tell us a little bit about Peter Vanderpoel architecture. Where you guys located? What type of projects do you take? And what have you been working on lately?

 

00;02;27;23 - 00;02;55;18

PV

The practice is located in Arlington, Virginia. If you're from the area, it's not far from the courthouse metro. Arlington used to be part of DC before receded back to Virginia a few hundred years ago. So we're right near downtown D.C. The practice is mostly residential and some small commercial projects. I'm trying to expand some of the commercial portfolio just to have a better balance in the marketplace. But I've been practicing - I've been on my own now for about 20 years now.

 

00;02;55;20 - 00;03;02;01

DP

Wow. So, tell me a little bit about the office. So how many people do you have working with you? Is that pretty consistent?

 

00;03;02;08 - 00;03;27;04

PV

So, the studio is in the backyard of my house, but it is off grid, so I have solar panels to run it and huge battery and a room in the back. It's not a passive house quality in terms of the exterior envelope, but it sort of leans those ways in response to the site. But it's very small. It's not much bigger than a garage. And I have two employees there, one full time, one part time. We can spend most of our day in there in a pretty comfortable fashion.

 

00;03;27;06 - 00;03;34;18

DP

That's pretty cool. Let's dig into that a little bit. So when did you decide to have an office or a building on your property that was off grid?

 

00;03;34;20 - 00;04;16;26

PV

Well, we used to have a garage. It was doing self-demolition over time. It used to be – it was not a Sears and Roebuck house, but it was a kit house from the 1980s. Yeah. And I forget the name of the company that made it. And it was one story. So, when my wife originally bought the house and then when our first child came, we decided to add the second floor.

And then I was working in the basement for a long time. But as the practice progressed, decided that I needed extra space. So, we finished off the demolition where the garage was essentially put it in the same location. But it's a story and a half. There's one floor and then there's a mezzanine above. Both my wife and I paint and so we have a couple easels up there on that second level. But the lower floor is all architecture.

 

00;04;17;03 - 00;04;19;19

DP

That's so cool. How long has your office been there then?

 

00;04;19;21 - 00;04;28;19

PV

Physically, for about five years. I started doing my own residential work in about 2001 when I was in graduate school, evenings and weekends.

 

00;04;28;22 - 00;04;31;16

DP

So, your first client, was that somebody you knew?

 

00;04;31;18 - 00;04;52;05

PV

No. It's a woman and I – she had a house not too far away, and she wanted to make it more energy efficient. So, we worked on that together. It went very well. And she decided that she wanted to do a more robust project. She bought the house across the street from her. Kind of a long, interesting story that goes with that. But then we built a new house for her and that was sort of my first big project.

 

00;04;52;12 - 00;04;57;02

DP

So, have you always been interested in energy efficiency in architecture and building?

 

00;04;57;08 - 00;05;29;16

PV

No, to be honest, it doesn't come up as often as you'd think and conversations with clients. But it's something that I'm trying to push now. As a passive house consultant, I can see the value of it, and it's not that difficult to get to. That's kind of fussy when it comes to construction, but in terms of the cost, it's making a much better envelope.

The tail on idea is that the mechanical systems, they don't need to be that special because you're not using them that much. The idea is not to be clever about producing energy, it’s to avoid using it in the first place. So, keep what you have.

 

00;05;29;18 - 00;05;34;26

DP

So, is it gotten less expensive over the last five or ten years to do energy efficient homes?

 

00;05;35;02 - 00;05;38;16

PV

I don't think so, because all of the construction costs have gone up after COVID.

 

00;05;38;22 - 00;05;39;10

DP

Oh wow, interesting.

 

00;05;39;10 - 00;05;54;11

PV

Everything associated with construction is – most of its up. Some things are starting to come down now. There are some materials that sort of lend towards that or lean towards the passive house and they're expensive like everything else. So, I don't think so.

 

00;05;54;18 - 00;06;02;28

DP

Interesting. Well, I’d love to talk more about that, but we're here to talk about Guilford Court. So, let's dig in here. How did you guys get the project? How did you get Guilford Court?

 

00;06;03;05 - 00;06;25;10

PV

I used to belong to a business networking group, and it was there that a friend of mine who was an insurance agent had met somebody who did construction. He wanted to do some projects and I went and had coffee with him one time, and then he had some backers who wanted to do a luxury home, and they found a lot in McLean. So he gave me the call and then we got started on the project from there. So, it was through business networking.

 

00;06;25;13 - 00;06;40;08

DP

Okay, so you didn't know the clients initially. Interesting. So, let's talk a little bit about the site. Tell me a little bit about the architecture around the site and I guess I should ask, was there a house on the site before you guys got there?

 

00;06;40;14 - 00;07;13;14

PV

Yes, there was. So, most of the houses there on that cul-de-sac were built, I would think in the seventies, the split-level brick. And over time – so when I first saw the site, all the houses on the cul-de-sac were like that. And during the design and construction process, I think at least two of them now have been torn down and rebuilt. There are a lot of tear downs in Washington D.C. because a lot of people come into the neighborhood – Amazon and whatnot – so it's not too hard to sell a house in that area at this moment. The houses that were on the lots were McMansion. I mean, I want to say-

 

00;07;13;17 - 00;07;17;05

DP

Sure. So stylistically, colonial stuff?

 

00;07;17;07 - 00;07;37;24

PV

Yes, colonial, stucco, no modern leanings at that time. That was sort of just before things were starting to get modern in the general building industry in D.C. So, it was typical suburban, large suburban houses. McLean's a wealthy community, so they're large and very nice but kind of standard stuff.

 

00;07;38;00 - 00;07;44;19

DP

Sure. So, it was kind of goofy when your client was like, hey, I want to do something modern. You're thinking, oh boy-

 

00;07;44;21 - 00;07;47;09

PV

Oh no. That's what I want to hear! I mean, the nice thing is I-

 

00;07;47;09 - 00;07;58;01

DP

No, I meant for all the neighbors – potentially for the neighbors. Sure. Right in the back of their mind. Did they ever talk about that? Hey, do you think, you know, we're going to put something modern here? We're excited about that. We don't really care.

 

00;07;58;05 - 00;08;09;10

PV

I think there's enough new things in that market, and new neighbors and so on that it's not as tight as it might be in terms of styles. And I think that's okay.

 

00;08;09;13 - 00;08;11;00

DP

How long has the house been finished now?

 

00;08;11;06 - 00;08;12;18

PV

It's been a couple – three years.

 

00;08;12;19 - 00;08;15;08

DP

Okay. So, you would have heard by now through the clients?

 

00;08;15;15 - 00;08;17;20

PV

Yes.

 

00;08;17;22 - 00;08;26;01

DP

So, let's see, programmatic requirements. So, you guys had your first meeting and they said, this is what we want. What was that?

 

00;08;26;03 - 00;09;25;17

PV

Well, the program was fairly standard, in that, the expectation to be a family, a number of bedrooms, a studio – if there was an artist, that would be sort of back on the site, but even though it wasn't important at the moment, but with COVID, the idea of having a prominent place or an office in the house also came to the fore during the design process – three car garage, the expectation of a pool, some sort of flattened area for a deck around that pool, and then we've got this very steep hill in the back that turned into this terrace for someone could lay out there and get sun. It's fairly private there in the center of that spot. So, in terms of the programmatic elements, they were more luxurious than some, but nothing out of the ordinary.

And then it was mostly dealing with the site that I think the interest started to come into the project because the first time I saw it, there was a house on there. We went out the back door and I went, ‘Oh my.’ In school you always go, ‘Oh, this will be challenging,’ but then in real life it's like, ‘oh, how are we going to do this?’

 

00;09;25;19 - 00;09;36;00

DP

So, did they talk about square footage in the beginning too? We want a house that's going to be 5,400 square feet, 3,000 square feet, 8,000. They have an idea because of square foot costs. Did they think about the house-

 

00;09;36;00 - 00;09;45;23

PV

No. As it was built – so, the contractor made some changes as the project was built. So, there was square footage added between permit and occupancy.

 

00;09;46;01 - 00;09;47;28

DP

You can do that? Don't you have to re permit?

 

00;09;48;03 - 00;09;56;08

PV

Different jurisdictions. Like they don't have an FAR in McLean. That's Fairfax County. Alexandria does and it's a-

 

00;09;56;09 - 00;09;59;09

DP

Yeah, I know. I deal with FAR like, it never ends.

 

00;09;59;09 - 00;09;59;19

PV

Yeah.

 

00;09;59;23 - 00;10;05;28

DP

And then you start thinking about renovating the basement and then FAR comes back in and you're working on the house and it's crazy.

 

00;10;06;01 - 00;10;08;29

PV

Yeah, it's just lot coverage there, and that's never a problem.

 

00;10;08;29 - 00;10;10;27

DP

Okay. What size is the house?

 

00;10;11;01 - 00;10;13;03

PV

I think it's 7,000.

