TRANSCRIPT

 

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;12

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;14 - 00;00;30;13

Peter Miller (PM)

Gentrification is always an issue in New York City, and trying to deal with that in a responsible way as an architect is something we often think about. Some people, you know, have a problem with larger buildings, but we're not talking about towers. The most bulk is on avenue is where I think people are a bit more comfortable. And because we're bringing residential into the neighborhood, that's usually something that's appreciated.

 

Everyone in New York believes rents and housing prices are too high and we need a greater supply.

 

00;00;30;18 - 00;01;00;18

DP

This is my guest, Peter Miller. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault we highlight Peter's project 625 Rogers Avenue. 625 Rogers Avenue is the site for a new mixed-use building with a primary use of residential ground level, commercial and community facility uses with a below grade enclosed parking lot. The architectural design for the building divides the overall mass into two distinct volumes a lower and upper.

 

The lower is a rectilinear form that relates to historic buildings in the area. This volume is meant to create a more contextual streetscape and a friendly residential feel. In contrast, the higher recessed form is articulated to relate to the new character of the neighborhood. It steps back and recedes as it rises, making it more private and less visible from the street.

 

The lower form is brick, the upper is stucco, the lower is dark, the upper is light. A side yard is included along the south elevation for more daylight glass and a restaurant terrace. Hi, I'm Doug Pat, and this is Design Vault. Peter Miller is a partner of Palatte Architecture, which he co-founded in 2010. He holds a B.S. in architecture from Washington University in Saint Louis and a master's degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.

 

Peter is a director of the Executive Board of AIA New York and a Design for Freedom Working Group member. He's a registered architect with 20 plus years of experience focusing on designing and implementing innovative building systems and components. His notable projects include Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut, The National World War Two Museum in New Orleans, The Revitalization of Forest Park in Saint Louis, the Confluence Masterplan of Missouri and NYC HPD's Small Lots Development Program.

 

Peter's work has won many design awards, including several AIA National Honors Awards and the Mies Crown Hall America's Prize. His work has been featured in Architectural Record, Elder Corps, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He's originally from rural Indiana and is from a family of craftsmen, engineers, entrepreneurs and tinkerers. He treasures the creative process of turning ideas into physical form.

 

So welcome, Peter. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about Palatte Architecture in New York City. So it was founded in 2010. Where are you guys located In the city. What's the size of the firm? What type of work do you do?

 

00;03;17;08 - 00;04;01;09

PM

So we're located in the, I like to say the Union Square area. We're on 16th Street and Sixth Avenue. We are 11 people in total, three partners and eight architects. The work that we primarily do is residential in nature. It spans from multifamily, residential in the mid-sized range. 50 dwellings is probably an average size for a mid-sized development to custom residential townhouse projects within the city and custom houses ground up outside of the city.

 

In addition to the residential work, we do a variety of other things early education is a big part of what we do. Preschools, daycares, things of that nature, and some other commercial projects spanning from retail to restaurants.

 

00;04;01;12 - 00;04;02;08

DP

How's business?

 

00;04;02;14 - 00;04;30;04

PM

Businesses up and down. You know, when you own your own business, it's always a rollercoaster. I would say we're busy. There is a lot of work being constructed right now. We have a lot of projects in construction. Design work continues to come in. It's not quite as strong as it was a year ago. I think interest rates are affecting particularly the custom residential side of our business, but the multifamily business continues to be booming. We stay busy.

 

00;04;30;07 - 00;04;31;28

DP

Has the firm grown?

 

00;04;32;01 - 00;04;52;08

PM

We try very hard to stay the same size. We have a team of people that we really like and we trust them. And I think a big part of who we are is the consistency within our office. So when times get slow, we find ways to keep those people productive, and when times are busy, they go the extra mile for us and they put in the extra work.

 

00;04;52;10 - 00;04;59;17

DP

So tell us a little bit about yourself. So how long have you been practicing and what's your role in the office as a partner?

 

00;04;59;20 - 00;06;10;10

PM

So I've been practicing since early 2000s. I attended Columbia University for graduate school and finished in 2006 and spent a better part of a decade working for well-known firms, doing international projects, particularly of like museums and high end residential. We formed Palatte Architecture. I had two business partners, John Sunwoo and Jeff Wanders, and then we met at Columbia in studio, and there was always an idea that we wanted to work together.

 

It took a while. We had our own careers in other firms for a while and came back together and formed the office in 2010, but it took a little while to get off the ground. Within the firm my role is partner. We are fairly equal. It's one of our core elements at Pallet architecture, the three partners. We have complementary skills, but we all can perform anything within the office.

 

Projects are organized where each partner is in charge of one, and then beyond that, we have some other roles. One of my roles is sort of business management and human resources, so I do that in addition to all the design work, the construction administration.

 

00;06;10;09 - 00;06;15;17

DP

All right, so let's dig in here and talk about 625 Rogers Avenue. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;06;15;19 - 00;07;07;25

PM

So this is with a client we've been working with for a while is a little bit of background on Palette Architecture. We really started this firm fairly early in our careers. As such, we didn't have as many connections. A lot of things started out as they do in sort of those classic ideas of architecture. You're doing somebody's bathroom, somebody's kitchen, and then you do a good job and you end up doing their house and eventually you work your way up.

 

So it's been that way. We met this client when we were doing a lot of houses and they were looking to turn a house into a residential building, a multifamily four. So it was to turn like a big townhouse into a four family. And so we did that project for them and we built a relationship that's led to, I think, ten different projects with them now.

 

And this is the latest one. And so they've grown in scale each time. And this one's, I think, 25 units.

 

00;07;08;02 - 00;07;14;29

DP

The project is considerable size. So give us a little history of the location and what was there prior.

 

00;07;15;01 - 00;08;17;11

PM

This is in the Prospect Lefferts neighborhood of Brooklyn. So that is on the northeast side of Prospect Park. We've done a number of projects in this area. The site before this was largely vacant, there was a couple of dilapidated houses in that area. It was mostly a small demo and clearing the project is near the corner of Parkside and Rogers Avenue.

 

Rogers is the major thoroughfare through the Prospect Lefferts neighborhood. We do not have the actual corner lot, which was kind of an unusual situation in terms of design. There is a small brick building on the corner that has a bodega in the ground floor. Adjacent to them there was an easement in place for them to have access to the back of their building.

 

So we have a minimum of eight feet that we needed to keep open between us in their building. So we ended up with a building that had two facades, even though it wasn't on a corner because of the easement.

 

00;08;17;13 - 00;08;22;24

DP

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

 

00;08;22;26 - 00;09;08;03

PM

So the scope of the project is largely multi-family residential. As with any case, working with a developer, you know, it's maximizing units and floor area for the residential use. However, because it's on Rogers Avenue, which is a major thoroughfare, there was an overlay for commercial. So there was a desire to try to put as much commercial in here as was viable in terms of sales. On the ground floor we have two commercial spaces. One is designed to be a restaurant and the other is a bit more flexible, likely to be more of a retail establishment. And then in addition, there is a small community facility space on the ground floor. There is a lobby also on the ground floor that leads up to the residential spaces. And there is five floors, two through six, that is residential apartments above.

 

00;09;08;05 - 00;09;12;03

DP

So building plan. Could you describe that on the site shape?

 

 

00;09;12;05 - 00;09;27;04

PM

Yeah. So it's L-shaped, I would say, with one of the major legs being across Rogers Avenue and the other leg running parallel to this easement that I mentioned before. And then there is a courtyard in the back portion of the L.

 

00;09;27;06 - 00;09;33;10

DP

So project restrictions, zoning codes. What were you guys dealing with out there other than the easement?

 

00;09;33;12 - 00;10;21;05

PM

One of the things that has generated a lot of our work in Prospect Lefferts Gardens is there was a zoning change probably about a decade ago that allowed for larger bulk in the area. So a lot of the buildings along Rogers Avenue and in other parts of the neighborhood, are suddenly getting a lot bigger. And in some cases you're seeing full tear downs.

 

In some cases you're seeing vertical enlargements. In our case, it was important to have this contextual approach that some of the smaller buildings were going to remain for decades and others were going to instantly become larger. So we wanted something the span between those. That meant having a form that followed the context of those smaller buildings. So it's larger up to a setback, and then it sets back at the height of our neighbors and then becomes something a bit more fanciful above.

 

00;10;21;07 - 00;10;28;09

DP

I'm thinking about the neighbors, right? And I'm thinking about the neighborhood. And you said these buildings are getting bigger. Is that driving anybody crazy?

 

00;10;28;12 - 00;11;09;05

PM

Oh, certainly. It's a mixed neighborhood and gentrification is always an issue in New York City. And trying to deal with that in a responsible way as an architect is something we often think about. And it's certainly an issue in this neighborhood as well. Some people, you know, have a problem with larger buildings, but we're not talking about towers.

 

The bulk has risen from like four stories to six or seven stories. So it's a bit bigger. The most bulk is on avenues where I think people are a bit more comfortable with it. And because we're bringing residential into the neighborhood, that's usually something that's appreciated. Everyone in New York believes rents and housing prices are too high and that we need a greater supply. So there isn't a lot of tension, I think, on that.

 

00;11;09;08 - 00;11;17;22

DP

What is the city do in terms of review, esthetics and building height? Is there an open meeting and you guys are just about to go into construction?

 

00;11;17;29 - 00;13;21;19

PM

We are in construction. We've been in construction for almost a year. The superstructure is in place. A lot of the interiors are framed out and the building is fully enclosed. At this point, we are about to clad the exterior, so we're pretty far along in construction in terms of the city's take on the shape and the zoning of the building.

 

New York City is fairly as of right city. If you are following the zoning code, zoning text in the building code, you can largely do what you want, but it is fairly constrained, especially if you want to maximize the floor area, maximize the amount of units. So you often find yourself into these rectilinear envelopes if you're trying to maximize, but there's room for play.

 

And I think that's really what we were trying to do with this lower mass, is to build that out, make it very tight and taut and follow the context of the neighborhood. It was a bit more challenging on our site because we also had to deal with this easement. And so the easement is a whole swath of the property that you can't use.

 

You're probably aware, but in New York City, the amount that you can build is a factor of the lot size. So the larger the lot, the more you can build. However, if you're not allowed to build on a portion of the lot, then that same amount of area has to fit into a smaller envelope and so it gets tight.

 

That's kind of what led to the L-shape, is that we couldn't simply do it in a bar building across the main avenue. We had to put some sort of extension on to the back. But we were fortunate that that extension could follow the easement. So we get a lot of natural light and air from that. It's not legal light and air, which I think people from New York will be familiar with, which is something is a requirement for all apartments.

 

But we were able to get that through our courtyard and through our rear exposure. And so this was really like bonus windows and bonus light and air that we could get because of the easement. In addition, this corner building is quite a bit smaller, so we are afforded a lot of wonderful views over the top of it.

 

00;13;21;21 - 00;13;37;24

DP

So tell us a little bit about the design process. I just typed in 625 Rogers Avenue and there's a nice website that comes up and there are some great three dimensional images there that tell me a little bit about the design process. How does that work in your office and how long did it take for this project?

 

 

00;13;37;27 - 00;14;19;02

PM

The design process is usually quite rapid in New York City. I would say the actual meat of the process, which is kind of something that a lot of times you learn in school, you spend some time, you make some models, try out a few renderings and you come up with something and then you say, Well, we're not going to do this part.

 

Let's change it like that. That part of like coming to a form and a floor plan was probably an 8 to 10 week process. And then, of course, there's many stages after that coordinating with structure and mechanical and doing all the fine details and then that sort of thing, Then that's probably another couple of months.

 

00;14;19;04 - 00;14;21;21

DP

So were the clients excited about the project?

 

00;14;21;23 - 00;16;41;07

PM

Yes, they do value design a lot and so they were quite excited about it. I think there was always a question of how were we going to deal with this easement? And I think they were very excited about this idea of this lower box that is contextual. We weren't formally contextual. I think that's also probably important to mention.

 

It is a black brick, so it's not your traditional New York red brick or yellow brick that you might find in there. It is a black brick, so it is meant to pop a bit. What was important to us as a firm was to make something that was formally contextual, didn't look bigger than the neighbors didn't look imposing.

 

We're not interested in a building that like sticks out like a sore thumb. I think a lot of architects think that you need to make something flashy in order to be noticed, and then for people to come and want you to design another flashy thing that wasn't necessarily what we were after. We wanted something that had a calm facade to it and felt a bit like the neighborhood.

 

But this isn't the early 1900s, like the context was built in, so we can't do exactly that. So we were looking for something that was formally similar but materially different. And so we went with this black brick along the lower volume. And then of course we had more area to use and we had to put it somewhere. So we set it back and we gave it more articulation.

 

 

It's a bit of push and pull of rectangular volumes above, but it's a very light color and the idea was always to be set back enough to where it wasn't initially visible. It was more of a second look sort of thing that when you see the building, you're like, Oh, that feels like the size of other buildings in the neighborhood.

 

And then when you look a second time, you’re like actually it is not. And what's going on up above is really articulated and interesting. And why did they do this sort of thing? And the reason why we did a lot of that on the upper volume was to create outdoor spaces. This was a project that was conceived during the pandemic and then finalized throughout that process.

 

There was a lot of interest in our office about making outdoor spaces, particularly private outdoor spaces, beyond the size of balconies, spaces that were more of room size so that you could actually spend time outside with others and you could work outside when the weather is good. So a lot of the articulation on this upper volume was about trying to create private outdoor spaces for each of the interior units.

 

00;16;41;10 - 00;16;45;07

DP

So were there any unique construction details throughout the project?

 

00;16;45;09 - 00;18;20;15

PM

Certainly. And we are talking about brick, I'm sure, today. So I think that has a lot to do with it. We've been finding that thin brick has been really advantageous to us throughout the process. New York City is all about every inch. Every inch matters. Real estate agents will tell you that. So the thin brick does afford us a thinner wall thickness, which allows every unit to be a little bit bigger, the sales area to be a little bit bigger.

 

So that's something we'd like to do. But what we found great about the true brick system, which is what we used, is that it's a mechanically fastened thin brick which affords us new types of details. When you see the classical full brick, you can do corbelling, you can have some bricks, project out from others to create shadow lines and other types of articulation, which wasn't initially available in thin brick because everything just had to sit inside of a tray and anything that projected out would become too much of a load and either pop out.

 

And so what we were really excited about with this thin brick system, the true bricks, is that we could have a variety of brick depths while still saving these inches. And so there was a lot of thought about that in terms of details. We used different depths of thin brick to articulate slab edges and also areas of pattern and texture.

 

So within this brick volume on the base, there are strip windows. In between each strip window. We do have a textured brick that creates a bit of interest. It creates a patterned shadow on the facade, and then that is all captured in between these sort of expressed slab edges.

 

00;18;20;17 - 00;18;24;29

DP

So could you go through a wall section for me? Exterior to interior.?

 

00;18;25;01 -  00;19;29;12

PM

So we have on the exterior a variety of different depth thin bricks that snap into the true bricks tray system, which is sort of like a channel shaped system that is then attached into a kingspan karrier panel. So this is sort of an all in one cladding waterproofing insulation panel. I believe it's an XPS insulation that's wrapped in a metal panel.

 

And these are tongue and groove panels that come together and they're flashed at their tongue and groove. So the metal panel on the outside acts as waterproofing, especially when the joints are flashed. Then there is this completely separated other metal panel on the interior, the separated by this XPS installations that provides your insulation and then that interior panel allows you to attach to the studs.

 

So there's no need for sheathing or waterproofing layer or another set of insulation. It's all in one. So we have that karrier panel and then that is attached to the stud. And then on the interior of the stud we have our finishes, which is general sheetrock.

 

00;19;29;14 - 00;19;33;06

DP

And the installation values of the walls?

 

00;19;33;06 - 00;19;36;24

PM

Two and a half inches. So I'm guessing that's probably about R 14.

 

00;19;36;26 - 00;19;46;17

DP

That sounds really interesting. And using thin brick, I mean it's a veneer like anything anyway, so whether or not you're going to use something that's three and 5/8 thick or it's a half inch thick, it’s still a veneer.

 

00;19;48;19 - 00;20;22;13

PM

100% agree. We live in a world now where energy code and sustainability issues are vitally important. And for the most part we know Brick classically is like a veneer as a cladding and a structural system, but it's just really not done that way anymore. It's mostly a cladding system now because we need to have this rain screen where where air can move behind the facade, and we need continuous insulation.

 

So if it's going to be mostly a veneer. Now I'm a fan of the thin brick systems because it saves you that extra couple of inches.

 

 

00;20;22;16 - 00;20;40;15

DP

Yeah, I totally agree. And you touched on this a little bit. Just back to the esthetics. So tell us about the style choice. The building is contemporary. When I read about the architecture you guys talked about as statically trying to work with the existing architecture in the neighborhood. Tell us a little bit about that.

 

00;20;40;17 - 00;22;28;22

PM

I think it's largely about scale. So as I mentioned, we are trying to create a datum that matches with the neighbor. In terms of height. I think the concern back to what you mentioned before is that people are going to feel like their neighborhood is growing rapidly and that it feels much more urban than it used to. And so that was really important to us in terms of context to make the scale feel as if they had always known this building.

 

Beyond that, we felt that Brick was an important choice. There's a lot of brick in the neighborhood. We felt that other materials might feel too distinct from the rest of the context. I don't think it's important that we try to look exactly like the neighbors because we're in a different era, a different technology. But there needs to be some tie to the way it is.

