TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;08

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;10 - 00;00;22;07

John Hutch (JH)

One of the missions was to continue to keep the character of Broadway, of Fell's Point through those storefronts and set back the building's mass so that it was not present or felt when you're walking along the sidewalk.

 

00;00;22;14 - 00;02;25;12

DP

This is my guest, John Hutch. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from The Design Vault. We highlight John's Project Marketplace at Fell's Point. Marketplace Fell's Point is located in historic Fell's Point, Baltimore, Maryland. The new urban lifestyle apartments feature open rooms that maximize exterior daylight and the views. The bulk of the units in the marketplace project open onto private courtyard space, complete with firepits and water features.

 

Many of the units are rehabbed historic buildings from the late 1800s with large windows and special features. The apartment buildings have direct access to over 100 community retail and entertainment venues on Fell's Point waterfront. In addition to the private courtyards, the project also features a club room, lounge, fitness center and secure parking for the residents.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. John Hutch, one of the founding partners and a principal at JP2 Architects in Baltimore, Maryland. John has a Bachelor of Science degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati. He plays an active role in the professional development and awareness of sustainable design within his firm. He brings 30 years of experience leading the design process of employing project management with an emphasis on project delivery.

 

He has a background in both public and private sector work, which provides diverse experience for all of the projects the office takes on. John has an international portfolio of mixed use projects which include corporate hospitality, retail, multifamily and entertainment facilities. So welcome, John. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about JP2 Architects, where you guys are located in Baltimore? What's the size of your firm? How long have you been around and what kind of work do you do?

 

00;02;25;14 - 00;03;00;16

JH

Great. Thanks, Doug. We are about a 20 person firm, and we're located in the Canton area of Baltimore, which is adjacent to Fell's Point, where this project is located. We founded JP2 Architects in 2006 and I have two other founding partners, Jamie Pett and Gordon Gaudet. The three of us have been working together for almost 30 years now.

 

When I moved here in 1995, I got to know the two of them and we've been friends and colleagues and now partners ever since.

 

00;03;00;18 - 00;03;02;12

DP

Wow, That's really cool. How did you meet?

 

00;03;02;13 - 00;03;19;23

JH

So we all met at the large international firm of our RTKL, and we were each in the commercial group. Although I tended to bounce around between groups, which gave me a diverse experience. But we were still young, rising up through the ranks and learning a lot.

 

00;03;20;00 - 00;03;23;19

DP

That's really interesting. Did you guys always know that you wanted to start a firm together?

 

00;03;23;21 - 00;03;54;10

JH

No. We each probably had different starting points. I'd say it was always my dream to start a firm and I can thank my parents for saying hold on, hold on, hold on, you need more experience. So when I moved here to Baltimore, met the two of them, I spent about ten or 12 years there prior to the three of us starting, and I couldn't ask for better partners.

 

We each fulfill a different niche and role in the firm and bring different experience and complement each other very, very well.

 

00;03;54;13 - 00;04;05;00

DP

That's wonderful for our listeners. Sean and I were talking before we got rolling here, and I used to work in Baltimore, Maryland for Zeiger Sneed. I guess I'm wondering if you ever ran into them.

 

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

JH

I haven't met them in person, but we still run into them every once in a while, competing on a project.

 

00;04;11;11 - 00;04;19;27

DP

I'm sure you do. I'm not sure how involved they both are in the firm at this point, but they certainly did something really wonderful in Baltimore.

 

00;04;19;29 - 00;04;37;14

JH

They have and they've won a lot of awards in the area. And why I plan to my roots here in Baltimore was because the design and architectural community is strong, thriving. It's a livable city. And I really love the passion that everybody brings to their projects and profession here.

 

00;04;37;17 - 00;04;45;04

DP

That's great to hear. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How long have you been practicing and what's your role in the office as a partner?

 

00;04;45;06 - 00;05;38;09

JH

Sure. So I graduated from Cincinnati in ‘91. That was probably not the best time to be graduating and looking for a job, but I struggled through those first few years gaining experience. And so when we started JP2, as I mentioned, as I think it's always been my dream to start a job. So a lot of the business planning, the oversight of the firm in general, my background is probably more design delivery heavy.

 

But I think one of the beauties of the practice we've established is that we have an amazing group here that all overlaps and has a terrific sense of projects and project management and design from beginning to end. So I will take on some master planning and some design roles, but I can tell you that my partners can draw circles around me.

 

00;05;38;11 - 00;06;22;00

DP

We talk a lot about this with our guests, our university experience. So you go to college and you learn about design, you know, structures and HVAC equipment and all those kinds of things. But you never really think about everybody's going to be good at something different, right? Or they're going to be good at a few things and then somebody else is going to be.

 

And so you really need that if you're going to have a partner, if you're not going to run your own office, you're going to have partners. It's really important to overlap. It's important to complement one another and then allow those people to do a good job in the areas that they're good at. Right? It's not something that anybody ever discusses in college. You get out and it becomes reality where you got to run a business and make money.

 

00;06;22;02 - 00;06;50;20

JH

Exactly. It's amazing how many hats and projects I may touch in a day, but having a team around us and having colleagues that I work closely with allows that overlap. What it does is it extends those initial ideas of a project and allows the whole team to be on board throughout the process so they know the vision, they know what we're executing when you go from a design concept to actually detailing a project and how to deliver it.

 

00;06;50;26 - 00;06;58;09

DP

So true. Okay, so let's dig in here and talk about Marketplace at Fell's Point. So how did you guys get that project?

 

00;06;58;11 - 00;07;58;06

JH

It's a wonderful, wonderful history. And we actually made contact through an ex RTKL employee who was in the landscape department and he got out of the design profession and started purchasing and renovating a lot of row houses here and Fell’s Point and Canton area. And he and another developer, David Holmes, the person I was speaking about is Dan Winter, and the two of them started realizing that they had properties near each other.

 

So that became a genesis amongst the two of them. They were pursuing a strategy of basically a garage with office above it, and it was seven or eight stories tall and the community fought them all along the way. And Dan, knowing that we had just started our practice and respecting our design skills, said, Hey, can you guys give me some advice?

 

Take a look at this. What should we do here? That was how we landed the project.

 

00;07;58;06 - 00;08;00;07

DP

And essentially the function changed?

 

00;08;00;09 - 00;08;51;22

JH

There you go. So I'd say I'm probably a frustrated developer because I love to look at something and say what belongs, what fits, and also how do you make it financially viable? The project, as initially conceived, wasn't penciling out from a financial standpoint, and it was a lesson of less is more. Why fight what should be here, which is a dense, residential neighborhood of two and a half, three and a half story tall row houses.

 

There are lot lines throughout, so we being old school, put pencil to trace and started sketching some ideas and they started to look at it and lo and behold, they started to peak their interest. They started to put some performance together and look at it and said, You know what, this works. That was a big change.

 

00;08;51;25 - 00;08;55;09

DP

Yeah. So the architect sold the developer in a way.

 

00;08;55;10 - 00;08;59;07

JH

Exactly. We brought an idea.

 

00;08;59;10 - 00;09;06;17

DP

Yeah, you brought in a great idea. So give us a little history of the location because you guys use some of the existing buildings, correct?

 

00;09;06;19 - 00;09;59;11

JH

That is correct. The site is fantastic. As you know, Fell’s Point is rooted in history going all the way back to the late 1700s and early 1800s. It's a waterfront community here on the harbor in Baltimore. And is known for shipbuilding sales, it's a port. So the establishments, bars, restaurants, all of that catered to folks who were in that industry.

 

Fell’s Point at the time, which would have been 2008, was what you probably hear about Baltimore, boarded up windows and storefronts. And a lot of these properties were not worth much. And so as Dave Holmes and Dan Winter were purchasing these, they had to have some kind of hope and vision that they could transform them.

 

00;09;59;13 - 00;10;05;18

DP

Okay. So tell me a little bit about the scope of the project and the client's programmatic requirements.

 

00;10;05;20 - 00;11;05;28

JH

Sure. The scope of the project, the buildings have historic storefronts, even though many of them, think about it is the 1800s, they were not historic, they were new. And so over time, they go through a transformation that was anything but historically sensitive. So one of the missions was to continue to keep the character of Broadway, of Fell's Point through those storefronts and set back the buildings mass so that it was not present or felt when you're walking along the sidewalk.

 

I'm starting from a massing standpoint to tell you about the program because the storefronts then would still be, and there's about 28,000 square feet of retail and and entertainment. And then there are in total, there are two blocks. There's one on the east side and one on the west side of Broadway. And they total 160 apartment units.

 

00;11;06;00 - 00;11;16;17

DP

I'm trying to picture what this looks like because we got some existing buildings down here and we do have some new architecture as well in plan form. What am I looking at?

 

00;11;16;20 - 00;11;59;23

JH

You're looking at like an amoeba. Unfortunately, apartment units don't like that shape, but the West block touches all four streets around it, so it almost has tentacles and reaches out. So along this storefront were basically 2 to 3 stories and we were able to do that and then set back. But the setback piece is more of a U-shape so that you didn't again have a mass of a building just lurking behind these.

 

You only had the ends of the U-shape. A lot of the use of brick and color and materials in that area was so that they felt like they fit in.

 

00;11;59;25 - 00;12;03;02

DP

So the retail space, is that all new architecture?

 

00;12;03;04 - 00;12;52;10

JH

It is. So the whole block has new storefronts, but they're restored. So they're restored to the historic significance. We went through many photos and did a lot of research. The Historical Society was incredibly helpful in that front. The depth of this storefront or what was behind those is new. When you go out into, say, the suburbs, you're used to a concrete podium with, say, four levels of stick frame construction above it.

 

That is essentially what we did in this project. We have a concrete podium that separates the retail use from the residential use above that's needed by code, but also makes laying out the apartments above much more easily.

 

00;12;52;12 - 00;13;03;09

DP

So let's talk a little bit about stylistic choice for the new architecture and then what you guys ultimately did to restore to the exteriors of some of these existing buildings.

 

00;13;03;12 - 00;14;21;23

JH

Terrific. Yeah, we had a good dialog with the Historic Preservation group here. One of the concerns is always when you create new are you competing or you're trying to match the historic facades. And we literally had on the west block two missing teeth that were non contributing and it was obvious they were not contributing to the historic fabric of the community.

 

So our challenge was how to blend in. And this is where Glen-Gery was incredibly helpful with the brick choices, the brick style and how we detailed it. So we went with a more simplistic detailing of soldiers and roll locks than a brick facade on both of the missing infill pieces. So you had a character that was still there but not trying to replicate, and that's how we worked on the Broadway facades. Around the perimeter, if you want to look, there are two alleys on either end of the buildings. Those are brick buildings. They fit in, but took the same approach where we use bricks so that it became part of the urban fabric without trying to mimic the historic aspects of the existing.

 

00;14;21;26 - 00;14;28;02

DP

Did Glen-Gery have bricks that matched the original bricks from that long ago? From the 1800s?

 

00;14;28;05 - 00;14;55;02

JH

No. But we had some that fit really well. There were molded bricks. We use the Catawba, which is a Cushwa line on the Broadway faces. In the back, we used 56-DD brick, which is more of a monolithic brick. So that one, it's still molded, but it was more uniform. So you did have a little bit more of a contemporary feel or use to the brick than you do on the historic facades.

 

00;14;55;05 - 00;15;10;13

DP

Interesting. So back to the planning process for a second. So you guys, you sit down, you do some sketches, you got some ideas, you talk with the developers, and then when did it turn into a project and how long did it take from beginning to end?

 

00;15;10;20 - 00;17;56;28

JH

How long do you have? I think the process started in early 2008. We started our firm in 2006, so this was a significant project for us. We worked very close with Dan Winter and Dave Holmes through this process. They had been working with the neighborhood groups, listening then what they want. So we took these bum wad sketches and floor plans and stuff like that, and then it started to become real.

 

And then we could start to put together some imagery of the facades. We could start to look at how we were affecting adjacent neighbors and start showing them a reduced massing than what was proposed before we started this project. And that started to win over some converts. And so that process and going through, which you may have heard in this area called CHAP, which is the Commission for Historic and Architectural Preservation, was that historic piece probably took a year.

 

So we were still in a design process for a good year after we started and then I'd say about another nine months to a year after that, we got into construction documents again, history, right? So now we're into 2009 and we all know what happened in that era with the real estate market. So we had finished construction documents as a recession, The Great Recession was happening and the thought process was, let's file for permit. So again, I'm glad you're sitting because it is a long story. I'll try to keep it somewhat short and there are details to fill in that are fascinating. We did file in 2009. It sat for years for a number of reasons. For one, they couldn't get financing.

 

You can imagine paying 2006, 2007 prices and then suddenly the bank takes a look at your property and says it's worth a 10th of that so you don't have equity in the project anymore. And so they were running up against hurdles for this. So the project sat and they were then looking for partners that could help with the project.

 

So enter Klein Enterprises and Dolben is out of Boston, Massachusetts, and Kline is a local developer here. So they came in and basically took over the project with a little bit of revisioning. So it was probably two years after that. And the construction wound up, I think it was 2012, 2013 when we finally had substantial completion.

 

So you're looking at four or five years.

 

00;17;57;00 - 00;18;05;18

DP

Yeah, that's a long time to hang with the project, especially when you're done with the drawings and then everything just sits here like, what am I going to do now?

 

00;18;05;19 - 00;18;44;19

JH

Right, right. It was interesting. I learned a lot about developers along the way as we took the plans, took the idea to a number of other developers to partner with. Some of them didn't want anything to do with the retail piece. They love the residential, but they don't do retail. And I think that's where this partnership and where it landed was a great fit.

 

Dolben has tens of thousands of apartment units. Klein, there's a lot of mixed use, and so they were not afraid and they know the neighborhood and started to have a vision for what they could create in terms of an atmosphere and a buzz in that part of Fell's Point.

 

00;18;44;22 - 00;18;57;22

DP

So back to construction. So you're under construction. Any unique construction details that you guys came across using brick or anything else, especially with all these existing buildings out there, right?

 

00;18;57;25 - 00;20;23;26

JH

It was probably one of the most challenging projects you’re going to look at. I'm sure you've talked to a number of architects that when you do an urban infill, it's a challenge. We touch over a dozen property lines on the west block and over a dozen on the east block. Each one of those neighbors needed to be notified.

 

You had to figure out how you're going to close the gap on those property lines, how you're going to flash onto other people's party walls. Essentially, as boring as the back of the place was. We had wall sections at every property line because each one was a unique condition on the west block, where we have almost 100 apartment units, we also have an underground parking garage.

 

So we have about 60 parking spaces underground and all the initial readings or that we have a water table. So here you're creating a bathtub, you've got a water table. And I think it was Hurricane Sandy that had a storm surge that pushed water up to that block as well. So now you're thinking, okay, how do I prevent water from above and below from filling this garage?

 

And so we had to create under-floor and remediation for the ground water as it swells and being able to pump it, that water table rises and lowers. So when it rises, you're pumping 24/7.

 

00;20;23;28 - 00;20;31;06

DP

So how did you guys resolve this? You're still pumping water out of there. When the groundwater rises up and it's like a bathtub that you built.