 

00;10;13;03 - 00;10;29;18

DP

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the building design. So, we already discussed the fact that you've got a site with some challenging topography. Talk a little bit about the unique geometry or the geometries that were generated based on what's physically out there.

 

00;10;29;18 - 00;12;18;03

PV

So, the lot as it looks in plan, in the site plan, it kind of looks like the state of Georgia and the Atlantic coast of Georgia, which just a little bit to the northeast of Florida is what's on the cul-de-sac. So, there's a very small entrance circle for the cul-de-sac, very small entrance onto the site, and then very steep as it goes up in the back.

And then these two angles that almost describe 60 degrees from the two property lines that go away from the cul-de-sac. And so, my first inclination was, well, that's almost 60 degrees. And so, a hexagonal plan would work on a plot like that. So, then I started looking at precedents for that. I know Frank Lloyd Wright had done the Hanna house in California that was based on the hexagon. He had done a whole series of projects based on geometry. So, I had looked at those, but it was through that less hexagonal forms and more towards three axes rather than we normally think of two axes that X and Y. But this now has these 120-degree rotation that with a hexagon you have three axes that are involved in describing that geometry and that was essentially the same geometry we had on that site. So that became the basis for the design.

And there were three geometries. We've got three programmatic elements of getting the cars on and off the semipublic and then the private. And then we also have this dramatic rise in height. So, we could also do the same thing vertically. We had the garage at the lowest level so the cars can get on easily. The semipublic now faces the street on this very narrow frontage and then the private is up highest and essentially resting on top of the semipublic block and runs back. But because the site is so steep, it touches ground. It's a grade at the back of the property, even though it's sitting on top of the lower level at the front.

 

00;12;18;06 - 00;12;35;05

DP

So, you did a lot of thinking about this project. The clients must really love that. I mean, you sit down with them, and you start talking about these three axes and three levels, three buildings, three heights, you know, the whole thing up there must have been like, “wow, man, this is really cool. This guy knows what he's doing.”

 

00;12;35;07 - 00;13;15;20

PV

You had mentioned that I teach, and one of the things that I find the easiest way to engage with clients is to talk about ideas rather than just areas and square footage costs, because everybody wants to be on board with that because thinking is the fun part of the design. The best compliment I get is somebody says, I never thought of that. I feel like, well, so I'm bringing value to this.

I have proposed several different designs. I think I had three different options. I had pinned them all up in the office and had wine and cheese for some people come in and just talk about it, and the design that is there right now was not my first choice. But then someone had said, “well, you know, this has all these things going on with these three axes.” And then it was like, ‘yeah, I think that is the best one.’

 

00;13;15;26 - 00;13;18;12

DP

When you're talking about people, is that the clients or other people?

 

00;13;18;12 - 00;13;20;18

PV

No, no. Other people in the office.

 

00;13;20;21 - 00;13;27;19

DP

Oh, that’s so great. So, you had a kind of design charrette in the office. Everybody's looking at it. You stand back and you kind of go through all the design options.

 

00;13;27;26 - 00;13;36;09

PV

And then the same thing will happen with the client. This was a speculative house, so it wasn't dealing with the final client, with the person who's going to move into the house.

 

00;13;36;11 - 00;13;42;15

DP

Oh, it was a spec house. Interesting.

So, local zoning codes and issues there.

 

00;13;42;18 - 00;14;08;29

PV

Fairfax County isn't that onerous. The usual, there's lot coverage. There's no aesthetic review. They do have those in Georgetown, in D.C., and in Old Town, in Alexandria, Virginia. But most of the other jurisdictions don't have an aesthetic review. And so, we didn't have to worry about that. The FAR, which happens in Alexandria, but not in Fairfax, we didn't have that. It's just lot coverage. It's rarely a problem.

 

00;14;09;02 - 00;14;10;25

DP

There wasn't anything too challenging.

 

00;14;10;28 - 00;14;11;17

PV

No.

 

00;14;11;19 - 00;14;12;15

DP

And building codes, IRC?

 

00;14;13;11 - 00;14;19;18

PV

Yeah, well, it's - Virginia has a uniform state building code, which is based on the IRC, and they have a couple of tweaks in there. But yeah.

 

00;14;19;24 - 00;14;26;27

DP

Right. Of course, they do. So, describe the building plan for us. What did you end up with?

 

00;14;27;00 - 00;16;50;09

PV

Well, one is getting the cars on and off the lot. They can't – just the nature of cars – they can't be going up and down hill. So, we need to get them on the shortest route and the lowest route so that if you think about the site as a state of Georgia, the Florida borderline was where the cars came in. The semipublic faced the cul-de-sac. It addressed through there and then we had stairs going up this series of stones, because one of the concerns was that's a long way up to get to that first floor just because it's so steep. So, we have these stones on the site that are shifted. So, you're sort of walking across these lily pads and then a diagonal that goes up and then a set of stairs. So, there's a variety of experiences moving towards the front of the house.

We also had the office portion and that was right inside the front door. So, if someone in the house decides to set up office there, they have a client come by. They don't have to go into the main house just in and out the front door, take care of business.

And then from there, a few more steps go into the main house. So that opens up in a very large open space. There's the fireplace, dining, living, kitchen are all in that area. And then behind the kitchen is sort of the pool deck area for showers and changing and so on. And then there's a large circular stair that's the pin.

So, if you think about the semipublic and the private, they splay out at 120 degrees and the stairway is the pin that holds us together to do that rotation. So, there's a very large grand sculptural stair up to the second level, and it comes up between the master bedroom and the additional bedrooms so that when you move towards the cul-de-sac, you're now in the master bedroom suite that is like this big diving board looking over. It's a tremendous site of this that was very challenging. But being in that master bedroom and looking out over the trees, away from the site, it's a dramatic view. Going the other direction, there are the other bedrooms, as I said, eventually gets back to grade because it gets so steep in the back. And then there's also the stair continues down.

So, there's a family room in the basement, a large television there as well. And then on the other end, we have that same rotation with the garage, and that's a much more modest stair coming from the garage into that living space. But it's based on those three axes and those two hinges to turn it on to the site, both in plan and in section.

 

00;16;50;15 - 00;17;00;28

DP

Yeah, that's really cool. So, tell us a little bit about the building materials. We’ve already discussed the house is modern and you use a series of different materials for the house.

 

00;17;01;01 - 00;17;31;29

PV

Right. There's fiber cement boards for the bedroom space and then the semipublic was a brick, and then the garage was - I think there's a wood on there. So, we have a couple of different faces. There's a brick facade for the semipublic. I think there's some brick as well on the garage. And we also brought some of the brick inside in the living spaces. We wanted to have a variety of materials to represent because everything's now being divided into threes with the garage, semipublic, private spaces.

 

00;17;32;01 - 00;17;38;19

DP

So, tell me a little bit about why you guys chose to use brick and in particular the dark brick.

 

00;17;38;22 - 00;17;55;25

PV

The dark brick. That was not my selection. I did not select the colors on that element, but it would also be contrasting. You could see the dramatic change in color because as I said, it's about these three elements and so they read differently everywhere you cut it.

 

00;17;56;00 - 00;18;02;21

DP

And it would seem to me that you chose to use brick as a differentiated design element, right?

 

00;18;02;23 - 00;18;13;08

PV

Right. It's also very common in this part of the country. In Old Town, Virginia, and just all up and down the East Coast, brick was the way to do durable construction and still is.

 

00;18;13;10 - 00;18;17;13

DP

Are there any houses around this one – are masonry as well?

 

00;18;17;17 - 00;18;36;11

PV

Yes. So, the houses that were there in the neighboring lots, most of them were split level with a lower with brick on the first floor and siding on the second floor. The houses that have come in their place, the two I can think of are stucco, but there's a lot of brick in the neighborhood.

 

00;18;36;14 - 00;18;53;12

DP

So, this is, as we discussed, it's contemporary. I wanted to talk a little bit about the unique construction details. I'm looking at these two facades that come together at the corner, and we've got two completely different building materials. That must have been a challenging detail. And you got a window, you got a corner window there. So how did you guys do that?

 

00;18;53;20 - 00;19;59;16

PV

There's steel in there to handle that opening on the corner. The reason why that angle is the way it is – something else that we hadn't discussed is that I used to play the drums, and still do. And for a long time, I used to play actually, in a bagpipe band. More sophisticated than you think – but, so, rhythms is something that I've been dealing with since I was ten years old.

And one thing that came up is what called polyrhythms, where you have overlaying rhythms. You take two rhythms that may not be so interesting on their own, but when they're overlaid with each other, then it creates something more interesting than either of them were to begin with. And that's how I view this project that this overlay, the reason why that window angle is there on the corner is because the geometry of the private portion has been thrust through the semipublic and so there's an angle that goes through. The chimney was rotated along that as well, and the contractor turned that back. But it was that slot that pushed through that mirrors the same access that the private portion is on.