 

And it was also sort of important to us that the windows had some sort of gridded logic to it to match the neighbors. So there's a nod to that. Beyond that, we felt freedom to go a different way. And so we relied on sort of a color choice as one way to do that, to create this darker volume on the lower part would sort of emphasize the height of the building that it matched the others because it's so present in its darkness.

 

The other thing we liked about the darkness is that it made all the details a bit more subtle. It gave us a little more freedom to do things like these patterned bricks and these shadow lines that indicated that this was a newer building and that it has some innovative techniques and details to it. But wasn't flashy to the point of look at me and forget everyone else in the neighborhood.

 

00;22;28;25 - 00;22;39;02

DP

That's well explained. So when you guys did drawings for the architecture, for the construction process, all 2D, 2D and 3D, Revit, what are you guys working out?

 

00;22;39;02 - 00;23;05;06

PM

Yeah, well, Revit. Our office is 100% BIM. We are an office that was founded since 2010. So the partners, all the employees, we all grew up in this, so we're 100% BIM. We use Revit as our software. So everything is done in Revit from beginning to end. We found this really beneficial with some of our clients too, because we can get the visualizations a lot quicker and that just makes them feel comfortable.

 

00;23;05;08 - 00;23;16;07

DP

Yeah, clients love that. Yeah, for sure. So do you guys learn anything interesting through the design in what you're currently in construction process? Anything new for you as you've been working on the architecture?

 

00;23;16;09 - 00;24;17;03

PM

Well, let's see things that I would want to talk about. Usually the lessons are the things that like you didn't see coming or you feel like you could have control. I think one thing that we really learned on this project is moving to this Kingspan panel that I mentioned before is a new thing for our office. We're doing it on two projects or two simultaneously.

 

We knew a lot about the details going into it and we really believed in it and we love it, but our contractors were not familiar with it and so there was definitely a lot of lessons in how to communicate these details because a lot of them came in and were like, They see these new Legos for the first time and they're like, Oh, they must go together like this.

 

And then you arrive at a site and you say, No, actually you put that piece on wrong. It should be like this. There was a lot of back and forth and learning about how to communicate, when to come in in the process with somebody that hasn't used the technology before and really get them up to speed on it.

 

00;24;17;06 - 00;24;42;15

DP

That's funny, yeah, GCs love that when you walk out into the field and you tell them they're wrong. Yeah, sure. Before you go, Peter, 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 your younger version of you, or maybe for some students or young architects that are just getting rolling?

 

00;24;42;17 - 00;25;03;01

PM

Well, that's a great question. It's easier for me to advise my earlier self than advise a generic architect in school, and I hope this advice applies for me. I was always an introverted sort of person. I come from a very conservative rural background and it took me a while to learn how to really speak my voice to people.

 

And I think in school there's this sense that your work is always out there for critique and that you should be careful about everything you do. I think I've learned over time that as long as you follow your own voice and your own beliefs, that those things will fall in place. And so I would advise myself, when I was younger, to not be concerned about whether or not your voice is going to land perfectly amongst your audience.

 

I think as long as you believe in it passionately and you talk about it strongly and you think about it all the time and you critique yourself, that that will lead to stronger work and it will lead to people wanting to see your work and interact with your work and make sure that it gets built in the way that you had always imagined it.

 

00;25;03;02 - 00;25;51;16

DP

Yeah, I think that's a really beautiful way of looking at things right that it will land in the right location. You're just responsible for finding your voice and expressing it as best you can within the framework of the work that you do. That's great. So, Peter, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Palette Architecture and yourself?

 

00;25;51;19 - 00;26;13;22

PM

Well, certainly you can go to our website, PaletteArch.com, or they can follow us on Instagram also @PaletteArch.

 

00;26;13;24 - 00;26;29;26

DP

Well, Peter, thank you very much. It's been great to have you.

 

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;09

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;11 - 00;00;30;15

Ross Padluck (RP)

What we did on the inside was opened the living room, the dining room and the family room in the back with these pocketing doors so that when the doors are closed, you can have these very private moments in the house. But when they're entertaining, the series of pocket doors opens up. So the property is really open from the front terrace into the living room, dining room and the yard in the back so you can kind of open the house up front to back, or you could close it down from more intimate settings.

 

00;00;30;17 - 00;03;44;04

DP

This is my guest, Ross Padluck. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we highlight an Italian art Deco private residence designed by Ross. The private residence we're discussing today is located on a narrow urban lot in a neighborhood which includes many homes from the 1920s. These homes feature various elements of brick and stone cladding combined with tile roofs and decorative windows.

 

The new home was inspired by the Italian art deco movement, as well as the German Expressionist. It draws from the work of Piero Portaluppi, a preeminent architect of streamlined art deco classicism in Italy in the 1920s and thirties. Other inspirations include German architects Fritz Hogar and Heinrich Muller, well-known for creative and experimental forms constructed with brick.

 

The exterior of the home is composed of details that decidedly complement the vernacular of the neighborhood. The construction palette of masonry includes brick, lilac sandstone, black windows, black slate and copper. Interestingly, the brick shapes, which appear to be custom, are actually all standard Glen-Gery modules. The course work is detailed and unique. The leaded glass panels in the windows are restoration glass and the roof dormers are clad in copper.

 

The details of the house are mannerist yet subtle, and the brick is creatively patterned in coursed to give the house a unique personality. Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Ross Padluck is a registered architect and partner at Kligerman Architecture & Design in New York City. Ross has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from New York Institute of Technology, where he received AIA Henry Adams medal as valedictorian of the School of Architecture.

 

Ross’s passion for architecture started young. Back then, he remembers being fascinated with the historic homes of New England. He joined Kligerman Architecture & Design in 2010. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, Lux Interiors, and Gallery. His firm is known for design, rooted in tradition, but modern in its sculptural forms, precise details, material integrity and liberal use of glass.

 

The firm still creates presentations by hand and uses the latest digital technologies, including 3D printers and VR. So welcome, Ross. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about Kligerman Architecture & Design in New York City. So where are you guys located in the city? What size is the firm? How long has it been around and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;44;06 - 00;04;29;13

RP

Well, thank you for having me. Kligerman Architecture & Design, we’re actually just up the street from the Brickworks Studio. We're on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue across the street from the library. We're in 505th Avenue, which is a Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Building which is, I guess, considered the sister building to the Empire State Building. They were built at the same time with the same architect and 505th was completed first before the Empire State Building.

 

And at the time it was the tallest building in the world. Before it was surpassed by its sister, the Empire State Building. We're about a 40 person architecture and interiors firm. We do high end residential architecture, mostly single family. We were known as Ike Kligerman Barkley when I joined the firm. We went through an ownership transition last year when I became a partner.

 

00;04;29;20 - 00;04;39;06

DP

Well, interestingly, as an aside, I do high end residential architecture. I worked with a gentleman named Joe Moore for about 20 years. He's up in the Greenwich area.

 

00;04;39;14 - 00;04;40;27

RP

Okay. That's a great neighborhood.

 

00;04;41;02 - 00;04;48;24

DP

Yeah, that's really cool. So tell us a little bit about yourself. So how long have you been practicing architecture and what's your role in the office as partner?

 

00;04;49;01 - 00;05;20;11

RP

I always knew I wanted to be an architect. Since I was in preschool. I was sort of drawing houses and building them out of blocks when I was in preschool. So it was just a natural career. And I come from a family of architects, so it just sort of all made sense. My first job actually, I started of working for an architect when I was 14 years old.

 

Yeah, I did. After school drafting for an architect in high school and kind of had various internships and stuff from there at Kligerman, as a partner there, I run a studio, oversee probably about a dozen projects at the moment.

 

00;05;20;18 - 00;05;24;27

DP

Tell me about your family. Family of architects. That's interesting. Both mom and dad?

 

00;05;25;01 - 00;05;41;03

RP

No, my uncle is an architect who was a kind of huge influence and resource on me. And I have a cousin who's an architect and one is an engineer. I have another cousin who's a graphic designer. So there's this sort of creative energy in the family. My grandmother was a painter, too.

 

00;05;41;06 - 00;05;43;27

DP

That's really cool. I mean, architects are pretty rare.

 

00;05;44;01 - 00;05;50;05

RP

It's kind of a not a common profession in families, but it sort of comes naturally to us, I guess.

 

00;05;50;12 - 00;05;56;01

DP

Very cool. So let's dig in here and talk about the home. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;05;56;07 - 00;06;05;15

RP

So it's a community that we've done a lot of work in over the years. We have a long history of doing work in that community and it was a referral from another client that we got the project.

 

00;06;05;17 - 00;06;07;09

DP

So you didn't know the clients?

 

00;06;07;09 - 00;06;10;09

RP

Did not know them, but they were friends of one of our other clients.

 

00;06;10;16 - 00;06;13;06

DP

And what about the location? So was there a house there?

 

00;06;13;13 - 00;06;23;24

RP

There was a house there. It was sort of a turn of the century house that had been badly renovated in the eighties. You know, we were growing family and it was time for a new house. So they turned to us to design it.

 

00;06;23;28 - 00;06;32;13

DP

So the location, there are lots of homes from the 1920s era and are they still there and simply getting renovated or is it turning over?

 

00;06;32;16 - 00;07;03;27

RP

There's not many left, the kind of vernacular of that neighborhood. There were a lot of homes built in that sort of 1920s timeframe that were kind of brick and stone and had slag glass windows and tile roofs like you mentioned. And there's kind of very Spanish and Moorish ornate feeling to them. Unfortunately, a lot of them have been torn down.

 

They've been replaced with newer and larger homes, but there's still a few left in the neighborhood. And the neighborhood is sort of maintains that character, even though the homes have been replaced of the sort of 1920s buildings.

 

00;07;04;00 - 00;07;16;20

DP

So that ultimately did impact the esthetic of the home that you design. We'll talk about that in a little bit. So what was the scope of the project? That is, what were the programmatic requirements for the project?

 

00;07;16;23 - 00;07;31;06

RP

It's a single-family home, so it had to have entertaining space and living space on the first floor for them. They do a lot of in-house, entertaining large parties and then enough space for the clients and their children on a very small lot.

 

00;07;31;09 - 00;07;39;08

DP

Yeah. So what were the project restrictions in terms of the height of the building and the size of the building on the lot? Were they pretty stringent?

 

00;07;39;08 - 00;07;55;03

RP

Yeah. The zoning in that neighborhood is pretty restrictive, so you have to fit a lot into a very small envelope. So you have to be really creative of how you use floor space and how you configure the building envelope to fit within the zoning requirements and the floor area restrictions.

 

00;07;55;05 - 00;08;01;13

DP

And you couldn't go over two and a half stories or okay, so I nailed that. That was the restriction. Two and a half stories?

 

00;08;01;13 - 00;08;07;03

RP

There's actually not a restriction of stories, it's a restriction of height. So that's what limits how far you can go.

 

00;08;07;10 - 00;08;10;02

DP

And FAR restrictions, is that what they call them.

 

00;08;10;02 - 00;08;13;02

RP

Yea, floor area ratio, it's pretty tight there.

 

00;08;13;04 - 00;08;41;24

DP

So let's talk a little bit about the building design. Stylistically, we talked a little bit about this already, the Italian art deco influence and of course the reference that I made earlier to the German architects. Interestingly, I was looking at Portal Whoopi's work online. I know it sounds a little bizarre, but it almost seemed like a modern cross between Palladio and Boulay, right?

 

I mean, it's just the symmetry is gorgeous. Some of the buildings that this man designed were unbelievable.

 

00;08;41;26 - 00;09;16;27

RP

Yeah, they're really incredible. I've had the fortune of being in a few of them in Italy, and Porto Lippi was sort of off the radar up until a couple of years ago. And now it's, you know, there's all these books out about them and everyone's sort of looking at it. But he just did really incredible sort of forward thinking work in Italy in that timeframe that was still sort of rooted in tradition, not too dissimilar from the work that we do at the firm.

 

So it sort of just seemed like a natural influence for us. A lot of his work was urban, a lot of it was in Milan, so it sort of had that urbanity to it like this house does.

 

00;09;17;04 - 00;09;22;27

DP

So tell us a little bit about the building plan. Looks relatively straightforward, like a large rectangle.

 

00;09;23;05 - 00;09;52;11

RP

Yeah, the sort of narrow rectangular lots. So there's not much you could do with it. What we did on the inside was opened the living room, the dining room and the family room in the back with these pocketing doors so that when the doors are closed, you can have these very private moments in the house. But when they're entertaining, the series of pocket doors opens up.

 

So the property is really open from the front terrace into the living room, dining room and the yard in the back so you could kind of open the house up front to back or you could close it down from more intimate settings.

 

00;09;52;14 - 00;10;00;17

DP

That's a really nice idea for a relatively narrow house. Who came up with that idea where the client's like, Whoa you guys showed it to them and they thought, Wow, this is really neat.

 

00;10;00;24 - 00;10;05;14

RP

You know, they were really kind of happy with it. We sort of hit it on the first shot, I guess you could say.

 

00;10;05;21 - 00;10;08;28

DP

So how large was the team that was working with you on the.

 

00;10;09;00 - 00;10;11;25

RP

It was me and at the time, John Ike.

 

00;10;11;27 - 00;10;19;17

DP

So let's talk a little bit about the facade, which is very interesting. All brick, who decided on brick?

 

00;10;19;23 - 00;10;31;19

RP

It's the vernacular in that neighborhood. Just about every house uses brick or stone or a combination of them. The natural choice to use. So we wouldn't recommend anything else in that neighborhood.

 

00;10;31;26 - 00;10;33;02

DP

And what about the color?

 

00;10;33;05 - 00;10;39;26

RP

So we wanted to create something that was a little richer, a little darker, a little moodier. And that's how we ended up with that color.

 

00;10;39;28 - 00;10;59;28

DP

I want to back up a little bit. I always ask our guests about the town reviews, like how long that process took was a challenging historical neighborhood, that sort of thing. What did you guys go through in terms of presentation? So you meet with the client, you show more schematic design. Then ultimately you've got to go to the town and get this thing approved.

 

00;11;00;07 - 00;11;05;15

RP

There wasn't any sort of historic or architectural review board there, so it was just the building department.

 

00;11;05;21 - 00;11;12;22

DP

And in terms of zoning requirements, the building had to be relatively narrow rights for the setbacks. Were they restrictive or?

 

00;11;12;25 - 00;11;24;10

RP

Restrictive on the sides? The biggest challenge is the floor area, which is very restrictive. You kind of have to fit a lot into a very small footprint. So there's very little wasted space in the floorplan.

 

00;11;24;12 - 00;11;42;01

DP

So let's talk about the facade. What I loved about this house was the figuring in the brick, right? So there were all stock sizes and shapes used by your company and was that intentional? You didn't want to spend extra money having these custom shapes made?

 

00;11;42;04 - 00;12;16;04

RP

Yeah, we wanted to have that in mind of trying to do this with stock shapes. We wanted to do an all-brick house, which is inherently a little more expensive. And instead of doing custom shapes, we looked through the Glen-Gery catalog to see what was available, sort of quote unquote in stock that wasn't custom made. And then we took these different shapes and create a different patterns and modules with them.

 

And that's how we created those sort of columns that are between the windows. And we created that corduroy texture that's on the chimney all out of Glen-Gery shapes.

 

00;12;16;06 - 00;12;27;19

DP

Yeah, I found that really beautiful. The piers in between the windows are figured, right? So when you guys design that, did you ultimately do mock ups in the fields to see what these things looked like?

 

00;12;27;25 - 00;12;40;03

RP

We 3D printed the brick shapes and then sort of put them together almost like Legos to see what makes sense and what makes an interesting shape. And we did mockups on our 3D printer with those brick shapes to kind of lay it out.

 

00;12;40;10 - 00;12;52;27

DP

And what about some of this interesting coursing that I found as I looked around the exterior elevations, for example, at the entrance, right? The coursing above that entrance is almost done in a star shape or a crown like shape.

 

00;12;53;04 - 00;13;16;03

RP

Yeah, it's sort of a star shape or a crown, as you say. And we had originally designed that in stone, and the owner had wanted the house to feel a lot more monochrome. So I said, Well, why don't we do it in Brick? And it sort of created that crown shape out of, it's just modular standard brick that's laid at different angles and it sort of radiates around the arch to create that pattern.

 

00;13;16;10 - 00;13;19;06

DP

To remind me some of the other details on the house.

 

00;13;19;13 - 00;13;58;12

RP

The house is about that arch. It's the entrance. It's very subtle because it's all done out of the brick. It doesn't really stand out, but it's a detail that you notice right away just the way the mortar joints are run to create that pattern. And then we have, as I mentioned, the special piers between the windows, which are created of three different pieces of brick special shapes that create that.

 

And there is the chimney, which is the corduroy texture. We also used some of the sill pieces to create a water table or sort of base around the house. And then we experimented with different patterns of brick running bonds and stock bonds to create different patterns and sections of the house to break up the mass of it a little bit.

 

00;13;58;19 - 00;14;01;11

DP

And the dormer is done in copper, which is really cool.

 

00;14;01;16 - 00;14;15;03

RP

I like when Dormers feel like objects on a roof. I don't like when the metal roof comes out. So we created them to feel, you know, like these copper boxes sitting on the roof, which is a very German kind of mannerism of going about that.

