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51 LANDSCAPE KPMB DESIGNS A TRANSCLUCENT MONUMENT TO HORTICULTURE IN WINNIPEG, CANADA’S COLDEST CITY. BY PANSY SCHULMAN PHOTOGRAPHY: © EMA PETER IT’S HUMID ENOUGH for the air to cling to your skin. There’s a quiet roar coming from a nearby 60-foot-high waterfall, which gently mists a cluster of surreally large ferns. Tucked among the profuse greenery is a banana tree bursting with unripened fruit, a cacao plant, and jewel-toned flowers that stretch upwards towards the sun. You’re standing not in some far-flung jungle but in the heart of Winnipeg, the coldest major city in Canada, inside the tropical biome of The Leaf, a new horticultural center designed by Toronto-based KPMB Architects in association with Architecture49. Completed last fall, The Leaf replaced a century-old conservatory in the city’s 400- acre Assiniboine Park, which also hosts a zoo and an outdoor theater. The 21,000-squarefoot Hartley and Heather Richardson Tropical Biome is just one of the building’s attractions: an adjacent Mediterranean biome showcases plant life from drier climates; a ground-floor restaurant serves cuisine made with ingredients sourced from the park’s gardens; and an attached event venue accommodates celebrations and conferences. “I wanted to create an experience that allows you to transcend current conditions and enter a different world,” says KPMB partner Mitchell Hall. His approach to The Leaf was informed by parallel work on several health-care projects that incorporated the therapeutic value of biophilic design. “All architects want to believe their work makes a difference,” he says, “but studies have found real healing properties from proximity to plant life, and The Leaf offered the best opportunity to take advantage of that.” Though low to the ground—its highest point is 100 feet tall—The Leaf’s distinct translucent roof, which dramatically spirals upward, renders the building impossible to miss on Winnipeg’s flat prairie landscape, even from miles away. It was made from ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a plastic that allows significantly more light and heat penetration than traditional glass and avoids the need for extensive structural support. “The idea of creating a transcendental environment required that its container be as unencumbered and comprehensible as possible,” Hall says. “We needed a design that maximized the amount of sun that comes in but had a minimal impact on your experience, so that you can actually feel as if you’re in another world. That’s where ETFE came along.” The material was also preferable for the extreme climate fluctuations of the city, where temperatures can soar upward of
52 LANDSCAPE 80 degrees Fahrenheit in summer and stay well below 0 degrees in winter. Research for the roof took Hall as far as Kazakhstan, home to the Foster + Partners– designed Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center, which has one of the largest ETFE roofs in the world. The team toured the tent-shaped project with the roof’s manufacturer and “basically went to school,” Hall said. The intricate cable-net structure supporting the roof is strung from The Leaf’s central spire, which is located within the tropical biome and contains much of the roof’s mechanical system. Metal tubes at the top of the spine pump air between the three ETFE layers, preventing condensation and aiding in the precise temperature control needed to accommodate the building’s varied flora. To avoid unnecessary clutter on the roof’s 70,000-squarefoot surface, the lighting is also mounted there, and operates via projection onto reflectors embedded at various connection points between the Surrounded by 30 acres of public gardens (above), The Leaf’s tropical and Mediterranean biomes are accessible via a soaring atrium (right and opposite).
L 53 2 3 5 6 7 0 50 FT. 15 M. GROUND-LEVEL PLAN ETFE “pockets.” An elevator within the spire takes visitors up to the canopy walkway, which leads directly into a butterfly room on the third level. The waterfall, designed by Canadian artist and landscape designer Dan Euser, cascades past the walkway from above and falls into a koi pond below, offering a mist-framed aerial view of the lush tropical landscape within. Owned and operated by the Assiniboine Park Conservancy, The Leaf is a paid attraction, but, outside, 30 acres of public gardens designed by local firm HTFC Planning and Design stretch out on the surrounding grounds. The outdoor space is divided into six uniquely themed areas, among them a kitchen garden—which grows a variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and other edible plants, and hosts an outdoor oven for cooking demonstrations—and a performance garden, with a stage and amphitheater-style seating. The Indigenous Peoples Garden, a tranquil gathering place where visitors can wander pond-side in tall grasses, was designed in collaboration with local Indigenous artists, designers, and community leaders. Hall’s biggest hope for the project is its educational potential. “There’s a huge amount of knowledge associated with the connection between climate, people, and plants,” he says. “How important and delicate that relationship is needs to be better understood and protected.” n 1TROPICAL BIOME OPICALBIOME 2MEDITERRANEAN ERRANEAN BIOME 3LOBBY 4RESTAURANT STAURANT 5KITCHEN 6GREENHOUSE 7HORTICULTURE TICULTURE OPERATIONS OPERATIONS
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55 THIS HOUSING COMPLEX, LOCATED IN A WATERFRONT EAST ASIAN CITY, REFLECTS ITS ARCHITECT’S LONG-STANDING INTEREST IN DENSITY AND URBAN FORM. THE PROJECT ENCOMPASSES TWO BLOCKS OF TIGHTLY PACKED THREE-STORY TOWNHOUSES, EACH OF WHICH INCORPORATES A COURTYARD THAT BRINGS NATURAL LIGHT INSIDE THE RESIDENCES AND PROVIDES PRIVATE OUTDOOR SPACE. ON THE UPPER FLOOR OF EACH IS A LIVING ROOM TOPPED WITH A SLOPED ROOF AND CLERESTORY WINDOWS; TOGETHER, THE WINDOWS FORM LARGE BANDS OF GLAZING THAT GIVE THE COMPLEX A DISTINCT URBAN IDENTITY. PHOTOGRAPHY: © NILS PETTER DALE (BOTTOM); HIROYUKI KAWANO (TOP) By entering, you have a chance to win a $500 Visa gift card. See the complete rules and entry form online at architecturalrecord.com/guessthearchitect. The Gyldenhal House was designed by Sverre Fehn. Occupying an entire city block in central Oslo, the complex houses the headquarters of Norway’s largest publishing house and incorporates the preserved facades of several demolished buildings. Fehn died at 84 in 2009, two years after the project was completed. Guess the Architect Contest A monthly contest from the editors of RecoRd asks you to guess ENTER NOW! the architect for a work of historical importance.