 

00;20;31;11 - 00;20;33;07

JH

Exactly. You are.

 

00;20;33;09 - 00;20;35;17

DP

Unbelievable. That's expensive.

 

00;20;35;19 - 00;21;07;07

JH

It's expensive. And again, you can imagine, I mean, now we're 12 feet below all the properties around us as well. So there was an incredible amount of documentation of the properties adjacent to this project. To be sure these 1800 structures don't settle, don't crack, and then making deals with each one of them that if that happens, we'll repair it.

 

So there was an incredible amount of liability on the contractor owner and architects and engineers as well.

 

00;21;07;09 - 00;21;30;06

DP

Wow. You guys have a real constitution. I don't think I could handle that. Just way too much responsibility. You know, interestingly, I did some work with Habitat for Humanity when we lived in Baltimore. And I remember these brick buildings, these row homes, they were crumbling. When the brick is that old, did you guys run into issues like that?

 

00;21;30;09 - 00;22;27;06

JH

We did. The interesting part of this was finding a right contractor that could deal with this. You weren't looking at a suburban stick frame guy. They'd look at it and were scared. So we needed somebody that had some chops. We ended up with Lendlease and they did a terrific job supporting the historic facades during this time. And so we had every ten feet, a steel column going up the front of the facade and then being supported laterally with other beams and huge cement blocks to keep them from falling as things were excavated behind it.

 

So it was painstakingly slow at that point. But then also the timing had to be right in order to get the concrete slab there to then reinforce and support those walls and to tie them back in to the concrete slab so that they wouldn't, you know, fall out or fall in.

 

00;22;27;08 - 00;22;52;19

DP

It takes a special kind of person and firm to do this kind of work, to be involved in that stuff. Architects do all different kinds of jobs, right? And this is one of them working with historic architecture. So what about drawings? What kind of drawings did you guys put together for the architecture? Was it 2D, 3D, lots of details? And then of course, you had to hire engineers and do drawings for the existing condition work.

 

00;22;52;25 - 00;24;05;19

JH

That's correct. And early on there's a bit of surveying that you do. I would say that it was also incredible working with a civil engineer, because if you think each one of these properties also has utilities coming in and out of it, making sure that we're staying away from all of these. So the underground piece of this became incredibly complicated. The three dimensional aspects, my partners and I are not old, but, you know, we still do a lot by hand. So a lot of the three dimensional stuff in order to get information out there quickly was by hand a lot of two dimensional facades around the project to see how it would relate to the adjacent properties. A lot of wall sections. This would have been wonderful if we had the technology today and, you know, have a drone or something scan the existing conditions in three dimensions. There was a lot of back and forth. Fortunately, it's only a half a mile from our office, so it could be down there in a heartbeat as soon as they discovered things during construction. And that was a vital way of solving some of the problems that came up because so many of them you can't anticipate.

 

You can only suggest a solution until things get uncovered.

 

00;24;05;21 - 00;24;14;11

DP

Yeah. Instead of getting in your car and driving a half hour, you walk right out onto the street and walk down the street and you can take a look at whatever challenge you face that day.

 

00;24;14;14 - 00;24;15;08

JH

That's correct.

 

00;24;15;15 - 00;24;23;27

DP

So did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process? That's a loaded question.

 

00;24;24;00 - 00;26;07;16

JH

It is. And I'd say, you know, even just this discussion, you can see I mean, all of these things are something new. And I think that's the beauty of the profession. As you mentioned, you work on so many different types of projects. And what I love about how we work as a firm that we don't have these vertical silos, we work across different typologies and bring that knowledge base to each project, which lends itself to something like this where you have mixed uses.

 

So the retail spaces on the ground floor needed to have If I'm going to put a kitchen in there for a restaurant, I need exhaust. That's got to go up through a couple stories of apartment buildings. So that kind of coordination, anticipating the needs of each component so that each of them stood alone and was able to be successful on their own rather than handicapping one.

 

One of the things we were not able to do is create what would be normal for a retailer today in terms of ceiling heights. We had to hit the second floor windows of the facades. So sometimes that meant that a retailer could only have maybe a nine or ten foot ceiling in there in order to get all the ductwork and lighting and everything else below the concrete slab.

 

I'd say what we really learned was from a design perspective, how to work with the community. I think that was the big success here, that we were able to revitalize an area of Fell's Point, bring life to it, bring housing for people, for more activity, and to do that successfully where the community was extremely happy with the end result.

 

00;26;07;18 - 00;26;24;04

DP

So I'm curious, some of these brick buildings, the existing brick buildings, how did you guys handle the new interior wall systems insulation and how did that work and did that decrease then the interior space? Because some of these buildings are probably pretty narrow.

 

00;26;24;09 - 00;27;18;17

JH

That's correct. Working with a different module that you're basically given was different and you ended up with almost a wall within a wall in order to get the proper insulation and which made for some unique conditions out the windows where you notice how, you know, like suddenly you've got a big inset that's about a foot and a half to the window.

 

There were some cases where we had to bump up the ceiling or bump down the floor a little bit where some of these windows were as as much as we tried. There were some things we just couldn't change. So this section is what was fascinating on these projects in that front facade along Broadway, we had to ramp down a couple of feet in order to get to the level that was needed for those apartments.

 

So it was both in section and then also horizontally in terms of laying out apartments that utilize the existing facades.

 

00;27;18;19 - 00;27;30;22

DP

Yeah, a lot of site specific challenging conditions. I can see why being out there, being in person was really important because every building's going to be just a little bit different.

 

00;27;30;29 - 00;27;31;28

JH

That's correct.

 

00;27;32;00 - 00;27;46;16

DP

Before you go, John, you've been an architect for some time. Based on what you know today about being an architect, do you have any words of advice for either your younger self or maybe young architects coming up in the profession?

 

00;27;46;18 - 000;29;02;11

JH

I'd like to just call it dumb luck, but I was really, really fortunate to land in a dream job in the late eighties, and it set me on a course for a career that was, this has been phenomenal and a journey. Going to the University of Cincinnati, having a co-op program was fascinating. Your third year, you're going to work for a firm for three months and nobody wanted to work in New York City.

 

And so I said, I'll go. And that firm happened to be KPF. So I cut my teeth in college with six months working at Kohn Pedersen Fox working on international high rise structures. That set me on a course that took me from there to Disney Development to the West Coast, then back to Ohio before I even graduated college. So I tell that story because that's my advice to folks.

 

Go for it. Don't be shy. Try to find a path that speaks to your heart. And you know, it's one of the beautiful things about the United States is you can travel, you can go to another location where the jobs are, where you want to be, where you fit.

 

00;29;02;18 - 00;29;07;04

DP

Well, that's a really interesting point. I think we forget that. I certainly do.

 

00;29;07;06 - 00;29;11;03

JH

Got a little international connection that reminds me of it quite a bit.

 

00;29;11;05 - 00;29;18;18

DP

So, John, it's been great to have you here today. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about JP2 Architects and yourself?

 

00;29;18;21 - 00;29;37;17

JH

Well, we are active on social media, so your normal spots of LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Our website is JP2architects.com. And as with a lot of folks, we're looking for people to grow with us. It's an exciting time right now.

 

00;29;37;20 - 00;29;41;11

DP

That's a great little plug. Awesome, man. Well, it's been great to meet you, John.

 

00;29;41;17 - 00;29;51;29

JH

I'll do one more plug. Part of this project is an isolated corner of the 600 block of Broadway, and that is where Brickworks is located.

 

00;29;52;00 - 00;29;53;04

DP

Get out of town.

 

00;29;53;07 - 00;30;27;18

JH

So that is one of the main reasons we wanted to use this project, not only because of the incredible history and everything else associated with it. We thought for sure that corner was made for a Starbucks, a first floor and a second floor seating. But that is not going to happen in Fell's Point. Fell's Point is about local businesses, local restaurants and Brickworks Studio there is phenomenal. I love it. It is such a great fit and we love having them a resource that's just down the street.

 

00;30;27;25 - 00;30;52;07

DP

Yeah, it's kind of perfect.

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;17

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;19 - 00;00;30;25

William Smart (WS)

The approval authority wants us to respect how it looks from the outside and how it integrates with the streetscape, with the materials of the area, which is predominantly brick with sawtooth roofs. And they also want you to kind of reinforce and retain the great character of the precinct. So to keep these big, large, open plan offices with sawtooth roofs, I feel as a designer, we nailed it. We really got the design exactly right.

 

00;00;30;27 - 00;03;09;28

DP

This is my guest, William Smart. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault will highlight William’s new Smart Design Studio building. The new Smart Design Studio is an innovative, sustainable and sculptural building with both new and renovated facades that sit within an inner city conservation area of brick warehouses. The design relates to the industrial buildings from the precinct.

 

While it makes a departure with a modern facade of tiles, galvanized sheeting, steel frame windows and dynamic forms of curling and curving brick. Structurally, a large portion of the building feels industrial with precast concrete slabs, structural brick roof vaults and steel. Environmentally, the naturally lit and ventilated studio collects its own water and generates its own power, creating a carbon neutral building.

 

In addition, large full length clear story windows enable natural light to enter the single industrial scale workspace. The Sawtooth roof trusses and a portion of the facades were retained with the exception of the offices on the western street frontage. That's where a narrow, highly designed apartment runs atop the length of the building. The apartment features four self-supporting offset brick, catenary vaults that allow light into the apartment.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. William Smart is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects. He's also the founder and creative director of Smart Design Studio, established in 1998. The Office is a multi-disciplined design studio offering professional services and architecture, interior architecture and design. Over the past 23 years, Smart Design Studio has delivered a wide range of projects from large scale master planning, cultural buildings, offices, workplaces to private houses and product design.

 

Smart Design Studio’s buildings have received critical acclaim since its inception , SDS has received over 50 international and national awards for architecture, urban design and interior design. William was also the recipient of Indie Award’s Luminary Award. Williams taught and lectured across Australia, published written work and is an active participant in the design community. So welcome, William. Nice to have you with us today.

 

Before we get started, tell us a little bit about Smart Design Studio. So you're coming to us from about 16,000 kilometers away. So tell us where you're located. What's the size of your firm and the type of work that you do.

 

00;03;09;28 - 00;04;33;03

WS

Doug It's a real pleasure to be here. Our studio is located in Sydney, which is on the east coast of Australia, and it's a temperate climate, so subtropical. So like today's the middle of winter, the maximum temperature will be 18 degrees Celsius in summer it gets quite warm, reasonably humid, but not quite tropical. It's quite a nice environment.

 

I'll talk about that in more detail because we've tried to do a very sustainable project for our offices, but we've been running for about 25 years now and with 50 people and we think that's just the perfect size for us because we can do some large projects that run over many years and we can do some small detail projects that allow us to be more innovative or to get a level of detail to explore and develop.

 

And we love integrating architecture and interiors and view it as one and through our own way of working, we've developed a methodology which we call design from the inside out or architecture from the inside out. And so we try to think of our buildings from the interior perspective. First, what is the space we're making? How do the occupants use the building?

 

And then we work through from that perspective toward the outside of the building and try to build an armature around it that's responsible, sustainable, complements the character of the community that we live in as well and tries to synthesize all those things together. But the approach is definitely to build it from the internal spaces.

 

00;04;33;06 - 00;04;34;20

DP

So form follows function.

 

00;04;34;20 - 00;05;25;19

WS

Absolutely form follows function. But we also think you can be really powerful with form and you can develop emotive responses to form. So just in that idea of internal spaces, we think that in a really great building, and the best of ours achieve this, you take someone to a moment when they go, Whoa, this is amazing, this is beautiful.

 

And sometimes that's more than the functionality. It can be just an internal space where there's a staircase or a vista or place you go to that's a surprising experience. And I'm often in my mind imagining how an occupant or a user of the building will circulate through it, how they will walk into a room, what the transition of light is from outside, inside and from one room to another.

 

And how they go to this place and think, Wow, I wasn't expecting this at all.

 

00;05;25;21 - 00;05;27;03

DP

That's a beautiful description.

 

00;05;27;10 - 00;05;27;22

WS

Thank you.

 

00;05;27;29 - 00;05;33;06

DP

Absolutely. So I was on your website, pretty extensive. What type of projects do you guys take?

 

00;05;33;12 - 00;06;56;17

WS

Well, we've been running for 25 years now, and that means we've really grown the company into a place where we can be careful about the projects we take. So we are looking for projects where we can design the architecture and the interiors as one. And that's borne out of our philosophy of how we work. And we're also looking for projects where we can achieve a lot of detail, and that doesn't necessarily mean we need to use expensive materials.

 

We actually quite like inexpensive materials, things like the everyday brick is something we're in love with and how we use that is probably where the innovation starts. But we like to do architecture and interiors has one a lot of detail and work on projects from start to end so we can really achieve the details and in that we prefer to have a range of projects.

 

So at least half of our work are residential projects and they can vary from large apartment buildings where there's more complex of buildings down to small houses and everything in between. And then we also do a few commercial projects, cultural projects such as art galleries, or recently we finished Science Gallery in Melbourne, which is about the fusion of art and science in this new space.

 

And we use architecture to bring the two together and then we also tend to end up working on a few product design projects as well. So door handles, grip rails, other things going down into there. Very fine detail is something that we love doing concurrently.

 

00;06;56;24 - 00;07;04;18

DP

That's really cool. I have a lot of questions. We'll get to them in just a minute. So tell us a little bit about yourself. So how did you start Smart Design Studio?

 

00;07;04;24 - 00;08;50;03

WS

I started my own design studio in ‘98, so 25 years ago. And after graduating, I worked in France for a year and a half and learned about traditional ways of building. Following that, I worked for just over three years at Foster and Partners in London, which is a very big commercial practice and has built a number of buildings in the US.

 

And then I came back to Australia in ‘96 for the Olympics and I wanted to work on an Olympic project and I wanted to try living in Sydney because I grew up in the country, in Western Australia, in the outback, and I moved to Sydney to work on the railway station at the Olympic site. So I've gone from working on large projects and as that last project was nearing to an end, I felt this need to set up my own studio and do my own projects.

 

And I chose that name without having any projects in mind or in place. I thought I had something to say and I didn't know what it was, but I just felt I had a voice and I needed to create a platform to develop my own voice. And I wasn't getting that in working for other practices because I was channeling the voice of that practice.

 

So that's why I set it up and it's taken really sort of 15 years to find out what that voice is. I had things I liked I was interested in. There weren't always the budgets on the first few projects to achieve those things, but over time we've developed these interests in materials who work with the details, who work with the forms, the collaborations with other architects or engineers or other consultants and contractors, and have kind of come up with some buildings that are remarkable that people think and ask us, How did you do that? How was that made? How could you do all that? It seems unbelievable, which is great. I think that's what I wanted to do when I started this practice 25 years ago.

 

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

DP

It's great. I have some of the same questions for you today about your building. So clearly when you got started, your office was relatively small. You've grown to 50 people. What's your role in the office now?

 

00;09;02;02 - 00;10;17;06

WS

How I see my role is to kind of help guide a large team of people towards the great outcome. So we need to achieve. So my favorite thing is preparing drawings or writing specifications. I like that more than the other stuff that comes with running a company of this size and often there's a lot of meetings. But this morning I just was in an early morning meeting with some contractors about trying to nut out some key details that we couldn't let go of on a new commercial building we're doing.