 

00;14;15;05 - 00;14;23;16

DP

So on a project like this, it's obviously really important to find a good mason. So you guys clearly found somebody liked. What was that process like?

 

00;14;23;22 - 00;14;37;18

RP

We worked very hand-in-hand with the Mason to create that. You know, we're very specific about all these different patterns and layouts. So it was a lot of site visits and working one on one to make sure our vision came to reality on the house.

 

00;14;37;20 - 00;14;47;28

DP

So you were talking about having a 3D printer and making these that must have been a really fun process, right? I mean, that's like the awesome stuff that architects get to do.

 

00;14;48;01 - 00;15;02;08

RP

Yeah, it is. The 3D printer itself is kind of a pain to use. It's finicky, but once you get it to actually do what you want it to do, being able to just sort of create these shapes and put them together was really satisfying. That's sort of how we create our vision.

 

00;15;02;08 - 00;15;04;20

DP

Did you guys do the building in Revit?

 

00;15;04;26 - 00;15;09;13

RP

The building was actually done in CAD, believe it or not, all 2D.

 

00;15;09;17 - 00;15;11;00

DP

So no 3D renderings?

 

00;15;11;02 - 00;15;12;27

RP

Nope. Except for hand renderings.

 

00;15;12;29 - 00;15;14;29

DP

Is that pretty typical for your office?

 

00;15;15;02 - 00;15;38;11

RP

Most of our projects are in Revit now. For me, the intricacies of the house, I felt more confident doing it in 2D. It's just the way my brain thinks. I still think of old school drafting and that's kind of what CAD does. And the house was small enough that it was manageable. A lot of our other houses that are much larger than this, it makes sense to do them in Revit, but I felt kind of old school doing it in CAD, but it worked out.

 

00;15;38;19 - 00;15;42;14

DP

And did the clients get to see these little models, the little modules or?

 

00;15;42;18 - 00;15;50;21

RP

Absolutely. We showed them, you know, this is the pattern and these are the different shapes of brick and they got a kick out of it, but they were excited.

 

00;15;50;24 - 00;15;59;05

DP

Yeah, very cool. So, we talked about the size of your team. There were two people that worked on the project essentially and start to finish. How long does that take for your office?

 

00;15;59;13 - 00;16;19;23

RP

Search to finish a house of the skills is about three years. We're about a year for design from when a client first hires us to get through schematic design construction documents, permitting, all of that. And then construction is about two years, which seems like a long time. But our houses are very custom and we're doing very one off sort of things.

 

00;16;19;28 - 00;16;22;05

RP

It takes time, but it's worth it in the end.

 

00;16;22;07 - 00;16;31;08

DP

Yeah, you know, that process can be pretty interesting for people that haven't done it before, the clients. Have these clients been through a custom home before?

 

00;16;31;14 - 00;16;38;06

RP

Not to this scale. They had renovated a home before, but they hadn't built a home like this before, so it was a first time for them.

 

00;16;38;09 - 00;16;40;17

DP

Well, I'm sure that we're very happy, the house is beautiful.

 

00;16;40;24 - 00;16;44;01

RP

Thank you. They were very happy. So we did our job.

 

00;16;44;03 - 00;16;50;10

DP

Awesome. So the column in the front. Very cool. Reminds me a lot of Frank Furnace.

 

00;16;50;16 - 00;16;50;28

RP

Yes.

 

00;16;50;28 - 00;16;53;11

DP

Whose idea was that? Where did that come from?

 

00;16;53;17 - 00;17;15;21

RP

That was mine. We wanted to create something special on that corner. Since it is the main entrance to the house. And it was inspired by a lot of the work that Portaluppi did, where he uses more classical elements and we didn't want to do another piece of brick there. It was time to do some stone. It is solid lilac sandstone that's supporting that brick arch.

 

00;17;15;24 - 00;17;18;00

DP

So was that difficult to have made?

 

00;17;18;02 - 00;17;25;01

RP

We had it custom made, unlike the brick, we did have the column custom made. It was milled in Canada.

 

00;17;25;03 - 00;17;36;04

DP

Did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process? It's clearly a pretty unique home, so there were a few new things for you guys, I would assume.

 

00;17;36;11 - 00;17;55;25

RP

Yeah, I think working through the brick shapes and the course thing, we try and get Windows to line up with brick coursing or if the windows are off, you adjust the stone sills to make up for the difference in brick. And I think we learned a lot about just making sure that the brick lines up everywhere.

 

00;17;55;28 - 00;18;06;19

DP

So were there any instances of we drew it this way, but then you get in the field and you're working with a mason, They're like, no, you know, we're not going to be on course here and we're going to have to adjust things.

 

00;18;06;19 - 00;18;32;16

RP

There were a few instances where the cursing under the windows was ever so slightly off, but we were able to adjust that with the stone sills and make it work. I was very exact when I drew it to make sure that everything mathematically worked out just because the design was so important to us and to the clients, we really wanted to make sure you could actually build it the way we intended it.

 

The drawings were pretty precise, and that led to a fairly smooth construction process.

 

00;18;32;18 - 00;19;03;09

DP

That's great. It is one of the most important things to me. After the house has been designed, we sign up the GC, we get rolling on the project, the project managers get to know one another. This would be the architect and the project manager for the general contractor. Those first couple meetings between those two people are really important because at that point you get to spend a lot of time explaining, okay, this is why I drew it this way and I need you to keep this in mind when we build it, right?

 

00;19;03;16 - 00;19;25;09

RP

Yeah. We were fortunate to have a really good contractor. He was really a craftsman. Very hands on approach, like we have with design and construction. He understood our design goals for the house and the quality goals, he really paid attention to the details and worked with us throughout construction to make sure the vision was carried out.

 

00;19;25;11 - 00;19;37;20

DP

So Ross, before you go, you've been an architect for a little while now. Based on what you know about being an architect today, do you have any words of advice for your younger self or even young architects getting started?

 

00;19;37;22 - 00;20;11;11

RP

I do. You know, the advice is to stick with it. A lot of people that I went to school with did not end up pursuing a career in architecture. For me, it's something I love doing. I'm very passionate about it and it's not an easy educational process. It's not an easy career. I think a lot of people get discouraged by that, but if you love it and you care about it, just stick with it because it's very rewarding and we get to do really unique and special things.

 

There's not a day that goes by that I don't regret my career choice.

 

00;20;11;16 - 00;20;24;07

DP

Well, that's really cool. Being a high-end residential architect can be extremely challenging, but also very rewarding long term because you're working on a singular typology and you can get really good at it.

 

00;20;24;11 - 00;20;56;25

RP

Yeah, well, you're designing for the end user and you're spending their money. So it's a high stakes process, but it's also very creative and you get to work with unique materials and work with craftsmen and people who are really good at what they do. So in that respect, yeah, it's really rewarding and we're creating things that people and families are going to use for the rest of their lives.

 

They're going to live in them. They're going to have their friends over. As challenging as it can be to work in that environment, we're just creating such special things. It's wonderful.

 

00;20;56;27 - 00;21;02;03

DP

Yeah, I like to say that we've got to know a lot about a lot to be a high-end residential architect.

 

00;21;02;05 - 00;21;13;16

RP

Yeah, you have to be an architect. You've got to be a plumber. An extra installer, a lawyer, an accountant, a marriage counselor. You have to be everything. A materials scientist.

 

00;21;13;17 - 00;21;27;01

DP

I like that. Marriage counselor. Marriage counselor, for sure. My goodness. So Ross, it's been great to have you here. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Kligerman Architecture & Design and yourself?

 

00;21;27;03 - 00;21;31;21

RP

Check out our klingermanad.com. And you can also look at our Instagram account [@kligerman.ad].

 

00;21;31;24 - 00;21;34;00

DP

And do you have your own Instagram account as well?

 

00;21;34;01 - 00;21;38;06

RP

Yes, that's @RossPadluck.

 

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;10

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;12 - 00;00;30;08

Gabe Deck (GD)

We wanted to make sure we could fit as many units while making them as wide as possible. So five ended up being kind of the magic balance point to get them feeling pretty wide, really maximizing at least four bedrooms, five plus bathrooms, elevators and then roof deck spaces are pretty key for Philadelphia Center City townhouse developments. These houses each contain three roof deck spaces.

 

00;00;30;10 - 00;03;16;07

DP

This is my guest, Gabriel Deck. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we highlight Gabriel's Sansom5 Project in Center City, Philadelphia, Sansom5 is a collaborative venture between Philadelphia and New York developers. The site is a 5000 square foot rectangular parcel with three street frontages that previously contained small office buildings. The site is in Center City, Philadelphia, close to the Rittenhouse and Fittler's Squares.

 

There's a five foot grade change across the main frontage, and the parcel sits within a flood zone adjacent to the Schuylkill River. Most neighborhood buildings are primarily brick masonry with strong cornice lines, which drove esthetic and material choices. Each townhouse features entry door locations where grade changes mitigated and the facade is recessed within a portal of capstone. The project, which is light brown brick, also features facade materials that include gray, flat block, metal panels, wood, accent cladding, and a mix of black and brown clad, slim profile windows.

 

The project includes five high-end townhouses which maximize square footage. Each home contains four bedrooms, six bathrooms, an elevator and three outdoor spaces. Hi, I'm Doug Pat, and this is Design Vault. Gabriel Deck has a Bachelor of Architecture from Temple University. He describes himself as a big time Philadelphia guy, having stayed in Philly after college and continues to do business there.

 

He began his career working for Wallace Roberts on a variety of project types. After the 2008 recession, he got his real estate license, where he made a number of contacts in residential development over the next few years. These relationships led to a number of small residential design projects. He eventually started his own small firm. His work was mostly urban, small scale residential editions, which quickly grew into new construction townhouse developments and then larger adaptive reuse residential projects.

 

The scale of work grew over the first few years, as did the business. The firm was rebranded GNOME Architects in 2018. The team is currently nine people operating out of a repurposed public high school in South Philadelphia. The firm has 400 plus projects to date, mostly in Philly, but also in other parts of the country as far reaching as Colorado and Maine.

 

Welcome Gabe. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about GNOME Architects in Philly. Where are you guys located? What's the size of the firm? How long has it been around and what type of work do you do?

 

00;03;16;09 - 00;04;27;27

GD

So GNOME Architects has been around since about 2018 after a rebrand of my previous business. We're currently a team of nine people comprised of myself and my business partner, Derek Spencer, and a handful of designers. So the business started back in 2013. Originally when I quit my job at WRC to focus on some small residential projects that I had acquired from developer contacts that I had made working in real estate.

 

Philadelphia is a small town in terms of the industry. Word spreads and quickly I was able to get a lot of project work by way of these developer contacts. Most of the projects were third floor additions, small townhouse, new construction, infill projects. And once I partnered with Derek Spencer, we started focusing a bit more on larger multifamily work.

 

The team grew, the project scale grew. Now we are working on developer driven business on one end of the firm doing large multifamily work, low rise podium buildings. Most are 30 to 50 units in scale. And then on the other side, we're doing custom single family homeowner projects with interior design as well.

 

00;04;27;29 - 00;04;41;10

DP

So Gabe you had your real estate license, which is pretty interesting for an architect, and you use that, I'm assuming, for a few years during the recession and then kind of moved back into architecture. When did you get your architectural license?

 

00;04;41;13 - 00;04;58;08

GD

So architectural license came around 2012, couple of years after the real estate license, and kind of was doing the two in tandem, you know, working nights and weekends trying to do sales. I got burned out pretty quickly, doing a full time job with an architecture firm, and then that on nights and weekends, it was a lot.

 

00;04;58;11 - 00;05;15;06

DP

What's so interesting to me is over the course of my career, I have met a lot of architects that end up doing lots of different jobs because architects aren't always busy all the time and they're one of the first people hit by recessions.

 

00;05;15;08 - 00;05;36;28

GD

Yes. And that's exactly kind of what happened to the big firm that I was with. I wasn't sure of my future there, wasn't sure what I was going to do. And real estate. I had a number of friends that were in the business. I went in that direction and I figured it was somewhat parallel to an interest in residential design.

 

So it seemed like a natural fit and thankfully it led to a lot of good relationships and some work to start the business.

 

00;05;37;05 - 00;05;42;19

DP

Yeah, it certainly sounds fortuitous. So what is your role in the office as a principal?

 

00;05;42;25 - 00;06;01;00

GD

I share the burden of running of the office with my business partner, Derek Spencer. I would say my role is more in the CEO traditional sense, while also the design director of the firm, where my business partner is handling more of the technical development of things and more overseeing the design development of things.

 

00;06;01;02 - 00;06;06;14

DP

So it's always interesting to find out how people end up working together. How'd you meet Derek?

 

00;06;06;17 - 00;06;40;10

GD

Derek and I started working together. He was my first employee, actually. I met him through mutual contacts when I realized I was spread too thin, working out of a spare bedroom in my home in the early days of my business. Derek was currently working for a firm across town, that’s, I'd say, one of our competitors. He was looking for something new, and it was the infancy stages of the business, so he came to start working with me.

 

And fast forward to three years later, we had a team of four of us and we were ready to rebrand and create GNOME Architects.

 

00;06;40;13 - 00;06;57;06

DP

So let's dig in here and talk about the project. This is really beautiful and I would imagine it took some time to get done in Center City, Philadelphia. So how did your office get the project? And you did mention obviously that you had some relationships or acquaintances that were developers.

 

00;06;57;09 - 00;07;23;25

GD

This project actually came from one of my very first clients that I had who was connected with the real estate office where I hung my license at that time. It was a partnership between that long existing client and a couple of developers from New York City that purchased the property, and we assisted them to take it through all of the permitting process and all the hoops we had to jump through as it's a pretty sensitive site.

 

00;07;23;27 - 00;07;28;02

DP

So could you give us a little history of the location before your buildings?

 

00;07;28;04 - 00;07;57;09

GD

So the site is on the western end of Center City, Philadelphia, about a block away from the Schuylkill River, sits in a floodplain about five feet or so below the FEMA flood zone line. It was a three sided site. So we had challenges to create, drive all access and building entrances and maximizing the use of both Center city and looking west towards the river.

 

So it was a challenging yet a site that had a lot of great opportunity as well to work with it.

 

00;07;57;12 - 00;08;03;10

DP

Yes, So unusual to get a piece of property in the city with three street frontages.

 

00;08;03;13 - 00;08;18;27

GD

Yeah, it's pretty uncommon, but it actually allows for some benefits as far as how you apply the zoning code and how city planning orients. The frontages actually worked to our benefit to get a driver on the back and five houses fronting the broad side of the site.

 

00;08;18;29 - 00;08;43;06

DP

So, Gabe, what was the scope of the project and what were the programmatic requirements for the townhouses?

 

00;08;43;09 - 00;09;09;12

GD

So the scope of the project was to try to maximize as many townhouse units as we could across the site, while also ensuring that they felt large and spacious and wide with Philadelphia townhouse development. You're often dealing with very narrow properties, so anything that's built new construction is typically somewhere between 14 and 20 feet wide or so. So we wanted to make sure we could fit as many units while making them as wide as possible.

 

00;09;09;12 - 00;09;30;29

GD

So five ended up being kind of the magic balance point to get them feeling pretty wide. The developer wanted to make sure we could provide as much parking as possible, so each unit has a two car garage and then really maximizing at least four bedrooms, five plus bathrooms, elevators, and then the big thing here also is just outdoor spaces.

 

00;09;30;29 - 00;09;42;01

GD

So roof deck spaces are pretty key for Philadelphia Center City Townhouse developments. These houses each contain three roof deck spaces.

 

00;09;42;04 - 00;09;45;02

DP

And how many stories has the project has had? Four or five.

 

00;09;45;04 - 00;09;59;18

GD

It's technically five stories by way of the code. However, there is a pilot house on top of each house, which also contains some livable or habitable space, which makes the buildings read as six stories interesting.

 

00;09;59;18 - 00;10;21;08

DP

So let's talk a little bit about the style, the architecture, some of the buildings that surround it. I had mentioned that we had some pretty strong cornice lines locally and you probably picked up on that in terms of brick courses. And then we've got some really beautiful, tall, decorative patterning on each one of these facades.

 

00;10;21;15 - 00;10;45;02

GD

We typically like to do our best to work in some contextual elements into our projects. So with this site, there's a lot of surrounding context that has primarily brick material, very strong cornice lines at the rooflines. So inserting a new development that is essentially six stories adjacent to a lot of three and four story buildings, we had to kind of get creative to make things fit in.

 

00;10;45;05 - 00;11;08;23

GD

So we kind of struck a line at the top of the fourth floor for the brick material. Coming up to that, a chorus line at the top of the fourth floor. And then we selected a kind of a gray, brown, beige tone brick, as a lot of the neighboring buildings are a variety of colors. So there's not really a strong predominance of red brick or white brick or brown.

 

00;11;08;23 - 00;11;16;20

GD

It's kind of all over the place. So the gray brown tone of the selected brick that we used kind of was a nice middle ground for it.

 

00;11;16;22 - 00;11;34;10

DP

So let's go back to the zoning for a second. So these buildings step back as they move up above that third story. Plus they're up at least on one end, at least five feet, creating these stoops. Did you have to step the buildings back? I know you clearly did that for functional reasons to have these roof gardens up there.

 

00;11;34;17 - 00;11;57;18

GD

Yes. So it was, again, just a way to kind of fit within the context of the lower height buildings around us. The zoning code didn't really require us to set the buildings back where we did. We did it more for the outdoor spaces, but the fourth floor line was kind of the natural place to do a material transition to make the massing fit well with the vernacular nearby.