10 11 3 57 Building TECHNOLOGY Höweler + Yoon Completes a Trio of Residential Buildings in Boston Firm principal Eric Höweler, FAIA, writes about the various approaches to design and construction taken on a series of apartment towers aimed at increasing housing density in the city. HOUSING IN BOSTON remains a wicked problem. Lack of supply and insatiable demand have made Boston one of the least affordable major cities in the U.S. Creat ing new high-density housing, in urban neighborhoods served by transit, has been the focus of the last three mayoral administrations. Affordability is the main topic of conversation at most community meetings and is the centerpiece of current mayor Michelle Wu’s agenda. All residential projects with more than 10 units are currently required to provide a minimum of 13 percent affordable units. Creating more new housing also creates more affordable units. The critical factors that drive, and sometimes restrict, the creation of housing in Boston are viable sites, the entitlements process, parking requirements, and constructability. Because Boston has been continuously remade over centuries, most of the sites that are easy to develop have already been built up. There is no “as of right” development in Boston, so approvals and entitlements are negotiated through a process that includes input from community groups, city agencies, design-review commissions, and abutters (owners of adjoining properties). To build new housing, thus, requires thinking creatively about sites previously deemed “undevelopable.” The three projects presented here are recently completed or nearing completion. Located in three different neighborhoods, they represent unique approaches in the entitlements process and illustrate innovations in housing typology and construction. Less Parking, More Housing Zero Athens South Boston (“Southie”) has been dramatically transformed by development along the Red Line subway transit corridor (“the T”). Located only a block from the Broadway subway station, the parcel at the corner of Athens and West Second Street had been passed over for development due to its irregular, pie-shaped footprint. Incorporating offstreet parking on the small parcel proved inefficient, so the design team proposed a carshare solution with only two parking spaces. This operational answer to the parking problem unlocked the ability to erect a six-story building with 55 units of housing. Zero Athens (the building’s address on Athens Street) is a compact building that occupies most of its wedge-shaped plot, but the stepping of the north facade allows it to be articulated as a series of corner units, giving the building massing a distinct granularity that acknowledges that “part-to-whole” nature of housing. The exterior integrates itself into a historic neighborhood through a facade of large terra-cotta shingles that references the earth tones of the brick buildings in Southie while introducing a new tectonic language. Zero Athens is built with 5+1 construction, consisting of one floor of fire-rated steel and concrete at the base with five floors of stickbuilt framing above. This cost-effective type 1 ALUMINUM PICTURE FRAME ASSEMBLY 2 ALUMINUM CASEMENT WINDOW 3 WOOD WINDOW SILL 4 HORIZONTAL ALUMINUM TRACK 5 TERRA-COTTA TILE ZERO ATHENS FACADE DETAIL 6 ALUMINUM MEMBRANE AND WEATHER BARRIER 7 EXPANDABLE INSULATION 8 WOOD BLOCKING 9 COLORED ALUMINUM FLASHING 10 GYPCRETE SANDWICH PANEL 11 TYPICAL STRUCTURAL FRAMING The terra-cotta facade of Zero Athens is articulated as a series of corner units on a wedge-shaped site (left). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 2 PHOTOGRAPHY: © ALEX FRADKIN
58 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 Building TECHNOLOGY ZERO ATHENS 212 STUART 50 PROSPECT allows for the greatest density under the International Building Code. In urban settings, this maximum allowable becomes the minimum viable, making this the default construction type for most urban housing and highlighting the challenges of midrise housing, where construction costs and return on investment drive the building massing. For Zero Athens, the ability to work with the city to reduce parking requirements, coupled with the efficiency of the massing and a contextual material palette, enabled the transformation of a residual site into a key part of an emerging neighborhood. No Back 212 Stuart Located between Bay Village and Back Bay, the parcel for 212 Stuart Street was assembled from two smaller parcels to total 7,000 square feet, but, still, its small footprint made it nearly impossible to develop efficiently with offstreet parking. The development team, led by Transom Real Estate, negotiated to lease 50 spaces from the adjacent hotel garage, illusThe multistory concave fluted piers of the facade of 212 Stuart (left) were hoisted in place by crane (above).
59 trating how a creative approach to the entitlements process transformed an empty lot into a 20-story housing project. The 200-foot-tall residential tower exceeded the allowable zoning height, yet the increased density was supported by city agencies to add more housing in downtown Boston. The multi-year approvals-and-entitlements process highlights the difficulty of adding density in the historic city center. Height, parking, shadows, wind effects, and contextual fit were the consistent issues raised during the community-engagement process. The building massing and facade articulation negotiate the difference between the high-rise scale on Stuart Street and the lowrise context of Bay Village with a facade design of a coursed block, stacked in multistory packages. The facade consists of precast concave fluted piers that stagger across each face, creating different rhythms in horizontal courses, and references the finer-scale details of its immediate neighbors. The concrete piers are 20 to 30 feet long, to maximize a module size that is within the limits of what is transportable on flatbed trucks and the carrying capacity of a construction crane. The key typological innovation is a response to the community-engagement process. Neighbors residing across the street in a two-story townhouse expressed a concern about facing the “back” of the building, where the mechanical rooms were initially located. In response to this comment, the project was redesigned to feature townhouse duplexes facing the low-rise neighborhood to the south, with the retail and residential lobby facing north onto Stuart Street. The “no back” approach provides townhouse entrances complete, with stoops and flower boxes, facing the existing townhouses. The new building negotiates specific urban conditions to complete the street and contribute to the neighborhood. At 212 Stuart, townhouse entrances, complete with stoops and flower boxes, face the low-rise neighbors (above). The precast piers were shipped on flatbed trucks (right). PHOTOGRAPHY: © CHUCK CHOI (OPPOSITE, LEFT AND THIS PAGE, TOP); KYLE RICHARD, COURTESY SASAKI (OPPOSITE, RIGHT); HOWELER + YOON (BOTTOM)
60 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 Building TECHNOLOGY Right Place for Height 50 Prospect Prompted by a new subway-line extension on the Green Line (GLX) that ties the primarily residential neighborhood of Union Square to the center of Boston, 50 Prospect Street is the first phase of a planned 2.3 million-squarefoot Transit Oriented Development. The project aims to create density around the new transportation hub, to energize the neighborhood, improve walkability, and increase the amount of urban housing. The project combines two known building types, the point tower and the mid-rise bar building, which wraps around and over the concrete parking deck. The high-rise portion of the project is a square-footprint tower with 14 units wrapped around a compact core. The massing of a point tower is less efficient than the typical high-rise bar building, but its small floor plate minimizes the building profile on the skyline and limits the shadows cast on its neighbors. The cost of the elevators, pressurized stairs, and fire-rated construction, is offset by efficiencies achieved by building to a certain height—in this case, 25 stories. The cladding for the tower is made up of precast panels (known as “donuts”). The facade panels were designed with a vertical texture of alternating bands of color—reds and oranges, creams and grays—derived from the palette of existing buildings in the Union Square neighborhood. The economies of scale of the precast panel facade and a girder slab structure allowed the project to be built quickly and cost-effectively, producing 460 units of housing, 20 percent of which (92 units) are affordable. Boosting density near transit, the new residential tower acts as an “advocate,” marking the terminal station as the right place for height. Like politics, all design is local. These three projects provide a cross section of housing types in different Boston neighborhoods. They are an outcome of years-long processes of negotiation and engagement, multiple stakeholders, trade-offs, and creative problem solving at multiple scales. Urban housing is a constraint-based process that highlights the agency of architecture as part of a larger collective endeavor of city-making. n 50 Prospect aims to create density around a new transportation hub. PHOTOGRAPHY: © ALEX FRADKIN