 

And then the project architect that's running that's doing an amazing job, but at this moment needs me to come in and say to the contractors, this is the way it's going to be. We've got to document and develop in that way. So that's kind of how I end up steering things. And I work four days a week from Sydney and then one or two days a week out of town and on that day I try to sit down on the drawing board and not our new projects or complex projects, but I love that drawing time.

 

So I'm kind of like a person in the team that's almost like a coach that tries to help everybody get to the right place and at times I'll step in and lend a hand and at times I'll be working in the background, checking things and reviewing things and trying to help develop the direction of projects. But it's sort of like this really strong helping role that I've developed over time.

 

00;10;17;09 - 00;10;23;05

DP

I'm sure this varies, but how many projects do you typically have in the office running at the same time?

 

00;10;23;05 - 00;11;21;10

WS

I would say there's probably about 20 active projects at the moment and from that we would have three or four that are going through planning approval processes. And in Australia that's very slow. It takes probably a year for us to get planning consent on a project and they don't take a lot of work, but they take sporadic pieces of work.

 

So accounts who might come back and say change this time or work on that for a short while. So maybe five or six projects in those stages. We've always got a couple in preparing for planning. We've normally got a few in the documentation stage and then we’ve normally got half a dozen or even more at the moment that are under construction.

 

And some of those are very large projects that go over three or four years and then some of them are smaller ones. It might be a year or a year and a half, but it just naturally works out that somehow it's all fairly evenly spread between all the different stages, and it means that we can resource it well and improve on our systems and ways of documenting from the work we're building on site all the time.

 

00;11;21;13 - 00;11;41;15

DP

Well, it certainly sounds interesting for you because you get to bounce around on a lot of different projects at different stages in the process, so it sounds like a lot of fun. So let's dig in here and talk about our building. Tell us about the new Smart Design Studio. So how long have you guys been in your current location and before that, what was your original location?

 

00;11;41;18 - 00;14;32;23

WS

Before this, we were in an area in Sydney called Surry Hills, which is kind of a beautiful, quite central, historic part of town. And we moved to this new industrial area that's being transformed at the moment, halfway between the center of Sydney and the airport. And that means we're actually only four kilometers from the city center because our main airports very close to town.

 

What attracted us to this particular area was that we could get a very large piece of land at a relatively inexpensive price and build a studio where the whole of the team could work on one floor. And linked into that is a desire to not grow anymore. We've sort of arrived at 50, for us that’s the perfect size. We can do some large projects, some small ones, and control all of the stage as well.

 

So we do want to grow anymore. But we did recognize that from our last project and our last office that we needed to all be in one room and work from that space. So we bought an old warehouse building in a conservation area. And for us that means that it's not a heritage listed item, so you can make changes to it.

 

And quite extensive changes, but you've got to work within the character of the area and the approval authority wants us to respect how it looks from the outside and how it integrates with the streetscape, with the materials of the area, which is predominantly brick with sorted roofs. And I also want you to kind of reinforce and retain the great character of the precinct and to do that internally.

 

So to keep these big, large, open plan offices with sorted roofs. And that just worked perfectly for how we wanted to use that particular space. So we have an office of about 800 square meters just over. So it's almost 20 square meters per person. It's like a lot of room because we've had our own office before. We've understood what it is that we need and how we work and what the best range would be.

 

And I feel as a designer, we nailed it. We really got the design exactly right. So it's one big room which is about 20 by 20 meters. And then on the outside of that, we have four separate rooms, one for model making. One is a kind of breakout space, what we call the canteen. One is a materials library, and then the last one is the front of house and meeting room area.

 

And so the activities that need to be segregated from the main working space are on the outside of that, but within the same volume and then the central space is flooded with natural light and has a beautiful acoustic to it. So you can hear the sound of people talking, but you actually can't hear what they're saying. So it doesn't take your attention away from what you're doing.

 

It's a really great space to work in. And one of the interesting things is we make a lot of models, we do a lot of hand drawings. All the walls are pinned up with work, and then there's maybe more than 100 models in various states of completion or degradation, over time through the studio space. So you feel like you've walked into this creative space where work is being developed and being designed on the run.

 

00;14;33;00 - 00;14;51;25

DP

So I've always found that it's really hard to be my own client. And I'm kind of wondering, so you first lay out the programmatic requirements and as you start designing, did that evolve? Did the program change a little bit for you? What was a client like? Just kidding. And did you know right away what you wanted?

 

00;14;51;28 - 00;16;06;23

WS

I've done a few projects for myself now and I'm designing a couple more and I love working for myself. I don't find it hard being my own client. The only sticking point every time is budget. Actually, I always run over budget dramatically and have to find a way of making that work. But I love designing for myself and the main studio spaces who are designing it.

 

And in fact the whole building almost felt like it designed itself. I didn't even feel like I was designing it. It just felt like it all fell into place quite easily for us. Those projects are rare, certainly the minority, but this one felt like as soon as we drew something, it felt right. And then you just made minor adjustments along the way and it kind of sold together quite beautifully.

 

And I feel like in just about every area, we got it really right because we put so much thought into what is it we need and how much space do we need for these kinds of materials? And you know, when we have all the models, what do you want the clients to see when they walk around the studio?

 

We even thought about that tour through the studio and how we would walk prospective clients and consultants through the space and tell the story of how we work and who we are. There's so many layers to the design and we had time to think about it properly and do a good job. So I feel like we've got it right.

 

00;16;06;23 - 00;16;11;29

DP

The final design included an apartment. Tell us a little bit about that.

 

00;16;12;01 - 00;17;59;16

WS

This conservation area in Sydney, what the city wants is for this to be a hub of activity and for that to not be where people live. They want businesses here, they want makers, they want microbreweries, they want art galleries, they want live music. So they're kind of trying to develop that in this particular area. So they have prohibited housing, including apartments in this area except for a caretaker's residence they allow.

 

So we were able to get an approval to build a caretaker's residence on this site. And that's why it's called the caretaker's residence, because it was permitted under the planning consent. And it's where I live with my partner and my dog and these catenary shaped and structural brick vaults. And there's two big ones and two small ones and the big ones are about seven meters wide and 4.2 meters high.

 

And the small ones are about five meters wide and 2.7 meters high. And in between these vaults, they're offset from each other, we have these large sheets of glass, and it allows light to flood into the space. I think what we were trying to do with the project on many levels is to be something that was very responsive to this precinct.

 

So it was a positive contribution to the heritage area that we work in. And also we wanted to just have a bit of fun with the project and do some things we didn't know how. I've been dreaming of doing beautiful vaulted brick structures like you might see in Barcelona. I've been dreaming of them for a long time and I couldn't find a client that wanted to do it because we generally get to a sticking point, which would be a conversation a bit like, Tell us about your experience in doing this.

 

So I haven't done it before, but I know how I can work it out and then a clients would just get to a point where that's how I want to be your guinea pig. I don't want to test this for you. So we were able to do that with ourselves and it's actually a beautiful space to be in.

 

00;17;59;18 - 00;18;18;17

DP

It looks really wonderful. I'm going to stop you right there because we're going to come back to the vaults. Let's talk about the building design and we'll start with the basics. So tell us a little bit about the site now. It didn't look like there were any unique topographic features. Seemed pretty straightforward and there was a building on the property already. Tell us a little bit about that.

 

00;18;18;19 - 00;19;35;27

WS

So there's an existing warehouse here and the front strip of that building, which was where the offices and meetings had been adjusted so many times over the past 60 years that it had lost all its integrity. And we demolished that front seven meters and rebuilt that. And then we kept the rest of the warehouse, which was about 80% of the footprint, and restored that.

 

And that's where that big room is in our studio. And the front strip, which is seven meters wide, has a beautiful brick vaulted facade that almost looks as though it's peeling open the brick kind of curves outwards and leans downwards. And we worked out a way to lay bricks facing downward direction and peels up again the other way.

 

And at the top of that three story structure, we have this apartment building which is got the four votes that we spoke of before. And so what we tried to do with the project was to use everyday ordinary materials like galvanized roof sheeting and galvanized steel windows and a very simple brick. But to take these materials and do something extraordinary with them.

 

So my kind of beautiful sculptural shapes or to make beautiful load bearing brick vaults. So that was one of the primary objectives and that talks to the history of the area and really relates back in a very sympathetic way to the context.

 

00;19;36;04 - 00;19;45;16

DP

So you'd said it was a conservation area. Were the zoning restrictions challenging for you guys? And then was the building ultimately reviewed by a review board?

 

00;19;45;22 - 00;21;11;18

WS

Totally. It was very well received and mostly it complies with the planning controls that the biggest challenge for us was getting this caretaker's residence approved. But one of the great initiatives of the project also was we wanted to make all our own power, collect our own water, and reuse that on onsite to be a carbon neutral building.

 

And the city responded very well to that. And because Sydney's quite a hot climate in summer, we need some way of controlling the climate and really stopping the sun from coming into the spaces. So we designed this sustainable building where we don't have any air conditioning in the studio or the apartment spaces and it's just naturally ventilated. And we have underfloor heating which has got hydraulic pipes that extend and wrap around through the floor and in summer they work in reverse and I call the floor and that chill the space.

 

And in Sydney, which has relatively high humidity, we have to manage that carefully so you don't get condensation on the floor surface. But we do all that through a building management system, which is like a computer that opens, it controls the windows, it also controls blinds, it controls the fans, it controls how much water goes through the floor and what temperature and so forth.

 

And tomorrow is thinking about today. And it's managing all that quite beautifully, actually. It all works extremely well. And it's a real milestone. There aren't many buildings in Sydney that are comfortable to be in without air conditioning in summer. It's just so hot here in the summer months and humid that it's a real challenge to make that work.

 

00;21;11;20 - 00;21;24;00

DP

Yeah, I don't understand that. So it's natural ventilation, meaning windows or open air is flowing through the building. You've got to control the humidity on the interior. How is that done?

 

00;21;24;03 - 00;23;32;14

WS

So how it works is the building sets up about five different climate times of the year. One of those is extremely hot and extremely cold. So they're two different times of the year. And then you have temperate and then warm and cool and then the perfect temperature. So this time of the year is a cool time of the year.

 

And what happens now is the windows will stay closed all day and then around midday they'll open for an hour and change the air and they'll close again. So they have little motors that open and control them. They're called actuators. And at nighttime, the building opens up all year round for either two or 5 hours, depending on whether it needs to cool down or heat up or how much air we need to change.

 

So big volume space, you can do this because there's so much air for the number of occupants that you don't need to have the windows open all day long. If you had a regular office building, you've got to rethink that because you run out of oxygen and people start to feel sleepy and tired. So what the building does is it kind of breathes in a way and lets the oxygen in at nighttime and fills up the space with the fresh air.

 

And in the daytime, if it's moderate like springtime, the windows just stay open all day long and they don't open a lot. They only open about an inch. So you're not getting air running through at high velocity. You're just getting a trickle of breeze running through the space. And what often happens is the high level windows are normally open a lot to let the hot air out.

 

So we have an overheating problem more than a problem of being too cold and we've got to warm up the space. But today it would be all the windows would be closed. Now, as I mentioned before, we're trying to hold on to the heat. And then what we're going to try and do is just block some of the heat load to stop, particularly the eastern and western sun from coming into the space and overcooking the space.

 

The building design has less glass on the east and the west than you would normally see in most office buildings. And then our design thinking is about what you do with the light when it comes into the space. How do you reflect and bounce it and make a beautiful private atmosphere to be in without having a huge amount of glass that would lose a lot of heat in winter and gain a lot of heat in summer?

 

00;23;32;17 - 00;23;37;25

DP

Very interesting, very different than what we're used to here in the US for the most part.

 

00;23;37;28 - 00;24;32;03

WS

Yeah. So glass is sort of interesting, isn't it? Because you think of it as the way of bringing light into the space and it absolutely does that. But in another way it's a poorly insulated material compared to others. So if you think of it as a very thin sheet of plastic or cling film or something like that, then even if it's not getting sun directly on it, it's going to let the heat out or the heat in whichever one you don't want.

 

It's just going to allow the temperature to move towards what's on the outside, even if you don't want it to. So a principle that we have is to reduce the amount of glass in buildings. We try not to do buildings that are mostly glass, you know, in an office building to get at least 30% of the facade is solid, but we're targeting more like 50% solid.

 

And you have to be very thoughtful about the occupants of the building and the desire of the tenants to have a lot of glass in the spaces and how you're going to be really responsible with that as well.

 

00;24;32;10 - 00;24;57;21

DP

So let's go back to the building plan for a second so our listeners can imagine this. So you've got, as far as I understand it would be like a large square. The front end is a long rectangle, the series of stories and then the leftover, much larger rectangle is the workspaces. And then along that long front facing rectangle atop that is the apartment, am I correct?

 

00;24;57;27 - 00;24;58;16

WS

That's exactly right/

 

00;24;58;16 - 00;25;12;29

DP

Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the style choice now. So when you're walking in the alley in the back, you see one facade and you're walking along the main road in the front, you see a very esthetically different facade. Tell us a little bit about those.

 

00;25;13;02 - 00;27;58;20

WS

Yeah. So the laneway at the back, which is called Balaclava Lane, is the original facade of the building. And it's interesting when you walk through this precinct because what you see is the laneways are almost exactly as they were built in the 1950s. So you see rusty old windows, old timber, rickety doors, original brickwork that's never been painted.

 

And they're beautiful, they're just gorgeous to look at. And people who find them think they're incredible. And this is a little bit of an undiscovered area right in the center of Sydney. It's kind of remarkable. And then on the front street faces of the building, all of the people have gone and renovated them, I guess, every ten years and modernized them.

 

And so there's no good buildings left behind. They've done them cheaply, badly. They've kind of destroyed the integrity of the streetscape. So we saw an opportunity with our building was to leave the back as it was because it's so beautiful. And our work there was to make it durable, waterproof, more environmentally responsible, but not stylistically too different. And then on the front streetscape, we had an opportunity there to be quite expressive.

 

So we tried to do a modern version of the building opposite ours, which is the only one in our street that hasn't been renovated. And it's a classic sort of modernist style where you have very long horizontal steel frame windows, a kind of beautiful ribbons of glass in between those in a bit of a tower at the end.

 

And we almost mimic that design. But we did that in a way that was more nuanced to keeping that hot sun out in particular and giving the views out from the internal rooms that we wanted to see. So in the main meeting rooms, we needed to have solid walls in the spaces so we could pin up our work and control the light.

 

And then we have high level windows to let light into the meeting rooms and low level windows to look out to a garden that's on the street below. So when we worked from that idea of what the internal spaces needed to be, and then we married that with what the environment needed to do and then thought about the context, it led to a new building from the outside, which looks like very long strip windows.

 

And the positioning of those relates to the internal functions of the space. And then we tried to be creative and inventive and to take that everyday material being a brick and just to kind of push it to do things no one had done with it before in our minds. I mean, you have some amazing architects in America, like Frank Gehry, who's done incredible things with brick as well.

 

But we sort of thought there's an opportunity here to represent this era of technology and to be a design that came from the 2020s, for example, rather than something from the 1950s.