 

00;11;57;20 - 00;12;00;28

DP

Were there any historical reviews by the zoning board?

 

00;12;01;00 - 00;12;31;12

GD

Surprisingly, this was not a historical designated site, so we were not subject to any historic review. I would say the biggest hurdles we had or really within meeting the flood zone regulations. So it was a challenge to make sure we maintained all the FEMA regulations so these buildings don't have basements. We have flood doors on all facades and the challenges related to keeping your habitable floors above the flood plain were the big driving elements for this.

 

00;12;31;15 - 00;12;45;24

DP

Okay, so first floors above the floodplain, the base, the plinth, I'll call it, is masonry, is brick masonry. So you have these doors. Do they have to be a certain size? And I would imagine they're breakaway or is that the way it works?

 

00;12;45;26 - 00;13;06;23

GD

So each structure had to have a number of flood vents on at least two sides of the exterior walls. The size of these denser, I believe, one square inch per square foot of building footprint. They allow for the passing of flood water going in and out of the building just to relieve the flood pressure that the building would be subject to.

 

00;13;06;28 - 00;13;21;11

GD

So we did our best to hide them in kind of inconspicuous areas along the front facade where they were required, as well as the back of the building where the dry is. That's not really seen from the public right of way. So it was a nice place to hide these vents.

 

00;13;21;13 - 00;13;32;09

DP

So tell me about the apartments and plants we get along rectangle and each one of these is more squarish in plan. And I'm also wondering, I don't see the two car garages.

 

00;13;32;11 - 00;13;56;26

GD

Yeah. So the garages are all facing a rear drive aisle that we were able to hide. It's like a one way drive I'll access that comes in off of one of the small side streets, exits on the far end of the other side street. And then there are two car garages at the rear of each home are facing this drive while the driveway is also covered by a series of exterior decks, each deck serving one of the houses.

 

00;13;56;26 - 00;14;01;13

GD

So it's a covered drive aisle with a garage door. At either end of it, you never actually see it.

 

00;14;01;19 - 00;14;04;11

DP

And the buildings in plan are the each rectangles.

 

00;14;04;13 - 00;14;17;17

GD

Yes. So they're roughly, I'd say, 22, 23 feet wide by 40 to 50 feet deep with the drive at the rear and the main entrance at the opposite side facing the street frontage.

 

00;14;17;20 - 00;14;23;24

DP

So what was the building review like with the city of Philadelphia? Was that challenging? Was it time consuming?

 

00;14;24;01 - 00;14;45;16

GD

So it had a bit of back and forth. Our office handling primarily projects in Philadelphia. We've made a lot of good relationships with different plans examiners, different city agencies. I've gotten to know the process pretty well, as it is rather daunting for anyone who's unfamiliar with it. So I would say this project had a number of rounds of verifies from the plans.

 

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

GD

Examiner is mostly related to the interpretation of the parking that was implemented as well as kind of the interpretation of the roof deck access structures and that type of things. And typically it's a dialog with them to make sure everyone's kind of on the same page and there's a middle ground you need to find. But I would say we got through it in a couple of rounds, which was better than we had expected given the sensitive features of the site.

 

00;15;10;16 - 00;15;25;02

DP

So building materials you guys used primary Li Brick, I mentioned to you before we got rolling, it's a light. It appears to be a light brown brick. It's actually called Stonington gray velour. It's got a wide variety of values or shades in it.

 

00;15;25;08 - 00;15;46;03

GD

This was a really beautiful brick that worked well for our goals to kind of strike a line between the various masonry colors of the surrounding buildings. So it actually has a nice amount of variety in it. Some of the bricks are a lot more brown and darker. Some of the bricks are very light kind of in the the off-white color range.

 

00;15;46;03 - 00;16;06;16

GD

So once you get close, you really see the variety of color that's in there, which is really nice. And then at different times of the day, it also reads a little bit differently in the morning in direct sunlight. It kind of has a more of a warm brown tone to it and kind of in the twilight hours of the sun going down, there's a lot of reflectivity is caught.

 

00;16;06;16 - 00;16;13;14

GD

And when you look closely at it, so it really speaks well to the contemporary approach that the building esthetic has.

 

00;16;13;16 - 00;16;42;09

DP

What I love about this project is the brick pattern. You guys really spent a lot of time working on all the different patterning that's happening at the Stoops and around the windows, at the cornice lines. So tell us about how you did that in the office. Right? Typically we see a designer working on exterior elevation drawings and then, you know, the lead designers review them and it's back and forth and then eventually you're putting that into the CDs and you're doing mock ups in the field.

 

00;16;42;09 - 00;16;43;19

DP

So how did that go?

 

00;16;43;22 - 00;17;09;08

GD

Yeah, so it surprisingly went pretty smoothly on this project. The brick patterning that we went with was kind of a solution to a number of problems. We had planned driven windows, which is typical of these Philadelphia townhouse projects where you don't have a lot of space. So your windows can only go in certain areas. But then when you want to create alignments vertically on the facade and such, you've got to kind of get creative.

 

00;17;09;08 - 00;17;32;11

GD

Sometimes if that's a goal. So the brick patterning that we implemented was a tool to kind of strike these alignments vertically in the facade. So we have this recessed entry portal that is maybe two thirds of the width of the frontage, but the windows on the upper floors could not necessarily align with the jams of that portal opening.

 

00;17;32;11 - 00;18;01;20

GD

So we implemented brick patterning at the JAMB locations of the windows to then create a hard line that would align with the portal entryway below. That's one way we used the pattern to help. We also used it to just create interest on the facade. As I mentioned, the flood zone required us to keep the living spaces pretty high out of grade and that resulted in what would otherwise be a rather blank wall at the base of the building.

 

00;18;01;20 - 00;18;17;09

GD

The changes in brick pattern were a tool to kind of add some interest, so the brick we chose in relationship to a lot of cast stone that also creates some interesting accents around the window openings was a nice balance.

 

00;18;17;12 - 00;18;26;27

DP

What I really love is in this photograph on the far left you've got the brick patterning at the center stoop, but the patterning is completely different. On the left and right.

 

00;18;26;29 - 00;18;52;27

GD

The stoops were a huge focus of the design, so we had to get the occupants about 5 to 6 feet above the sidewalk level to the entry doors, which instead of having kind of a visible staircase that would otherwise dominate the sidewalk, we utilized a screen wall of brick in front of the staircase entryway that was also in front of a patterned planter box.

 

00;18;52;27 - 00;19;16;10

GD

So you have these multiple layers of masonry that add interest at the staircase. It allows us to insert some greenery as well. So it's a very tactile experience as you walk up to the front door of these houses that worked out very beautifully and the execution of the masonry and saw was fantastic by the mason as well, which we were very pleased to see.

 

00;19;16;12 - 00;19;39;18

GD

We had a series of conversations with the GC to make sure everyone was on the same page with the detailing. Our construction documents were very thorough to make sure that the areas of recess patterning as well as kind of projected roll lock and soldier course detailing was achieved and all the shadow lines could be read throughout the day as the sun moves around the building.

 

00;19;39;20 - 00;19;42;16

DP

So did you guys draw this in 2D and 3D?

 

00;19;42;18 - 00;20;12;01

GD

Yes. Our process typically starts with a three dimensional model of the building that we get to a comfortable point. We utilize sketch up primarily for a design tool in the schematic phase. And once we're happy with the sketch model, we move into 2D drawing. This project was done a few years ago before our office implemented Revit, but we were still able to successfully document how all the masonry patterning was working in 2D.

 

00;20;12;04 - 00;20;16;29

DP

So did you show the three dimensional model to the clients along the way?

 

00;20;17;06 - 00;20;42;27

GD

We did. We had a number of options for this projects. They were all similar in the materiality, but some were maybe a little more traditional, others were even more contemporary looking. So we utilized the 3D models as a design tool to visualize the project to the client. And in the end they were very happy with one of the options we chose, which had very minimal changes that they needed to see.

 

00;20;43;00 - 00;20;47;25

DP

Clients love 3D models, right? Were you able to model any of the BRIC in SketchUp?

 

00;20;47;27 - 00;21;17;18

GD

We built the SketchUp model and applied some custom made material swatches that we built utilizing other brick colors, and we made sure we could match exactly what the Stonington gray velour would look like. And then it was just a matter of scaling the pattern down to the brick unit. So even in the areas where you have these dimple patterns that read against the entryway walls, all of the patterns were aligned perfectly to align up with the massing recesses that took place in the model.

 

00;21;17;18 - 00;21;19;20

GD

So it ended up being pretty successful.

 

00;21;19;22 - 00;21;23;26

DP

So how many people worked on the team for the project from the architects office?

 

00;21;23;28 - 00;21;40;10

GD

I would say that through the design process there were at least four of us that work through the design concepts together and I would say primarily one designer and myself kind of pushed the design to where it is now. But back when we did the project, it was a pretty collaborative effort within the office.

 

00;21;40;13 - 00;21;48;08

DP

So I feel like every project I learn something new. Did you guys learn anything through the process of working on this project?

 

00;21;48;11 - 00;22;11;06

GD

We learned quite a bit, especially in terms of the brick detailing here. We kind of learned that certain patterns have rules around them, especially when you're utilizing like a stacked pattern where you have these very clean vertical lines that need to be maintained. It's tricky to make sure that things don't read as a mistake within that patterning, especially as it relates to where you put windows.

 

00;22;11;08 - 00;22;31;10

GD

So we had to make sure our window spacing was just right. So you didn't results in little slivers of brick that would be noticeable and read as a mistake. So we took a lot of care in making sure that the tolerances and the actual window sizes and everything were worked in to make sure that we didn't end up with those kind of conditions.

 

00;22;31;12 - 00;22;45;08

DP

And that takes some pretty close work with the. Mason You mentioned that you thought the execution worked out well. Did you guys have a tough time finding a mason or was the first mason you guys ended up meeting the person you used.

 

00;22;45;10 - 00;23;11;22

GD

So the general contractor, it was his team, really. And the mason that he chose and started the project with kind of nailed it right from the start. We had probably two or three on site meetings with the Mason, looking at the drawings. That's a back and forth with some questions. And then ultimately we had a small mockup in the field and everyone was on the same page and collectively in the room together to make sure that the execution was going to happen just right.

 

00;23;11;22 - 00;23;12;18

GD

And it did.

 

00;23;12;20 - 00;23;40;09

DP

So last thing I wanted to ask you about was the metal panels on the fourth floor and these large bay windows on the outside edges of the building. Really beautiful. These are great details. You see these bay window details everywhere on 1930s and forties, city architecture. And I think doing that on the ends of these buildings and then adding the flat lock metal panels to the fourth floor is really beautiful.

 

00;23;40;11 - 00;23;41;19

DP

Great detail.

 

00;23;41;22 - 00;23;59;21

GD

Yeah. So back to kind of the challenges of working in Philadelphia and not a lot of space to work with. The bay windows are always a tool to add a little bit more interior square footage, but the challenge is always Hadia clad them. How do you make them feel appropriate when the rest of the facade material is masonry?

 

00;23;59;23 - 00;24;29;00

GD

Yeah, we kind of struck a line with a traditional meets contemporary bay esthetic to compliment the window patterns within the masonry as well. So the bays have very kind of glassy windows, wrapping all sides in the same style of windows as the punched openings within the flanking brick masonry and then the color of the bays being much darker than the masonry was meant to draw more attention away from the bay and actually focus it on the adjacent brick masonry.

 

00;24;29;02 - 00;24;48;17

DP

One more comment or question. These entry portals are beautiful. Was it tough for you guys to decide? Okay, we're going to set back the front door and these very large windows lose a little bit of square footage, but we get these entries which are highly differentiated on the facade or along the facade.

 

00;24;48;20 - 00;25;11;06

GD

Yes. So the entry portal was a result of trying to solve a problem around the narrow sidewalk. The city only allows you to project so far into the public right of way and you're trying to make this nice prominent entrance for this luxury townhouse. And in order to achieve a wide staircase going up there, you got to kind of recess the frontage of the building.

 

00;25;11;06 - 00;25;31;25

GD

So we accomplished that by recessing just the entryway that the ground floor. When I mentioned being in the floodplain, we had to get the first floor up pretty high. So the entry door is actually at a middle landing between the garage level in the first floor. The first floor is actually up about ten feet above the sidewalk. So we recessed the entryway.

 

00;25;31;25 - 00;25;40;02

GD

It allowed us to have four or five foot wide steps leading up to the front door and a nice prominent procession up the steps to the front door of the house.

 

00;25;40;09 - 00;26;03;15

DP

Well, Gabe, it's a beautiful project. When I first saw these photos, I was really excited to do this interview. So I have done so many different things in my career while being an architect. And while it's not that unusual, I've found that being an architect has helped me to be good at lots of other things in my life.

 

00;26;03;18 - 00;26;30;10

DP

The other thing that I will say is that we end up working on many different things in our lives, even if we're let's say you end up doing stair details for a large firm for ten years and you think I wasted all that time doing stair details. The reality is we never really know when any of the things that we learn how to do will come in handy and can ultimately change our life in some way, even if it's in a small way.

 

00;26;30;10 - 00;26;45;28

DP

So I think it's really cool that you got your real estate license because you made all of these relationships or just a couple relationships that ultimately helped you become a successful architect. It's a big deal, right? So I don't think you give yourself enough credit.

 

00;26;46;00 - 00;27;04;16

GD

Yeah, I think I realized early on that I was good at some things, but not good at everything I needed to be good at. So the relationships were everything, especially in the early days. So knowing when to reach out to the people who know the solution is a big part of being an architect, a big part of being an entrepreneur.

 

00;27;04;16 - 00;27;22;22

GD

Starting a business as well is, you know, you need to do it right. You have a license that you got to hang your hat on. So it's critical for you to understand when it's time to reach out for design professionals outside of your purview and outside of your profession for the right solution to problems on your projects.

 

00;27;22;24 - 00;27;29;20

DP

So, Gabe, it's been great to have you here. Thanks so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about No more architects and yourself?

 

00;27;29;22 - 00;27;44;25

GD

Sure. So our website is pretty current websites WWE and gnome arch dot com genome RC. I would say even more current than that is our Instagram account, which is also at Gnome Arch.

 

00;27;44;28 - 00;27;47;19

DP

So one more question. Where did you get the name?

 

00;27;47;21 - 00;28;09;22

GD

The name actually came from a rebranding exercise that we did back in 2018 and we were looking to create a new identity that spoke to the residential nature of our products and we wanted to kind of speak to the home and a place of being. So the gnome, the garden gnome is a character that does that. It's the marker of place.

 

00;28;09;22 - 00;28;35;29

GD

We also wanted the branding to be very memorable and approachable, so we initially kind of wrote off a name that came to us from our rebranding company and we thought it was crazy. And the more rounds of more names they suggested to us, the more we came back to that first stab of GNOME being the solution and so happy that we trusted in the company that we rebranded with and it's worked out for us very well.

 

00;28;36;05 - 00;28;37;25

DP

It's a great story. Well, thanks again, Gabe.

 

00;28;38;00 - 00;28;41;13

GD

Thank you.

 

00;28;41;16 - 00;29;05;01

DP

Thanks for listening. If you learned something today, share this episode with a friend and give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to help others find the show. If you want to find out more about today's project, visit Glengarry com forward slash design dash vault that's gleaned GSR y dot com forward slash design dash vault one even more inspiration.

 

00;29;05;01 - 00;29;28;24

DP

Take a look around Glengarry icon while you're there. Glengarry is one of the nation's largest brick manufacturers and an industry leader for its diversified product line of more than 600 brick products with inspiring photos, useful resources, easy search tools, helpful design studios, and more. I'm sure you'll find the inspiration you need to stretch your imagination

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;18

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;20 - 00;00;38;03

Sussan Lari (SL)

The house had character. Typically, Tudor style houses from outside are just stunningly gorgeous piece of structure. And when you go in, it's just sad. And that is not going to happen with my approach to design, because I like the style of Tudor and I don't like the style of sad inside spaces. So it's bright and happy and is open, is spacious. You know, lots of windows.

 

00;00;38;06 - 00;02;41;18

DP

In this special series we’re unlocking some of the most powerful conversations we've had so far. We're connecting the dots, revealing hidden gems and unearthing insights that might have slipped by. All to spark your next big idea with brick. Whether you're looking for fresh inspiration or innovative solutions, this series is designed to fuel your creativity. So let's dive in.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Today we explore Tudor style homes with insights from Peter VanderPoel, of VanderPoel Architecture, who designed the geometrically inspired Guildford Court in McLean, Virginia, and Sussan Lari of Sussan Lari Architect PC, who transformed the Tudor style Henhawk house in Long Island, New York. Tudor architecture is a style of British design that emerged between 1485 and 1558, blending decorative Renaissance elements with the Gothic tradition. Recognized for its steeply pitched roofs, half timbered facades, ornate brickwork, and distinctive chimney treatments.

 

Tudor buildings often feature large, grouped windows and intricate details. While exteriors highlight rich textures and patterns, interiors are known for wood paneled walls and plasterwork ceilings, creating a blend of medieval charm and early Renaissance sophistication. In this bonus episode we’ll highlight various aspects of Peter and Sussan's project, including the architectural design process, construction challenges, and the thoughtful use of brickwork to create Tudor style homes that bridge tradition and modernity.