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All the Comforts of Home Duvall Decker brings a sense of familiarity and autonomy to two new houses for intellectually disabled residents at Mississippi’s Baddour Center. BY MATT HICKMAN 64 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 IN FOCUS THE TERM transitional housing largely implies a certain sense of the ephemeral, referring to a temporary living arrangement from which residents ultimately transition into more permanent accommodation. At the Baddour Center, a 120-acre residential campus for adults with intellectual disabilities in the far northwestern reaches of Missis sippi, a pair of group homes designed by Jackson-based Duvall Decker provides its residents—10 men, five to each 3,530- square-foot house—with housing to transition into and live in indefinitely, with a greater degree of independence than in the other Center facilities. “It’s a passage between somebody who needs a lot of care and somebody who might be able to take care of themselves,” explains Roy Decker, cofounding principal of Duvall Decker along with 2023 Record Women in Architecture Awards honoree Anne Marie Duvall Decker. “The men in these buildings may spend the rest of their lives there, so we had the weight of that reality on our shoulders.” The residents, who have multiple types and levels of disability, previously lived in a fully staffed group facility at the Baddour Center, or on the “outside,” where they had acquired the life skills to largely take care of themselves. While each of the new houses receives a modest amount of daytime support from a staff member, the setup is a straightforward one: a few men of various ages living together under the same roof in a five-bedroom house. “If you think about it, five guys living anywhere is a recipe for disaster,” says Decker, who notes that, thanks in part to several key design strategies, Baddour Center staff have reported minimal conflict among residents at the newest group homes on campus. Nestled between two existing group homes on the southern end of the Baddour Center’s verdant, community-integrated campus in the small city of Senatobia, the two houses feel immediately familiar, reassuring residents with their low-slung profiles, gabled roofs, prominent light wells resembling traditional chimneys, and generous front porches. Providing a comfortable, safe, and accessible living space to residents was paramount. But as Duvall Decker points out, this approach isn’t unique to designing housing for people with intellectual disabilities. “As special as their needs may be, in a way these needs are also universal,” she says. Certain considerations made for residents include corridors without blind spots, a kitchen with direct egress, an absence of dead-end spaces where social conflict might occur, a separation of high-sensory areas and low-sensory/private spaces, and rooms with views into them that give residents the choice to either engage with their fellow housemates or not. “These physical strategies reduce stress and allow for residents to have a little more time to make a decision about how they participate, with their peers or with staff members,” says Decker. Each sitting differently on the landscape, the houses are formed by two vestibule-linked
3 1 9 10 6 7 5 8 NEW TRANSITIONAL HOME 1 1 5 8 10 0 20 FT. 6 M. PHOTOGRAPHY: © ANDREW WELCH PHOTO NEW TRANSITIONAL HOME 2 1 PORCH 2 LIVING ROOM 3 KITCHEN & DINING 4 LAUNDRY & HALF BATH 5 COVERED WALKWAY 6 BEDROOM 7 BATHROOM 8 CART & BIKE PARKING 9 FRONT ENTRANCE 10 SIDE ENTRANCE 65 Both houses have an angle between their communal and private wings (opposite) and feature sheltered outdoor corridors (above, left) and large light chimneys (above). volumes that give each wing the appearance of a freestanding smaller house. One wing contains the bedrooms and en suite bathrooms. It is flanked by a covered outdoor walkway that provides access to a side entrance through which residents can come and go from their bedrooms without setting foot in the other wing, which contains a living room, spacious kitchen and dining room, and laundry. “By turning and splitting the buildings, we created multiple paths between the houses,” says Duvall Decker. “It gives you a lot of choices.” The homes establish a strong connection with the outdoors so that residents feel bonded with the larger campus, the seasons, and the cycles of the day. The light chimneys, for example, pull natural morning light into each of the bedrooms and common areas. As Decker explains, the most critical input came from Baddour Center residents themselves. “We did our homework: we diagrammed, mapped, thought about codes and health-department requirements,” he says. “And then we talked to the residents, and we felt as if we didn’t know anything.” “We were aware of the analytical technical information, but the lived life of the circumstances by which the residents occupy their days, their relationships, and their loves was so much richer and more complicated,” he adds. “Mixing that back into the technical safety
PHOTOGRAPHY: © ANDREW WELCH PHOTO Joto-Vent.com | 425-256-2210 | [email protected] SCAN ME NFVA of 11.03 in2 /LF PERIMETER FOUNDATION VENTS Continuous Venting of the Crawl Space 66 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 IN FOCUS Spacious front porches overlooking the Baddour Center’s bucolic campus serve as a space for residents to socialize or seek respite. requirements is how the plans were built.” Residents were most keen on seeing large front porches—with living rooms overlooking these through oversize windows—and attached garages for bicycle and golf cart parking incorporated into each home. Another request honored in the final design was for more space but not necessarily increased square footage. “He kept saying ‘not bigger, but more space,’ ” recounts Decker of a conversation with one resident. “What he was describing was taller ceilings and volume. This was a clue to the fact that residents felt the traditional group homes had a kind of oppressiveness to them.” “These buildings are really simple,” adds Decker. “There’s nothing extraordinary in the space-making, except the way it is all knit together in relation to the residents’ needs, which makes it special for them.” n
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REGISTER TODAY NOVEMBER 13 | LOS ANGELES The Colburn School | 200 S Grand Avenue Los Angeles’s Changing Cultural Landscape Join Architectural Record for an evening of CE sessions, including a panel discussion moderated by our editor-in-chief, Josephine Minutillo. Following the discussion, stay for cocktails and conversations. SPONSORED BY: RecordontheRoad.com Sandra Jackson-Dumont Director and Chief Executive Offi cer, Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Michael Maltzan, FAIA Principal, Michael Maltzan Architecture MEET THE PANELISTS Josephine Minutillo Editor-in Chief Architectural Record Sel Kardan President and CEO, The Colburn School IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: PHOTO: RON ESHEL
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70 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 IN 2003, in the essay “Delirious No More,” Rem Koolhaas cast the planned rebuilding of the World Trade Center as a death knell for the feverish experimentalism he had so enthusiastically chronicled 25 years earlier in Delirious New York. In the gargantuan scale and literal symbolism of Daniel Libeskind’s competition-winning rebuilding scheme—in essence, voids on the sites of the old towers and a perimeter of new towers culminating at 1,776 feet—monumentalization took the place of imagination. Vast sums of public money bought a decades-long series of ribbon-cuttings, and commerce made its return—not organically, as a new beginning for the site, but opportunistically, in the form of a highend mall and kiosks around the memorial that peddle official 9/11 Museum–themed merchandise. Even as Lower Manhattan, far from being deserted, grew into a lively residential area, Ground Zero remained an artificial zone of granite and marble. “New York,” Koolhaas had warned, “will be marked by a massive representation of hurt that projects only the overbearing self-pity of the powerful.” The 138-foot-tall translucent marble cube of the Perelman Performing Arts Center is the latest monument on these 16 acres of Lower Manhattan. Rising directly opposite the 9/11 Memorial and adjacent to the impregnable base of SOM’s One World Trade Center, the 129,000-square-foot building was designed by REX with Davis Brody Bond as the final civic project for Ground Zero under Libeskind’s master plan (one commercial tower and one residential tower have yet to be built). As such, it offers a modicum of closure even as it trumpets the achievements of those responsible for guiding the rebuilding over the past two decades. Inside and out, the walls of the $500 million building are inscribed with their names: the developer Larry Silverstein, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Citi, Goldman Sachs, former deputy mayor John E. Zuccotti, and, of course, Ronald Perelman, the businessman who kickstarted the project with a $75 million gift in 2016. Inside the Box Three reconfigurable theaters form the heart of the final public building at Ground Zero. BY IZZY KORNBLATT PHOTOGRAPHY BY IWAN BAAN PERELMAN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | NEW YORK | REX