 

00;27;58;22 - 00;28;05;25

DP

So tell us a little bit more about this peeling brick facade. How did you guys make these partial vaults?

 

00;28;05;27 - 00;30;54;05

WS

All of the work is in sections and cross section, not in plan. So when you look at the building as a floor plan, they're all rectangular rooms on the inside. But in section we have a part of the facade that peels outwards at the top and sort of leans outwards. And we worked out a way to lay the bricks on top of each other almost at 45 degrees.

 

And we're able to do that with creating a small jig to lay them on. And then we laid up to three courses at once and then we'd have to leave it for overnight and then lay another three courses the next day. So it dried and then on the bottom part, we lay them over a steel frame and on that steel frame we had a curved sheet of metal, so they were laid onto that curve sheet of metal and then tied back using brick ties to that other element that that projected outwards.

 

So that's sort of what was done in construction. How we came up with that was to work collaboratively with our bricklayers and our engineers and just sit down at the table. And we knew who we wanted to build the project before we'd finished all the documentation. And so we were able to sit down with them at a meeting table.

 

And I kind of said, here's the vision, this is what we want to do, and this is how I thought you might make it. But I don't really know how to lay a brick. Can you help us with this process? And the builders we chose I experts in heritage construction and they also know a lot about engineering. So they were able to sit down with their bricklayers and myself and our structure engineer and we workshopped it together.

 

And in a few hours we worked out how to do that. And then they went away and did on their own. And what I've learned over the last 25 years of doing my business is that sometimes you need to monitor something very closely and sometimes you actually just have to let it go. And these bricklayers were so good and so careful.

 

And they loved this job so much that they just wanted to be let go. And I hardly had to do any supervision work at all in the project. It was just developed by them. And one day I remember they turned up on site and they said, William, we think we have to change your brick causing dimension, which I'd set at 51.3 millimeters.

 

They said, we need to change it to 51.4 millimeters. So that's the height at which each brick goes from one to an x one. And it kind of came out with this big bit of paper that looked at all the maps and showed me how that would work and how many bricks it would be. And then I just thought, if we're talking about 0.1 of a millimeter, then you guys don't let me at all, you are there, you really embrace the project.

 

So it was 100% a really strong collaboration project where they would come along and say, We thought we'd like to change this part. And this is our suggestion. And most of the time it just made it better. That's the best part of collaboration, I think, is when you enjoy the process and other people make the project even better.

 

00;30;54;07 - 00;31;12;01

DP

Yeah, for sure. I think I've asked every single guest we've had so far if they had trouble finding a mason, almost every one of them, I think every one of them so far said they did not have a difficult time. I know we've had some challenges over the years finding really talented Masons. It's a dying breed.

 

00;31;12;03 - 00;32;08;01

WS

This project was a wonderful opportunity for some of those bricklayers to really show their skills and to be proud of what they did, and they're really proud of it. The two bricklayers we had here related that was Gareth, who is over 70 years old, lies drick six days a week, loves doing it, and his son in law, Harvey, Harvey, married Gareth daughter and they've been laying bricks together for like 30 years or something incredible.

 

And they just really love this project. And I realized that as architects we actually have an opportunity to create buildings where the tradesmen can really shine. And what I believe is that if you kind of create the vision and the project, the people will come to it. You'll find the people to make it. There'll be someone who just loves the challenge of doing something that's not square and upright and the standard thing. They want to kind of do some experimental parts of the project as well.

 

00;32;08;04 - 00;32;17;03

DP

You said that you were thinking, Well, there's a lot of brick out here. I'd love to use brick. Were there any restrictions because it was a conservation area.

 

00;32;17;05 - 00;33;57;08

WS

Not explicit. I mean, the cities, it's quite merit based in its assessment, I suppose, because what they're saying is we want you to make a positive contribution to this area. I think if you went in, proposed something like an aluminum clad building, they would reject the plans, but you probably could do concrete or concrete block or maybe stone as well.

 

But it seems so logical in this area that it'd be made from brick. I've had quite a lot of experience in working with brick site over the years. I've started to understand how to do mortar joints really well, how to make it kind of work gymnastics so it can do more expressive forms and it felt like the right material.

 

And then for us it came down to the point of choosing exactly the right brick. And we have two types of brick in our building. One is called a dry press brick, and that's made about 60 kilometers from Sydney, so very local. And they're beautiful. They're white, they're in the space that I mean, now they're chalky, they chip easily, they have incredible material quality to them.

 

And because they're on the inside, we can afford to use these more softer bricks and look after them. Well, and then on the outside of the building, we used a very durable brick called La Paloma, which is made in Spain, actually. And we wanted to use a black brick on the outside of the building for a bunch of different reasons.

 

But in Australia we don't have the really good clays that make good black bricks, so we had to use the Spanish brick and I made a special profile for us. So they were able to customize it and they're just incredibly strong and durable and look beautiful with the trees and the landscaping that's in this area and marry perfectly with the building opposite that I mentioned.

 

00;33;57;10 - 00;34;16;12

DP

So let's get back to these unique vaults in the apartment. How did you build these? There's a series of them. I saw some photos. They looked like they were built in one location or perhaps moved or were they built at the spot they ended up in and also really unique shape, right? They're elliptical.

 

00;34;16;15 - 00;36;58;22

WS

Yes. They're all built in situ. And how we built them was pretty close to what we imagined at the start. So we made a catenary shaped false work curve. So like a hollow boat sitting upside down, we made a timber plywood form and then we literally put the brakes top of that form so that the mortar didn't leak out in between.

 

We didn't use regular mortar. We use two terracotta tile glue and we glued the bricks together so that there's no mortar joints. And if you’re laying them up down, that's a good way to do it, because you don't have that problem of the mortar leaking out in an uncontrolled way towards the inside face. We made the timber false work that was all CNC cut was put together without using nails.

 

We worked out that you could make this CNC machine work very hard for you and accented cutting is incredible force work because you can make it a perfect shape and it's really fast. They were all cut overnight, delivered in one day, all assembled within one week. So a very fast process. We laid the bricks across the top and then we put a thin layer of reinforcing mesh over the top of that and we sprayed it with 60 nostics of concrete.

 

Now, in that process, with all the bricks glued together and you have this concrete on the outside, the brick itself, in this catenary shape doesn't need any support. It will hold itself up. It is the perfect structural shape. And that shape can also be described by or represented by taking a chain and hold it at the two ends that slumps to a catenary shape in tension.

 

When you invert that and put that up the other way, it stays true to its shape, but it's all in compression and brick has a great material for compression. It's strong when the forces are loaded on top of it. And the person that made that famous is the Sagrada Familia Building in Barcelona uses catenary vaults everywhere. And Antonio Gaudí is the master of how those elements come together.

 

We laid bricks on top. We spread it with a thin layer of concrete, but we call shock crete. In Australia, it's a similar way to how you build swimming pools. They trialed that off and they left it to drive for a month and then after that we took it away. So the concrete in that system provides provide stability because you could imagine if you make this brick vault, then it's a bit vulnerable when you have kind of a strong sideways force, like a very large wind or a branch or a tree falling on it, it could all fall sideways and topple over and then take it away.

 

And it stands up beautifully in this place is kind of fun to do all that. We worked collaboratively with one of the local universities who helped with the CNC cutting. They wanted a project where they could talk about real life building within education programs, and they linked that into the software and how you would shape and develop it and how even patterned the bricks internally. It was all done through parametric software as well.

 

00;36;58;28 - 00;37;01;27

DP

So I'm curious, do the walls have to be insulated?

 

00;37;01;29 - 00;37;22;02

WS

So in that construction, we have brick on the inside, then we have this thin layer of concrete on the outside of that, we have a 100 millimeters thick insulation that you might only see in a courtroom. So it's rigid insulation, it's got silver socking it, it's very strong. And then outside of that, we have plywood and standing same galvanized roof sheeting.

 

00;37;22;08 - 00;37;23;04

DP

So you had to curve the plywood?

 

00;37;23;06 - 00;38;39;22

WS

Yeah, we curved the plywood and they were laid in strips that ran the length of the catenary except for in parts of it where we wanted to see this very thin edge. We use seven millimeters thick plywood and laid them in two different directions and glued them together. Gluing sounds like a horrible word, isn't it? Sounds like you're cheating in a way.

 

But if you think of it as adhesives, there's a lot of technology that's developed with very strong and durable adhesives now, so they can work well together and as I mentioned earlier, this space we're in now has no air conditioning in the space. It's a beautiful climate. There's a lot of thermal mass. So there's brick walls, stone floors, brick ceilings, effectively relatively small amount of windows.

 

So maybe 10% of the wall area is window. But it's a bright space because we carefully think about how the light comes into the space. So it is very comfortable all year round. We'll go through that week of very hot weather in the middle of summer where the temperatures soared to over 40 degrees and the humidity is up over 80%.

 

We go through that week of the year with a maximum temperature in the space would peak at 26 degrees. It's really comfortable. It works very well. It's a good illustration of that concept that a well insulated environment that has a lot of exposed thermal mass will be very resilient in hot weather as long as you keep it well insulated.

 

00;38;39;24 - 00;38;46;03

DP

It sounds like it. So how long did the process take then from design to completion for the whole project?

 

00;38;46;06 - 00;40;35;20

WS

The whole project was three years. So it was a year and a half to design and document and get planning consent. So while it was chugging its way through the consent authority, which is a very slow process in Sydney in particular, we were documenting the project and then it took us a year and a half to build. It was a wonderful experience.

 

I thought to myself at the outset of the project, here’s three years of my life and I've got to keep working at the same time to keep my business running. I really want to enjoy this and make it a special experience that I won't ever forget. So in doing that, I came to site with my dog every Saturday morning from seven and left at about two in the afternoon and spent a lot of time with the builders working through things, thinking about things, making sure we're prepared for the next week, and then did two site meetings a week on Tuesday mornings and Thursday mornings came down for a few hours each time and I got know every single person that was on the building site really well. So to that level where you knew where they lived, you knew what their family was like and developed a really strong kind of bond in the process. And many of these people have gone on to work on other projects, but we all know each other now, so friendships form in that process and I look back on it as a really wonderful time in my life where I kind of immersed myself in construction and it gave back more than I had to give it.

 

It taught me so much about building, about design, about opportunities with projects, about just if you have a vision, put it out there and just let the people come to it and let them do their magic. That doesn't always work perfectly for everybody because some people just don't want to do the hard stuff. They want to do the easy stuff.

 

But I feel like if you put it out there in the right way, then you will attract the people who want to do the really good projects.

 

00;40;35;22 - 00;41;04;18

DP

Yeah, it's my favorite part of the job is the people part. Actually, I love to draw, but I love going out into the field and meeting people and listening to them and asking them questions and really feeling out early on how they would solve a problem before I tell them how it's going to be solved because I'm always going to learn something.

 

So I completely agree with you. You had said that you loved to draw. Who did the drawing for this building? Was it you and a series of other people or and did you do the drawings in 2D and 3D?

 

00;41;04;20 - 00;43;25;05

WS

I led the team. For me, it was a personal project and that was my opportunity to have very strong and close leadership on every aspect of it, from the architecture to the interior design. In that interior design sort of realm, we custom designed about 13 new products for the project, from chairs to stools to grab rails to door handles to lighting fixtures.

 

For us, the product design stuff takes a lot of time, but it's very rewarding and we couldn't develop new product for it. But we went down to custom designing a whole lot of special things. We did the architecture and the interiors, and I led the design team. At its peak it was about five or six people working on the project during the documentation phase where in construction we had a full time architect plus myself and I was working actually about 40 hours a week on the project to kind of do all this, meetings and make sure everything was done properly. So I was probably not just a project architect, but a little bit of a developer, manager and managing the consultant to the council and other people in that process as well. And we drew it all in 2D software called Micro Station, and that was one of the last projects we did with that software.

 

We now use Revit for most of our documentation and we also used a little bit of software called Rhino, and we did a little bit of scripting for laying out pick patterns with that software, able to very quickly change the shape of the catenary and check the light coming into the space and very quickly change all that brick patterning, which is quite unique, sort of the bricks aren't light in a normal brick bound configuration.

 

They're laid where the offset is very close to the end of the brick. You get this beautiful rifling pattern of the vertical brick joints through the room. And so we used a bit of software for that, and then we made five cardboard models for the space. There was the early version which didn't have a catenary vault. It had a barrel vault in its roof.

 

And we made two other models of the apartment space and a few test models for the facade of the. So I've come to realize that the CGIs will kind of give you a perspective view on the space. A cardboard model will give you a three dimensional, very fast feeling of what the volumes are like. You see the light coming in.

 

It's a very different experience and we find that preparing a cardboard model with a CGI is the perfect way to describe a project to our clients. They love them.

 

00;43;25;12 - 00;43;38;10

DP

Before we move on to one or two other questions, I wanted to go back to sustainability for a second. We talked a little bit about the lack of HVAC system there. Tell us a little bit about the water savings system.

 

00;43;38;12 - 00;46;18;07

WS

So in an old warehouse building, we have a large proportion of roof to the floorplan. So the building here is just over a thousand square meters in its footprint on the land and more than 80% of that is a sawtooth roof which has tall windows facing south. That's our kind of not sunny side and then the inclined roofs facing pitching towards the north which is our sunny side in the southern hemisphere.

 

From that we collect all the water and push it into large rainwater tanks and then that's filtered and used for flushing toilets and for irrigating the property. So we have some irrigation pipes in the ground that drip feed the plants in the area in summer, able to harvest all the water and use that to be honest, we could have put much bigger tanks in because it collects so much water in heavy downpours, a subtropical area, you would kind of go through a month where there isn't any rain or two and then quite often have a big downpour where sometimes it will rain for a week without stopping.

 

So having bigger tanks is the next stage of the project. Actually, we're going to do the next stage, which is another building a few years on from now, and that building will have really big rainwater tanks in there because we can save it up even more for the future. That roof also allowed us to install 260 solar panels, which is about a 95 kilowatt solar farm system, and that generates in its own right more than twice the power that we need in our office.

 

And so we've set up a little network where we export the power to one of our neighbors and we sell them the power at the rate that they would buy it from the normal supplier. We just have a meter on it and we use that money to start to pay down some of the investment on this very large solar array system.

 

We also have a backup battery. So every day we fill up the battery and draw down that in the evening and some of that battery is reserved for backup power. If we were to have a power failure, it will help to run our server to shut down slowly and or things like that. We have a stage two for the project and a few years on from now we're going to build an even larger building on a neighboring site, which we also own, and that building will even be more sustained.

 

We're going to push this even harder. We've just launched our plans to the city to see if we can get approval for it, and it's being favorably received at the moment. But we believe there's a market in Sydney for spaces without air conditioning, with a lot of natural light, with natural ventilation and kind of a unique character that's not your average copper tiled ceiling tiled, sealed office building. I don't think people want that anymore, but we'll find out in the future.

 

00;46;18;09 - 00;46;33;14

DP

It sounds profoundly unique and profoundly valuable. I mean, that is incredible. So because you're not spending all this money on energy, you're generating enough power to run not only your building, but you're selling it the energy as well. That’s amazing.