 

Both projects reflect a deep respect for tradition while incorporating innovative design solutions. Peter VanderPoel’s Guildford Court responded to the steep, angular site with a unique three axis geometry inspired by the hexagonal forms of Frank Lloyd Wright's Hanna house.

 

00;02;41;21 - 00;04;28;05

Peter VanderPoel (PV)

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

 

And then these two angles that almost describe 60 degrees from the two property lines that go away from the cul de sac. And so my first inclination was, well, that's almost 60 degrees. And so a hexagonal plan would work on a lot like that. So then I started looking at precedents for that. I know Frank Lloyd Wright had done the Hanna house in California.

 

It was based on the hexagon. He had done a whole series of projects based on geometry. So I had looked at those, but it was through that less hexagonal forms and more towards three axes rather than we normally think of two axes that x and y. But this now has these 120 degree rotation that with a hexagon you have three axes that are involved in describing that geometry.

 

And that was essentially the same geometry we had on that site. So that became the basis for the design. And then with three geometries, we've got three programmatic elements of getting the cars on and off the semipublic and then the private. And then we also have this dramatic rise in height. So we could also do the same thing vertically.

 

We have the garage at the lowest level so the cars can get on easily. The semipublic now faces the street on this very narrow frontage, and then the private is up highest and essentially resting on top of the semipublic block and runs back. But because the site is so steep, it touches ground. It's a grade at the back of the property, even though it's sitting on top of the lower level at the front.

 

00;04;28;07 - 00;04;34;24

DP

The design uses distinct programmatic zones, private semipublic and garage spaces.

 

00;04;34;26 - 00;06;57;14

PV

Well, one is getting the cars on and off the lot. They can't, just the nature of cars, they can't be going up and down hill. So we need to get them on the shortest route and the lowest route, so that if you think about the site as a state of Georgia, the Florida border line was where the cars came in. The semipublic face, the cul de sac.

 

It addressed through there. And then we had stairs going up this series of stones, because one of the concerns was, that's a long way up to get to that first floor, just because it's so steep. So we have these stones on the site that are shifted. So you're sort of walking across these lily pads and then a diagonal that goes up and then a set of stairs.

 

So there's a variety of experiences moving towards the front of the house. We also have the office portion now is right inside the front door. So if someone in the house decides to set up office there, they have a client come by. They don't have to go into the main house, just in and out the front door, take care of business and then from there a few more steps go into the main house.

 

So that opens up and a very large open space. There's the fireplace, dining, living, kitchen are all in that area. And then behind the kitchen is sort of the pool deck area for showers and changing and so on. And then there's a large circular stair that's the pin. So if you think about the semipublic and the private, they splay out at 120 degrees.

 

And the stairway is the pin that holds us together to do that rotation. So there's a very large grand sculptural stair up to the second level, and it comes up between the master bedroom and the additional bedrooms, so that when you move towards the cul de sac, you're now in the master bedroom suite that is like this big diving board looking over.

 

It's a tremendous site, as I said, was very challenging. But being in that master bedroom and looking out over the trees away from the site, it's a dramatic view going the other direction there. The other bedrooms that I said eventually gets back to grade because it gets so steep in the back and then there's also the stair continues down.

 

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

 

00;06;57;16 - 00;07;19;03

DP

These zones are further emphasized through the vertical layering of the building, rising with his site's natural topography. In contrast, Sussan Lari's Henhawk House expanded a 40 100 square foot Tudor home into a 13,300 square foot estate. While maintaining the scale and charm of the original architecture.

 

00;07;19;05 - 00;07;38;15

SL

Location is really a fantastic location. The tree lined boulevard type street in Long Island. The house itself was Tudor style brick. Relatively small zoning wise, were allowed to build close to 8000ft², and the existing house was close to 4400ft².

 

00;07;38;16 - 00;07;40;04

DP

So there's an FAR there.

 

00;07;40;07 - 00;08;08;02

SL

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

 

00;08;08;05 - 00;08;13;18

DP

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

 

00;08;13;20 - 00;08;49;05

SL

You know, in a way it gives this kind of fear of people to the Tudor because they think Tudor supposed to be dark interior and that is not going to happen with my approach to design, because I like the style of Tudor, and I don't like the style of sad inside spaces. So it's bright and happy and is open, is spacious, you know, lots of windows.

 

And in this particular case, the expansion of the house was extensive because I needed to keep a chimney.

 

00;08;49;11 - 00;08;51;21

DP

Was this a functional chimney or boiler flues?

 

00;08;51;21 - 00;09;10;09

SL

Yes. Function to me. And then we wanted to keep a fireplace. We wanted to keep a chimney and they wanted to keep the ceiling has to work ceiling of a dining room. So I said, okay, we keep all those tree, but we get rid of everything.

 

00;09;10;12 - 00;09;25;03

DP

Her design emphasized the playfulness of the Tudor esthetic, with its steeply pitched roofs, half timbered facades and intricate brickwork, all modernized with a bright and open interior that reflects contemporary living.

 

00;09;25;06 - 00;10;01;28

SL

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

 

00;10;02;01 - 00;10;22;28

DP

Brick played a pivotal role in both projects, not only for its durability and timelessness, but also as a design tool to express texture and detail. At Guildford Court, dark brick veneer was used for the semipublic zone, creating a visual contrast and grounding the structure within its suburban context.

 

00;10;23;00 - 00;10;53;28

PV

There's fiber cement boards for the bedroom space, and then the semipublic was, a brick, and then the garage was, I think there's a wood on there. So we have a couple different faces. There's a brick facade for the semipublic. I think there's some brick as well on the garage, and we also brought some of the brick inside in the living spaces.

 

We wanted to have a variety of materials to represent because everything's now being divided into threes with the garage, semipublic, private spaces.

 

00;10;54;01 - 00;11;00;14

DP

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

 

00;11;00;16 - 00;11;16;21

PV

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

 

00;11;16;21 - 00;11;23;19

DP

It, you know, would seem to me that you chose to use brick as a differentiated design element, right? Right.

 

00;11;23;21 - 00;11;34;07

PV

It's also very common in this part of the country. In an old town, Virginia, and just all up and down the East Coast. Brick was the way to do durable construction and still is.

 

00;11;34;09 - 00;11;38;10

DP

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

 

00;11;38;14 - 00;11;57;13

PV

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

 

00;11;57;15 - 00;12;07;19

DP

The brick was also introduced in interior spaces such as the fireplace surround, blending the exterior and interior seamlessly.

 

00;12;07;21 - 00;12;23;02

PV

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

 

00;12;23;09 - 00;12;24;22

DP

Do you remember the species?

 

00;12;24;24 - 00;12;27;25

PV

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

 

00;12;27;28 - 00;12;40;15

DP

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

 

00;12;40;17 - 00;12;45;17

PV

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

 

00;12;45;25 - 00;12;47;11

DP

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

 

00;12;47;11 - 00;12;54;29

PV

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

 

00;12;55;02 - 00;13;06;04

DP

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

 

00;13;06;06 - 00;13;15;24

PV

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

 

00;13;15;27 - 00;13;21;23

DP

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

 

00;13;21;27 - 00;13;37;08

PV

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

 

00;13;37;14 - 00;13;38;03

DP

Are those 12 12? Tudor style?

 

00;13;38;03 - 00;13;45;07

PV

Yes they are. The contractor ended up putting living space up there as well. So we made good use of that space.

 

00;13;45;07 - 00;13;59;19

DP

Of course, for Henhawk House, brick became a canvas for creativity. The facade features herringbone patterns, soldier courses and diagonal layouts, adding richness and depth to the design.

 

00;13;59;21 - 00;14;12;28

SL

I think we were good in accomplishing that because it has its playfulness and although is relatively large but it is not overwhelmingly massive.

 

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

DP

I'd say it's well scaled.

 

00;14;14;17 - 00;15;07;29

SL

It is well scaled, right? And then at the end, we realized that there's no way we could match the old brick. So I know Glen-Gery very well, because if I ever have done any brickwork has been Glen-Gery and why? Because the quality of the material and I get service. So I am fussy enough to worry about the size and also worry about the color of the grout.

 

And I want to have the samples of it made before I even decide what color brick. So a rep does that service for us and do the color we provide the color and tell what brick. And between those is what I chose and eventually and I have are some Mason that are Italian and five brothers and one better than the other.

 

They're local to local and they do a magnificent job. And also they built a good size.

 

00;15;08;01 - 00;15;09;10

DP

They did a mock up?

 

00;15;09;14 - 00;15;51;18

SL

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

 

And then that herringbone style has to be compartmentalize, right?

 

00;15;51;21 - 00;15;53;18

DP

In between the boards, I think at one.

 

00;15;53;18 -00;16;40;12

SL

Between the boards would work. We shouldn't do too much of it because too much of an accessory. Not good. So it allowed me to experiment and do detailed work. And also choosing of the color of the brick and the color of the stucco and the freedom I had in detailing and designing and working also with the roof and with the roofer - I’m friend with the roofer, I'm friend with the Mason man, I’m friend and and to make sure that we get eventually a beautifully detailed house and outside. And then when it come to the inside, our life is modern.

 

We are living in this time. Our space should be representing our era.

 

00;16;40;15 - 00;16;43;00

DP

Did you guys use any brick on the interior?

 

00;16;43;03 - 00;16;45;09

SL

Not on this project.

 

00;16;45;11 - 00;16;53;01

DP

What were some of the historical precedents? We were talking about details. Were there any local buildings that were Tudors? Was this the only?

 

00;16;53;01 - 00;16;59;08

SL

Yes, actually, no. No, it's not in this particular street. There are many other brick buildings.

 

00;16;59;10 - 00;17;27;18

DP

Both architects face unique challenges, but found creative solutions to overcome them. In navigating the steep and irregular site of Guildford Court, the unique three axis geometry and distinct programmatic zones brought forth a familiar concept for Peter, known as polyrhythms. The result is a home that harmonizes with its environment while offering dramatic views and a clear organization of space.

 

00;17;27;20 - 0;18;27;00

PV

Something else we hadn't discussed that I used to play the drums, still do. Yeah, and for a long time I used to play, actually in a bagpipe band. More sophisticated than you think. But, so rhythm is something that I've been dealing with since I was ten years old. And one thing that came up is what called polyrhythms, where you have overlapping rhythms, you take two rhythms that may not be so interesting on their own, but when they're overlaid with each other, then it creates something more interesting than either of them were to begin with.

 

And that's how I view this project, that this overlay, the reason why that window angle is there on the corner is because the geometry of the private portion is been thrust through the semipublic. And so there's an angle that goes through, the chimney was rotated along that as well. And the contractor turned that back. But it was that slot that pushed through that mirrors the same axis that the private portion is on.

 

00;18;27;02 - 00;18;46;17

DP

For Henhawk House, Sussan preserved key elements of the original structure, such as a chimney and a decorative dining room ceiling, while designing a new L-shaped layout. This approach allowed her to integrate traditional and modern elements, creating a home that feels both expansive and intimate.

 

00;18;46;19 - 00;18;54;15

SL

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

 

00;18;54;17 - 00;18;57;03

DP

Okay, there was a height restriction?

 

00;18;57;06 - 00;20;44;08

SL

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

 

Now, the zoning building going to hear that. Fortunately, we had no issue at the setback because we had plenty of space from the front of the house in King's Point to setback requirement for front yard is 60ft and we had way more than 60ft. It was deep enough that I was able to create a parking courtyard in front of the house and the garage.

 

We have one two car garage on the upper level and then three car garage on the lowest level. The garage is actually coming further out from the front of the house, but I don't think we had any other zoning issues. But one other feature of the house that I thought, it's kind of important. As I was driving around and see all these Tudor houses, Tudor is not a box, Tudor is never a box. Tudor expand. And that is one beautiful feature of when it's all expand. We had a lot of width, plenty of available. The size of the property was very large and we had enough room on the site, and I thought that if I could add an extra width to the house, will be introducing a brick wall, extending from the garage, and that will be the access from the front of the house to the garden.

 

00;20;44;10 - 00;20;47;26

DP

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

 

00;20;48;02 - 00;21;06;04

SL

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

 

00;21;06;07 - 00;21;11;12

DP

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

 

00;21;11;14 - 00;21;22;06

SL

Yes, that brick herringbone is new. The playfulness of the brick above the entrance hall in the front and back, front and back are identical in what they represent.

 

00;21;22;09 - 00;22;29;09

DP

Reflecting on the design and construction of each home, both projects skillfully balance historical charm and modern functionality, demonstrating how this iconic style can be adapted to meet contemporary needs while maintaining its traditional character. Whether through Peter's innovative use of geometric axes and dark brick to articulate spaces, or Sussan's playful incorporation of brick patterns, timber framed stucco, and steep gabled roofs, both projects celebrate the rich textures and distinctive elements that define Tudor architecture, such as intricate brickwork, bold roof lines, and striking chimneys.

 

Ultimately, these projects underscore the power of Tudor design to bridge past and present, offering timeless esthetics alongside modern livability. Through their thoughtful interpretations, Peter and Sussan highlight how this historic style continues to inspire and evolve, creating homes that are as functional as they are beautiful.

 

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;05;14

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;17 - 00;00;30;21

Mateusz Nowacki (MN)

They grew up in small villages in southern Poland, where a lot of the typical houses there are just built out of, like, clay brick. One could look at that and say, well, that's really utilitarian and where's the cladding? But to me, I find that really interesting. I'm like, oh, that is the cladding. And how do we kind of represent that in a new way?

 

Hence, where we landed with the materiality of this project, which is a kind of smoked, darker tone sort of clay brick that ages really well and has this kind of grace and it's timeless quality.

 

00;00;30;27 - 00;02;13;21

DP

In this special series, we're unlocking some of the most powerful conversations we've had so far. We're connecting the dots, revealing hidden gems and unearthing insights that might have slipped by, all to spark your next big idea with brick. Whether you're looking for fresh inspiration or innovative solutions, this series is designed to fuel your creativity. So let's dive in.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Today, we travel around the world to examine the architectural vision behind three remarkable projects with insights from William Smart, founder and Creative Director of Smart Design Studio in Sydney, Lorne Rose, principal architect of Lorne Rose Architect in Toronto, and Mateusz Nowacki, architect and designer of the H House in Ontario, Canada. We’ll highlight various aspects of each project, including the architectural design process, construction challenges, and the thoughtful use of brick to blend modern and traditional esthetics.

 

When working on these projects, each architect faced the challenge of integrating modern design elements while honoring the character and history of their respective contexts. William Smart's Smart Design Studio, located in Sydney's inner city, stands within a conservation area of brick warehouses. William designed the building to reference the industrial roots of the area, while incorporating bold, modern design gestures. The curving and peeling brick facade creates a sculptural and dynamic presence, showcasing an innovative use of brick in a contemporary setting.

 

00;02;13;27 - 00;03;29;05

William Smart (WS)

So there's an existing warehouse here, and the front strip of that building, which was where the office’s 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 in a downward direction, and peels up again the other way.

 

And at the top of that three storey structure, we have this apartment building, which is called the four walls 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 make kind of beautiful sculptural shapes, or to make beautiful load bearing brick folds. So that was one of the primary objectives. And it talks to the history of the area and really relates back in a very sympathetic way to the context.

 

00;03;29;08 - 00;03;53;14

DP

For Lorne Rose, the Tudor home in Toronto was inspired by a traditional Tudor style house from the turn of the century, but with modernized materials and craftsmanship. Replacing the half timber board work with stone, Lorne created a more durable and refined facade, all the while maintaining the Tudor character through intricate brick patterns like diagonal herringbone and basket weave.

 

00;03;53;17 - 00;05;23;14

Lorne Rose (LR)

There were some Tudor, a lot of postwar architecture. Toronto was very much influenced by English architecture, especially at the time, but the home that was the inspiration for this one was a much smaller home near Forest Hill Village. You know, where my office is, it was a much smaller home that had beautiful brickwork. And the Mick band was a homage to that house in Forest Hill.

 

Way to describe it is an orange segment carving. It would have been done out of wood on the original house, and these beautiful brick patterns, which you would see on other homes in Forest Hill village that really caught my eye and nobody really replicates properly these days. In addition to the first floor, as it were, carved, details like that on the old Tudor homes from the turn of the century in the revival of these styles are always left out.

 

So we really wanted to do it correctly on this home, and the homeowner spent extra money to do it properly and more authentic. Subsequent to that, there were quasi replicas of this house that popped up. People are in Toronto and they see something they want to emulate, but I don't take it as an offense, I take it as a form of compliment.

 

I didn't invent anything here. I was borrowing from, I have selected borrowing details from architecture styles that I like, and I do it with any style of modern or Georgian or French provincial. I like to use the most authentic details that clients will allow us to afford.

 

00;05;23;16 - 00;05;48;21

DP

Mateusz Nowacki’s H House located in a suburban area embraced minimalism and functionality. The home's clean, modern lines are contrasted with the strong material palette, where brick serves as a key element in grounding the design. The use of brick in simple linear forms respects the suburban context, while emphasizing craftsmanship and architectural simplicity.

 

00;05;48;23 - 00;07;00;10

MN

From a style perspective, the house is certainly a deviation from them, like they used to kind of live in a house that was quite ornamented and detailed and things like that was a beautiful house, right? But I think them seeing me continue to work on projects and the kind of projects I was working on, it really started to kind of have an effect on them.