 

00;19;59;19 - 00;20;05;03

DP

Is the chimney also masonry? And that's supported by steel. Doesn't run straight through the building.

 

00;20;05;06 - 00;20;07;19

PV

Right. There are portions of it that are supported with steel.

 

00;20;07;19 - 00;20;11;06

DP

Did you guys end up using any brick on the interior?

 

00;20;11;08 - 00;20;29;24

PV

Well, there is you can see it on the lower portion there. There's brick for the fireplace surround, which is in the lower left photograph there.

And there were also two trees on the site where we ended up pulling those up, but the contractor had those milled and use them for the trim. The wood that's above the fireplace there is from those trees.

 

00;20;30;00 - 00;20;31;13

DP

Do you remember the species?

 

00;20;31;15 - 00;20;34;16

PV

My recollection will be black locus, but I'm not sure.

 

00;20;34;18 - 00;20;47;06

DP

I was going to ask you what some of the historical precedents were for the for the architecture, but clearly were into much more modern architecture here. However, as you said, we see brick in the area.

 

00;20;47;08 - 00;20;52;08

PV

Yeah, there's brick. The material is common in Northern Virginia. The building forms.

 

00;20;52;15 - 00;20;54;02

DP

Yeah. I was going to say we've got gables here.

 

00;20;54;02 - 00;21;01;21

PV

Yeah, that's pretty common as well. So, the basis of it is traditional, but the implementation has become modern.

 

00;21;01;24 - 00;21;12;26

DP

And tell me a little bit, what I call this modern Tudor aesthetic. Where did that come from? And I know it's not modern Tudor but describe that for our listeners.

 

00;21;12;28 - 00;21;22;15

PV

So, from this view, the division of the fiber cement is accomplished with these vertical elements that come proud of the exterior finish.

 

00;21;22;18 - 00;21;28;16

DP

Okay, so they're not set back into the fiber cement. They're actually proud. So, it's applied.

 

00;21;28;18 - 00;21;44;00

PV

Yeah. And so that could be considered a reference. It was not the intention, but the half timbers that was common with timber houses would use expressed wood materials and then with stucco in between those and then the angles for the roofs are fairly standard.

 

00;21;44;05 - 00;21;44;24

DP

Are those 12:12’s?

 

00;21;45;07 - 00;21;51;25

PV

Tudor style, yes, they are. The contractor ended up putting living space up there as well. So, you made good use of that space.

 

00;21;51;25 - 00;21;59;28

DP

Oh, of course, that's great. And you had no issues with having a third or fourth story there, right? So, were there any height restrictions on the site?

 

00;22;00;04 - 00;22;06;12

PV

There are, but Fairfax County, you add up, it's an average the way it was in the back. We were okay on the front.

 

00;22;06;13 - 00;22;10;19

DP

Right. You said the third story, which was the basement was set down into the site.

 

00;22;10;22 - 00;22;18;04

PV

Yeah. You can see it on the left, the lower right image there you can see the window for the basement below that large corner window.

 

00;22;18;08 - 00;22;23;25

DP

So, did you learn anything new about brick dealing with these details, even with this cantilever?

 

00;22;23;27 - 00;22;37;29

PV

Well, no, it's just with steel implemented in there, it's fairly common. If you go through D.C., the urban renewal period of Georgetown in the seventies and eighties, there’s brick everywhere. And so, everybody knows how to work with brick in D.C.

 

00;22;38;03 - 00;22;55;19

DP

Well, it's clear it solved a design issue for you guys because you were looking for a series of materials that all went together, and I love the color. It goes so well with everything else. It really just works. I think it looks great. Now, who did the drawings for the job and did you do them in 2D and 3D, 3D, BIM?

 

00;22;56;11 - 00;23;14;28

PV

No. Well, we did a sketch up model. I was renting some space with the firm down, and Alexander at the time had a woman helping me out to do most of the construction documents in AutoCAD. And then we had the sketch up models for presentation just to talk about the design. There was originally, that's when I used to draw with my hands. I used to do it on sketch paper.

 

00;23;15;04 - 00;23;33;05

DP

You and me both. It's so great. I got so lucky, I worked in an office in Baltimore, and they got so slow that they trained me on CAD. This was 97, 98. Thank God. I would have been completely unemployable for the rest of my life had I not learned how to draw and, you know, how to use sketch up, which is great.

 

00;23;33;05 - 00;23;39;09

PV

Well, yes, I do. When I started though, we had a product called GDS, and it was McDonnell Douglas.

 

00;23;39;11 - 00;23;42;03

DP

Okay, So airplane software. You’ve gotta be kidding me. That’s great.

 

00;23;42;03 - 00;23;49;24

PV

It was their software. And there was a manual that was about two inches thick. And yeah, once you read it, you were fine, but it wasn't that friendly.

 

00;23;50;01 - 00;23;54;10

DP

Oh my gosh. So, sustainability and this house.

 

00;23;54;12 - 00;23;55;07

PV

Not a concern.

 

00;23;55;12 - 00;24;01;03

DP

Not an issue with the GC? Just wasn't something that you were going to push as part of the design build aspect of the house.

 

00;24;01;16 - 00;24;03;15

PV

No, that wasn't a concern for this project.

 

00;24;03;16 - 00;24;08;03

DP

No, I get it. I always ask all our guests; did you have any trouble finding a good mason?

 

00;24;08;05 - 00;24;11;22

PV

They're easy to find in Alexandria. If you see – I tell you what-

 

00;24;11;22 - 00;24;12;25

DP

Right. There’s so much brick in Washington.

 

00;24;12;27 - 00;24;26;16

PV

There's one project I can think of where they didn't get a good mason. I was down in Key West one time and they said, “you know, Hemingway did this wall.” And I said, ‘it looks like a drunk author did it.’

 

00;24;26;19 - 00;24;33;03

DP

That’s great. Oh, my gosh. So, before you go, I'd like to ask people, what's your favorite part about being an architect?

 

00;24;33;06 - 00;25;18;21

PV

It's in two phases right now. So, I used to teach full time. When I was teaching full time, I would say, I'm not making anything and I'm - that's what I'm trained to do. When I'm making things, often times I'll say, but this isn't about ideas. And so right now, the balance between those two is very gratifying. And being able to talk about ideas, which I like to think, is one of the benefits that I have in the office, because we'll talk about this stuff. I think everybody's more energized when that happens.

So, it's the camaraderie of the office. I know a lot of people are doing the remote work. We're in place and the studio. It's a fun place to be. The schematic design is my favorite part. You know, when I get close to retirement, everything else is going to go to somebody else.

 

00;25;18;21 - 00;25;19;02

DP

Oh, that's great.

 

00;25;19;10 - 00;25;21;19

PV

But I continue doing the schematic design.

 

00;25;21;21 - 00;25;27;13

DP

Yeah. So, I was going to ask you, what's the one thing you like least about being an architect? And it's probably all the other stuff.

 

00;25;27;13 - 00;25;32;03

PV

Site surveys. Yeah.

 

00;25;32;05 - 00;25;34;29

DP

You don't mean like existing condition stuff.

 

00;25;35;05 - 00;25;36;25

PV

Yeah, I haven't done that. We’re small enough, I’m not still doing that.

 

00;25;36;25 - 00;25;52;05

DP

It’d drive you nuts. Yeah, I get it, man. I've done many at home. Peter, you talked a little bit about Frank Lloyd Wright. Are there any architects that are usually in the back of your mind when you're designing that you really admire their work?

 

00;25;52;08 -00;26;35;17

PV

It more has to do with admiring the ideas because that's an inexhaustible font of information, whereas the projects they've done, they're done it does these certain things, but they're ideas that live inside of there that can apply to whatever project. So, depending on materials, depending on geometry, depending on what the site is telling me, that will determine then who I'll look to for references.

Like, for instance, as I mentioned, Frank Lloyd Wright did a series of houses based on a simple geometry that grew from one element that expanded. Corbusier, there was a lot of ideas in how he dealt with space, sort of the modern aesthetic, but it wasn't so much just this look. It had to do with accomplishing something he wanted to do intellectually.

 

00;26;35;20 - 00;26;41;29

DP

Yeah. Interestingly, Wright used brick in some of his work. Pretty effectively.

 

00;26;42;07 - 00;26;43;13

PV

Indian red.

 

00;26;43;15 - 00;26;52;26

DP

Yeah. Indian red. Well, Peter Vanderpoel, it was very nice to meet you today. Could you tell me how we can find out more about you and your architectural firm?

 

00;26;53;02 - 00;27;04;12

PV

Well, I have a website pvanderpoel.com P-V-A-N-D-E-R-P-O-E-L dot com. That has some samples of my work. And other than that, I'm pretty quiet.

 

00;27;04;14 - 00;27;07;00

DP

Well, great. The house is beautiful. Congratulations.

 

00;27;07;00 - 00;27;07;09

PV

Thank you.