 

00;46;33;17 - 00;47;54;14

WS

Our sort of energy system is quite advanced in allowing many different roofs of buildings in cities to have solar panels and then to blend that power with the power system of the city. So a lot of people have their own solar array systems. And if there's an excess, so a day like today, it's beautiful and sunny in Sydney and right now we would be making more power than we're using without doubt.

 

And what would be happening is the surplus power would be used to fill up the batteries and once they're filled up, that goes back into the grid for the city and the blend of power is distributed to other buildings in the area. We thought rather than doing that, we could firstly push it to our neighbors and then any top up power comes from the grid and any surplus power goes back into the great.

 

So it's the network set up to have these blended power sources and that makes a lot of sense because you really are producing the energy at the same place that you're using it. And a roof, for example, isn't a redundant asset in our mind. A roof should be used for, in addition to its performance to keep water out, it should be used to collect energy or to make green spaces for people and other animals like birds and bees to live in, in those spaces as well.

 

So we see that as an incredibly valuable asset to every building project.

 

00;47;54;21 - 00;48;07;14

DP

Very forward thinking, really interesting. So one of the last questions got for you, give me one or two things that you guys learned during the design, drawing and construction process on this job. What was new to you?

 

00;48;07;16 - 00;50;43;16

WS

One thing that I had thought about for a long time that this project absolutely cemented in my mind was this idea of bringing people to the table. So I spoke earlier about having our bricklayers and our engineers and the builder and myself come to the table and just say, Here's the vision of the project. I don't know how to lay bricks, but this is what I thought they might be like.

 

And they would say, Yes, it works like this, you don't know that. That was really successful. And we did that almost in every single building element. So we would do the same process for the windows, for laying the floor tiles, for laying the roof shading. I kind of lay out here, here all the drawings. This is what I thought about.

 

This is what we're working towards. Do you think this is the right way of working? And in that process, I got a lot of respect from particularly the tradesmen doing the work because that really happens within they often get told what to do and they don't get asked what their ideas are. And I also realized that it gave them an opportunity to be engaged with the project mentally.

 

So they felt invested. And for that the reward that we had was we got a higher standard of construction than you would normally see. We got people bringing their ideas to the project and we got friendly, smiling faces on a building site. So it kind of had this great energy about it. So that was kind of good. I've been trying to roll that idea out in our practice where we call them briefing meetings.

 

We sit down with a contractor before they start preparing their detailed drawings of how to build what they're going to make. And we tell them about the vision. And people are very, very receptive to that. So that's kind of one thing that I learned in the process. I suppose it ignited this idea that I have now that a part of our role is that we could create opportunities for people to shine like tradesmen, to really show their ways and rather than bricklayers as being borderline ordinary bricks in unremarkable buildings, you could do special things.

 

And the other one I've touched on as well as just I think if you have a vision, then you probably just can just go after that, go looking for the people to collaborate with you and find them and bring them all together so that it's been kind of really invaluable. And I feel like in that process and in collaborating, this always works this way, you need to get to say this is what we're going to try to get out of the project. And in other times you've got to be loose about it and let the collaboration evolve. The design I hate that is not what I want, but you've actually got to back off a little bit from that and listen to them and hear what they're trying to say, because that's what collaboration is.

 

It's two minds coming together to make something better than what one person could do on their own.

 

00;50;43;19 - 00;51;37;06

DP

Yeah, I always find when I ask somebody to give me their opinion or to tell me what they think the solution to a particular challenge is even if the idea they give me isn't something that I'd prefer. I always go back and think about it. And sometimes there are parts of that idea that I end up really falling in love with or liking a lot more than I did or incorporating somewhere else.

 

So I think as architects, we forget. We don't move beyond design all the time. We forget that this is a people business as much as it is about design and it's about money. So, you know, when we get out there in the field, we're working with human beings and to involve them in our jobs and make them invested in the thing that they're making, it ultimately makes a much better product.

 

So I think that's all very insightful.

 

00;51;37;06 - 00;51;40;25

WS

The process is way more enjoyable if you do that as well.

 

00;51;40;28 - 00;51;43;00

DP

Absolutely. My goodness.

 

00;51;43;03 - 00;52;28;13

WS

The part that comes to mind really for the project is longevity is something I really believe in and we've spoken a bit about sustainability in terms of energy consumption or collecting water, but another layer of sustainability is if you design things to last a long time, then you can make really big gains in projects. So we won quite a few sustainability awards, principally based on this idea of making way more energy than we use and not having air conditioning, which is a real hurdle to sell over in our environment.

 

The other thing I think is just if you make buildings last for 50, 100 years, then you know, all the embodied energy that goes into making them is really amortized over a long lifespan and becomes much less significant.

 

00;52;28;15 - 00;52;51;03

DP

Yeah, in college we hear a lot about timeless architecture, right? That's our goal is to make architecture timeless and it's so incredibly challenging to do just that. So I commend you guys on the building out there. It's really wonderful. So after all these years of being an architect or running a firm, if you could give your younger self some career advice, what would you say? What have you learned?

 

00;52;51;06 - 00;54;23;16

WS

What I think in architecture is that it's a very broad spectrum of opportunities. You could be really good at detailing or you could be really good at design, or you could be really great with clients and consultants and approval, in a way you’re so good with words. What I feel like is that there aren't many people who can do all of those things extremely well.

 

People tend to have an area that they're good at for people to excel. I feel like you kind of got to go with what you're naturally good and develop and grow that skill and become amazing at that. That's probably what there is to do now that can be architectural detailing, or it could be a type of building that you're interested, or it could be a place you get excited.

 

Like I get excited about incredible internal spaces. That's my favorite thing to design and that's sort of what I try to build is opportunities with our projects. How do we build these amazing interiors? For me, the outside is secondary to that. I always do the insides first and then come to the outside afterwards. That's my favorite thing. And then I kind of work on the things that I'm not very good at.

 

I find conceptual design really hard. It exhausts me. I put a lot of time into it. I set my standards very high, so I do it again and again and again. So I get it right. But once I've got the foundation right, it feels like a lot of our projects, everything falls into place. So the second part's much easier.

 

Okay. I guess in my advice, you don't leave the parts you're not so good alone, but you probably have to recognize where your strengths are and also play to those as well.

 

00;54;23;18 - 00;54;38;12

DP

Yeah, I always heard in business pick one thing and do it really well and ultimately you'll be successful. So that's a part of it for sure. So, William, it's been great to have you here. Thank you very much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about this Smart Design studio?

 

00;54;38;18 - 00;55;04;16

WS

Now Website SmartDesignStudio.com has a lot of information about the projects we've completed and our team. And then also just on Instagram, we kind of put a lot of work in to updating people on what's happening, what's currently happening. So that's @Smart.Design.Studio. There's a lot of updates on that side about who we are and how we're working on all the very current information. It's been a great pleasure to be on the podcast again. Thank you for inviting me.

 

00;55;04;18 - 00;55;24;12

DP

It was great to have you here, William, I learned an awful lot. The building's beautiful and the architecture your firm does is really quite wonderful. So check out the website.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Doug Patt

Let's go inside the vault. The Design Vault.

 

00;00;05;25 - 00;00;20;17

Michelle Wagner

One of the nice things about the site is it's next to the landmark districts. So the heights to the north are low and set, and they won't go any higher. So we knew we wanted to be tall and get as many apartments above that height for views to Manhattan.

 

00;00;20;20 - 00;02;15;29

DP

This is my guest, Michelle Wagner. I'll share more about her shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault we’ll highlight Michelle's project Front and York. Front and York is a 1.2 million square foot mixed use and multi-family complex in Brooklyn, New York. The large scale two tower development occupies an entire city block and encompasses a unique blend of apartments, condos, and luxury penthouses, as well as an unparalleled package of indoor and outdoor amenities, and more than 140,000 square feet of retail.

The project features a blend of more than 750 condo and rental units, as well as an interior courtyard that spans nearly one acre. Not to mention a challenging 25-foot grade change across the site. The building resembles that of a late 19th or early 20th century warehouse or factory, but significantly more luxuriant. With a glass fiber reinforced concrete frame and light gray brick infill, the building is quite beautiful and absolutely massive.

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Today we're talking to Michelle Wagner, registered architect, LEED AP. Michelle has her Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Colorado and is a registered architect licensed in New York and Colorado. Michelle is a project director at Morris Adjmi Architects. Before joining Morris Adjmi, Michelle worked on the World Trade Center Master Plan and design guidelines with studio Daniel Libeskind.

With more than 25 years of experience, she excels in the management of large-scale projects and has played a vital role in leading the design and delivery of some of the firm's most ambitious assignments. So, let's get into the details. Welcome, Michelle.

 

00;02;16;03 - 00;02;18;08

MW

Thank you, Doug. Thanks for that introduction.

 

00;02;18;12 - 00;02;26;08

DP

So first, tell us a little bit about Morris Adjmi Architects. Where are they located in New York. What's the size of the firm and what type of work do you do?

 

00;02;26;16 - 00;02;49;29

MW

Sure. We are in lower Manhattan, downtown, really. Right near the stock exchange. It's about a 100 person firm in New York. We also have a small office in New Orleans, about maybe a dozen people now. And that's where Morris grew up, actually. So he still has a home there and family there. And that office covers a lot of our work that's in the South now as we really branched out.

 

00;02;49;29 - 00;02;57;23

MW

We started as a very New York based firm in 1997. Do you want me to go ahead and tell the story of Morris's origin story?

 

00;02;57;24 - 00;02;59;13

DP

Yeah, sure. I'd love to hear it. Absolutely.

 

00;02;59;15 - 00;03;25;27

MW

OK. He was working with Aldo Rossi in Italy. He speaks Italian and he became kind of Aldo Rossi's right hand man in New York when he got the commission of the Scholastic Building in Soho, which you probably know. It's kind of a very modern, but fitting into that historical context very well, right next to the Little Singer building, which is a very famous piece of architecture we all probably learned about an architectural history class.

 

00;03;25;27 - 00;03;36;29

MW

So Aldo was tragically killed in a car accident in the nineties, and Morris finished that project for him and kept the office going and started his office from there.

 

00;03;37;06 - 00;03;39;23

DP

Wow. So what kind of work do you guys do today?

 

00;03;40;00 - 00;04;00;04

MW

We really focused on multifamily, office, hospitality work, our core. We also have art services and interior design, so we really try to deliver all of those services whenever we can. We also have a guy that focuses on urban design, so we've got some multi parcel experience in master planning as well.

 

00;04;00;07 - 00;04;03;21

DP

Wow. So, a comprehensive list of services that you guys offer.

 

00;04;03;24 - 00;04;04;26

MW

Absolutely.

 

00;04;04;29 - 00;04;11;08

DP

So, tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you end up at Morris Adjmi? How long have you been there and what's your role in the office?

 

00;04;11;10 - 00;04;49;02

MW

I came to New York originally to work on the World Trade Center Master Plan with Daniel Libeskind, which - with my husband - which was really supposed to be a six-month contract. And we've been in New York for 20 years now. So that's the way things go. After that, I really enjoyed the experience of working on large scale master planning projects.

So, I went to another firm for a while that focused on master planning and architecture. And then through a friend that I met at that firm, I just heard about this great architect, Morris, and I started to look at the work and I got invited for an interview and that was seven years ago, and I haven't looked back.

 

00;04;49;04 - 00;04;51;06

DP

Oh, that's so great. So, you're clearly enjoying it.

 

00;04;51;06 - 00;04;52;16

MW

Very happy there. Yeah.

 

00;04;52;18 - 00;05;00;12

DP

So, let's dig in here and talk a little bit about our building. Tell us about the Front and York project. So how did your office get the project?

 

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

MW

It was an invited competition. It was LIVWRK and CIM. There were three or four architects, I think. Bjarke Ingels was one of them... ODA. So, we all had a charrette. It was paid, but you know, not a lot.

 

00;05;14;10 - 00;05;15;13

DP

Sure. Of course.

 

00;05;15;15 - 00;05;28;02

MW

It was a lot of excitement around this competition because it was a big, big block. And you just don't get projects this big in the city very often. So, a lot of effort went in, and we won. So that was great.

 

00;05;28;05 - 00;05;35;20

DP

So just as an aside, are there a lot of competitions like that in New York that firms like yours or firms that are your size try to get?

 

00;05;35;25 - 00;05;51;04

MW

We're often invited to competitions where they've already kind of pre-selected architects and asked to participate. And of course, it's optional if you want to do that, because you know when you're going in for a competition that you're going to put a lot of effort in really to win that project.

 

00;05;51;12 - 00;05;53;16

DP

And how many firms do you usually compete against?

 

00;05;53;22 - 00;06;11;09

MW

We don't always know, honestly. At the time, sometimes it's a blind, so we don't really know. And then we try to find out, with some difficulty. But, you know, three or four small group, I think if it was a large number, we'd be less interested. Yeah, because you got to feel like there's a good chance.

 

00;06;11;11 - 00;06;14;07

DP

That's great. And how long does that process take?

 

00;06;14;13 - 00;06;15;13

MW

Usually, six weeks.

 

00;06;15;22 - 00;06;18;27

DP

So, you have six weeks to complete the project. And then...

 

00;06;18;27 - 00;06;20;00

MW

A concept design.

 

00;06;20;00 - 00;06;29;00

DP

The concept design. Okay. And then they pick somebody. Well, that's going to be challenging to like scheduling projects in the office. Are we going to get this one or are we going to get that one?

 

00;06;29;02 - 00;06;42;16

MW

Oh, yeah. Well, that's a lot of what I do now as a director. A lot of the scheduling. When I worked on Front and York, I was the project manager, so it was really about the project but have been elevated to director. So, it really is more about scheduling and staffing.

 

00;06;42;17 - 00;06;44;17

DP

I bet, with all those people.

 

00;06;44;17 - 00;06;45;05

MW

Yeah.

 

00;06;45;07 - 00;06;54;03

DP

So, tell us a little bit about Front and York. So, tell us some of the history of the location of Front and York and then how did that impact the design?

 

00;06;54;05 - 00;07;03;07

MW

So, the location is a full city block in Dumbo and it was formerly a lead factory and so there was contamination on site.

 

00;07;03;07 - 00;07;04;09

DP

I can only imagine.

 

00;07;04;09 - 00;07;23;12

MW

Yeah. And I think maybe that's why it sat vacant since the eighties. I think maybe it was a private parking lot and fenced for decades. So, you know, it really needed a big development like this to afford to clean off the site because really, we remediated like 50 feet of soils in some areas.

 

00;07;23;12 - 00;07;24;07

DP

50 feet?!

 

00;07;24;09 - 00;07;38;14

MW

Yeah. So, all of the contaminated soils were dealt with, some carted away somewhere, cleaned on the site under supervision of AKRF, our environmental engineer. So, it really took a big project like this to kind of utilize that site.

 

00;07;38;16 - 00;07;41;08

DP

Was the area around the site already well developed or...

 

00;07;41;10 - 00;07;49;01

MW

It was. There were already towers around the site. 100 J Next door was a tall tower. I don't know. It's probably 20 years old at least.