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72 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 But if the Perelman Center is in this sense par for the Ground Zero course, hidden within its mute walls is an attempt to challenge architectural convention of the sort that has until now been absent from the site. The building is conceived around three performance venues, located on the fourth floor, which can be separated or combined in 10 spatial permutations. Movable floors, seating, balconies, and other equipment then allow each permutation to be further customized; in total, according to REX principal Joshua Ramus, there are more than 60 possible configurations, catering to performances of all kinds. (The center’s inaugural season encompasses multiple varieties of theater, music, and dance, among other events.) This highly scripted mode of flexibility is distinct from that of black-box theaters, which begin as empty spaces: “strategic specificity,” Ramus says, “can prove to be more flexible than universal space.” From an ingenious system of lifts beneath the floors that each fold down into an impossibly small steel drum, to four mechanized guillotine walls, to movable panels near the ceilings that allow each space to be acoustically optimized for a given configuration, the building is filled with machinery designed to ease the implementation of this flexibility. Acoustics, code compliance, circulation needs, and access to the scene elevator and back-of-house, among other factors, have all been considered across each configuration, enabling artists to experiment freely with the building. “The design encourages play,” says Bill Rauch, Perelman’s artistic director. Creating so complex a machine at Ground Zero was no easy feat. The Perelman Center sits on four levels of underground infrastructure—two rail tunnels, a pedestrian concourse, and a vehicular ramp; and its ground floor, clad in black granite, is dedicated to Port Authority infrastructure, including a truck entrance that provides access to underground loading docks across the World Trade Center site. Further complicating matters, much of the underground infrastructure was designed and built years ago, when planning for a performing arts center had yet to progress beyond an initial scheme by Frank Gehry. Gehry’s design, which was abandoned in 2014, had fixed the location of the scene elevator, used for bringing large set pieces from the loading dock to the theaters—and so, when REX was hired in 2015, the architects had to design around the elevator while working with structural engineers to identify points for the building’s columns to tie into the below-grade structure. They found only seven such points, and, as a result, the building had to be as light as possible—even its egress stairs are enclosed in plate steel rather than concrete—and its steel columns had to “play a game of Twister,” as Ramus puts it, as they snake their way up and culminate in an enormous hat truss around the perimeter of the upper floors. Enclosed within that truss are the three venues, each of which is a self-supporting structure resting on rubber pads that isolate it from vibrations. A sloping cut into the granite base opens up room for a grand entry stair on the south side; ascending visitors pass under a cantilevered corner of the marble cube and up into a lobby-cum-restaurant, designed by Rockwell Group, on the second floor. This space, with its felt-covered walls and large variety of cushioned furnishings, contrasts sharply with the rectilinear exterior and overall sobriety of the build-
73 ing. Curved wooden ribs with integrated LED lighting line the ceilings, forming whorled nodes that periodically protrude downward; firm founder David Rockwell describes the total effect as “a little like the lining of an oyster.” Around the floor’s perimeter is a continuous double-height hallway, lit evenly in amber through the marble facade, and at its back, behind the restaurant, is a narrow terrace. Stairways and elevators then take visitors up, past the back-of-house spaces on the third floor, to the theaters above. There they find themselves in a set of dark circulatory spaces that can be freely reconfigured so as to shift the boundary between front and back of house; another orange-hued perimeter hall, this one triple height, provides access to the three venues, configured in plan in a large L, and a rehearsal room. The venues, which in their most basic configurations seat 99, 250, AN ENTRY STAIR (above) cuts under the center’s translucent marble facade (above and right). The building sits directly opposite the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero (opposite).
0 30 FT. 10 M. 0 30 FT. 10 M. 0 30 FT. 10 M. 74 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 SECOND-FLOOR PLAN 4 1 5 7 8 GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 1 2 3 4 1 ENTRY STAIR 2 STORAGE AND BUILDING SERVICES 3 TRUCK RAMP 4 SCENE ELEVATOR 5 LOBBY 6 RESTAURANT 7 TERRACE 8 OFFICES 9 THEATER TRAP ROOM 10 DRESSING ROOMS 11 COSTUMES 12 GREEN ROOM 13 JOHN E. ZUCCOTTI THEATER 14 MIKE NICHOLS THEATER 15 DORIS DUKE FOUNDATION THEATER 16 REHEARSAL ROOM 17 PRODUCTION ZONE 18 THEATER SCENE DOCK THIRD-FLOOR PLAN 4 11 10 12 10 0 30 FT. 10 M. FOURTH-FLOOR PLAN 4 13 18 14 15 16 17
75 and 450 patrons, respectively, are surprisingly small and straightforward. The only adornment of note is wood paneling, cut into a variety of vertically oriented molding-like profiles for optimal acoustic diffusion, which lines the walls of all three rooms. The Perelman Center is not the first theater project to pursue architectural mutability, nor is it the first to posit a link between ultraflexible architecture and radical or innovative art. The same theme animates the Dee and Charles Wyly Theater in Dallas (record, February 2010), designed by Ramus, as partner in charge of the project at REX/OMA, and Koolhaas. Earlier Koolhaas projects had explored this theme in different ways—in the oversize doors that link the expo hall, conference center, and concert venue at the Congrexpo near the Lille international rail depot (1994), for example, and the segmented movable floor proposed for the unbuilt Ghent Forum (2004). And another architect of similar inclination, Elizabeth Diller of Diller Scofidio+Renfro, led the design of the Shed at Hudson Yards in Midtown Manhattan (record, May 2019), where an enormous ETFE-clad sheath literally rolls out over an adjacent plaza on 6-foot-diameter wheels. Beyond the shared commitment to mutability, the Perelman Center and Shed have much in common. Both are conceived as “cultural” components of master-planned Manhattan megadevelopments. Both consist of newly formed institutions dedicated to producing interdisciplinary arts programming married to luxe, purpose-built buildings. And both have been enabled by the largesse of Manhattan’s rich and powerful. The two even share a primary benefactor, Michael Bloomberg, whose gifts have totaled around $130 million to each. Both also raise similar questions about the limits of mutability as an architectural concept. To what degree are these elaborate mechanisms employed not for practical ends but rather for the purposes of attracting media attention and philanthropic support? Arts organizations have an easier time raising money for capital projects than operations, and one might argue that, by making mutability part of the architecture of the Perelman Center, REX has reduced pressure on future operating budgets. But, ultimately, how necessary, and how useful, are its 60- some configurations? Many of the architects who in the past championed mutability did so in order to mount critiques of elite institutions. Cedric Price’s unbuilt proposal for the Fun Palace, created with the theater producer Joan Littlewood in the early 1960s, consisted of an enormous, endlessly reconfigurable structure where people of all walks of life would be welcomed to participate in performing and creating art. And the ambition that underlies many of OMA’s ultraflexible performing arts projects, such as the Taipei Performing Arts Center (record, December 2022), has been to refigure the relationship between performance and public: to liberate theater, opera, and other forms of performance from THE LOBBY and restaurant, designed by Rockwell Group, feature felt-covered walls and lighting integrated into curving wood ribs.