 

00;27;07;16 - 00;27;09;13

DP

I'm sure it's been a big success.

 

00;27;09;15 - 00;27;13;22

PV

It's very gratifying to see that - to see ideas that happen.

 

00;27;13;24 - 00;27;15;18

DP

Yeah, I think it's the best part about being an architect.

 

00;27;15;18 - 00;27;18;14

PV

Marriage of the two things – having an idea that actually gets built.

 

00;27;18;21 - 00;27;45;25

DP

Yeah, that's great. Congratulations.

TRANSCRIPT

 

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;05;11

Doug Patt (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;13 - 00;00;22;00

David Gross (DG)

Most of our buildings are taller and bigger. And this was a little bit of a throwback. A five-story building, not too many square feet, but it was a challenge for us and an opportunity to look at our housing work on a smaller scale and very proud of it.

 

00;00;22;02 - 00;02;59;25

DP

This is my guest, David Gross. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we’ll highlight David's project Park and Elton.

Park and Elton is a development with 38 residential units in the Bronx, consisting of two distinct five story buildings. These buildings correspond to the Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Plan. The plan provides a range of affordable housing choices for the Bronx.

The use of simple building materials, including brick in various patterns, colors and facade wall depths, makes these modest buildings appear quite unique. The simple modern masonry cornice and the differentiation of the window header detail with soldier course patterns reference the historical brick clad buildings found throughout the district. The subtle volume and height of Park and Elton also maintain a satisfying human scale.

Construction of the buildings included sustainable design elements and incorporated New York City Green building standards. Park and Elton are considered equivalent to LEED certified buildings.

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Today we're talking to David E. Gross, AIA. David earned his Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated cum laude with distinction.

David is the co-founder and executive partner of GF55 Architects, a national firm with offices in New York City and Miami. GF55, has expertise in multifamily, retail, educational, hospitality and industrial architecture. Since 1984, GF55 has designed and built over 12 million square feet of housing nationally. David's projects have received two Urban Land Institute Models of Excellence awards and was the recipient of the Andrew J. Thomas Pioneer and Housing Award in 2010 from the New York City AIA chapter.

David received an award of merit for the renovation and addition of a historic and significant mid-century modern house in Rye, New York. His work has also been featured in Architectural Digest and The New York Times. Today, we're going to talk to David about GF55’s Park and Elton Project.

Welcome, David. So, before we get started, tell us a little bit about GF55 Architects. I understand your firm is in both New York City and Miami. What's the size of the firm and do the offices take the same kind of work?

 

00;03;00;04 - 00;03;17;11

DG

We're very much a New York firm with a satellite office in Miami and the Miami offices in support of the New York workload. The needs of staffing vary, and sometimes we have the ability to staff the projects through the Miami workforce as opposed to the New York workforce.

 

00;03;17;13 - 00;03;24;03

DP

So, tell us a little bit about GF55 architects, who you're the co-founding partner. How did you guys get your start?

 

00;03;24;09 - 00;03;52;06

DG

My partner, Len, he's the “F” and I - Len Fusca - we met in grad school, and we were partners right away in both architectural terms and friendship terms. Down the road, 15 years later, we met Shy, also, who's our third partner and the three of us are close professionally and friendship wise. We're all friends. We have about 50 people right now and we have a varied practice. But really a specialty in housing.

 

00;03;52;08 - 00;03;54;18

DP

How long have you had the Miami location then?

 

00;03;54;25 - 00;03;57;23

DG

I would say since 2012.

 

00;03;57;27 - 00;03;58;27

DP

Has that been helpful?

 

00;03;59;01 - 00;03;59;27

DG

Very helpful.

 

00;04;00;03 - 00;04;04;25

DP

Do you have people that you work with locally and then you also work with them in Miami?

 

00;04;04;29 - 00;04;41;01

DG

Yes. The Miami office specializes in retail. We do a large amount of retail buildout work across the country, but our main office, I would say, is New York. In New York, we do a lot of projects that are versions of Park and Elton, but much larger. We also do charter schools and medical facilities, and we're working on a large storage facility near the JFK Airport, which came to us right before COVID and then the entire process of COVID with Amazon, it was all of a sudden that's a building type that was very much in demand.

 

00;04;41;06 - 00;04;46;21

DP

Ironically, it's a good segue way to what is your role in the office. Right. Everybody's doing something different. What are you doing now?

 

00;04;46;23 - 00;05;53;26

DG

I like being an architect. You know, sometimes I find that I maybe I'm focusing on the buildings too much. I would say that my role is focusing on the long-term growth of the company and the direction of the company.

We have an outside consultant on how to manage the office because at 50 people, all of a sudden, it's way too big for any of the three partners to direct themselves. And we value the expertise that we give, and we are mature enough now to value the expertise that outside consultants give us. So, we try to run the office very professionally. And I would say that a lot of our energy about running the office is motivating the workforce and we motivate the workforce through a carrot rather than a stick.

It's not the old school where you better be here or else. We have to market – intra-office marketing is almost as important as outside marketing. We have to make sure that everyone's gratified and satisfied because anybody under 40 demands that of us. It's challenging and it's interesting and it's – I like it. It's heartwarming.

 

00;05;54;02 - 00;06;01;06

DP

It's a neat paradigm, though. I mean, thinking deeply about your employees and their well-being and wanting to keep them, I think that's wonderful.

 

00;06;01;10 - 00;06;04;13

DG

We should sign you up for the volleyball team.

 

00;06;04;16 - 00;06;05;21

DP

I need about another foot!

 

00;06;05;24 - 00;06;10;00

DG

It's not just volleyball. It's après-volleyball that they like. You know, like apres-ski.

 

00;06;10;07 - 00;06;20;00

DP

That's great. All right, so let's dig in here and talk about Park and Elton. So, Park is at 3120 Park Avenue in the Bronx. Elton is East 159th Street in the Bronx, correct?

 

00;06;20;03 - 00;06;20;17

DG

Yes.

 

00;06;20;24 - 00;06;30;14

DP

So, you're a board member of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, as well as the New York Housing Conference, correct?

 

00;06;30;20 - 00;06;30;14

DG

Yes.

 

00;06;31;09 - 00;06;41;23

DP

You're intimately familiar with affordable housing. This project, did you know it was coming up? What was the process by which you interviewed or took the job or how did that work out for you?

 

00;06;41;26 - 00;07;31;26

DG

It was actually part two of a project. That part one was maybe ten years before that. And unfortunately, the original developer passed away. One of his employees took over the job and it's a unique project for us because most of our buildings are taller and bigger. And this was a little bit of a throwback, a five-story building, not too many square feet, but it was a challenge for us and an opportunity to look at our housing work on a smaller scale and very proud of it.

As you mentioned, I'm a member of housing organizations. I grew up, my father and grandfather were builder developers and while their work wasn't affordable with a capital A, it was affordable with a small A because they built stuff that was a modest price points. And I really have a lot of familiarity with that building type.

 

00;07;32;02 - 00;07;34;13

DP

Well, it sounds like something that can be pretty gratifying.

 

00;07;34;18 - 00;08;02;16

DG

Yeah, I would say that's my main professional focus. And Parker and Elton were challenging because even though they're small in scale, they're important. One of them is on the corner and it forms a strong impact on that street. And it's a part of the South Bronx, that is, the buildings are modest. These buildings are very much a breath of fresh air to the neighborhoods. They're small, but they punch above their weight class visually.

 

00;08;02;18 - 00;08;08;10

DP

So, did the architecture in the neighborhood affect the architecture that you ultimately made?

 

00;08;08;13 - 00;09;44;13

DG

I would say the architecture in the neighborhood affected it in scale, but not in aesthetics. I think that our point was to be not oppositional, but in contrast to the older buildings and, you know, one of our mottos is creative responses with humble materials. If you look at the classic modern architects, the housing was really an issue in the 1920s and it was never about luxury materials. Despite the Barcelona Pavilion and all the history of obviously building these amazing villas in a modernist style for very wealthy people. But the focus, on paper at least, was housing for people.

And what's so great about Park and Elton is because they're a small size, we really had to focus on the details. I would say that I had a great team in the office to work with. The original designer, Dimitri Papageorgiou and I worked on the basic idea. We had a third person on the team, Emily Koustae, who was sort of sitting next to Dimitri offering her opinion, said it so smartly that we listened. And then the woman who ran the job during construction, Ingrid Aguilar, she was also very important because during the construction we started to see some opportunities with the way the brick was laid that we tested it, she looked at it, she photographed it, she brought it back to the office, we changed it. There is a detail of white brick that goes up the building as if it's like bubbles floating into the air. They become fewer as they go vertical.

 

00;09;44;13 - 00;09;45;18

DP

It's denser below.

 

00;09;45;19 - 00;09;48;19

DG

Yeah, and that was all done during the construction.

 

00;09;48;24 - 00;09;52;17

DP

So, let's start with the client's programmatic requirements. What did they want?