 

00;07;49;04 - 00;07;59;09

DP

So, what were the client's programmatic requirements? You guys won the competition and they said, okay, this is what we need. Or you already knew that because you had entered the earlier competition and won it.

 

00;07;59;11 - 00;08;14;27

MW

Yeah, they came with a residential program, mixed use. They already knew what they wanted the program to be, of course. We weren't sure how we were going to handle the middle of the block because it is an extra-large block. So, some of our early options had a road in the middle.

 

00;08;14;28 - 00;08;15;16

DP

Oh, wow.

 

00;08;15;20 - 00;08;54;17

MW

One thing they really wanted; they wanted cars to be thought of as part of the site. Whether we drove up with a big turnaround in the middle, like the Antwerp, I think it's got a big turnaround in the middle. So, we looked at that. At the end of the day, we decided that the center of the block really should be a park and it would bring the value up for all the interior apartments as well as the street side.

One of the nice things about the site is it's next to the landmark district. So, the heights to the north are low and set and they won't go any higher. So, we knew we wanted to be tall and get as many apartments above that height for views to Manhattan.

 

00;08;54;19 - 00;09;03;02

DP

For those of you who are listening, should take a look at the site plan and the floor plan because it really is quite beautiful with almost like a park-like feature right in the middle.

 

00;09;03;06 - 00;09;22;21

MW

Yeah. As you mentioned, in the beginning, there's a massive park. It's like almost the size of a football field. It's for all the residents. We have a mixture of apartments and condos, front York, but everybody can access the park and even there's a lifetime fitness there as well. And they have some access to that park.

 

00;09;22;26 - 00;09;35;03

DP

Oh wow, that's so great. So, I know there's something unique about the site, right? There's a change in topography. So, when you guys first went out there and looked at that, am I correct, it was 25 feet approximately.

 

00;09;35;08 - 00;09;35;27

MW

About 20.

 

00;09;35;28 - 00;09;47;23

DP

So that's a big deal for a lot. That is as big as this one. You have to start to think about this going to be a really big building. Where do we enter? What floor we entering? How did you guys deal with that?

 

00;09;47;25 - 00;10;09;24

MW

It was a real challenge and of course we had to look at many iterations on how to deal with that. One thing we did know is that we wanted the condo lobbies really to see through to the park, and the condos are sited on opposite corners of the site. So, there's a big grade change from the lobby floors on each corner, like 20 feet.

 

00;10;09;29 - 00;10;24;04

MW

But we wanted to see that park. So, you know, eventually what we came up with was really like rolling hills in the park. I think when you go there, you'll notice it's very kind of hilly and there's a lot of winding path and it feels very organic and natural.

 

00;10;24;08 - 00;10;33;20

DP

Not like a city. So, tell me a little bit about the zoning ordinances there. You said you guys could be taller than buildings that were nearby. How is that even possible? And what were your restrictions.

 

00;10;33;23 - 00;10;57;02

MW

Actually, we are an as of right project. We did not apply for any variances. That was part of the directive from the beginning. We didn't want to wait for that. It can take months to get a ULURP or a zoning amendment here. So, we were as of right. So, we just maximized the floor area and the height limit and really didn't have to get special approvals.

 

00;10;57;04 - 00;10;58;24

DP

Interesting. So that's kind of nice.

 

00;10;59;02 - 00;10;59;22

MW

Yeah.

 

00;10;59;29 - 00;11;05;07

DP

Right? Walk into a project like that. So, tell us a little bit about the building plan. So, it's like a big donut.

 

00;11;05;12 - 00;11;31;16

MW

It's a big donut, yeah. With a large park in the middle, there's sort of a lower podium level that's about eight stories and then on opposite corners there's the towers, which are the condo apartments that are 22 stories tall, and those were sited on diagonal corners and also diagonally from another existing tower in the neighborhood, just to maximize view corridors and make sure that we weren't blocking any view corridor.

 

00;11;31;18 - 00;11;37;06

DP

Did you guys go through a lot of design iterations in terms of where those towers were and how tall the building was?

 

00;11;37;06 - 00;11;38;01

MW

Absolutely.

 

00;11;38;02 - 00;11;38;29

DP

A dumb question!

 

00;11;39;01 - 00;12;07;24

MW

Well, an interesting thing is, though, in our competition, it was similar massing with the two tall towers on the corner, but they told us, okay, that was the competition. Now we're starting over. So, we looked at every possible massing scenario again. And then of course, we ended up back with the towers on the corner. But the big changes, they were more massive. They were bigger towers, more like bars, because they really wanted to have great views in these apartments.

 

00;12;08;01 - 00;12;25;03

DP

So, style, I said in the intro, it looks a little bit like a factory warehouse building. I mean, it does, but it doesn't, right? I mean, it's incredibly stylistic. Talk a little bit about how you chose the particular style because it's a little traditional and it's still contemporary.

 

00;12;25;05 - 00;13;03;23

MW

You know, I think we were inspired by all the factory buildings in Dumbo. I mean, that is the period of significance, that early American factory building, which were very large, and they had big factory windows and were usually brick or masonry.

The storefront, you might notice we have a very tall sort of metal, blue metal storefront, and it looks very muscular, almost like structural steel. It's aluminum, but it looks like structural steel that was really inspired by the Manhattan Bridge, which you can see just down the block from both Front and York. You see the structural steel of the bridge.

 

00;13;03;25 - 00;13;09;05

DP

So, you guys decided from the get go that you were going to make a brick building, right?

 

00;13;09;07 - 00;13;48;22

MW

We did. We always wanted the brick. We actually looked at this building as precast donuts initially, just really a client directive thinking that was going to be the most economical solution. But even as precast, we wanted that gray brick. I mean, we were really trying to kind of fit into the neighborhood. There's a lot of granite, gray cobblestone in Dumbo and it was a big building, so we wanted something a little recessive and quiet, I think, in the brick color. So, we were looking for that dark gray brick, even when it was a precast building, which ultimately, it's not precast. It’s hand-laid Glen-Gery brick.

 

00;13;48;25 - 00;13;53;04

DP

So, what are some of the unique construction details that you guys employed here using brick?

 

00;13;53;25 - 00;14;37;23

MW

Well, the first thing is the brick itself. I mean, we had actually gone pretty far down the road with the precast and had a gray color in mind. But, you know, of course, economics are always a factor. And we couldn't find an economical gray brick that suited us.

So thankfully, we had a great salesperson that told us about, new at the time, custom color Glen-Gery on go clay coating, which is not like a clay coat that's very opaque and solid. It's actually more translucent and we could pick any color that we wanted and it was pretty economical. So that's what we did. We found a beautiful kind of dark, medium gray, very muted, and then a little lighter gray at the penthouse. On the kind of additions on top.

 

00;14;37;26 - 00;14;48;01

DP

And I'm looking at some really beautiful details here, particularly the recess in between that kind of frames out every one of those windows. Was that a detail that you guys spent a lot of time working on?

 

00;14;48;01 - 00;15;04;08

MW

Yes, that was actually a detail that we developed when it was precast donuts. And funny enough, we really liked it because it just gave that little bit of detail to the facade that without it, it felt a little bit flat. So that was originally there to hide the precast joint.

 

00;15;04;08 - 00;15;05;20

DP

Oh my gosh. So, it's a remnant of an earlier design.

 

00;15;05;20 - 00;15;14;01

MW

It's a remnant of an earlier design. I think at one point the client suggested maybe we should take it off. And we all said that we really like it.

 

00;15;14;08 - 00;15;16;15

DP

Yeah, it does an awful lot for the facades.

 

00;15;16;15 - 00;15;23;14

MW

We're going to use it to hide the brick control joint instead. So, that's tucked in there. And that's why you don't see them at the windows.

 

00;15;23;16 - 00;15;25;01

DP

So the control joints are inside.

 

00;15;25;03 - 00;15;26;17

MW

There in that reveal to one side.

 

00;15;26;26 - 00;15;32;05

DP

Oh, I'd love to see a blow-up detail on that. Tell me a little bit about the concrete structural frame.

 

00;15;32;07 - 00;15;34;18

MW

That's the GFRC. The white frame.

 

00;15;34;18 - 00;15;35;19

DP

Yes. Is that structural?

 

00;15;36;08 - 00;15;53;18

MW

Really beautiful. It's not structural, it's trim. This is a concrete building. So yeah, that is a device really to help modulate the scale of the building and also to help it read from a distance. I mean, you can see, actually, you can see that from a plane. I've seen it flying overhead.

 

00;15;53;19 - 00;15;54;22

DP

Are you serious?

 

00;15;54;24 - 00;16;12;15

MW

Yeah, it really does help bring down the scale because, you know, could you imagine if you didn't have that trim? I think the white color, it's really kind of neat standing on Front and York and seeing the blue and white bridge just right there and just kind of the colors just feel good. They fit into the neighborhood. There's white on the bridge.

 

00;16;12;22 - 00;16;17;28

DP

Had you guys looked at doing that in any other color, like gray, having it melt back into the facade?

 

00;16;18;05 - 00;16;34;02

MW

We study everything. We're very iterative, I think in our process. And you - we always internally look at three options. You know, we really push it and then we narrow down the options for the client usually, but lots of options.

 

00;16;34;04 - 00;16;38;08

DP

So, did brick solve any particular design challenges for you guys or for the client?

 

00;16;38;14 - 00;17;10;07

MW

I think the choice to go to brick was just feeling competitively at the time it was cost, but also just the control of knowing that you could go to different masons if you needed to. I think a lot of times there were more than one trade for - I don't know about the brick. I think that was just one mason in the end, but because it was such a big building, they wanted to make sure that there was some duplicity, I guess, of trades being able to work on things. And I think they got nervous about getting all the precast from one place.

 

00;17;10;14 - 00;17;20;17

DP

Did you guys have any challenges finding a good mason? I mean, I would imagine in New York it's not a big deal, but even in a Westchester County where I do a lot of work, we always have a challenge finding good masons.

 

00;17;20;17 - 00;17;35;25

MW

The masons were great. Everybody was great. New Line was the CM, New Line Structures. And we worked on this three years in construction. After three years, it was really hard ending construction because we were kind of a big happy family at that point. It was great.

 

00;17;35;27 - 00;17;44;18

DP

So, into the office I often think about how many people work on a project. How many people were on this team, and how many people did the drawing for the job?

 

00;17;44;25 - 00;17;50;01

MW

I'd say at least 20 at its peak, when we were in construction documents.

 

00;17;50;11 - 00;17;53;07

DP

Yeah. Now, did you guys do this in 3D?

 

00;17;53;10 - 00;18;35;11

MW

Oh, yeah. We did this in Revit. We usually start with Rhino, something very, you know, design-y and flexible and fast. But once you get into Revit, it becomes you're building a building, right. And a computer. So, becomes more cumbersome. But we absolutely did it in Revit. And actually that ended up being tremendously helpful because we use BIM in construction all the way through. That is, New Line did. That's something they like to do and always do. So, they have specialists that can really run Revit and they model in great detail all of the MEP plumbing and electrical systems throughout the building. So, we find clashes in construction on the computer before they ever happen in the field.

 

00;18;35;14 - 00;18;38;01

DP

How long have you guys been on Revit? Just curious.

 

00;18;38;03 - 00;19;04;14

MW

I think we transitioned, probably fully by 2018. When I started in 2016, I think we had one or two projects in Revit. Now we're all Revit. I think we're starting to lose people that know how to work in CAD, but we still have a few. Well, because everybody does Revit. So, we really, we can export to CAD and everything, but we just don't have many people drawing in CAD anymore - and doing the layers.

 

00;19;04;18 - 00;19;13;07

DP

Oh my goodness. Right. That that's how I operate right now. Well, I do both, but I'm on ArchiCAD. Are most of the people in the city on Revit?

 

00;19;13;14 - 00;19;21;15

MW

I think so. I'm sure there are still people working in CAD, but I think more and more people are going to Revit, especially for big projects.

 

00;19;21;18 - 00;19;29;18

DP

So, did sustainability ever come up as a factor in choosing brick, for example, color, texture, thermal, code compliance?

 

00;19;29;21 - 00;20;03;03

MW

This isn't a LEED project, so we didn't consider it for its sustainability, per se. But we did do something at Front and York, which was we qualified for Zone Green, which is a New York City zoning rule, that if you make your exterior wall thicker and heavily insulate it up to 16 inches thick, you actually get a zoning bonus for that. So, we did that. So, these are 16-inch-thick walls with lots of insulation, CMU back up. That's how this is a sustainable project in terms of the brick wall.

 

00;20;03;08 - 00;20;05;20

DP

So, it's an efficient veneer - it's an efficient facade.

 

00;20;05;21 - 00;20;22;21

MW

It's a very, yes, efficient façade. Helps with heating and cooling loads. We also won the Big Apple Brownfield Award for environmental protection for the clean-up effort I mentioned. Yeah, 2020. So, cleaning up that site was a very good move for Dumbo.

 

00;20;22;28 - 00;20;26;20

DP

Just curious, where does all that go? Where does all the land that they've removed...

 

00;20;26;26 - 00;20;38;12

MW

Sometimes they can actually treat it on site. It depends on - they test certain segments like it's a very involved process. If it's very, very bad then there are places out west that will accept it.

 

00;20;38;12 - 00;20;38;28

DP

Okay.

 

00;20;39;01 - 00;20;54;09

MW

If it's not, that can be landfill like for other projects that can be cleaned and kept local. So, the good fill was - actually like people would come, they put a call out and people would come if they needed fill for their construction projects and they'd cart it away.

 

00;20;54;14 - 00;20;59;09

DP

Yeah. Interesting. So, I'm thinking here, do we see any masonry on the interior?

 

00;20;59;13 - 00;21;08;27

MW

We do a little bit up on the eighth floor and amenities. We have some sort of indoor-outdoor fireplaces that have brick. So yeah, there's a little bit.

 

00;21;09;04 - 00;21;18;10

DP

That’s great. So did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process, something maybe that you guys hadn't been through in the past?

 

00;21;18;13 - 00;22;15;18

MW

I would say that one thing that we found very difficult at first was the redlining process in architecture, where the more senior architects will redline drawings and then give them to the junior staff to pick up the changes. That was very difficult with a 20-person team. So that kind of prompted us to find a tool which we eventually found Blue Beam Studio, which now we use on every project in the office where you can go in and do group markups together and highlight together. So, it's one document and you refresh the document periodically. So, we had a lot of logistical challenges like that.

We had to set certain meeting pulses internally to make sure we were communicating. So, we weren't overlapping or ignoring a corner of the building, which you can sometimes do, and it's 1.2 million square feet. I think there were a lot of things we learned internally through this process that actually help us now on some of our larger projects.

 

00;22;15;26 - 00;22;18;10

DP

How long was it until you guys implemented Blue Beam?

 

00;22;18;12 - 00;22;25;03

MW

It really like started, I think with Front and York and now the whole office is on it and we really do all of our markups that way.

 

00;22;25;11 - 00;22;26;08

DP

That's really cool.

 

00;22;26;10 - 00;22;34;23

MW

QAQC reviews and Blue Beam’s, probably the new CAD, I would say for a lot of us, because it is a very good markup and measuring tool.

 

00;22;34;29 - 00;22;35;24

DP

Yes.