76 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 the architectural conventions that keep them sequestered in a rarefied cultural realm. Ramus’s own soon-to-debut Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University, where a glazed horizontal volume cuts through the main theater, enabling passersby to glimpse performances from the surrounding streets, takes its place within this lineage. The Perelman Center, by contrast, and due in large part to its marble facade, takes on no such project. The envelope is doubtless a technical feat: its insulated panels, each fronted with a ½-inch piece of Portuguese marble sandwiched between two pieces of glass and each weighing almost 300 pounds, necessitated a production chain spanning four countries. Book-matching the nearly 5,000 panels, and then fitting them into symmetrical patterns on four largely identical facades, required an extraordinary degree of coordination on the part of REX’s staff and consultants. Ramus argues that the building’s stark simplicity and the luminosity of its facade— at night, it glows an even amber—will create a sense of mystery and draw in the public. But the facade is also a tool that keeps what happens inside the center invisible, and this is no accident: it was a preference of the client during the initial competition, Ramus recalls, that activity within the building not be visible from the 9/11 Memorial. And a critical element of REX’s design that would have at least suggested a link between performance and the outside world—glass walls facing the marble facade on the third floor, within the back-of-house spaces, and in two of the Credits ARCHITECT: REX — Joshua Ramus, principal designer; Alysen Hiller Fiore, project leader; Maur Dessauvage, Adam Chizmar, Wanjiao Chen, project team ARCHITECT OF RECORD: Davis Brody Bond — Carl F. Krebs, David K. Williams, partners; John Henle, Joseph Navarro, associate partners; Pedro Pereira, Adelina Mazyrko, Gayataro Desai, Valerie Theodore, Cylde Chen, Simon Lee, Maraike Crom, project team INTERIOR ARCHITECT (RESTAURANT AND LOBBY): Rockwell Group — David Rockwell, president; Michael Fischer, principal; Erika Britton, Sonya Chao, Ally Conchieri, Nazli Ergani, Scott Ferebee, Mariel Levine, project team ENGINEERS: Magnusson Klemencic Associates, Silman (structural); Jaros, Baum & Bolles (m/e/p) CONSULTANTS: Charcoalblue (theater); Front (facade); FMDC (stone); Threshold (acoustics); Tillotson Design Associates (lighting) ILLUSTRATED SECTION SAMPLE CONFIGURATIONS CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: Sciame Construction CLIENT: Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center (PAC NYC) SIZE: 129,000 square feet COST: $500 million (construction) COMPLETION DATE: September 2023 Sources CURTAIN WALL: Granoguli, LSI Stone (marble); AGC Interpane (insulated panels); Gartner RAINSCREEN: Campolonghi (granite); POHL (aluminum) SPECIALIZED EQUIPMENT: Gala Systems (stage/seat lifts); The Chicago Flyhouse, Hudson Scenic Studios, Sightline Commercial Solutions (theater equipment); Clark Door (guillotine walls and doors)
77 theaters and the rehearsal room on the fourth—was cut. One consequence of this change is that the drama of the facade cannot often be appreciated from indoors; one’s awareness of the outside world disappears all too easily. Another is that the single floor dedicated to staff and performers is entirely without natural light. At the Perelman Center, the timeworn pattern of Modern architecture repeats itself: a formal technique conceived to effect social change is subsequently repurposed to perpetuate the status quo. Here the inflated social status of the performing arts is reasserted rather than challenged. Perhaps this conclusion was preordained: one suspects that the powers that have controlled the Ground Zero rebuilding would have had it no other way. Nonetheless, entombed within these marble walls, the impulse to use architecture to enable the creation of new forms of art, to change how spaces are occupied, to reconfigure the city—the original promise of the rebuilding—can still be detected. It is the ghost in the strange machine that is the Perelman Center—a quiet reminder of how things might have turned out differently. n A COMPLEX SYSTEM of guillotine walls and floor lifts (right) enable the theaters (above), to be arranged in over 60 configurations (eight of which are illustrated at opposite, top).
78 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 An Open Book A once gloomy library, closed off to the street, is resurrected as a welcoming, light-filled community hub. BY JOSEPHINE MINUTILLO PHOTOGRAPHY BY NAHO KUBOTA EAST FLATBUSH LIBRARY I BROOKLYN I LEVENBETTS
79 WHEN CONFRONTED with the renovation of a dull, one-story, brick- and glassblock-clad library with a 100-foot-deep floor plate, there are some obvious moves an architect can make. Redesigning the street-facing elevation to be more welcoming from the exterior and more porous to the interior is one such move. Reorganizing the floor plan is another. But to really make a difference in what was a dark and gloomy space, punch giant holes in the roof and bring in daylight. It seems simple enough. Or incredibly daunting, considering you’d have to convince your client, in this case the Brooklyn Public Library and the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC), to devote a good chunk of the construction budget for the 8,000-square-foot refurbishment to skylights and the accompanying roof alterations. Not to mention, architecturally and urbanistically, this low, deep mat-building type is one of the most difficult to resurrect. And, in the wrong THE RENOVATED one-story library announces itself on the street (opposite and above) and welcomes visitors into a soaring space filled with daylight (left).
80 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 hands, it may only produce so-so results. In the right hands, however—in this case the 15-person practice LEVENBETTS—the outcome is a brilliant beacon on a street where neighbors include shabby storefronts for a laundromat and meat market, among others, that leads to a dynamic and light-filled community hub. “Labrouste’s centrally lit library was a starting point for us,” says Stella Betts, who leads the New York–based firm with husband David Leven. It currently has three other libraries in progress throughout the city— two of them, like this one, through DDC’s Design and Construction Excellence program, and the other through the New York City Eco nomic Development Corporation. But, while Labrouste famously fashioned his reading room for Paris’s Bibliothèque Nationale under circular roof openings and umbrella domes, LEVENBETTS chose a pointed geometry that is expressed in both the hexagonal organization of the plan and the faceted skylight openings. The plan emerged from the need to have 1 ENTRY VESTIBULE 2 READING ROOM 3 STAFF WORK AREA 4 MAIN DESK 5 JANITOR’S CLOSET 6 RESTROOMS 7 STAFF LOUNGE 8 CHILDREN’S NOOK 9 CHILDREN’S ROOM 10 CONFERENCE ROOM 11 LIBRARIAN’S OFFICE 12 ADULT NOOK 13 MEETING ROOM 14 STORAGE 15 MULTIPURPOSE THE DEEP light scoops dominate the central space (opposite). Finishes include translucent polycarbonate walls (this image). 1 345 2 13 12 11 10 6 13 14 FLOOR PLAN 0 15 FT. 5 M.