 

00;09;48;24 - 00;10;52;28

DG

HPD is the housing preservation development arm of the New York City government. And they have strict guidelines about what size units and what mix you can build. And they have different programs that the developer wants to qualify for to get tax credits.

So, we had to satisfy the specific program for affordability that the city and the developer had worked out. So, we satisfy that the one bedrooms are 650 square feet, studios are 475, etc., etc. There's a million requirements on how big the windows can be and what kind of air conditioning and what the energy rating is. Even though they're affordable, they're built in a very, very quality manner.

So that was the first requirement. Then there's a zoning requirement for a maximum building height and a maximum lot coverage. And there's a lot of metrics and matrices that you have to satisfy in order to finally get to the way it looks.

 

00;10;53;05 - 00;10;56;02

DP

So, there weren't any breaks given to the fact that this is affordable house.

 

00;10;56;04 - 00;11;03;22

DG

No, no special breaks. It's built into the code that you get a certain benefit from building affordable units.

 

00;11;03;24 - 00;11;07;20

DP

So, tell us about the two sites. How were they the same? How were they different?

 

00;11;07;23 - 00;12;10;19

DG

The Park is on the corner, and it has a corner window that wraps the facade, and you see it from a distance. And then Elton is an infill building on a street that is at a diagonal to the building itself. And we knew that in order to come out of this alive, both mentally and architecturally and constructability wise, we had to make the buildings the same.

So, we made them the same. The choice to use brick was an easy one because brick is so flexible, because brick is a unit that's made so that you can change it as you lay the brick which is laid by a person. So, there's a way to get richness and detail in the facade through the brick. It's super durable and the way we did it where we have the window panels are shiny black brick as opposed to the, I think, two color blend on the rest of the building gives it the texture as if it were a different material.

 

00;12;10;22 - 00;12;25;10

DP

When I was reading about the project, you said that the building plans are super simple and yet, you know, you stand back, and you look at these things and there's – you got something going on. So, tell us a little bit about the building plans. How did you make them a little less like a box?

 

00;12;25;12 - 00;14;10;09

DG

There's a little tower on the end, and on each end to give the building a little more shape, you know, lack of a better term. But that's a right out of the zoning code that allows you to do that. New York is actually very conservative because quality housing, which is the current zoning for housing encourage you to make boxes so that when you go down the street, whether it's Park Avenue or 135th Street in the Bronx, all the buildings are the same height. They're looking to create that urban scale that's consistent. And along the avenues, it's taller and along the side streets it's lower. But it's consistent. And you can see from these photographs that our building is within a few feet of the adjacent buildings. So that's how we ended up with the massing.

In terms of the windows, it's very budget constrained. So, it's not just simple materials and creative ways. The whole process, you have to find the design and there's a discipline to using the materials to change the scale. For example, if we had just drawn the elevation with the windows, it would seem like a barracks. It would just be a box and it would seem very closed. But by doing visual tricks, like adding the side panels and a different color that matches the window frame, it expands the visual impact of the window opening and it makes the scale of the implied grid larger. So, it seems airier, but in fact it's not airier. It’s a visual trick. Architects are doing that all over the world to try to bring their buildings into scale.

 

00;14;10;13 - 00;14;17;05

DP

And you change the direction of the brick, right? The way the brick is laid, and the facade undulates somewhat, right?

 

00;14;17;09 - 00;15;22;22

DG

I mean, if you zoom in on the photographs that we're looking at, the horizontal bands, they're vertical and they're a stack bond. They line up as a grid. And the regular brick in between the horizontal bands is a running bond that stagger each joint the half a dimension of the brick. So, you get a different way the sunlight hits the brick. It adds visual nuance and detail, which I think there's a criticism of buildings when they're too stark, unless they're completely stark. And then the starkness is a design feature.

But I think you need to find the details to make the building visually interesting. I think you owe that, as the architect, to the world. It’s beauty, commodity and delight since Vitruvius said it, and he probably wishes he had copyrighted that phrase because that would be a great brand in 1642. But commodity is the function, and the structure is firmness, and delight is it has to look good. I mean, that's fundamental to being an architect. It has to look good.

 

00;15;22;29 - 00;15;27;10

DP

What about the color? How did you guys choose the brown? The variations of brown.

 

00;15;27;12 - 00;16;14;15

DG

The brick has sort of a brown, gray feel, and we wanted it to seem contemporary and not traditional in any way. I think that that brick that we used, because it's such a small quantity and it's a small relatively a small building, it's a more expensive brick than the cheapest. The developer, the builder, is often looking for the least expensive.

But in this case, the difference in the cost between a better brick and a simple brick was minimal. So, we went with a more fashionable, more stylish brick that you see in other buildings around town on a taller and more higher end buildings. In fact, we use this brick in other buildings, we like this building. There's sort of a little laboratory for us to explore other ideas.

 

00;16;14;18 - 00;16;18;15

DP

How was it working with the mason in the field? Did you guys do mockups?

 

00;16;18;17 - 00;16;46;21

DG

We did mockups. I think that Ingrid, she got the guys to do what she wanted. You know, so much of the world is about how do you get the other person to hear you and how do you get the other person to do what you want? And certainly, the architect has no literal power. They have the power of persuasion. And I think we worked closely with the developer and the contractors to persuade them to help us achieve our visual goals.

 

00;16;46;23 - 00;17;03;03

DP

Yeah, clearly. We're talking a little bit about design challenges here and we're talking about how you manipulated the bricks in various ways to create a facade that looks more appealing. Did brick solve any design challenges for you guys?

 

00;17;03;05 - 00;18;18;19

DG

I mean, brick has been a success since, you know, the Egyptians. Brick has been a success since the Neanderthals almost. But brick gives you a tremendously good thermal rating in New York. Any building that is built with public money or public support has to achieve a very high green rating. It's basically a LEED rating. 20 years ago, 15 years ago, everything was LEED. It had to be rated.

Well, the New York City green enterprise standards are fundamentally a LEED goal. So, we had to achieve that. We have to do an energy certification at the end and brick is just a tremendously flexible material for that. If you use a metal panel, which is much more expensive or a terracotta panel, it isn't necessarily any more energy efficient than brick.

So, brick helps with that because it's a small unit, it's flexible. So, if you run into a funky dimension in the space between your building and the property line in the adjacent building, it's easy to manipulate. And you can work with it on the site and the guy who's laying it can work with it for you.

 

00;18;08;22 - 00;18;24;20

DP

I don't know a whole lot about building in New York City. Talk a little bit about how long was the planning process for the building. How long did the review, the City Review take? How long was the design process? Construction process start to finish?

 

00;18;24;22 - 00;19;14;29

DG

That's a good question. It takes about 9 to 10 months to design a building from start to finish. In the middle of that process, you file the drawings about five months in with the city of New York. It takes four months plus to get the drawings approved. As they are reviewing the plans and asking for more information, you're working on the plans and filling in the information. So, the filing process and the production process, the design process are running in tandem. They're running concurrently.

Then there's another 2 to 3 months for the project to have the site prepared, demolition to take place, SOE which is a Support of Excavation process, you have to support the site as it's being excavated. And then I would say a building like this takes about 18 months to build.

 

00;19;15;06 - 00;19;16;10

DP

Park or Elton?

 

00;19;16;17 - 00;19;40;10

DG

They were both built simultaneously. They weren't built one and then the other built at the same time. So, when they did the foundation on one, they were doing the foundation on the other. The concrete sub was at both sides at the same time. The brick was done at the same time. These are simple load bearing buildings where it's a block backup to a brick facade and concrete floors and load bearing concrete walls.

 

00;19;40;15 - 00;19;41;14

DP

No steel?

 

00;19;41;15 - 00;19;44;14

DG

A miscellaneous steel over the windows. Miscellaneous steel at the corners.

 

00;19;44;20 - 00;19;45;24

DP

Just steel lintels and-

 

00;19;45;27 - 00;19;59;28

DG

Yeah, not too much steel. The spans are that long. And if you look at the building without the details, the masonry is about 35% of the width of the windows. So that's a very short span.

 

00;20;00;03 - 00;20;01;24

DP

What about ARB?

 

00;20;01;26 - 00;20;50;22

DG

There is no ARB in New York City. You can build a 100-storey building and – city planning, if you need any kind of variance, or you have a zoning issue, city planning acts as the architectural arbiter of the project. But if it's a simple project like this, an as-of-right project, you would be smart to show it to a community board because the community boards, you know, that's the smallest governmental association in the city and it's really the local people who are on a community board. Obviously, it's the people that really care. And you want the community board to be a part of your process. So, the developer will meet with the community board quietly, keep it friendly. And a project like this, I don't think there was any opposition whatsoever.

 

00;20;50;22 - 00;20;55;23

DP

And you do that - you wrap up schematic design, then you meet with people that are local.