 

And me coming on home at Christmas and talking about how important natural light is and that kind of stuff. It really had an impact. So they saw that as something that they could kind of work with themselves in terms of how to approach the house. And then on top of that, we looked at references of Eastern European architecture that felt familiar to them in terms of their context, right.

 

So they grew up in small villages in southern Poland, where a lot of the typical houses there are just built out of like clay, brick and the clay brick is exposed, all the mortar’s exposed, so it's all load bearing. One could look at that and say, well, that's really utilitarian and reflective of the structure of the house and you know, where's the cladding?

 

But to me, I find that really interesting. I'm like, oh, that is the cladding. And how do we kind of represent that in a new way? Hence where we landed with the materiality of this project, which is a kind of smoked darker toned sort of clay brick that ages really well and it has this kind of grace and it's a timeless quality.

 

So we looked at those precedents as a reference in terms of where the style of the house itself went.

 

00;07;00;13 - 00;07;20;00

DP

Each project seamlessly blends modern elements with traditional craftsmanship. A strong emphasis on materiality and detail was evident in all three projects. William's use of brick in the Catenary Vaults of the caretaker's apartment is a striking example of blending contemporary design with age-old techniques.

 

00;07;20;02 - 00;08;36;08

WS

I've had quite a lot of experience in working with brick, so over the years I've started to understand how to do more joints really well, how to make it kind of work gymnastic 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 60km from Sydney to very local and they're beautiful. They're white to they're in the space that I'm in 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 and my good black bricks. So we had to use the Spanish brick and they 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 in the landscaping that's in this area.

 

And marry perfectly with the building opposite that I mentioned.

 

00;08;36;10 - 00;08;55;10

DP

So let's get back to these unique vaults in the apartment. How did you build these? So 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 they're also a really unique shape, right? They're elliptical.

 

00;08;55;13 - 00;11;18;16

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 curve. So like a hull of a boat sitting upside down, we made a timber plywood form. And then we literally put the brakes on top of that form so that the mortar didn't leak out in between.

 

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

 

We worked out that you could make the CNC machine work very hard for you and the CNC cutting is incredible false 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 it 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 mil stick of concrete. Now in that process where all the bricks are 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 is 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 Antoni Gaudí is the master of how those elements come together.

 

We laid bricks on top. We sprayed it with a thin layer of concrete, what we call shock created in Australia. It's a similar way to how you build swimming pools. They dried that off and they left it to dry for a month. And then after that we took it away. So the concrete in that system provides stability, because you could imagine if you make this brick fold, 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 you take it away and it stands up beautifully in this space. It's kind of fun to do all that.

 

00;11;18;18 - 00;11;32;21

DP

In Lawrence Tudor Home, the thoughtful arrangement of brick patterns and carved stone details brought a level of authenticity and timelessness to the project, enhancing the traditional Tudor aesthetic in a modern urban context.

 

00;11;32;23 - 00;11;58;16

LR

There were examples that I looked at as well, where the second floor, rather than brick, you could do some of these patterns in stone, but red brick was dear to the owner's liking, and I don't think there was really another option in the sides and the rear of the house there's a stone skirt that wraps around the house, but the rest of the house is broken while many people do a front end of all stone sites and red brick, it allowed us to tie the brick in all the way around the house.

 

00;11;58;18 - 00;12;08;02

DP

What I think is really pretty when you look at the exterior gables, the half timbered construction has become stone. Talk a little bit about that. And where have you seen that in the past?

 

00;12;08;04 - 00;12;39;26

LR

There were some examples I've seen in the city, but for the most part, you know, even on a lot of the house since we do that are Tudor, but we'll have a cornice detail. Our winters are harsh, or whether it's harsh or summers or hot, sticky. And we have extremes. The thought of sort of painting wood timbers, have timbers every now and then was not something the homeowner wanted to do.

 

So we suggested doing them out of stone. There's no maintenance. So we've done that a couple of times just to cut down on maintenance. There are some parts that are wood, but not a lot of this house.

 

00;12;39;29 - 00;12;48;00

DP

Matisse's minimalist approach to the brick design provided an understated elegance that complemented the home's modern design.

 

00;12;48;07 - 00;13;42;06

MN

Specifically, I remember for my mother when I said, you know, we're thinking about this kind of clay colored brick and something that looks really natural. She loved that idea. She really never understood why more houses in a kind of contemporary context didn't do that, at least in the context where they live, and to some degree, because the house, you know, in its design, in its formal and massing quality, it can appear really stark compared to its neighbors.

 

The materiality choices of it are meant to sensitize that approach. So this notion of really conventional brick is meant to appear familiar to kind of the onlooker or to the person that, you know, lives in that home. It has this really timeless quality to it. It's like, I can understand that house because it's made of brick. It's made of a conventional thing that I know that's been around for ages and has its conventional color.

 

That's the color that brick usually looks like. When you ask a child to draw a brick, they're going to draw you a red brick. Maybe with three quarters if the child is advanced enough. Right. There's this familiarity which helps make the architecture more digestible.

 

00;13;42;09 - 00;13;47;11

DP

So set up the building materials in general for us because the palette isn't just brick.

 

00;13;47;13 - 00;13;57;03

MN

Yeah. So the kind of two wings that ground the house at the base are a smoked Tudor velour modular brick. So it has this kind of rusty sort of clay color.

 

00;13;57;09 - 00;14;02;24

DP

And those colors I would use the word variegated right so we see a series of different colors, that red clay.

 

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

MN

Yeah. The specification of the brick itself has a variation in it. It's up to a good bricklayer to make sure they patronize it quite well. But a lot of that is just coming from like the brick. Looks like it's been smoked at its edges and some are more smoked than others, which is where you start to get that kind of differentiation.

 

And we like that a lot because the house has these really monolithic, large brick volumes. And so the kind of variation, the slight variation in the tone really helped to kind of break that monotony apart a little bit.

 

00;14;28;06 - 00;14;31;21

DP

Was it hard to find a mason, a good mason?

 

00;14;31;21 - 00;14;32;26

MN

Yes. It's always hard.

 

00;14;32;27 - 00;14;33;26

DP

It's crazy.

 

00;14;33;26 - 00;15;06;21

MN

Yeah. And so this is why, you know, as a studio, we think it's important to kind of collaborate with trades early on because they can help kind of understand or they can help kind of propose ideas about how to get the masonry right at these angles or at the cantilevers that we're proposing, things like that. And then the other materials, we're using a black standing seam metal above.

 

So conceptually, the volume that hovers above these two things floats. So metal felt more appropriate. And then we're using a composite wood system in between the windows. So that's meant to kind of be a homage to sort of old wooden shutters that kind of peel away from the window itself.

 

00;15;06;24 - 00;15;08;04

DP

Where did you find that?

 

00;15;08;07 - 00;15;23;08

MN

It's a product. I think it's based in the States, I can't recall. It's meant to be a veneer, but it's made out of wood fibers that are infused with like fiberglass and resin. Okay, so from a durability perspective, there's no means. So, and it retains its color over time really well.

 

00;15;23;13 - 00;15;29;04

DP

And you're using steel lintels over these large openings that you're then using this wood infill between the windows.

 

00;15;29;08 - 00;15;33;12

MN

Correct wood, the main one being the cantilever at the front entry of the home.

 

00;15;33;14 - 00;15;35;05

DP

So how did you pull that off?

 

00;15;35;08 - 00;15;54;06

MN

So you know we're looking at brick as a simple material. And it's execution that appears very traditional in the way that we're applying it. But we found moments where we could start to kind of give it a more contemporary execution. And the main one being that cantilever at the front entry, which is just upheld by steel beams that are cantilevered out and transforming their way back to kind of point lower.

 

00;15;54;06 - 00;15;55;24

DP

So they're tied back into the walls?

 

00;15;56;00 - 00;16;08;22

MN

Yeah. Correct. And that cantilever holds a terrace on the upper floor. So that dormer above the entry that opens out onto a south facing terrace that you can use. And even in the kind of cooler spring months, because the sun gauges that terrace quite nicely.

 

00;16;08;28 - 00;16;11;27

DP

Right. And that's a clear glass guardrail up there.

 

00;16;11;27 - 00;16;13;10

LR

Just a butt joint, no frames.

 

00;16;13;10 - 00;16;51;17

MN

No frames. Yeah. So that it just it kind of appears really minimal and visually to kind of carry on the notion of this house being an antithesis that's exemplified in this entry. Now, you know, just talking about it. So many of the houses in the context, you know, the entries are these large columnar conditions, you know, with very ornamented roofs and things like that meant to kind of evoke this kind of grandiosity.

 

And here I think we're trying to evoke a grand door, but we're doing so in a more nuanced way, layered elements, a kind of a structural acrobatic of this cantilever, the brick kind of enveloping you, your eye moving vertically towards that dormer. It's creating that grandeur, but doing so and using kind of tectonic architectural elements.

 

00;16;51;20 - 00;17;03;27

DP

Each project faced unique construction challenges. William discussed how his team worked closely with bricklayers and engineers to achieve the complex peeling facade and vaulted brick ceilings.

 

00;17;04;00 - 00;18;38;25

WS

All of the work is in sections, in 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 on to that curved sheet of metal and then tied back using brick ties to that other element that the projected outwards. 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 on the table, and we knew who we wanted to build the project before we'd finished all the documentation.

 

And so we're able to sit down with them at a meeting table. And I've 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 are 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 it on their own lawn.

 

00;18;38;25 - 00;18;50;17

DP

Lorne and his team also had to work closely with skilled masons to ensure the intricate brick and stonework met the high standards required to replicate traditional Tudor craftsmanship.

 

00;18;50;20 - 00;19;36;26

LR

At the time, I was dealing with a gentleman named Isaac Raposo from King Masonry. Now he had an idea. We worked with Isaac for years at King Masonry and other companies he worked at. He's passionate about brick and stone. So he said to me, Lorne, I got this special brick that's being used in university in the States, and it's Glen-Gery brick and it's 85% Shenandoah and 50% called 53DD that's being used at a university.

 

It had a nice tonal range. Some fired bricks in there. So it wasn't all flat coloring, a great deal of variation on the brick. And I said, great, let's do it. Isaac was instrumental in suggesting that brick and had other clients that have used a similar mix.

 

00;19;37;04 - 00;19;46;22

DP

So were there any unique construction details using masonry or brick on the home? Anything that you had never done before? Anything that you do a lot?

 

00;19;46;25 - 00;21;11;14

LR

This was the first time that I used the stone boards and so to speak, I have to bring and it was the first time, I believe, that I had these different brick patterns on a house, so it was challenging for the Masons. I remember calls about, how do you want to deal with this? Even on the stonework, we had some smoother blocks, but I wanted them chiseled with different patterns on them.

 

Really authentic stuff. Didn't want perfectly aligned joints. I wanted it a little bit, I call it messy, but when it's done perfectly linear, you can spend the money on a real stone. It does look real because it's so perfectly laid up. Bellies were put on a lot of the stones chipping the edges off. It's a little bit of a messier joint, you know?

 

I like to call it a rock joint. I was particular about the laying of the stone brick and quite happy with the way it turned out. The chimneys are quite detailed with different patterns as well, and limestone caps. One of the things I like to do is put superior clay chimney pots on jumbo ones. One of the details I loved and traveling in England is they would have many chimneys, and different clay pots on top of each.

 

Normally on our homes we put two of the same. I wanted to do something a little more British and mix them up. So each chimney has two different pots on it just for fun.

 

00;21;11;17 - 00;21;15;24

DP

For Mateusz, the design approach was driven by constructability.

 

00;21;16;02 - 00;22;29;25

MN

From a challenge perspective, I think the biggest one is one that surrounds the way in which I approach all my projects, which is buildability. With that, I mean, I try to find a way to create really interesting and engaging architecture using really conventional methodologies. So this is a stick frame house that limits its use of steel. And yet we see cantilevers and floor protrusions and things like that.

 

It's like, how do we get there if you're not building a full house out of steel and largely like my kind of interest in that was trying to make engaging and good architecture available to both clients and contractors at a better price in a way that feels more approachable from a building standpoint. And because with this house, my father being the contractor working on it, I knew inherently how he likes to build things and what his limitations are as a builder, I use that as a framework within which to start thinking about the design, thinking about the tectonics, thinking about really strategically where we're using more costly steel, where we were using larger expanses of glass, but also where we were tightening them up.

 

And so though the house looks like it's tectonically a lot more maybe complex than it looks, if you peel all of it back to the bones, it's no different than all the neighbors’, which are just typical conventional stick build houses with wood trusses.

 

00;22;30;03 - 00;22;34;19

DP

So a lot of thought went into, I would imagine how much this thing was going to cost?

 

00;22;34;21 - 00;23;21;28

MN

Certainly how much it was going to cost, and just the approach to how it was going to be built. So I remember, you know, when we were working through the construction documents on the project, having weekly conversations with the contractor and with trades that were involved from the early onset of how do we want to actually make this thing materialize?

 

How do we want to build this thing? Like, you know, how is this beam going to sit, what kind of post this is going to sit on and almost working through it with a really solid understanding of structural engineering, without going right to the consultant and asking him what to do. Like we had this really intimate relationship with how this thing was going to be built and in a way that sort of harkened back to the agrarian structures that it's influenced by.

 

Was the individual who owns that property is going to come in and look at the timber he has and build it himself. And we're sort of creating a modern interpretation of that approach in some degree.

 

00;23;22;00 - 00;24;20;15

DP

Reflecting on the design and construction of these three projects Smart Design Studio, the Tudor Home in Toronto, and the H House, several key themes emerge. Each project masterfully integrates traditional craftsmanship with modern design innovation. The architects William Smart, Lorne Rose, and Mateusz Nowacki emphasize the importance of collaboration throughout the process, working closely with craftsmen and construction teams to overcome challenges and bring their vision to life.

 

The use of brick as a versatile material is central to all three projects, whether it was to honor the history of a site, recreate the intricate patterns of a Tudor Revival, or enhance the minimalist esthetics of a suburban home, brickwork was reimagined to meet contemporary needs without losing its timeless appeal.

 

TRANSCRIPT

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;05;12

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;14 - 00;00;25;16

Steve Knight (SK)

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. And 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.

 

00;00;25;16 - 00;00;29;00

SK

They were trying to identify with this established tradition.

 

00;00;29;03 - 00;01;58;21

DP

In this special series we’re unlocking some of the most powerful conversations we've had so far. We're connecting the dots, revealing hidden gems, and unearthing insights that might have slipped by all to spark your next big idea with brick. Whether you're looking for fresh inspiration or innovative solutions, this series is designed to fuel your creativity. So let's dive in.

 

Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Today, we explore the intricate process of college campus design with insights from Steve Knight of David M. Schwartz Architects, who led the design of Nicholas Zappos College at Vanderbilt University, Kent Suhrbier of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, who oversaw TCS Hall at Carnegie Mellon University, and Simon Trumble of HDR, the lead designer for the Brendan Iribe Center at the University of Maryland. We’ll highlight various aspects of each project, including the architectural design process, construction challenges and the thoughtful use of brick to blend modern and traditional esthetics.

 

When working on college campuses, you often have to find balance to respect traditional campus aesthetics while incorporating modern design elements. Steve discussed the eclectic collection of buildings, including a range from Victorian to collegiate Gothic style at Vanderbilt.

 

00;01;58;27 - 00;02;59;08

SK

The campus itself, 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.

 

I think what's most interesting about the site is 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, is sort of the public face of Vanderbilt. So the colleges were a real opportunity, just 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 sorority. So we had to respond to very different contexts on each side of the building.

 

00;02;59;10 - 00;03;04;06

DP

Simon reflected on the neo Georgian influences at the University of Maryland.

 

00;03;04;13 - 00;04;17;19

Simon Trumble (ST)

The campus master plan has defined certain areas as historic and historic buildings that you need to stay within context with and other areas as moving beyond that historic into a we'll call it a new historicism, for lack of a better word, because this was the new gateway and because of where it stands, it was a building that was not fully confined.

 

However, we put on ourselves the fact that we are in a neo Georgian campus and how do we want to think about it? We've pushed the lines on that. But the handful of elements that come together from that in these neo Georgian buildings are always the white columns. We walk through our building, it's all white columns and there and then places those white columns go from standing very simply straight up to being pulled and leaning as they face the future and the future campus growth and that's kind of how we thought about it.

 

The brick is used, it's on the floor, and then it turns up the walls in places and it becomes the auditorium itself. And the auditorium spins, it's almost a rock in the river and the campus and the buildings spin around it. The landscape spins off of that rock. The auditorium is the anchor from which everything works.

 

00;04;17;22 - 00;04;23;24

DP

At Carnegie Mellon, Kent pursued innovative, yet contextually sensitive design.

 

00;04;23;27 - 00;05;36;12

Kent Suhrbier (KS)

The one thing that then really influenced the design of the building was meeting a kind of very wide floor plate that could accommodate sort of larger laboratory spaces, research spaces, in addition to lots of perimeter office and workspaces. And so we did two things to make that happen. We pulled all the core services for the building kind of to the west of the site instead of locating kind of building core in the middle of the floor plate in a traditional developer building.

 

This is an asymmetrical core where we pull everything to one side and free up the floor plate. We then cut a big connective series of stairs and interlocking spaces through the center of the building that bring daylight into the center of the building and kind of create a heart between all these various tenants. That also gave us some ability to have a relationship between all the tenants within the building so that they can see each other, experience what's going on with each other, but not be in each other's business.