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82 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 monochromatic, this cloudlike space offers a symphony of textures and treatments. The same could be said for the new exterior. Once again, corrugations offer visual interest, but also a distinctly different, and elevated, street presence. The 17-foot-high facade consists of two configurations of wavy, gray-painted aluminum panels, which are flipped to essentially create four panel types and a highly variegated pattern along the 80-foot-wide frontage. The rainscreen is clipped together, bolted onto the building structure, and fit into a precisely cut soffit, designed to mirror the many crimps and curves. Where there is a large meeting room just to the right of the central entrance, the aluminum is perforated to connect occupants, often children doing activities, to the street. Where there is a smaller staff office on the other side, the aluminum remains opaque for privacy. As a finishing touch, the words EAST FLATBUSH are painted in large white letters onto the entire length of the facade—an emphatic gesture connecting the building to its place, even if only subtly perceptible. Inaugurated in June after a nearly threeyear closure, the refreshed library was immediately embraced, especially on the hot August day of my visit, when it doubled as a cooling center. It is a space, unlike its previous iteration, where visitors are happy to spend a few hours. Its upgrade is not only a boon to the community, but also to LEVENBETTS, a small practice for which programs like DDC’s Design and Construction Excellence afford the opportunity to undertake more public and civic work. The firm, through the same DDC program, is now embarking on a much larger renovation of the Queens Museum. n all areas of the central space visible from the one information/security desk near the entrance, and the generous 8½-foot-deep light scoops—positioned in three wide rows along existing structural lines and spanning the entirety of that space—contort to face north above the 10-foot-high ceiling. Beyond the walls of the central hexagon, set askew within the rectangular building footprint, are tucked rooms of various sizes and shapes. These perimeter spaces, which include a staff office, meeting rooms, restrooms, and storage and maintenance closets, conceal all HVAC equipment above dropped ceilings and discreetly locate mechanical returns in, and supply fresh air through, slots along the ceiling line of the main reading room. Aesthetically, the warmth of wood and pops of color in these spaces contrast with the muted palette of the main reading area. There, corrugated translucent polycarbonate partitions mingle with mirror-finished stainless-steel column covers beneath the soft, white acoustic ceiling, which is perforated in a pattern of irregular circles that extends up through the skylights. (Fitting together those ceiling panels, especially in this faceted area, without disrupting the pattern was a particular challenge, and accomplished by beadcaulking and sanding the joints.) Thin LED strips along the ceiling are replicated bouncily on the reflective columns. Despite being FACADE AXONOMETRIC
83 ROOMS AND NOOKS along the perimeter feature wood accents and pops of color (above and right). The aluminum facade is a beacon in the neighborhood (opposite). Credits ARCHITECT: LEVENBETTS ENGINEERS: Silman (structural); Plus Group Consulting Engineering (m/e/p) CONSULTANT: Lumen Architecture (lighting) GENERAL CONTRACTOR: XBR CLIENT: NYC Department of Design and Construction/Brooklyn Public Library SIZE: 8,000 square feet COST: $10.1 million (construction) COMPLETION DATE: June 2023 Sources DOORS AND WINDOWS: Kawneer, Arcadia GLASS: Vitro (exterior and interior) SKYLIGHTS: Velux LIGHTING: Selux, Zumtobel, Leviton ACOUSTICAL CEILINGS: GypSorb (reading room); Atkar and Armstrong (perimeter rooms) RESILIENT FLOORING: Forbo TILE: Daltile
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CHECK OUT OUR OCTOBER WEBINARS TO REGISTER FOR UPCOMING WEBINARS IN 2023, VISIT HTTPS://CONTINUINGEDUCATION.BNPMEDIA.COM/WEBINARS OCTOBER 12, 2023 @ 2:00 PM EDT Today’s Architectural Metals for the Interior World CREDITS: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 0.1 ICC CEU This course will introduce attendees to a variety of interior applications for metal panels and other metal components. Discover the sustainable nature of metal, its green attributes, and how metal can enhance an interior environment with beauty, strength, and resilience. OCTOBER 18, 2023 @ 2:00 PM EDT Exploring Commercial Window Treatments: Selection, Technologies + Aesthetics CREDITS: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 0.1 ICC CEU In this course, participants will delve into the diverse range of window shade options, learn about their functional attributes, and gain expertise in selecting and integrating window shades seamlessly into architectural and interior design projects to contribute to building occupant comfort. OCTOBER 25, 2023 @ 2:00 PM EDT Sustainable & Resilient Stainless Steel Structural Design CREDITS: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 0.1 ICC CEU The publication of the new AISC 370-22, AISC 313-22 and ASCE/SEI 8-22 has become much easier. This presentation will introduce these publications, summarize information on the sustainability and resilience of stainless steel, and provide project examples. OCTOBER 26, 2023 @ 2:00 PM EDT Built to Last: Protecting interiors from expected and sometimes unexpected occupant behavior CREDITS: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 0.1 ICC CEU; 1 IIBEC CEH This webinar is part of the Mastering Movement™ Academy This webinar will explore decorative and functional products and coverings that help protect a space from the many expected, and sometimes unexpected, ways occupants and visitors inflict damage on the interior of a building. OCTOBER 19, 2023 @ 2:00 PM EDT Navigating the Urban Design Landscape: Creating solutions for the urban community through technology and planning CREDITS: 1 AIA LU/ELECTIVE; 0.1 ICC CEU This webinar is part of the Business of Architecture Academy This webinar will explore the challenges, solutions, and creative options available to architects and development planners looking to improve the modern community, specifically through the use of 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) software.
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87 PHOTOGRAPHY: © IMAGEN SUBLIMINAL RESIDENTIAL Beyond-the-Family House Madrid | Ignacio G. Galán and OF Architects BY LEOPOLDO VILLARDI ON THE OUTSKIRTS of Madrid, amid a sea of warm brick and terra-cotta, a serrated silhouette of azure cuts across a crimped backdrop of corrugated steel. This playfully unconventional facade belongs to a house commissioned by an elderly couple newly adapting to mobility challenges. Wary of the isolation experienced by the husband’s father in an institutionalized nursing home, and increasingly struggling with the four-story, stair-riddled layout of their longtime residence, they turned to a team of architects to design a home where they could comfortably age in place. Beyond-the-Family House is the product of a transatlantic partnership forged between New York–based Ignacio G. Galán and Madrid-based husband-and-wife duo Álvaro A small pool is used for exercise (above). Martín Fidalgo and Arantza Ozaeta of OF Architects. The three met in architecture school at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and have stayed in close touch since. “We work on some projects together, and others we work on independently. It’s a bit like an open relationship,” says Galán with a laugh.