 

00;20;56;00 - 00;21;20;03

DG

Exactly. To gain support because the last thing you want is opposition. I've worked in other cities and the great thing about New York is there are hurdles in front of you, many hurdles, but they're above ground. It's not like a game, you know, a video game where the hurdles come at you as you're running. You see them in front of you. The rules are transparent, and you can work the system.

 

00;21;20;06 - 00;21;26;14

DP

And when you guys present, do you present three dimensional images that you put together, Revit or-

 

00;21;26;14 - 00;21;47;22

DG

Revit. We do all of our work on three-dimensional building information modeling. Now, we don't use any CAD. Our staff is really talented and expert at BIM, and that means that when they're drawing, the very first line is a wall, not a line. And this three dimensionals are right there. And we have some very talented renderers.

 

00;21;47;25 - 00;21;53;12

DP

I’m sure. So, did you guys learn anything through the process of designing and getting these buildings built?

 

00;21;53;14 - 00;22;21;04

DG

The architecture is a very slow-paced world. If there's a crisis, you're not doing it right. There really shouldn't be any crises. Maybe when you're young and you forgot the most fundamental thing, there’s a crisis. But at this point, I would say that these buildings were inspirational for me because the four of us, the team, we were engaged all the way through, and we kept looking at it. It was a small project, and it was exciting in that way.

 

00;22;21;07 - 00;22;24;20

DP

I'll wrap it up with an easier question – maybe a harder question.

 

00;22;24;24 - 00;22;25;29

DG

Throw them at me. Come on.

 

00;22;26;05 - 00;22;29;05

DP

You clearly have a lot of experience being an architect-

 

00;22;29;29 - 00;22;32;13

DG

I didn't start out with gray hair. I've earned-

 

00;22;32;20 - 00;22;35;11

DP

I had hair.

 

00;22;32;20 - 00;22;37;12

DG

Exactly. Sure, you have hair.

 

00;22;37;15 - 00;22;45;25

DP

So, if you had to look back and give your younger self advice that you didn't know back then. What would it be, about being an architect.

 

00;22;45;27 - 00;23;24;22

DG

That's a great question. It reminds me of something I was thinking about on the way over here in preparation for today's chat. I think in any profession - medical, legal - your user group, your client is turned off to jargon. You can't speak with technical terms or only terms that another architect would recognize. So, I try very hard to be plainspoken and put things in terms of the benefit of the client and I think that that is something that I'm good at and people respond to that because the goal is to have a dialog with your client. And I think that's the best way.

 

00;23;24;29 - 00;23;44;05

DP

You know, interestingly, growing up, you must have seen how important that was with your father and his business. Having a good relationship, being a good communicator, being positive, never telling somebody no. Yeah, we can look at that. Let's give it a shot. So, it would seem to me that you learned an awful lot from your folks.

 

00;23;44;13 - 00;23;44;27

DG

I did.

 

00;23;45;04 - 00;23;49;24

DP

Well, David, it's been great to have you here. Thank you very much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about GF55?

 

00;23;49;26 - 00;24;00;02

DG

www.gf55.com or check out our Instagram page or our Twitter feed for all the stuff about us.

 

00;24;00;03 - 00;24;03;12

DP

All right, pretty straightforward. Well, thank you very much for your time. It's great to meet you.

 

00;24;03;19 - 00;24;05;11

DG

You too. I'm sure I'll see you soon.

 

00;24;05;12 - 00;24;09;01

DP

Right on.

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;05;19

Doug Patt (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;21 - 00;00;28;06

Gavri Slasky (GS)

We were given the site. Needed to build as many units as we could, but to keep the center open and accessible to the public. This courtyard, this Village Green, was intended to be used by the Village for tree lighting ceremonies or other public events. The idea was to try to incorporate the public into the building as much as possible.

 

00;00;28;14 - 00;02;31;27

DP

This is my guest, Gavri Slasky. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault will highlight Gavri’s project Morgan Parc. The Morgan Parc Project is comprised of 267 residential units situated above retail space. The nine story building is composed of a central tower at the far side of the square, flanked by two symmetrical wings, the masonry facades draw upon turn of the century mill buildings whose architecture is expressed in their strong, deep structural piers and intricate brick details.

The building facade is composed of masonry piers that extend the full height of the building, opening up a ground floor to create a retail arcade that wraps a courtyard. Large industrial sized window units span between the deep piers. The building is capped by glass, enclosed rooftop amenity spaces, an outdoor pool and terracing roofs, which overlook Long Island.

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

Today we're talking to Gavri Slasky, AIA, LEED AP. Gavri received his master’s in architecture from Princeton University and his B.A. from Columbia University in Architecture. Gavri started his career at Stephen B. Jacobs Group as the project manager for an 11 story 311-unit residential building in Long Island. Since then, together with Mr. Stephen Jacobs, he has designed and managed over 3 million square feet of residential new construction throughout New York and developed an expertise in building codes of the city and state.

Gavri specializes in piloting projects from conception to completion, testifying at local zoning boards, producing documentation for building department approval, overseeing construction administration and working together with the general contractor and owner in achieving building occupancy. Today, we're going to talk to Gavri about SBJ's Morgan Parc project. So welcome, Gavri.

 

00;02;32;00 - 00;02;34;00

GS

Thank you, Doug. Good to see you.

 

00;02;34;02 - 00;02;47;26

DP

And it's great to see you. It's nice to have you with us today. So, before we get started, tell us a little bit about Stephen B. Jacobs Group. Where are they located in New York? What's the size of the firm? And what type of work too they do?

 

00;02;47;28 - 00;03;38;20

GS

So, we are a mid-sized firm, about 30 architects and interior designers in Manhattan, where we're on Park Avenue South and 27th Street. So just north of the side iron building there. Our firm has been around for quite a long time. The founder of the firm, Stephen Jacobs, created the firm in 1967. So, it's been over 50 years. And the amount of work that he's done in New York is uncountable. So, over this time, you go to any street in New York and there's a building by SBJ Group.

For the most part, we specialize in multifamily housing. We've done quite a number of hotels and we've diversified recently into school buildings, commercial buildings, and we do quite a range of work.

 

00;03;38;23 - 00;03;46;15

DP

That's pretty impressive walking around New York City. Do you ever count on how many buildings they've done? Is it like a hundred? Like 200?

 

00;03;46;17 - 00;03;49;09

GS

No, there's definitely thousands, for sure.

 

00;03;49;10 - 00;03;50;04

DP

Oh, my goodness.

 

00;03;50;11 - 00;04;05;00

GS

We have this old Sanborn book, and every time that we got a project, I remember one of the former principals of the firm, Herb Weber, would just shade the lot in and so he would be able to flip through and keep track of it that way.

 

00;04;05;06 - 00;04;30;07

DP

Those Sanborn maps are pretty incredible. When I was at Penn State. My thesis was Housing for the Homeless in Times Square, if you can believe it. But I sent away for the specific Sanborn maps for that location, and I believe they were used by firemen. Yeah, they had to have been 75, 80 years old. They were updating at one point. I don't even know what they do today. Can you even get Sanborn maps?

 

00;04;30;14 - 00;04;48;05

GS

You can. Now, everything is digitally available. You have digital tax maps. They're super precise and updated. You can rewind history and go back to see what this looked like a decade ago or a hundred years ago and see how the site has evolved. Just a fun site analysis.

 

00;04;48;07 - 00;05;11;22

DP

Yeah. The maps have a footprint of the building at that particular location at the particular time, and then they have the heights of the buildings of various heights as you move around the building so you can literally build a model from them. So, tell us a little bit about yourself. So, this interview's pretty unique because you're in Israel and we oddly enough, know one another. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

 

00;05;11;25 - 00;05;15;22

GS

Yeah. It's great to see you. It's been almost 20 years.

 

00;05;15;23 - 00;05;17;15

DP

Oh, my goodness gracious.

 

00;05;17;17 - 00;05;35;14

GS

That's hard to say. The summer of 2004, I had just graduated Columbia. My teacher, Joeb Moore, offered me a summer internship at his firm in Greenwich. My seat was actually right next to your seat. I was wondering if you would remember me. It's been a long time.

 

00;05;35;16 - 00;05;45;20

DP

I do. I was like Gavry Slasky. Yes! I remember the name! It was a long time ago.

 

00;05;45;24 - 00;05;49;10

GS

It was. And to be fair, I was only there for a summer.

 

00;05;49;11 - 00;06;04;04

DP

So yeah. I joined Joeb in 1999, I believe, and I worked with him for about 20 years, 15 of those as a consultant. So, it was a great experience. He's an amazing architect, one of the most talented men I've ever met in my life.

 

00;06;04;07 - 00;06;09;26

GS

He's an amazing architect and such a kind person. Does such beautiful work.

 

00;06;09;28 - 00;06;21;15

DP

He does. If you're interested, Joeb Moore, joebmoore.com. Check it out. So how long have you been with Stephen B Jacobs group? Tell us more about your role in the Office.