 

Because this is a building where you have different research groups, lots of intellectual property that needs to be kept safe between both public and academic groups. And so lots of visual transparency with controlled boundaries.

 

00;05;36;15 - 00;05;38;25

DP

So the site, is it rectangular?

 

00;05;39;02 - 00;06;21;05

KS

The site was a much larger quadrant where we master planned for both this building as a sort of phase one, this 88 or 90,000 square foot sort of phase one. And then there's an idea of a connective plaza and paseo that would connect north south through the site. And then there's a phase two project that was developed kind of through a schematic level that's about 190,000 square feet that's adjacent.

 

It needed to be a very efficient plan. So it starts as a rectangle and then it begins to inflect and kind of reflect some of the views on the site in terms of beginning to bend and open to some of the view corridors and solar orientation that's on site.

 

00;06;21;07 - 00;06;24;15

DP

Each project sought to blend the old with the new.

 

00;06;24;17 - 00;07;47;20

KS

One of the challenges with this building was the area that we had to build was a long, narrow strip that runs north south, which then means we have long east and west facades, which from an environmental strategy is the opposite of what you want. And so we let that then start to influence the fenestration. And that's a little bit where this folded or triangular elements came from because we began to think, Look, we need something vertical that's going to shade the windows, right?

 

They happen just to the south of every window and this kind of code system that we created. And then how do we make them a shape that can catch the light so that as the sun moves around the building all day, it creates shade. But it also then can just be a plane that flashes with this kind of brightness at certain times during the day?

 

And so we started with the idea of the just the form, and that came out of, yes, the digital models, the physical models, getting everyone to buy into that as an idea. And then to be honest, the CM and the owner wanted to do those elements out of precast. They had it in their head that that was the right answer.

 

So, you know, instead of being too bullish about it, we said, well, let's mock up both. So we worked with technical folks on the bricks side to get the shape right and get pieces that we can mock up. And then we mock up and precast and everybody looked at it and said, The precast is terrible, let's do the break.

 

00;07;47;22 - 00;07;50;28

DP

And did you use steel lintels then for those parts?

 

00;07;51;00 -  00;08;33;19

KS

One of the things that was a great challenge. So the building continuous, we're leaving angles that everything is sitting on and we kind of stacked the deck against the precast because the precast had to hang from additional steel, whereas we were able to get the brick shape to stack just on the regular mantle. So it wasn't meant to be manipulative, but it was meant to be economic.

 

And we were able to come up with a way where we could keep the same material and offset some of the cost that comes from doing a custom. And these are large brick shapes. These are 16 inches long by about 9 inches deep. And so it's one shape, but it's a lot more substantial than a modular brick. But we were able to offset some of that by just how we were holding it up.

 

00;08;33;22 - 00;08;47;20

DP

Again, the brick really alters the scale of the building. I mean, I would imagine precast these massive panels on the facades versus doing these very pretty finely tuned brick masonry panels.

 

00;08;47;22 - 00;08;50;19

KS

I'm glad it ended the way it did.

 

00;08;50;21 - 00;09;14;02

SK

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 were doing very much the same thing.

 

They were trying to identify with. This established tradition.

 

00;09;14;08 - 00;09;27;07

DP

Really makes perfect sense. Absolutely. 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, sure.

 

00;09;27;07 - 00;10;15;08

SK

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 look to for the tower would be the Harkness Tower at Yale.

 

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;10;15;11 - 00;11;09;28

ST

Really. Interestingly, there was a lot of discussion early on that we would go from rhino to construction straight forward. So there are bent and curved steel tubes. There was a lot of discussion with the contractor that they would literally do almost a CAD cam type of situation just using the electronic design drawings to go and construct the building.

 

However, they did more of a hybrid with that. So we have curved steel studs backing up that brick and those curved steel studs are designed straight from the computer, so then they are shaped and placed a more regularized steel frame, although it has some curvatures as well, also coming straight from the computer. And so those are brought together in order to then layout the auditorium and then to provide backup for the brick and then to work from there.

 

00;11;10;00 - 00;11;13;04

DP

Wow, what a great way to do it. The only way to do it.

 

00;11;13;11 - 00;12;34;03

ST

It's doable otherwise, but the reality is the time to do it today is not the same. And you would shy away from doing certain things because it will take too long. We have 22 different curves. You might break that down to five or four and you have two different corners and work from there with the gentler bend. It doesn't make sense, but when you see it in plan, the auditorium itself warps in order to allow the courtyards to re match up from the old computer science building to the new computer science, and then to have a staircase that wraps up to a second floor terrace from which you can access the second floor of the main building.

 

But you also have this garden space. Again, we talk a little bit about nature and the studies looking at the screen and then being able to go outside. In nature, we have three gardens, we have the great gardens, we have the rooftop on the second floor garden, and then we actually have another garden on the very rooftop called the Reese Park.

 

 

And that was a gift, so to speak, from Brendan Irib and Andrew Reece to their buddy who had passed away. And it's got a little gallery up there as well as the garden space then gives to the campus, now, one of the greatest views that they could possibly have, and that gets used all the time for donor meetings, special guests, what have you.

 

00;12;34;06 - 00;13;09;27

DP

A strong emphasis on craftsmanship and detailed design work was evident across all three projects, whether it was the intricate brickwork, the carefully planned facade systems, or the custom elements within each building. Attention to detail was crucial in achieving the final architectural outcomes. So I read that approximately 30% of construction materials were sourced locally. 30% of the building materials contained recycled content and 75% of construction waste was recycled or repurposed. Is that all correct?

 

00;13;10;00 - 00;13;48;28

KS

That is, even though we were again trying to work fast and economically there was still a mandate to make a building that was healthy and that would achieve a LEED gold certification. And so we targeted many of these things. And then in some ways with the materials, what we would do is target a combination of what are some of the really significant things, and then can we find local sources for some of the really big pieces of the building.

 

So the terracotta comes from just over the border in Ohio and the brick in this building is all brick from up at the Hanley plant. So 60 miles from here, just northeast of where I'm sitting now.

 

00;13;49;00 - 00;14;28;13

ST

And, you know, we have another layer in that brick facade, which is a sort of design element playing up, really showing algorithmic design work in there. It's almost like as if somebody break the bricks and they pull and they fall back into the wall. They almost look like they're falling out, wind blown and in movement. This is in the auditorium and it's a little design feature, really showing off algorithmic design.

 

You really wouldn't notice the fact that the curvatures has had to be figured out that way or the wood paneling had to be figured out that way. That doesn't show. But that this was a way of really showing and playing with the tool, but using regular brick.

 

00;14;28;15 - 00;14;30;16

DP

So none of the bricks were custom.

 

00;14;30;18 - 00;14;32;28

ST

None of the bricks are unbelievable.

 

00;14;33;05 - 00;14;36;01

DP

And how many different Glen-Gery bricks did you guys use?

 

00;14;36;04 - 00;15;27;05

ST

The original is a mix of three different bricks, but it's a basically a neo Georgian mix and it's the campus mix that they've had on that campus. The brick was a big debate because when we started to think about this sort of rock in the landscape, we played around with a lot of different materials and we were looking at metal, we were looking at stone, we're looking at precast.

 

There was other ways to think about it. We started to come back to a precast brick and we came back to regular brick masonry construction. Done the original way. We have some brick lintels up there that are about 3 to 4 feet. Big. Those were if you want really custom detailing to pull that off. But in general, it's the Georgian mix for the campus and it made sense to anchor the campus in its history, so to speak.

 

00;15;27;07 - 00;15;58;17

SK

Southern Indiana is limestone country, Indiana limestone. It's where the stone was 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 when just imagine 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;15;58;25 - 00;16;04;27

DP

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

 

00;16;05;04 - 00;16;17;24

SK

Well, there's one firm we've worked with on almost all of our projects.They're stil,l 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;16;17;24 - 00;16;37;26

DP

Yeah, it's stunning. So 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;16;37;28 - 00;17;42;03

SK

Yeah, well, it's a very warming material. It's a 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 building something that will hopefully be around for a very long time.

 

This building will be around for a very long time. 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 reed of just one color, right?

 

00;17;42;03 - 00;17;44;09

DP

Like if the building was all limestone?

 

00;17;44;09 - 00;18;06;02

SK

Was all limestone, right. 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 mock up panels with the help of a very patient Mason in a very patient local brick distributor who gave us about an acre of their brickyard to do all these different experiments.

 

00;18;06;02 - 00;18;07;06

DP

Wow. That's so cool.

 

00;18;07;06 - 00;18;41;29

SK

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 is 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;18;42;02 - 00;18;58;04

DP

All three projects faced unique challenges during construction to control costs, while ensuring the integrity of the design can explain how significant design adjustments actually benefited both the project's budget and its aesthetic coherence.

 

00;18;58;06 - 00;19;55;23

KS

We would price kind of really almost every 2 to 3 months during design and in some cases make some fairly dramatic shifts in terms of what we were doing, whether it was restocking, you asked about zoning, the building could have been taller and actually started off a story taller and we kind of restacked it and made it more compact specifically to create some economies.

 

And then that had some opportunities for us too because we were able to create the kind of think tank penthouse on the top, which isn't a full floor. And then all of our mechanicals are kind of stitched into that from a massing standpoint. So we could get a lot of both economy, but also just this is a building that you see from across the ravine.

 

We didn't want to weave all the mechanical equipment and all these things kind of fully exposed up on our roof. So it was a way of really stitching it into the building and making it part of the intentional mass of the building instead of an accidental, no offense to our engineers, piece on top.

 

00;19;55;25 - 00;20;12;04

DP

Well, it's something that happens on most pieces of architecture. I mean, that's just where do the mechanicals go? Simon reflected on the challenges and debates surrounding the unique brick curvature of the Brendan Iribe Center’s auditorium.

 

00;20;12;06 - 00;21;15;00

ST

The curve on the brick was a lot of debate. When we worked on this early. We looked at an egg sitting in the landscape. We were thinking of that egg. The curvature is both in the bottom as well as the top and we spoke with a lot of brick experts on doing, I'll call it the counter curve, the bottom half of that curve.

 

And in that discussion we would have to use seismic anchors to really hold the back. And there was a lot of discussion about whether we really have to invite quibbling into this or if we could follow the curvature of the bill. At the end of the day, I think we chickened out just a little bit. We took it, I'll call it from the belly line straight down and from the belly line above as the curve.

 

Our thought was within the auditorium. We could light that bottom space, so we'd put a curved light at the base and really have that belly kind of light up. And so the egg would sort of glow from the base. We do have that at the top as well. It solved a lot of other little issues, as you say.

 

So it took the detailing down a notch.

 

00;21;15;02 - 00;21;27;07

DP

An innovative construction technique was used for the Nicholas Zappos College at Vanderbilt University, where the team found a clever way to streamline the installation of the building's ornamental chimneys.

 

00;21;27;10 - 00;22;03;14

SK

One of the details that makes the college's 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 wall 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;22;03;16 - 00;22;06;19

DP

You just have boiler flues going through these things.

 

00;22;06;19 - 00;22;10;29

SK

They're vents, they're flues. So they do serve a functional purpose as well.

 

00;22;11;02 - 00;23;54;20

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. Reflecting on the design and construction of the Nicholas Zappos College at Vanderbilt University, TCS Hall at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Brendan Iribe Center at the University of Maryland, several key themes emerge.

 

Each project balances tradition and innovation, blending the historical context of the respective campuses with modern design elements. The architects Steve Knight, Kent Suhrbier and Simon Trumble emphasize the importance of collaboration through the process, working closely with clients and construction teams to navigate complex challenges and bring their vision to life. The use of brick as a primary material in various forms, whether to echo collegiate Gothic tradition, create rhythmic facade patterns or blend into a neo Georgian context, showcases how this timeless material can be reimagined to meet contemporary re needs.

 

The overarching takeaway from these projects is the power of architecture to create meaningful spaces that honor the past while embracing the future, ultimately enhancing the academic environments they serve. If you'd like to hear more about each individual project, you can find links to the full conversations in the show notes. If you haven't done so already, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the rest of this series where we revisit some of the most powerful conversations and unearth insights that might have slipped by all to spark your next big idea with brick.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Doug Pat (DP)

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

 

00;00;05;16 - 00;00;44;27

Kent Suhrbier (KS)

The one thing that then really influenced the design of the building was meeting a kind of very wide floor plate that could accommodate sort of larger laboratory spaces in addition to lots of perimeter office and workspaces. And so this is an asymmetrical core where we pull everything to one side. We then also cut a big connective series of stairs and interlocking spaces through the center of the building that also gave us some ability to have a relationship between the all the tenants within the building so that they can see each other, experience what's going on with each other, but not be in each other's business.

 

00;00;44;29 - 00;03;45;00

DP

This is my guest, Kent Suhrbier. I'll share more about him shortly. In this episode from the Design Vault, we highlight Kent's project, TCS Hall at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Carnegie Mellon University built TCS Hall, which is a new academic building on Forbes Avenue at the western edge of its campus. The project aimed to allow for future expansion and create connections between the campus and the nearby community.

 

It was designed to accommodate both private and university users, providing flexible spaces for collaboration while respecting the need for privacy. The finished project, an 88,000 square foot LEED gold certified facility, was done in collaboration with Tata Consultancy Services. The building houses the Institute for Software Research, the Master of Science in Computational Finance Program, the Center for Business Engagement and the TCS Think Tank, all of which promote academic research, innovation and professional development.

 

The partnered brickwork drew inspiration from the original Horn Postle campus architecture, reflecting the economic significance of brick as a building material in Pittsburgh. This was combined with terracotta and glass to create a balanced, contemporary aesthetic. Various colors and coursing a brick appear across the elevations, such as running bond, stacked and soldier. The brick walls subtly undulate as they mix with flat, dark window bars that dance across the facade.

 

A cost effective approach was taken to create the rhythmic facade pattern using the logic of binary base code to develop the esthetic modules. Hi, I'm Doug Pat and this is Design Vault. Kent Suhrbier holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and is a fellow of the AIA. He's also a principal at Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s Pittsburgh studio.

 

His work for them includes civic facilities, museums, centers for engineering and innovation, corporate headquarters and university laboratories. The core theme of his diverse experience is his commitment to crafting spaces that define new paradigms, as has been the case on projects like the Frick Environmental Center and Carnegie Mellon Universities ANSYS and TCS halls. His approach to design values, evocative spaces that maintain a thoughtful sensitivity to the natural environment and the communities they serve.

 

Kent has spent many years teaching the practice of architecture and is deeply committed to mentoring and nurturing the next generation of designers. He's currently an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University. So welcome, Kent. It's nice to have you with us today. So tell us a little bit about balance, a Bohlin Cywinski Jackson studio.

 

00;03;45;02 - 00;04;30;09

KS

That's a pleasure, Doug. So we're a national practice with studios across the country. Our Pittsburgh studio has been here for little more than 45 years, and it's always been located in the center of downtown Pittsburgh. And similar to kind of all of our groups, works on a blend of typologies in terms of buildings. So we do everything from residential to multifamily.

 

But at the core of a lot of our work is our university buildings and university projects. And we've been fortunate in the Pittsburgh region to have a very long relationship with Carnegie Mellon that goes back to originally the software engineering Institute and then the Intelligent workplace. And then in more recent years, working on the work with ANSYS Hall and now TCS Hall.

 

00;04;30;16 - 00;04;36;22

DP

And this is a big firm. So you guys have studios across the United States. Where are they and what's the overall size of the business?

 

00;04;36;24 - 00;05;04;05

KS

We're not that large. We are about 100 people and we're located in studios in Seattle, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Wilkes-Barre. We started in Pennsylvania. We still have a strong presence in Pennsylvania, but we also, over the years, have created quite a strong studio in Seattle. All the studios develop really about this idea of craft. And so each one kind of has settled in that nature in their place.

 

00;05;04;07 - 00;05;07;11

DP

So you've been an architect for some time over 30 years, right?

 

00;05;07;14 - 00;05;09;06

KS

Yes.

 

00;05;09;08 - 00;05;15;08

DP

Time flies. So tell us a little bit about your experience as an architect. Have you always worked for BCJ?

 

00;05;15;11 - 00;05;29;06

KS

I worked for BCJ early in my career and then went and had my own practice for a number of years while I was teaching and then had an opportunity to come back to BCJ in the Pittsburgh studio about ten years ago. And we've been at it ever since.

 

00;05;29;08 - 00;05;32;09

DP

And have you taught anywhere other than Carnegie Mellon?

 

00;05;32;12 - 00;05;37;18

KS

No. Lots of critiques and reviews, but most of my teaching has been based at CMU.

 

00;05;37;21 - 00;05;43;01

DP

So let's dig in here and talk about the project. So how did your office get the project?

 

00;05;43;03 - 00;06;30;02

KS

We were working currently with the university on ANSYS Hall. The university had gone down a path with a slightly different project. It was not working for the combination of the university and the private partner, and so they had decided to actually stop that project and take a different direction. And that's when we were brought in, which was a fantastic opportunity, but also meant that we were in the position of having to work very quickly because this was a project where once you change direction, everybody wants to hold the schedule, hold the original parameters for the work and the project.

 

And so that put some additional pressures on the work. But at the same time, I think really brought the team together to focus in a way that was actually really advantageous.

 

00;06;30;04 - 00;06;46;26

DP

That's interesting. One of the most important things we do as architects is manage the client's expectations, right? So you get that project and then you've got to say, Well, we're going to move very quickly as quickly as we can, but we're going to end up spending a little bit more time than you might think getting rolling here.