0 10 FT. 3 M. 88 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 RESIDENTIAL 1 PATIO 2 POOL 3 VESTIBULE 4 KITCHEN 5 DINING 6 LIVING 7 PRIMARY SUITE 8 REAR GARDEN 9 GUEST ROOM 10 ROOF TERRACE 11 LOWER PATIO 12 PARKING The house is neither nostalgic nor impersonal, but full of charming quirks—despite what the industrial palette might immediately conjure. It’s compact, too, with a floor plate of about 1,000 square feet. An empty corner lot in Peñagrande, where the clients already lived, proved to be ideal. The couple could frequent the same butcher and grocer, and stay close to old friends. They hail from a generation that cherishes casual encounters, so these relationships were important to maintain—their new patio, shaded by fledgling trees and lined by a low, unimposing expanded-metal fence, ensures that they can greet strolling neighbors. The first level, entered at grade through a small vestibule, organizes living, eating, and cooking alongside a primary bedroom suite— a configuration that is “practically nonexistent in Spain,” says Galán. Walls were dimensioned to perfectly fit the eclectic mix of furniture that the couple has amassed over decades, and the husband, a retired engineer, can tend to his collection of bonsai trees in a secluded rear garden. Overhead, three sawtooth openings telescope in width to create a zigzagging ceiling line. They also point southward, which may seem counterintuitive, but their clerestory windows are set back, behind a perforated scrim, and calibrated according to seasonal solar angles. In the summer, direct sunlight is all but avoided, and, on winter days, typically cool in this semi-arid climate, warm rays graze the room. A ribbon of bookmatched oak lines their soffits, drawing the eye up. Also used for pocket doors and millwork, the oak pairs well with the sage green exposed H-section columns and swinging metal doors along the eastern wall. These conceal a half-bath, stairs to the upper and lower floors, and a wardrobe, which hovers above an opening in the floor plate that one day may need to accommodate a small elevator. One level up, two guest rooms separated by a living area and kitchenette can host family members or friends on extended stays. 7 6 3 9 10 12 11 SECTION A - A 2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 12 0 10 FT. 3 M. GROUND-FLOOR PLAN A A
89 PHOTOGRAPHY: © IMAGEN SUBLIMINAL Sawtooth clerestories flood the interiors with daylight (above). Sage green H-section columns (left and far left) structure the house. The rentable unit has its own terrace (opposite). Below, there is a rentable unit, with its own terrace, where the wife’s nonagenarian mother now resides. Mobility restricted, she walks up the gentle incline of the sidewalk to visit her daughter, who is no stranger to patient care as a former pediatrician. But the couple knows, one day, that this apartment will be vacant, and they’ve discussed leasing it to a student at the nearby university who, from time to time, might join them for meals. At about 16 inches deep, the rear-ventilated facade, with its bright ceramic rainscreen and thick insulation, pays dividends. Paired with a radiant cooling system embedded into the terrazzo floor, plus common-sense window placement that stirs airflow, and an automated system of louvers, this thickness makes for an energyefficient—and comfortable—residence, without the need for air-conditioning. In fact, the small photovoltaic array on the roof sufficiently powered the home through the summer. The savings have not gone unnoticed, especially in Europe, where the conflict in Ukraine has inflated the cost of utilities and building materials (the couple paid for the house by selling their old one). “When designing for people our age or younger, we often reflect on our own memories,” Fidalgo says. “But we haven’t entered this stage of life yet, and the project made us face reality in a very different way.” With a discerning eye, the architects have improved their clients’ quality of life, from the myriad ways they can now share their home with others to the house’s ability to evolve with their changing needs. “We want them to grow older the very best way that they can—happily.” n
90 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 RESIDENTIAL 1 2 3 4 5 A A Geode ADU Burlingame, California | IwamotoScott Architecture BY CLARE JACOBSON GEODE ADU, designed by San Francisco– based IwamotoScott Architecture, offers a quiet complement to a Midcentury Modern Californian dwelling. Many ADUs (accessory dwelling units) are designed to be backyard homes for relatives or renters. Although this one has everything necessary to serve as a residence, it was primarily designed as a work studio for the homeowner. “That’s my home, and it’s very lived in,” he says of his 1964 Eichler house, designed by architect A. Quincy Jones, “but I need an organized space to work. I walk through the door and feel relaxed—it’s pleasing.” The main house on the property luxuriantly spreads around a central atrium, a common feature of houses built by the developer Joseph Eichler. The 640-square-foot Geode ADU (the maximum size allowed in the city of Burlingame, south of San Francisco) is, by PHOTOGRAPHY: © BRUCE DAMONTE 1 PATIO 2 LIVING/SLEEPING 3 WORK AREA 4 BATHROOM 5 KITCHENETTE 6 MAIN HOUSE contrast, necessarily compact, carved into a hill and fitted with built-in cabinets that Craig Scott, principal of IwamotoScott, compares to those on a boat. The overall effect is indeed calm. Much of that effect derives from the natural and neutral material palette. Clean lines and exceptional craft reinforce the feeling. But calmness here does not mean it’s simple. “We started with a more orthogonal, rational approach,” says Scott, “but the site’s odd shape made that hard to justify.” Geode has an eight-sided plan, to take best advantage of the site. The plan centers on a living area, with a bathroom, kitchenette, office, garden, and storage springing off tangentially. And the small space has sectional complexity, with what the designers call a “reinterpretation of the butterfly roof,” as well as steps leading up to a desk area. The owner, a creative director, enjoys circumambulating the stepped path to process ideas as he works. Geode ADU shares few characteristics, other than vertical siding and radiant floor heating, with the main residence; more significant is the spatial interplay between the two. IwamotoScott directed Geode’s large northeast window toward a break in the A-framed roof of the Eichler house. From the elevated office, the owner can see through this gap all the way across San Francisco Bay to Mount Diablo. With an even larger northwest window-wall, opening onto a patio, the quaint quarters feel spacious. A clerestory-lit interior garden behind the office desk brings additional light into the ADU and, intentionally or not, serves as a stunning background for virtual meetings. For Geode ADU to live up to its crystalline moniker, its details need to be pristine. An exposed ridgeline brings dimensionality to the bathroom; trapezoidal shelves fit into a sharp, angled nook; seamless (and handleless) doors hide messiness. Scott points out two particularly tricky details—a flue to a gas fireplace running through a TV cabinet, and the long-span desk with hidden drawers and power cables. The precision was difficult to achieve but essential to the homeowner’s quest for serenity. “I’m in different world here,” he says, “and that’s really a beautiful thing—that architecture can have such an effect on people.” n Clare Jacobson is a San Francisco–based design writer and editor. The ADU’s prismatic form contrasts with the main house (opposite, top). The interior is fitted with custom cabinets, and well-placed glazing provides ample daylight (opposite, bottom left and right). FLOOR PLAN 0 6 FT. 2 M. 0 6 FT. 2 M. SECTION A - A 6 5
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92 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 RESIDENTIAL Blind Dormer House Toronto | Anya Moryoussef Architect BY ALEX BOZIKOVIC A HOUSE with a gabled roof is the most elemental of architectural forms. But a newly remodeled residence in Toronto by Anya Moryoussef Architect puts a strange new face on this familiar shape: its front is an enigmatic composition of staggered windows in a field of white brick, capped with a dormer that presents a blank face to the street. “It is familiar, yet also unfamiliar and a bit uncanny,” Anya Moryoussef says of the project, which she’s dubbed the Blind Dormer House. The 2,200-square-foot project is a “cultural probe,” she says, into our ideas about home and their architectural expression. Blind Dormer is a remodel of a two-story 1920s dwelling in a former streetcar suburb near downtown Toronto. It retains the original side walls and foundation, their masonry and concrete preserving the bulk of the old structure’s embodied energy. Moryoussef, a Canadian who spent three years working with Sarah Wiggles worth in London, is committed to minimizing the waste and emissions generated by her projects; she also sees the house’s existing elements as a spur to creativity. “In evitably, there are disjunctions,” she says, “between the exterior shell and what’s going on inside.” The client for the remodel is in the process of starting a family, and wanted the residence to accommodate a variety of family configurations. Accordingly, Moryoussef designed a house that splits the difference between individual rooms and an open plan. It also shares kinship with Adolf Loos’s Villa Müller: in both, an inscrutable exterior wraps a house rich with color, texture, and three-dimensional complexity. From the front door, a half-flight