 

00;22;35;26 - 00;22;39;02

MW

And it's cloud based or it can be. So, you can work in a big group.

 

00;22;39;03 - 00;22;40;26

DP

So, you can go in and draw in 2D.

 

00;22;41;02 - 00;22;41;20

MW

Yep.

 

00;22;41;22 - 00;22;44;21

DP

Wow, that's pretty cool. We've been using Procore.

 

00;22;44;28 - 00;22;50;07

MW

Yeah. We also use Procore. New Line Structures did and that was tremendously helpful.

 

00;22;50;07 - 00;22;53;05

DP

Yeah, for project management, it's been great. Super helpful.

 

00;22;53;09 - 00;23;20;08

MW

Yeah. And just the process of using Navisworks and Revit is basically - Navisworks is the software that helps you look at Revit and really find those clashes in the field. This was the easiest CA project, maybe not easy for all of the staff, but in terms of the leadership, we weren't running into big problems. It was very smooth. We were finding the problems in the model in the field. So that was great.

 

00;23;20;11 - 00;23;25;19

DP

How many drawings does a job like this have? Like what does a construction document set look like?

 

00;23;25;19 - 00;23;27;09

MW

Yeah, I think about 500 drawings.

 

00;23;27;09 - 00;23;28;00

DP

Oh, my goodness gracious.

 

00;23;28;03 - 00;23;31;27

MW

Yeah, something like that. Three or four volumes, you know. Lots of trades.

 

00;23;32;01 - 00;23;34;22

DP

Wow. And construction was three years.

 

00;23;34;25 - 00;23;35;15

MW

That’s about right.

 

00;23;35;20 - 00;23;37;19

DP

Wow. So how long has it been complete?

 

00;23;37;26 - 00;23;44;22

MW

I think it's been complete release since the summer. Last summer? I could be off by a month or two.

 

00;23;44;29 - 00;23;46;26

DP

Are they happy? Is it full?

 

00;23;46;29 - 00;23;53;06

MW

I don't know if it's full, but it's very well occupied. I do know that there's 16 penthouses are all sold.

 

00;23;53;09 - 00;23;54;08

DP

Wow.

 

00;23;54;13 - 00;24;12;23

MW

The views are spectacular all around. So, I think maybe they wish they built more larger apartments because really when this was landing, I mean, seems like the trend started to go to larger apartments. With COVID and everything. A lot of one-bedrooms, but they're really nice sized one-bedrooms, you know.

 

00;24;13;00 - 00;24;13;26

DP

Yeah. The photographs are beautiful.

 

00;24;13;29 - 00;24;28;00

MW

Yeah. And the amenities are - we've had so many developers and other people touring the amenities on the eighth floor. There's 15,000 square feet of amenities up there and they're spectacular. And a couple of swimming pools.

 

00;24;28;03 - 00;24;28;25

DP

Oh, my gosh.

 

00;24;28;26 - 00;24;31;13

MW

On the roof. I think that's a real selling point.

 

00;24;31;15 - 00;24;39;12

DP

So, one last question before you go. Personal question, What's your favorite part of the job and what's your least favorite part of the job as an architect?

 

00;24;39;14 - 00;25;01;17

MW

Well, I like to solve problems with teams. I really like large projects because you get to work with large teams and it's just really fun. We have a lot of people that we have a lunchroom at, at MA and we have people that sit around and do the New York Times crossword puzzle together every day, and we just like solving problems together. So that's my favorite part.

 

00;25;01;24 - 00;25;05;05

DP

Yeah, that's great. You don't have to tell me what you don't like.

 

00;25;05;07 - 00;25;10;04

MW

What I don't like, I think would be obvious, which is the stress and the headaches. And, you know...

 

00;25;10;04 - 00;25;13;09

DP

Yes. I can only imagine on projects that are this big.

 

00;25;13;09 - 00;25;18;24

MW

Right. Running into things that you didn't expect in the field. Those are the things that I like the least.

 

00;25;18;24 - 00;25;23;10

DP

Yeah. My boss used to say, “it's always the thing you don't see coming that gets you.”

 

00;25;23;11 - 00;25;24;03

MW

That's right.

 

00;25;24;03 - 00;25;37;09

DP

It really is. It's not the stuff you worry about all the time. It's the one thing you just never saw coming. Well, Michelle Wagner, thank you very much for your time today. Where can people go to find out more about you and Morris Adjmi Architects?

 

00;25;37;12 - 00;25;40;14

MW

I’d suggest our website, which is ma.com

 

00;25;40;16 - 00;25;50;01

DP

All right. You got it. Well, super simple. And thank you very much. It's been great. Front and York’s gorgeous. Thank you very much.

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;05;27 - 00;00;29;07

SN

It's a very faithful rendition of what's known as Collegiate Gothic. It is very much in step with this long-established tradition of higher education that goes back to the church in Europe and then institutions like Oxford and Cambridge. And then it comes over to the states with institutions like Harvard and Yale, who are doing very much the same thing. They were trying to identify with this established tradition.

 

00;00;29;14 - 00;02;24;07

DP

This is my guest, Steve Knight. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault we’ll highlight Steve's project, the Nicholas S. Zeppos College Building at Vanderbilt University.

The Nicholas S. Zeppos College Building is several thousand square feet, five stories with a large tower at one end. The building is red brick and limestone, designed in the collegiate Gothic style. The building has a slate roof, slate dormers, large brick chimney masses, limestone window frames and quoins, multi-story window bays, gable forms across the facade, and limestone gothic arches, a tall square picturesque tower with chamfered corners, polychromatic brickwork and limestone cap rounds out the building at one end.

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Today we're talking to Steve Knight, who led the team designing the Nicholas S. Zeppos College at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Steve is a member of the American Institute of Architects and he's a principal with David M. Schwarz Architects. He studied at North Carolina State University, where he received his Master of Architecture. That same year, he joined David M. Schwarz Architects. Steve primarily focuses on his firm's performing arts venue projects. He served as project architect for the design of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the Palladium at the Center for Performing Arts, the Gilliard center, and most recently, an 8000-seat amphitheater in Huntsville, Alabama.

Among other projects, he's currently leading the offices team on the design of the multiphase residential college project at Vanderbilt University. The Nicholas S. Zeppos College Building is one of four residential buildings for DMS at Vanderbilt University. So let's get into the details. Welcome, Steve.

 

00;02;24;14 - 00;02;25;28

SN

Greetings, Doug. Good to be here.

 

00;02;26;08 - 00;02;30;09

DP

So, tell us a little bit about your firm, David M. Schwarz Architects.

 

00;02;30;20 - 00;03;04;27

SN

Sure. We're a mid-sized design architect and planning firm. We're based in Washington, D.C. We have about 35 design architects on staff. We were started in the mid-seventies by our founder, David M. Schwarz.

It was a really interesting time to start an architecture firm in Washington and in the U.S., really. And there are two pivotal things that happened in the late seventies. The first was the district passed one of the most stringent historic preservation ordinances in the country. And on the heels of that, the federal government enacted tax credits for historic preservation.

 

00;03;04;27 - 00;03;06;22

DP

Really? How fortuitous.

 

00;03;07;00 - 00;03;43;12

SN

So, we found ourselves, the firm at the time - this is before my time there, obviously - but we found ourselves working in newly established historic districts on landmark designated buildings, and it really informed how we think about architecture that architecture is - it's very important that it responds very carefully to the context around it. Each building is part of a larger ecosystem that creates meaningful places, beautiful places to walk, live, places that are memorable. That really is a kind of a train of thought that I think we've carried through all of our work to this day.

 

00;03;43;20 - 00;03;54;16

DP

So, the greater majority of the work that you guys do is traditional. Has that been challenging in any era over the course of the last 50 years when people were doing more modern architecture and...

 

00;03;54;26 - 00;04;42;08

SN

Well, it certainly is today. We never sought out to be traditional architects in that sense. One project begets another, and like many architects, we sort of get known for our buildings and what we do. And I think in terms of that stylistic leaning, if you will, it's a bit controversial these days, I think, particularly within the architecture design community, where I think there is a tendency amongst the majority to want to look forward in sort of the past is the past, let's look to the present and let's look to the future.

I think for us, architecture is primarily about communication. And what we mean by that is that buildings in their edifices say something to people and it's really important that they engage with the communities that they serve.

 

00;04;42;20 - 00;04;58;02

DP

Yeah, it's interesting talking about classicism, traditional architecture, having a kind of language and speaking to the community in a certain way. Right. It's kind of understandable language for many people. You see, especially in Washington.

 

00;04;58;10 - 00;05;02;25

SN

It is, it's a very legible language of building and design. Absolutely.

 

00;05;03;03 - 00;05;05;14

DP

So, tell us about your role in the office.

 

00;05;05;27 - 00;05;33;12

SN

I'm a principal in the firm. I've been with the firm since I finished graduate school back in the late nineties. I started out as an intern and then, as you could imagine, sort of worked my way up through architect staff and project architect and then project manager. I spend most of my time communicating and working with teams of people in the office. Design, for us, is a very collaborative sport. The office is a very collaborative environment.

 

00;05;33;12 - 00;05;33;28

DP

That's great.

 

00;05;34;05 - 00;05;59;17

SN

I think one of the most interesting things to me is the founder, David Schwarz. I have rarely ever seen David pick up a pencil and draw something, but he commands a great deal of influence and quality oversight of the firm's body of work, largely through talking to people, getting to know each of us. And I in turn try to do the same.

 

00;05;59;25 - 00;06;02;08

DP

Well, you've been there a long time. It sounds like you've got a great boss.

 

00;06;02;14 - 00;06;07;06

SN

He is a great boss. We got a great group of people around me. I consider myself very lucky.

 

00;06;07;12 - 00;06;20;27

DP

Oh, that's really cool, because, I mean, architecture is challenging enough, right? It's a challenging profession. Very difficult business. We're all architects, right? So, we're all a little self-absorbed. To find somebody you enjoy working with and for is wonderful.

 

00;06;21;02 - 00;06;22;01

SN

Yeah, it's very important.

 

00;06;22;04 - 00;06;34;02

DP

Yeah, that's great. So, let's dig in here. Let's talk about the residential college project at Vanderbilt and specifically the Nicholas S. Zeppos College building. How did your office get this project?

 

00;06;34;15 - 00;07;25;15

SN

Well, it goes back to a master plan study that we did. Oh, at least 15 years ago, we conducted a study. The university was interested in reorganizing student life on campus, and they struck on the idea of the residential college model, which grows out of a very well-established tradition that starts on the other side of the pond by places like Oxford and Cambridge.

And then it comes to the States in the early 20th century with the Ivy League institutions like Yale and Harvard and Princeton. And what they really liked about it was this notion of breaking down the larger student community into smaller communities of a few hundred people. So, we developed this master plan that sort of provided strategic opportunity areas on where these colleges could be located.

 

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;28;28

DP

So, they came to you with this idea. There would be four colleges.

 

00;07;29;06 - 00;07;38;02

SN

They came to us with a very broad idea of, “we want to rethink student life on campus,” and through conversation, the residential college model came out of that.

 

00;07;38;02 - 00;07;38;21

DP

Wonderful.

 

00;07;38;23 - 00;08;00;27

SN

And then opportunity areas across campus. We identified sites. They then constructed what they called the freshman campus, the freshman college, if you will. That's where all first-year students go to live and there was a bit of a lull. And then we sort of came back with this more defined project of the four colleges, of which Nicholas S. Zeppos is number two.

 

00;08;01;08 - 00;08;07;11

DP

So, had you been hired at that point or were you working against other architects to try to get the project?

 

00;08;07;16 - 00;08;17;01

SN

No, we had been hired at that point. We had done other work in Nashville, most notably the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the Nashville Symphony's concert hall.

 

00;08;17;01 - 00;08;18;02

DP

So, they knew of you.

 

00;08;18;03 - 00;08;22;19

SN

So, they knew of us. And we just developed good, strong relationships in the community.

 

00;08;22;20 - 00;08;31;27

DP

That's great. It's a great way to get jobs. So, can you tell me a little bit about the history of the place, the town, the neighborhood, the buildings around the site?

 

00;08;32;04 - 00;08;52;00

SN

Sure. In Nashville, it's a fascinating city with great heritage and history. One of its monikers is the Athens of the South. They have a full-scale replica of the Parthenon on Centennial Park campus, which is actually just across the West End Boulevard from Vanderbilt.

 

00;08;52;02 - 00;08;55;07

DP

I'm sure I've seen photos of this and have forgotten. That's incredible.

 

00;08;55;17 - 00;08;59;15

SN

It. It really is. Every detail is fully, faithfully executed.

 

00;08;59;16 - 00;09;02;07

DP

I'd love to talk about that some time but go ahead.

 

00;09;02;17 - 00;10;17;15

SN

But that's not why it's called the Athens of the South. It's called the Athens of the south because of the number of institutions of higher learning that one finds there. So, you have Fisk, you have Vanderbilt, many institutions. And it just at a sort of a per capita level. It developed this sort of bookish, erudite culture. Another thing that helped reinforced it was there's a great deal of publishing that happens there, mostly religious, and musical publications.

So anyway, so it's the Athens of the South, so that's really neat. The Vanderbilt history is really interesting because it's basically it's founded as an outgrowth of the Civil War. The institution, it was basically viewed by its namesake who endowed the starting of the university as a kind of a healing moment between the North and the South.

Cornelius Vanderbilt. And he has a statue, obviously, in the heart of campus. The campus itself is - it's a really beautiful green garden-like setting. It does have the classification of being an arboretum because of the number of unique specimens of trees one finds there. The architecture is quite eclectic. Like most campuses, there's a kind of a historic heart of Victorian era buildings and some collegiate gothic buildings as well. And then it sort of evolves over time.

 

00;10;17;24 - 00;10;31;07

DP

So, you touched a little bit on what these college buildings are composed of. Could you give me a little bit more information about the programmatic requirements of each of the four buildings - or let's just stick to the Zeppos College building?

 

00;10;31;12 - 00;12;03;17

SN

Yes. So Zeppos houses 340 students. We typically say beds. It has 340 beds. So that's the lingo in that business, if you will. And it's viewed as a really holistic living environment for students. Not only are there places to sleep, but there are also places to study, places to gather. There are places to eat. There are even accommodations for some resident faculty. Each of the colleges, or at Zeppos, has a family - faculty member and their family has an apartment within the facility. And they help provide leadership and mentorship to the student community.

So, and all of those things are fully realized programmatically with dining facilities. There's a really great dining hall in Zeppos. There's a great room, as we call it, a large living room with wood paneling, courtyards. So there's nice quality, secure, defensible outdoor space for the students to use.

On each of the floors, it was a really interesting challenge because we're dealing with a lot, even within that reduced footprint of only 300 odd beds, it's still a lot of program, a lot of footprint to have to manage. So, to create a sense of place that's navigable and somewhat homelike and approachable and familiar, we did some interesting things within the student floors. There's a lot of articulation in the building massing, and we offset the double loaded corridors to create nodes and they tend to coincide with elevators and stairs so that we create places for students to naturally bump into each other.

 

00;12;04;00 - 00;12;16;08

DP

Well, I'm going to actually ask you about that in just a minute. So first, let's back up and talk a little bit about the site and the topographic features, if there are any. Or are they just completely flat?