 

00;06;21;17 - 00;06;22;13

GS

So I've been.

 

00;06;22;13 - 00;08;06;24

GS

At group for about a decade, and the first project I worked on, which he mentioned actually was in Mineola. It's not this Morgan Parc project. It was sort of the predecessor to this. We were working on a 300 plus unit apartment building, around the corner from this Morgan Parc project, called One Third Avenue, and that was my first project working with Stephen, and with this same client, Kevin Lalezarian.

That was a new experience for me. I had previously worked on single family homes. I worked for a year at KPF, so that was completely different, working on Super Towers in Asia. This was New York. This was something that was extremely practical. It's going to get built. It was going to get built, and fast. And the people in the office, they knew what they were doing. They done that type of work for a long time. So, it was quite a learning curve for me. That was a great project.

And during construction of that project, One Third Avenue, the client decided to go ahead with the second project around the corner from that. He had faith that he wouldn't be competing with himself. He'd be able to fill up all of his units.

We started designing Morgan Parc. That was such a rewarding project for me because I was on that from day zero, going with the client and Stephen to the Planning Board meetings and really seeing how a project starts from its conception, being in every single meeting, hearing how the building gets massed out, all the different considerations of it through the years of approvals and construction. And it opened about three years ago, during the pandemic, actually.

 

00;08;06;26 - 00;08;39;17

DP

So, let's talk a little bit about the building. Just as an aside, so I met Isaac Daniel Astrachan a couple of weeks back. He also works for SBJ. I was a host for a panel discussion here at the Brickworks Design Studio on 5th Avenue, and Isaac was on the panel talking about the Morgan Parc project. So, I know a little bit about it, but let's get into the details. So, you just explained how your office got the project. Your client wanted to do another building with you guys. Had SBJ worked with those clients for a number of years, even before the project you came in on?

 

00;08;39;20 - 00;09;13;28

GS

Yes. The Lalezarians are a family of real estate developers and property owners, second generation and repeat clients for us, as are many of our clients. That's what they do. They build buildings, they hold on to the buildings, they manage them, and we try to give them the best service that we can, be as efficient as possible and make the most beautiful building that we can with the budget. And they come back to us. That is basically the goal. So, most of our clients are repeat clients like that.

 

00;09;14;00 - 00;09;36;04

DP

Well, it's really impressive. It's the most important thing for an architect, right, to get word of mouth business. You're not marketing your company all the time. You've got a steady stream of people that are coming back to you after they get to work with you, you know, the first time. So that's wonderful to hear. So, tell us a little bit about the history of the location of Morgan Parc and what impact that might have had on the design.

 

00;09;36;08 - 00;10;24;05

GS

So, Morgan Parc is on a piece of property right in the center of Mineola, which is the seat of Nassau County. The property is right across the street from the train station, so it is uniquely located for a transit-oriented development. It is right in the center of their downtown.

Prior to our client owning the property, all that existed on that property was a single Citibank building and a sea of parking. Actually, during the construction of One Third Avenue that I mentioned before, our client, when he purchased the Morgan Parc property, moved the Citibank tenants into One Third Avenue building and making way for this second development.

 

00;10;24;08 - 00;10;25;12

DP

That's really interesting.

 

00;10;25;15 - 00;11;00;26

GS

It's located at the heart of their downtown right next to the train station. NYU Langone is right across the street there as well. So, it's a busy area. And on Mineola’s master plan from a few decades ago, this site was labeled as the village green. It was their sort of center, their downtown. But that was a sort of future hope that somebody would make that a reality. Village Green was actually a working name of our project until marketing came along and made it into Morgan Parc. But that was always in the forefront of the design.

 

00;11;00;28 - 00;11;05;24

DP

So, that's a good segway. So, tell us a little bit about the programmatic requirements from the client.

 

00;11;05;27 - 00;12;00;08

GS

We were given the site. Needed to build as many units as we could, but to keep the center open and accessible to the public. This courtyard, this Village Green, was intended to be used by the Village for tree lighting ceremonies or other public events. The idea was to try to incorporate the public into the building as much as possible – or when I say the building, the site. It's a large square shaped property. While it was a parking lot for Citibank, people would use it as a cut through, as a shortcut to get to the train station. And so that also became part of the program. The client wanted to maintain access, crisscrossing through the site so people can still get to the train station without having to walk all the way around the block. So, we created these openings between the different wings of the building so people can get from one side to the other.

 

00;12;00;11 - 00;12;02;21

DP

Describe the building plan to us then.

 

00;12;02;24 - 00;12;44;18

GS

It's a U-shaped building which has its tallest portion on the tracks, which is that front street. So it’s the back of the building. So that's a nine story structure at that point. It has the two wings of the “U” that gradually step down to six stories at Second Street, which is the downtown street.

The scale of the building respectfully interacts with the existing context there. The larger buildings that I mentioned at NYU and some other buildings are situated at the train tracks in that zone. And then the historic downtown is lower scale, three- or four-story buildings.

 

00;12;44;20 - 00;12;47;29

DP

So, you're a little bit of an expert on zoning codes.

 

00;12;48;01 - 00;12;50;29

GS

I've had my share of reading-

 

00;12;51;01 - 00;13;04;22

DP

Right! So, it sounds to me like a project like this, you really got pretty good at what's going on with the city – what the requirements are. So, tell us a little bit about the project restrictions for this particular job, maybe a little bit about the zoning codes.

 

00;13;04;25 - 00;13;39;19

GS

They don't quite have a zone sort of set up for this. So, what we had to do is go in and propose what it is that we wanted to build there – look around at other developments in that area and see what would be appropriate and then open that up to discussion to the public. And that project was in front of the planning board maybe four times. These meetings, which started about 7 p.m. or so, they would go till 11 p.m. they would have standing room only of people giving comments pro and against.

 

00;13;39;25 - 00;13;47;25

DP

Their local people come to the meeting, and they want to say what they think of the architecture. So, this is like an architectural review board, right?

 

00;13;47;29 - 00;15;02;11

GS

Sorta. You know, it's interesting because the comments were less about the architecture, more about planning, traffic, and heights of buildings and schoolchildren. So those were the major concerns that they had, but it was the democratic process. So, watching it play out, seeing everybody given the opportunity to have a voice, and through that process, the building changed as well. In reaction to that, the building got smaller.

And we were given the opportunity also to present the benefits of the building and what the building would be offering the city, because as we were designing this, this wasn't a building that we were designing in isolation from far away and imposing it onto the local town, but rather with the village of Mineola in mind constantly. And so, so much of the building was being built and designed not just for the residents but for the people of the town. And I used to go out there during construction every week or two and go to the coffee shop across the street and really got to see this downtown come together where there used to be, essentially, a hole in the middle of it with this enormous parking lot. The building has so many different facets to it, but the public side of it was really rewarding.

 

00;15;02;13 - 00;15;10;09

DP

Well, again, a good segway. Why don't you talk a little bit about the style choice and how it reflects or relates to the buildings that are around and in the neighborhood?

 

00;15;10;12 - 00;16;11;05

GS

So, when Stephen conceived of the design of this building, he was thinking of historic mill buildings, turn of the century factory buildings that were made of brick, that had large openings, had repeated structural piers. They were built in an efficient way, allowing for large openings to light up the factories where the work would be taking place in. And they were often clad in brick by masons who were extremely talented. And it's hard to find people of that talent today, but that was their craft.

So that was in the back of Stephen's head and a lot of the work that he did in the early period of his career in the late sixties, early seventies was adaptive reuse. He had taken these types of buildings and turned them into lofts, but at this point he was creating this new building that based off of its old historic model.

 

00;16;11;08 - 00;16;28;14

DP

So, when the clients came to you guys and you talked a little bit about aesthetics, did they give you any historical precedents or did they say, hey, this building has got to match the aesthetic of what's around it? And then maybe talk a little bit about your use of brick and why you guys chose that particular brick and that color.

 

00;16;28;17 - 00;17;47;13

GS

I had mentioned that these were repeat clients, so we knew them very well. We knew their tastes. We knew their preferences. They came to us, and they said that they wanted a timeless building, a building that wasn't a fad that would be dated in a decade or so. They wanted something timeless. They don't build buildings and then sell them. They build them, and then they keep them and maintain them as part of their portfolio. So, they were looking to create something for the long run.

So, I think at that point, Stephen started to think about these historic buildings that are so beautiful that they become historic landmarks and get adapted for one use, changing to another, use. I brought people to see this building after it was completed and they asked me, what was this building before? It's funny to think that this is a brand-new building, but I thought that that was actually quite a compliment. We are trying to emulate historic buildings. We never thought that we would be able to fool people that this was historic. That wasn't the intent, but it just fits. And when the client asked for timeless, I feel like that type of reaction from people that visit the building didn't know the site before. I feel like that accomplished the goal that the client was looking for.