 

00;06;46;29 - 00;07;23;09

KS

Yeah, and there was certainly that in the planning and what I think it meant is some of the things happened in parallel. More things were probably run in parallel than you might do on a traditional project and process, which I think actually then allowed us a little bit of freedom to do some experimentation with the materials. We had a very good construction management partner who was on board at the same time we were, which on a project like this where you're moving quickly and you have a fixed budget is essential because every decision has to be made in the context of design, budget and schedule.

 

00;07;23;11 - 00;07;26;21

DP

So could you give us a little history of the location?

 

00;07;26;24 - 00;09;03;18

KS

Sure. The location of this, it really drove and I think opened this the opportunity for this project to kind of have the character that it does. As you stated, it draws on the traditional Horn Postle tan & buff brick that defines most of Carnegie Mellon's campus and its original. It's a campus that was developed around 1905 that was a design competition, essentially in a traditional Beaux Arts style.

 

And then it's evolved with a whole series of much more contemporary buildings throughout the 100 and some years since then. And this specific building is on a brownfield site. Pittsburgh is defined also by these very deep ravines. We have a very deep topography to the city. And so the site for this project is actually on the other edge of the ravine from the main campus.

 

It's sort of the first building of a new quadrant that is actually at the fringe, kind of between the edge of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. They share a boundary between each other along this kind of eastern edge of Carnegie Mellon. And so what that meant is we could use the material to tie it to the campus.

 

But in terms of stylistic, but there was also this drive from both the university and from the private partner with TCS keys to make this something very nontraditional. So this was a task of how to use brick in ways that are not historic or traditional in any way. So leverage the material, but not necessarily alter the details.

 

00;09;03;20 - 00;09;06;15

DP

So the client knew this was going to be a contemporary building.

 

00;09;06;22 - 00;09;10;16

KS

They did. I think we were fortunate in that they were insistent.

 

00;09;10;18 - 00;09;19;01

DP

Well, they chose your firm. It makes perfect sense. So what was the scope and programmatic requirements for the project?

 

00;09;19;03 - 00;10;45;10

KS

So in your intro, I think you hit most of the stakeholders and there's even a couple more since then because there were some spaces that weren't even fit out when we were doing the building, but it needed to be a very kind of flexible, open floor play. The one thing that then really influenced the design of the building was meeting a kind of very wide floor plate that could accommodate sort of larger laboratory spaces, research spaces in addition to lots of perimeter office and workspaces. And so we did two things to make that happen. We pulled all the core services for the building kind of to the west of the site instead of locating kind of building core in the middle of the floor, played in a traditional developer building. This is an asymmetrical core where we pull everything to one side and free up the floor plate.

 

We then also cut a big connective series of stairs and interlocking spaces through the center of the building that bring daylight into the center of the building and kind of create a heart between all these various tenants that also gave us some ability to have a relationship between the all the tenants within the building so that they could see each other, experience what's going on with each other, but not be in each other's business.

 

Because this is a building where you have different research groups, lots of intellectual property that needs to be kept safe between both public and academic groups. And so lots of visual transparency with controlled boundaries.

 

00;10;45;13 - 00;10;49;09

DP

So the building plan, so the site, is it rectangular?

 

00;10;49;16 - 00;11;31;13

KS

The site was a much larger quadrant where we master planned for both this building as a sort of phase one that's 88 or 90,000 square foot sort of phase one. And then there's an idea of a connective plaza and paseo that would connect north south through the site. And then there's a Phase two project that was developed kind of through a schematic level that's about 190,000 square feet that's adjacent to it.

 

You know, it needed to be a very efficient plan. So it starts as a rectangle and then it begins to inflect and kind of reflect some of the views on the site in terms of beginning to bend and open to some of the view corridors and solar orientation that's on site.

 

00;11;31;16 - 00;11;40;23

DP

Right? So at least in the lower plan, if I recall the plans correctly, there's almost like a diagonal which is cut into that first floor plan. Is that correct?

 

00;11;40;25 - 00;12;00;14

KS

Correct, yeah. So we started off in with a simple plan. The way we would describe it is we almost want the kind of site forces the views, the kind of the way you move around the site to then begin to push and pull on something that starts very simple, but then can have some more complex geometry to it as it gets pushed and pulled.

 

00;12;00;16 - 00;12;11;09

DP

So that brings us to project restrictions. So what was the zoning like on this site? Were there any restrictions in terms of the height or the shape of the project? Setbacks?

 

00;12;11;12 - 00;13;07;01

KS

Yeah. I mean, I don't know any of us have found that magical site where there aren't those we'll all look forward to when we find it.

 

The site. Had a few issues and that it was a brownfield site. It was a former gas station site. So you can imagine the fun that brings to some of the initial site work. But that also gave us some opportunities to kind of take some parking in underneath the building once we had to kind of over excavate and clear out part of the site.

 

It's right on the side of the ravine. So from a planning standpoint, we could push the building kind of right up to the tree line and right against the side of a very steep hill that did take some really good coordination with the construction manager. And this is a group, Mascaro, who is regional here but does really a fantastic job and was willing to kind of cooperate on figuring out how then to stage essentially all the facade work while hanging off the side of a hill.

 

00;13;07;03 - 00;13;10;09

DP

So how long did building review take with the city?

 

00;13;10;14 - 00;14;12;25

KS

So this one was fairly to finish our zoning question, they're both related. The zoning restrictions on the site are more comprehensive as part of a kind of institutional master plan. This is one of the benefits of working with the university clients is they in some ways create their own zoning within their institutions. So there were some restrictions. The setbacks were predominantly this idea of being adjacent to the hill.

 

It's along a very busy city corridor. Forbes Avenue and this is an area where we wanted to pull out very closely to the street and kind of hold the urban edge. But we also then had to be very careful in how to do that. And you see, like in the plans, that is reflected by undercutting the lower story so that there's more pedestrian flow, more movement kind of at the lower level, and then pulling the upper levels two through four out towards the street and then again stepping back at the top to create an outdoor green roof and terrace That's part of the think tank at the top floor.

 

00;14;12;27 - 00;14;23;04

DP

So let's talk a little bit about what I mentioned in the intro. This idea of using binary code to design the exterior elevations. Am I reading that correctly?

 

00;14;23;06 - 00;15;52;10

KS

Yeah, it was part of it, although my computer science friends would probably tell me that our coding is terrible. But there was an economy to this building that we were also looking to maintain in terms of its budget. And so we were exploring ways where we could create a systematic language of parts for the exterior that could be very expressive but also be very predictable and very manageable in terms of the number of parts.

 

And so by kind of going back to binary and saying let's just focus on two modules and let's really just break this up over the facade and let's look at how that might then create a facade that's very articulated and very rhythmic, partially because on the inside of the building we needed to accommodate both open workspace, but we also needed to accommodate the potentiality for lots of enclosed offices.

 

And what we didn't want is a kind of fixed grid necessarily on this facade. This is a space in an edge that I think everyone early on just really wanted to have something that was a little bit more dynamic that would shift with the light. And that's kind of where some of the detailing came in later. So we started basically just saying let's create a, you know, in a and a be a zero and a one, and then let's look at how we can begin to map those over this facade in a way that you can have a very regular plan on the inside, but an exterior that is perhaps a little more articulate.

 

00;15;52;12 - 00;16;06;20

DP

So you have these modules that you're imagining on the exterior and once you had those parts, you take a look at the plan and the form followed the function of what was going on on the interior in a way.

 

00;16;06;22 - 00;16;10;05

KS

Yeah, those two in our world push and pull on each other.

 

00;16;10;07 - 00;16;14;19

DP

Of course. Absolutely. Ever since Louis Sullivan and before him.

 

00;16;14;19 - 00;16;17;12

KS

Yes.

 

00;16;17;14 - 00;16;37;18

DP

So let's talk a little bit about the parameters for the building materials. So I read that approximately 30% of construction materials were sourced locally. 30% of the building materials contained recycled content, and 75% of construction waste was recycled or repurposed. Is that all correct?

 

00;16;37;20 - 00;17;17;04

KS

That is, you know, even though we were, again, trying to work fast and economically, there was still a mandate to make a building that was healthy and that would achieve a LEED Gold certification. And so we targeted many of these things. And then in some ways with the materials, what we would do is target a combination of what are some of the really significant things, and then can we find local sources for some of the really big pieces of the building.

 

So the terracotta comes from just over the border in Ohio and the brick this building is all brick from the Hanley plant. So 60 miles from here, just northeast of where I'm sitting now.

 

00;17;17;06 - 00;17;45;21

DP

So the brick facades to describe them. So you've got these flat plains of brick masonry on the facades on various elevations, and then you have these almost triangular protrusions which occur across the facade as well. Did you guys do a series of three dimensional drawings in the office? Did you work in BIM software? Did you model this thing in 3D and then show it to the client and then ultimately mock it up in the field? How did that work?

 

00;17;45;23 - 00;19;37;22

KS

Yes, yes, and yes, we do work entirely in them and we use that for what it's really good at. We also build a lot of physical models. And so all these projects we will build a series of physical models of varying scales as well. And so whether it's studying the patterning and the kind of decoding of the facade, we would start there.

 

And then as we develop, it will increase the scale of some of these models. One of the challenges with this building was the area that we had to build was a long, narrow strip that runs north south, which then means we have long east and west facades, which from an environmental strategy is the opposite of what you want.

 

And so we let that then start to influence the fenestration. And that's a little bit where this folded or triangle other elements came from because we began to think, look, we need something vertical that's going to shade the windows, right? They happened just to the south of every window and this kind of code system that we created. And then how do we make them a shape that can catch the light so that as the sun moves around the building all day, it creates shade.

 

But it also then can this be a plane that flashes with this kind of brightness at certain times during the day? And so we started with the idea of the just the form, and that came out of, yes, the digital models, the physical models, kind of getting everyone to buy into that as an idea. And then to be honest, the CM and the owner wanted to do those elements out of precast.

 

They had it in their head that that was the right answer. So, you know, instead of being too bullish about it, we said, well, let's mock up both. So we worked with technical folks on the brick side to get the shape right and get pieces that we can mock up. And then we mocked up some precast and everybody looked at it and said, The precast is terrible, let's do the brick.

 

00;19;37;24 - 00;19;41;00

DP

And did you use steel lintels then for those parts?

 

00;19;41;02 - 00;20;25;00

KS

One of the things that was a great challenge, so the building was continuous. We're leaving angles that everything is sitting on and we kind of stack the deck against the precast because the precast had to hang from additional steel, whereas we were able to get the brick shape to stack just on the regular mantle. So it wasn't meant to be manipulative, but it was meant to be economic, and we were able to come up with a way where we could kind of keep the same material and offset some of the cost that comes from doing a custom.

 

And these are large brick shapes. These are sixteen inches long by about nine inches deep. And so it's one shape, but it's a lot more substantial than a modular brick. But we were able to offset some of that by just how we were holding it up.

 

00;20;25;02 - 00;20;39;05

DP

Yeah, the brick really alters the scale of the building. I mean, I would imagine precast this massive of panels on the facades versus doing these very pretty finely tuned brick masonry panels.

 

00;20;39;07 - 00;20;40;18

KS

I'm glad it ended the way it did.

 

00;20;40;24 - 00;20;46;28

DP

And so I'm curious about software. Just as an aside, you guys are on Revit?

 

00;20;47;04 - 00;20;48;10

KS

We are Revit based, yeah.

 

00;20;48;12 - 00;21;04;19

DP

We were talking before we got rolling that you had been on Mac. Now you’re PC. I don't know much about either. I'm on ArchiCAD and have been on ArchiCAD for 25 years. Where you guys on a different software before you switched over to Revit and therefore a different operating system?

 

00;21;04;22 - 00;21;36;20

KS

We for many years were MicroStation and then we were AutoCAD by fairly early on we drove into Revit for a good portion of our work. Being able to work three dimensionally is just so important. We do use a lot of rhinoceros or rhino where we nest that in our Revit models as well for more complex geometries, things like that.

 

And so actually when we're modeling whole brick facades, often we'll use some of these other solid modeling tools just because they're a little more flexible in terms of their conceptual work.

 

00;21;36;22 - 00;21;40;06

DP

So what was the size of the team that worked on the project?

 

00;21;40;08 - 00;22;07;16

KS

It would vary from a little bit over time. We work in a non departmental way where we pull the team together at the beginning of the project and our intent is that most, if not all of that team stays intact through the construction of the project. So a building of this type, we'd have maybe three or four people kind of fairly dedicated, partially to move very quickly from kickoff to construction was really only about nine months.

 

And so we had to hustle.

 

00;22;07;18 - 00;22;10;19

DP

So yeah, that sounds really squeezed.

 

00;22;10;25 - 00;22;37;07

KS

One of the things that we do plan on is we take a very active role through construction in terms of just staying very engaged in the process. We have a construction manager who's we've already been partnered with for a year. We will make sure that it's a very collaborative process through construction. Well, we do talk about the idea of craft, and craft for us is part design, part how we document but a lot of it is the things that other people are doing, which is putting the whole thing together.

 

00;22;37;09 - 00;22;38;16

DP

Was the project bid?

 

00;22;38;19 - 00;22;43;09

KS

It was a GMP, so they would bid packages of it as part of that.

 

00;22;43;11 - 00;22;45;17

DP

Does the construction manager help with that?

 

00;22;45;19 - 00;22;47;16

KS

They do, they manage that process?

 

00;22;47;19 - 00;22;59;11

DP

I'm completely unfamiliar with that process. I do high in residential and I haven't ever worked with a construction manager, although my peers have for certain. That's just not something I've been exposed to.

 

00;22;59;14 - 00;24;04;07

KS

It depends on the quality of your construction manager, but if you have a good one, you do have some ability then to manage costs kind of all the way through. We would price kind of really almost every 2 to 3 months during design and in some cases make some fairly dramatic shifts in terms of what we were doing, whether it was restacking.

 

You asked about zoning, the building could have been taller and actually started off a story taller and we kind of restocked it and made it more compact specifically to create some economies. And then that had some opportunities for us to because we were able to create the kind of think tank penthouse on the top, which isn't a full floor.

 

And then all of our mechanicals are kind of stitched into that from a massing standpoint. So we could get a lot of both economy, but also just this is a building that you see from across the building. We didn't want to leave all the mechanical equipment and all these things kind of fully exposed up on our roof. So it was a way of really stitching it into the building and making it part of the intentional mass of the building instead of an accidental no offense to our engineers piece on top.

 

00;24;04;10 - 00;24;22;28

DP

Well it's something that happens on most pieces of architecture. I mean, it's just where do the mechanicals go? So did your team learn anything interesting through the design and construction process? Something new for you guys? Something unusual?

 

00;24;23;01 - 00;25;18;05

KS

I'll start with the positive. We didn't do these large, full scale mockups, and especially when you have a design idea that is so systematic, right, where you're saying, Let's do this one thing and let's do it, we'll make two patterns and we're going to repeat it. The ability to kind of mock that up and debug it and get all the kinks worked out of it before you get up on that, hanging off the side of the ravine, was key, that was just an essential piece because as much as you think it through, as much as you model it as much as you are sure you have it worked out, the sequencing and the constructive ability always has one or two surprises for us. And so, you know, I think that was a really great part of the process. In many ways, it's an owner who's willing to say, Yeah, let's buy a mockup and let's have everyone try this before we get up on the building. That was a really essential one, just because we were able to kind of eliminate so many issues that repeat hundreds of times across its facade.

 

00;25;18;06 - 00;25;30;00

DP

So that's great. So, Kent, you've been an architect for a while, as we've established, based on what you know today about being an architect, do you have any words of advice for your younger self or even architects just getting started?

 

00;25;30;02 - 00;26;26;20

KS

There's maybe two things that I share with our group here that I still try to live by, and one is always stay curious, you know, if you can set out each day to learn something new, no matter how long you've done it, if it's a year or two years, 30 years, that's the best thing you can do. One to keep it engaging and to keep it what you believe in.

 

And then you're constantly improving. One of the things I used to ask of all my students and I still ask of all of our team here is I am good with everybody setting out to make every mistake once and as few as you can twice, because then you're actually learning. If you're trying and you're kind of stretching, you're going to make some mistakes and that's okay.

 

And that's it's a tricky profession to say that in. I get that right. But it's also, you know, when you have a studio environment, you have peers and you have all these checks and balances. So there's ways to do that. And we still practice that way where we set out to make mistakes, but we're out to learn.

 

00;26;26;23 - 00;26;36;08

DP

Yeah, I love that. I mean, hey, you can make mistakes. Everybody makes him make that mistake one time. Learn from it and don't do it again and do your best not to do it again, right?

 

00;26;36;08 - 00;26;41;19

KS

Yeah. Then we're going to have to talk.

 

00;26;41;21 - 00;26;51;15

DP

Well, Kent, it's been great to speak with you today. Thanks for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and yourself.

 

00;26;51;15 - 00;27;08;25

KS

Probably the best place to start is just at our website with most of our socials and everything else link through there. And we've got some blogs there and all kinds of current things that are going on with the firm where we're hiring some of our new work looks like and that's just. www.BohlinCywinskiJackson.com

 

00;27;08;27 - 00;27;11;20

DP

Well, thank you very much, Kent. It's been really nice meeting you.

 

00;27;11;25 - 00;27;16;19

KS

Likewise. So thank you