 

00;12;16;19 - 00;13;04;06

SN

No, there is a bit of grade change from - I have to get my compass directions right - from east to west. I think what's most interesting about the site is it has kind of a two-sided nature to it. So, on one side is West End Avenue, which is a major east west thoroughfare that connects with downtown Nashville. It's sort of the public face of Vanderbilt. So, the colleges were a real opportunity to sort of enhance the university's image to the outward community.

And then on the other side, the opposite side is a very opposite kind of condition. It's a series of very low scale residential structures that house the Greek community. So, several houses, each one is a fraternity or a sorority. So, we had to respond to two very different contexts on each side of the building.

 

00;13;04;17 - 00;13;08;22

DP

So, tell us a little bit more about the building plan. You started getting into that.

 

00;13;08;29 - 00;13;29;25

SN

Sure. So Zeppos is a figure eight with two courtyards. What makes the figure eight is what we call a double loaded bar, if you will, on the upper student room floors. You have rooms on both sides of a corridor. And again, there's interesting offsets in those corridors and bars to help break down the massing.

 

00;13;30;04 - 00;13;32;25

DP

Does that create these large gables?

 

00;13;33;00 - 00;13;48;03

SN

Yes. And then and then some of the bars, we actually punch through to create Gables to help break down and articulate the massing of the building. It's basically a city block. So, all of those moves are really important to help make the building very approachable and friendly.

 

00;13;48;11 - 00;13;51;14

DP

Are all four college buildings a city block.

 

00;13;51;26 - 00;14;14;09

SN

About. They each layout a little differently from one another. The one immediately to the east of this one, Rothschild College. That one has three courtyards. Due to the particulars of that particular site and obviously what makes the Zeppos college most special amongst the four of them is this 300-foot tower at one end of it.

 

00;14;14;17 - 00;14;20;03

DP

So that's a great segway. Tell us about the style of this building because it's stunning.

 

00;14;20;12 - 00;15;02;06

SN

It's a very faithful rendition of what's known as Collegiate Gothic. It was really very much a communication and really a marketing decision by the university in terms of we looked at lots of different vernaculars. What should these things look like? And the entire team ultimately arrived at Collegiate Gothic is the appropriate response. It is very much in step with this long-established tradition of higher education that goes back to the church in Europe and then institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, and then it comes over to the States with institutions like Harvard and Yale who are doing very much the same thing. They were trying to identify with this established tradition.

 

00;15;02;13 - 00;15;04;13

DP

Really? I mean, it makes perfect sense.

 

00;15;04;14 - 00;15;05;02

SN

Absolutely.

 

00;15;05;13 - 00;15;14;25

DP

So, were there any specific buildings that you can recall that you guys were looking at? The tower looks like it could have been pulled from the facade from a church in Europe. Right? I mean.

 

00;15;15;02 - 00;16;04;01

SN

Sure, we're very eclectic in our approach. We spend a lot of time looking at examples in books. We try to visit places in person, and that was a really important tool at the outset of this project is we actually took members of the client team on a little whirlwind tour of residential college examples around the country. Some examples that we looked to for the tower would be the Harkness Tower at Yale.

A slightly more atypical one that we did look at. It would be the Nebraska state Capitol and I think one feature that we quoted from that one is towards the top of the tower. As it starts to step in, you'll see what we call a little lantern, a little limestone lantern on each of the four corners. That's a common type feature in this style of architecture. When you're creating a tapered tall form like this, we thought it worked very well.

 

00;16;04;09 - 00;16;11;29

DP

And you chose brick for the majority of the material for these exterior facades? Tell me a little bit about that.

 

00;16;12;07 - 00;16;45;17

SN

Well, we always want our buildings to have a really rich palette of materials. And that's true of the interior and, of course, the exterior. So here the palette is a combination of brick, carved Indiana limestone, and then an accent stone, which is called Crab Orchard. It's actually a stone that's native to Tennessee. And we thought that was very appropriate to sort of weave in a local material that one finds in and around Nashville. The brick in particular is really interesting because we knew we didn't want a stark read of just one color.

 

00;16;45;19 - 00;16;48;08

DP

Right. Like if the building was all limestone.

 

00;16;48;08 - 00;17;09;26

SN

Like it was all limestone. And even within the brick itself, it's not just one brick, it's actually a blend of three bricks. And we did lots of mockup panels with the help of a very patient Mason, and a very patient local brick distributor who gave us about an acre of their brickyard to do all these different experiments.

 

00;17;09;27 - 00;17;10;16

DP

That's so cool.

 

00;17;10;16 - 00;17;46;22

SN

We tried different blends and we ultimately settled on a blend of three bricks for the college, and then we further augmented that with what we call decorative bond detailing. So, if you look closely at some of the details, you'll see brick that's fashioned into basket weave patterns, sawtooth patterns, what's known in England as diapering, which is creating a sort of a diamond checkerboard pattern. And we use different bricks for that as well. They tended to be iron spot bricks that are really beautiful because they catch and reflect light in different ways depending on how the sun is hitting them.

 

00;17;47;06 - 00;18;26;25

DP

Yeah, so it's interesting. We've got this polychrome going on, so you guys have the red brick and then I see these diamonds which are made from a different color brick, and then you're taking that one step further. You're backing off the changes in color perhaps, and you're changing the direction of these bricks and the patterns on the interiors.

I mean, it just takes so much time and thought to do everything you guys are doing on these facades. How much time did it take? Just doing like the design work? And who was doing that design work in the office? How were you doing these drawings and how are they being reviewed? I mean, there's a lot going on here.

 

00;18;27;02 - 00;19;17;26

SN

There's a lot there. I mean, the process is really key and it's a very layered process. You don't start out drawing detail. You start out with a parti and then you look at the plan and then you study the massing and then you get to a point and that's schematic design and that was probably about five months. And then we launch into design development.

We are refining the details and that was probably another six months of design development. And within both of those design phases, it's hand sketching, physical study models - we still love doing old fashioned models, just cutting out of cardboard and matte board - as well as two-dimensional drafting. And then, of course, actually three-dimensional modeling and digital modeling in the computer. That was a really key tool.

 

00;19;18;06 - 00;19;22;26

DP

With all these bricks and all those patterns. Must have been an unbelievable process.

 

00;19;22;26 - 00;19;45;28

SN

Yeah. And then it all has to be documented. It's a beautiful project. The standards were very high at the same time we did have a budget and doing cost take-offs at each of the milestone levels of completion - at schematic design and design development - were very important and they caused us to have to do some recalibrating and some adjusting to keep the thing on budget and on track.

 

00;19;46;09 - 00;19;52;23

DP

Yeah, I mean, you sit down with the clients and show them some of this stuff and I'm sure the first words out of their mouths is how much is this going to cost, right?

 

00;19;52;25 - 00;20;12;01

SN

Sure. It's interesting. In the earliest design packages, schematic design, you just can't draw all the detail. So, we actually put photos of collegiate gothic buildings in the drawings to help the contractors really get their head around, okay, this is really complex here. This is not your typical...

 

00;20;12;14 - 00;20;19;14

DP

And there had to have been a lot of handholding in the field too. I mean, a lot of the detail, like the variegated quoins, the quoining on the corners.

 

00;20;19;14 - 00;20;23;19

SN

Yeah. Every one of those stones is actually laid out in the design.

 

00;20;23;27 - 00;20;30;16

DP

All the dimensions, the materiality, the color. Like everything. Wow. So, there's a lot of details.

 

00;20;30;27 - 00;20;39;27

SN

Yes. I mean, it's a phone book level – for anybody who remembers what a phone book is – a phone book thickness level of drawing and documentation.

 

00;20;40;04 - 00;20;51;19

DP

Tell me a little bit about the limestone work, because, again, the level, the detail and the wonderful intricate detailing, I mean, you've got to draw and then you got to find somebody to make that.

 

00;20;51;28 - 00;21;24;16

SN

It's southern Indiana is limestone country. Indiana limestone. It's where the stone is quarried and it's where it is still fabricated. To this day, it is grand tradition. It goes back to the mid-1800s. It had its heyday in the early 20th century with, one just imagines, the proliferation of limestone buildings one finds in any great city in the U.S. and then it gradually tapered off from there after the war in particular. But there are still a few very dedicated fabricator firms that do the what they call the cutting.

 

00;21;24;23 - 00;21;30;24

DP

It had to have been hard to find somebody with so few people doing this kind of - this level of detail work.

 

00;21;31;07 - 00;21;44;12

SN

Well, there's one firm we've worked with on almost all of our projects. And they’re still - this is what they do. They are perfectly set up to do it, Bybee Limestone. We know them very well. We love them and they know us. And they love us too.

 

00;21;44;12 - 00;22;05;24

DP

Yeah, it's stunning. So back to Brick for a second. Did Brick solve any particular design challenges for the architecture for the client? I mean, you touched a little bit on the color, on the exterior and the feel of the architecture, right? We talked about the fact that you make this building all limestone. You got a problem. I mean, it's just a monolith.

 

00;22;06;06 - 00;22;38;17

SN

Yeah, well, it's a very warming material. It's very appropriate, in particular, the way it's used here for what is essentially a residential place. It's a very approachable, it's a very durable material, obviously. And sustainability is very important. We think one of the most important aspects of sustainability is building very consciously, using resources very consciously and very wisely. And in building something that will hopefully be around for a very long time. This building will be around for a very long time.

 

00;22;39;05 - 00;22;45;02

DP

That's for sure. Were there any unique construction details that you guys developed as you were working on this?

 

00;22;45;12 - 00;23;50;11

SN

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, architecture is a very collaborative sport, and we didn't do this all ourselves. We had a very dedicated architect of record Hastings Architects out of Nashville. They were very faithful in working with us to realize all of the technical detailing, achieve what we're trying to achieve aesthetically, and then a really good contractor late in construction. They were very on top of things the whole way.

I'd say a couple of specifics: one of the things, the details that makes the colleges really fun and interesting are these ornamental chimneys that you find on the roof. And the contractor hit on a really interesting idea because in particular after the previous college where they did not do this, they elected to construct the chimneys on the ground, and then hoist them into place with the tower crane. That allowed them to advance construction on the roof without tying up a huge amount of roof area with scaffolding and preventing them from drying in the building. It was just a much easier erection process down on the ground.

 

00;23;50;21 - 00;23;53;09

DP

You just have boiler flues going through these things. I mean.

 

00;23;53;16 - 00;23;58;06

SN

They're vents, They're flues. Yeah. So, they do they do serve a functional purpose as well.

 

00;23;58;07 - 00;24;05;00

DP

I think that's a wonderful touch. You wouldn't expect to see these chimney masses on a building like that. They really kind of set it apart.

 

00;24;05;07 - 00;24;46;07

SN

One other quick detail is it sort of goes back to the documentation. After we get even through CDs and in construction, there's then what's known as the submittal process where shop drawings are submitted and the contractor hired one firm, an engineering firm that was sort of the central documentation point for all of the masonry. Typically, you would have separate drawings for brick and limestone, and in this case, the Crab Orchard. So, we had one firm that was weaving all of that together. It really helped the coordination and adjustments that had to be made to some of the technical details because it was all in one place. You know, it's also this is modern cavity wall construction.

 

00;24;47;13 - 00;24;49;03

DP

That’s a good point. Okay. So how does that work?

 

00;24;49;11 - 00;25;23;18

SN

So, there's a concrete superstructure between the slabs. We span metal studs. And then much like any building, we pack insulation between the studs. There's exterior rated gyp. board and then a barrier coating that goes over that and then some additional installation in some cases to get the proper R-values. And then the brick is hung off the building. It's built the way modern brick buildings are built today. Cause it really had to be, because that's just how we build - that's how people know how to build. Yet, we're trying to achieve something quite different in the aesthetics.

 

00;25;23;25 - 00;25;26;07

DP

Did you guys use any brick on the interior?

 

00;25;26;18 - 00;26;01;09

SN

So far, no. But there's one last college that's under construction and we were using brick in the dining hall of that one. It'll be a thin brick that's applied to the inside wall surface, but it's been a fun opportunity and a challenge at the same time across four colleges, because we want them all to fit within this collegiate gothic vernacular.

But yet, we want each one to be slightly different, so it's identifiable and to the community that lives there in a larger community as well. So, finding subtle, fun, different things we could do from one to the next was always one of the most interesting and challenging parts of this.

 

00;26;01;21 - 00;26;10;17

DP

I was thinking about while we were talking about the general contractor that you worked with. Was it a bid job or did you guys go immediately to the GC?

 

00;26;10;27 - 00;26;31;26

SN

They were a construction manager. So, they were brought on board early in the process during design. We like working that way because we like getting the technical expertise and input during design. We can constantly be moving forward as opposed to taking three steps back if a contractor comes on much later and says, “I wouldn't have done it that way.”

 

00;26;32;01 - 00;26;37;09

DP

What I was getting at was whether or not you had any challenges finding a really good mason.

 

00;26;37;19 - 00;26;48;06

SN

You know, it's interesting. It's lots of masons. There was a mason subcontractor, but they in turn subcontracted. It would be interesting to ask them. I know it was a challenge.

 

00;26;48;08 - 00;26;50;21

DP

Finding the right people to do the work.

 

00;26;50;21 - 00;26;51;17

SN

The right skill set.

 

00;26;51;23 - 00;26;57;11

DP

It's always a challenge for every architect. So, Steve, what was your favorite part of the project?

 

00;26;57;22 - 00;27;36;01

SN

I really enjoy the design development phase. We're really getting in and figuring out details. It's a level of problem solving that I find really interesting because in the earlier design phase, we sort of setting up the game board and making the major moves, but then to go in and make each one actually work and really figure stuff out and all the tools that we used to do that and it's a really interesting variety of tools, whether it's a half inch scale model of a corbel that's sitting on my desk or a sketch or the digital model, I just find problem solving at that level to be really, really fully engaging and satisfying.

 

00;27;36;10 - 00;28;02;24

DP

It's great. It takes a long time for most people to find what they really love about the profession, right? I mean, some people end up doing everything they've small offices, some people end up doing one thing one or two things inside of an office. It's a challenging business. It's a challenging profession. I think it's really nice that you're as happy as you are doing what you're doing and as good as you are at it. That's wonderful.

 

00;28;03;02 - 00;28;24;05

SN

I think one of the other interesting things, I use the word ownership a lot with the teams in the office and in design development. It's a really great opportunity to give individual young designers pieces of the building to figure out and design. When it's all done, they can come with me to the site and they can look at that point and yeah, I did that. That's really cool.

 

00;28;24;05 - 00;28;30;16

DP

Oh, that's great. So, Steve Knight, it was great to have you here. Where do people go to find you and your firm?

 

00;28;30;20 - 00;28;41;29

SN

Go to our web site www.dmsas.com. And if you're in Washington DC, come by and pay us a visit. 1707 L Street

 

00;28;43;00 - 00;28;47;09

DP

You get to meet some of our listeners. That's wonderful. Well, thank you very much, Steve Knight.

 

00;28;48;00 - 00;28;49;12

SN

Thank you, Doug. It's been a pleasure.