 

00;17;47;20 - 00;18;28;19

DP

Yeah, Issac said the same thing when he was here that people had asked how long the building had been there, you know, after the building had been constructed. So interestingly, when you go to school, when you go to architecture school, one of the first things I learned was that the architect is striving for timelessness in their work, right?

Not all architects choose to do that, but at Penn State they talked about that a lot. I found it pretty interesting. I like to ask people that come in whether or not brick solved any design challenges or design problems for you guys. And clearly it did in this aesthetic realm. But can you think of any other way that you were able to use Masonry and it solved some design challenges?

 

00;18;28;22 - 00;19;51;00

GS

There's a lot of different facets of this building, but I think the brick is one of the key factors that brought this whole building together. It's a large building. There could have been other approaches to take using different materials to break up the mass, and you see that quite a lot around the suburbs. What Stephen wanted to do was to embrace that this was a large building and take one material, being brick, and use it as many ways as possible and unify the building, make one unified building out of it.

We worked on a few details. We worked on them and reworked them and got feedback from masons, reworked them again. We created a couple of unique shaped bricks. We were playing with all sorts of articulation, ins and outs and we ended up with a detail for the pier and detail for the cornice, a detail for a second-floor band – it was really about three or four typical details that we worked out. And then repeated it in a rhythm and executed it. And it was wonderful working with the masons on site as well, because as architects we can draw what we want, but at the end of the day it's all about the execution of the craftsperson. We were fortunate to have a great mason on the project.

 

00;19;51;07 - 00;19;55;05

DP

So, did you guys build actual physical mock ups that were out there?

 

00;19;55;07 - 00;20;18;10

GS

Yes, we did. We built a couple of mockups and made a couple of adjustments during that period. And then they started and they were able to start low down on the building, did a few portions, and then once they got those couple of details down, they're able to run with it. And it was a long process and a lot of brick, and the client had faith in it. I was very fortunate about that and it came out great.

 

00;20;18;12 - 00;20;38;12

DP

So, two quick questions about how long everything took. I'd like to think about how large is the set of drawings when you're going to build a building like Morgan Parc? Did you guys draw the thing in 2D and 3D? And how long did this whole process take? Through Planning, city review, design, and then construction.

 

00;20;38;14 - 00;21;42;03

GS

Great question. The way that we work, we work in 3D and 2D. At the same time, we usually model the building in Revit. We’ll work out the massing, the elevations, study different details in three dimensions and color, testing out different color combinations. We had gone back and forth on whether the windowsills should be metal or cast stone or brick. And we tested out these options in three dimensions and 3D models.

The working drawings at the end of the day were all done two dimension CAD, and they were, you know, as precise as we could get. It's actually interesting. The building is a U-shaped plan, but it's two Ls that are joined at the center to make this U-shaped. So, the building is actually mirrored down that center. So, we were able to draw it, one L, and mirror it. That was part of my struggle over the years, was to try to keep it as symmetrical as possible so that we can keep on using that for efficiency.

 

00;21;42;06 - 00;21;45;16

DP

That's pretty cool. So, you really only had to draw half the building, right?

 

00;21;45;19 - 00;21;47;11

GS

For the most part.

 

00;21;47;13 - 00;22;13;14

DP

I'm sure there's way more that goes into it, but when you first say that, you say, Oh wow, that's pretty cool. So, the thing is simply mirrored. I'm sure there's a lot of differentiation that goes from one L to the other, but it's pretty interesting.

So, what's, kind of, top of mind for a lot of people today is sustainability. Did you guys talk about that at all in terms of using masonry, or was that a request that the client had that you guys had to keep in mind?

 

00;22;13;19 - 00;24;17;16

GS

Sustainability is something that's viewed in every project that we do in one sense or another. Brick buildings allowed for a cavity wall and continuous insulation on the exterior of the backup wall. And so, it allows for a beautiful finish, but a very sustainable envelope. And the amount of insulation that you put in that cavity wall is really dependent on how large of a relieving angle you can get for the brick because the more insulation you have, the further the brick has to be on the backup wall. That's sort of the only limitation.

 

00;22;52;09 - 00;22;54;03

DP

And what did you guys end up doing?

 

00;22;54;04 - 00;24;17;16

GS

Yeah, it's been a couple of years. I don't remember exactly. We put as much as we could. We put insulation on the inside as well.

This is not exactly related to brick, but one of the most interesting, sustainable anecdotes from this building that I remember is in the excavation of the building. Long Island is built on sand primarily, and it's a great site for foundations to build shallow foundations. The sand takes the load, but another advantage of it was the contractor who excavated out the sand, and I don't know how many hundreds or thousands of truckloads of sand have to go out of this building – I didn't even mention that the building has three cellars for parking – so they went down 30, 40 feet into the ground for the entire site. So maybe a million and a half cubic feet.

The contractor who was excavating that, taking that sand away, sold that sand to a construction company for concrete. So concrete is a very carbon heavy building material. But what I like to think about was that the sand in the foundations in the site for this building, actually went back into the building process. I'm sure it didn't go to our building. It probably went to someone else's, but it wasn't just shipped off to someplace and dumped somewhere.

00;24;17;24 - 00;24;39;16

DP

We always have interesting experiences, right? So, was there anything as you went through this process of building Morgan Parc, designing it and ultimately going through the various stages with the town, with the city, then getting the thing built? Was her anything that you or your team learned that was really interesting for you? It was kind of a first.

 

00;24;39;19 - 00;25;48;27

GS

There's so many firsts. Every building process is a learning experience. There's this one lesson learned that was interesting. It was during the brick installation, actually. I noticed that there was this one detail at the corner of the building that wasn’t correct, and I was wondering how could they make that mistake?

It doesn't have the usual frame around it. The brick checker pattern just died into the side and I looked at our drawings and then I realized that the elevation was taken with a pier, hiding a portion of the elevation behind it. And so, it looked like that was the end of the building, but it actually continued another foot or so. And the mason was looking at the elevation and they didn't see that.

So, they just continued the same pattern until the end that maybe they thought there was a dimensional mistake or something. So, every week I would go to them and say, are you going to fix that detail? And he was like, at the end. And I was thinking to myself, oh, you better fix that at the end before Stephen comes to take a look at that. But he did. And that was an interesting lesson learned – to make sure that every elevation is drawn, nothing is being hidden by any portion of the building in and of itself.

 

00;25;49;00 - 00;26;36;13

DP

Well, I think about that a lot, I go out on to the job site and I see something and it's not exactly the way I had drawn it. And sometimes you're just not paying attention, sometimes I didn't cover it well enough in the drawings and unless you're out there on a weekly basis, these things just completely get away from you.

So, one last question before you go. This is very interesting to me. So, you're an expert on zoning and building codes. So, this is an incredibly valuable asset for any office. I would imagine at some point you could probably become an attorney with all the knowledge that you have. Was that something that you always gravitated toward that side of the business over time, or is that just you were kind of thrown into it? It was interesting to you. You were good at it, and that's how it evolved.

 

00;26;36;16 - 00;28;25;23

GS

It's funny, it's not the part of architecture that people are usually interested in, and it definitely wasn't so in the beginning for me. But the more I read through these things, the zoning – New York City, or every different town has their own zoning ordinances - there are so many nuances there, and these words that are written down there were written very carefully, and they create what you're building is going to be. And so, careful reading through these documents are critical, whether it's zoning or building code. And I came to really enjoy creating it. And it is probably the dorkiest thing, but I enjoy it and I enjoy getting emails or calls from colleagues saying, “Gavri, can you check what are we allowed to do here?” I love being able to look it up and learn. Each time I look at it, I learn more and then the codes change from 2008 to 2014, New York City now 2022, and New York State has their own codes. And then to compare in New York City versus New York State and to see what's allowed in one versus the other. They don't tell you why in these things, they just tell you what's allowed or what's not allowed.

You try to think about what is a consideration, what's the difference between New York and New York City in New York State. So, New York State has larger sites. So, their stair cores are allowed to be further away from the center. They try to direct people to have their egress stairs at the edges of the building. The dead end distances are shorter than they are in New York City. In New York City, they allow you to have scissor stairs in residential buildings because you have a small footprint and you don't really have much of a choice. These rules, they end up shaping the plan. They end up shaping every aspect of the building.

 

00;28;26;00 - 00;28;39;28

DP

Well, Gavri, I can tell you really love this stuff. And I'm sure Stephen B. Jacobs Group is very happy to have you. So, thank you very much for spending some time with us today. Where can people go to learn more about SBJ architects?

 

00;28;40;01 - 00;28;49;00

GS

Yeah, you can go to our website sbjgroup.com.

We are on 27th and Park Avenue South. Looking forward to hearing from everybody.

 

00;28;49;07 - 00;28;51;08

DP

It's a small world, man. It’s great to see you.

 

00;28;51;10 - 00;28;53;12

GS

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

 

00;28;53;18 - 00;29;21;00

DP

Thanks, Gavri.