of stairs leads up to a piano nobile with a kitchen that is separated from a dining area and living room by freestanding cabinets. In the kitchen, figured calacatta viola marble slabs form the counters and backsplash—the red and purple veining boldly jumps out in the white interior. Nearby, an open stair connects to the second floor and the basement. This circulation route puts guests in conversation with the site’s main feature—a towering oak in the front yard, whose trunk is visible through a two-story slot window. White oak carries into the house with millwork veneers and wideplank flooring. The second floor consists of two rooms linked by a bathroom: one looks over the dining area below; the other is currently used as the primary bedroom. But, in the future, this pair of spaces could also serve as a child’s bedroom and sitting room—or many other arrangements. The top-floor attic, currently used as a home office, enjoys an en suite powder room tucked into the titular blind dormer (although it presents a blank face to the street, an aperture above brings in ample daylight). For the architect, the design transforms a conventional house into something inherently more flexible, preempting the spatial changes that inevitably come with the cycle of aging and generational change. And, if passersby can’t quite understand its logic from the street, the white facade provides a backdrop for a lush garden (by Designland) and that oak, against which the changing of the seasons play out. “The house is a blank canvas for this tree and the shadows it casts,” Moryoussef says. “I consider the light and shadow part of the architecture.” n Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic at The Globe and Mail in Toronto. PHOTOGRAPHY: © DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY
9 8 1 2 6 7 0 10 FT. 3 M. SECTION A - A 93 1 VESTIBULE 2 DINING 3 KITCHEN 4 LIVING 5 PATIO 6 MECHANICAL 7 LAUNDRY 8 NURSERY 9 OFFICE Asymmetrically placed windows (opposite) offer glimpses of a towering oak (top). Inside, muted tones (above) are contrasted by bold figured marble (right). 1 2 4 3 5 A A 0 10 FT. 3 M. GROUND-FLOOR PLAN
7 3 6 4 FOURTH-FLOOR PLAN 0 10 FT. 3 M. 1 2 3 4 5 GROUND-FLOOR PLAN 94 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 RESIDENTIAL Werfstraat Brussels | Bovenbouw Architectuur BY TIM ABRAHAMS INTRIGUED by the premise of the 2014 exhibition Pasticcio at the Flemish Architecture Institute, a couple wanting to replace their house on Werfstraat in Brussels called the exhibition designers, Bovenbouw. The show had brought together a group of European architects, including that Belgian office, who were reinventing building traditions that had emerged before the Modern movement. The clients, who run a telecommunications company, did not want a glimmering glassandsteel building, nor did they want something dull and retro. “They were fascinated by the idea that buildings could be contemporary without all the Modernist tropes,” says principal Dirk Somers. To make way for the residence, Bovenbouw demolished the client’s existing house, a converted twostory workshop that no longer provided enough space for their family and didn’t in any architectural sense address the scale of the street, with its heterogeneous mix of office buildings, warehouses, apartment buildings, and an art gallery. The new fourstory house features a symmetrical rhythm of recessed windows that is interrupted by a blank protrusion, hanging over the entrance, similar in fashion to Palladio’s Casa Cogollo in Vicenza, Italy, the main historical influence. This unexpected gesture not only gives PHOTOGRAPHY: © DAVID DE BRUIJN the shallow building some depth (the plot is 24 feet deep at its shallowest), but it also creates space on two floors for curved lateral windows with oblique views toward a treelined boulevard, and, above it, supports a generous southfacing balcony overlooking the street. This bold move both demands and accentuates ingenious, fabriclike brickwork. The facade, 50 feet high from the ground to cornice, is richly textured with courses of conventional bricks, cut to five different sizes. Brick stretchers have been laid above and below the windows, while headers run in ribbons between floors. More extreme are the bricks stood up as “sailors,” exposing their broad undersides. This variety allowed the builders to seamlessly contour the outermost wythe (there is an air cavity behind it) to create rounded corners and curved window reveals. Such plasticity is redolent of the many stone Art Nouveau buildings in Brussels. Yet the building, in plan, is clear and symmetrical, with a strong central entrance. A guest room and garage are placed on the ground floor; above this are two children’s rooms and a shared playroom. The parents have their own floor, with bedroom, private bathroom, and study. The uppermost floor contains a kitchen, living room, and the 1 VESTIBULE 2 GARAGE 3 ELEVATOR 4 STAIR 5 GUEST ROOM 6 KITCHEN/DINING 7 LIVING 8 BALCONY balcony, but a furnished terrace with a halfbath makes the roof level usable as well. Both the plot and the building code indicated that the best location for the staircase was to the east, rather than at the center, so a curved corridor on the ground floor leading to the oval circulation tower became necessary. This curvature reconciles the symmetry of the building with the more utilitarian needs of the staircase, enabling the old and the modern to coexist and, hence, becoming a unifying design feature. This consistency of geometry in the detailing helps make Werfstraat a convincing, clever blend of contemporary and classical principles. It is an intensely urban house too, one that addresses the street with brio and confidence but, on a shallow site, also offers seclusion and privacy. n
95 Fabric-like brickwork adorns the street-facing facade (right). Bursts of color enliven the kitchen (top), oval staircase (above), and the primary bathroom (opposite).
96 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 RESIDENTIAL Stick House, Brick Garden Brooklyn, New York | Abruzzo Bodziak Architects BY JOANN GONCHAR, FAIA THE LATEST residential revamp project by Abruzzo Bodziak Architects (ABA), “Stick House, Brick Garden,” sits amid a pleasing architectural jumble in Green point, a Brooklyn neighborhood developed in the late 19th century that initially attracted workers and their families, with its once-plentiful jobs on nearby docks, in shipbuilding, or in factories. The house’s tree-lined street, a few blocks from the East River, includes humble two-story wood-framed rowhouses, threePHOTOGRAPHY: © MICHAEL VAHRENWALD/ESTO and four-story brick tenement buildings, and shiny new condos. The variety, says Emily Abruzzo, ABA cofounder, with Gerald Bodziak, “made it hard for us to know what to relate to,” referring to the design approach for the renovation and expansion. The firm, a 2016 Design Vanguard, which does a mix of civic and residential work, exhibitions, and research, prefers to riff on what already exists, explains Abruzzo, rather than invent forms entirely from scratch. “That has never been interesting to us,” she says. ABA’s clients are Bettina and Fergus McCall, a British couple who both work in the TV and film industry (he in visual postproduction and she in digital archiving and editing). They had bought their unassuming three-bedroom, 3½-bath, circa-1890 rowhouse in 2010, undertaking a few modest renovations and repairs before moving in, including updating an upstairs bathroom. But soon they began to consider a more comprehensive overhaul. The property, which like many others nearby consisted of two woodframed floors over a masonry lower level, possessed notable assets, in particular an ample front yard and a capacious rear garden. But it also had serious deficiencies—it was dark, had little insulation behind its vinylsiding-clad facades, and its front bedrooms, one each for their two then-teenage children, were cramped, with one much smaller than the other. Although zoning regulations would have permitted the architects to greatly enlarge the house by going upward, the McCalls did not want that much added space. So, instead, ABA proposed moving the front facade forward by about 8 feet and extending the floor plates. The solution preserved the rear garden and still allowed for a gracious entry court, while expanding the living area by about 20 percent, to nearly 2,700 square feet. The strategy made some rearrangement of the interior possible, with a combined kitchen, dining area, and living room extending from front to back on the first floor, a more equitable bedroom configuration above, and renovation of those bathrooms the McCalls had not previously updated. It also permitted insertion of floor-to-ceiling double-hung, divided-lite windows—a client stipulation. “Bettina said to us, ‘It is not a home if it doesn’t have lites,’ ” relates Abruzzo. The windows, then, along with the house’s existing structure, became the jumping-off point for the design of the new front elevation. “Thinking of the project as a wood house, since it was historically of wood, informed all of the decisions,” says Abruzzo, explaining that the windows helped establish the gridlike organization of the stained cedar panels and battens, which sit above a new
97 The entry court’s brick pavers (opposite) continue into the lower level (right). Floor-to-ceiling windows (above) and an enlarged skylight over the main stair incorporating LEDs (far right) brighten the interior.
98 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2023 RESIDENTIAL 1 ENTRY COURT 2 ENTRY HALL 3 LIVING 4 DINING 5 KITCHEN 6 PANTRY 7 HALF BATH 8 OUTDOOR ROOM 9 STUDY 10 BEDROOM 11 CLOSET 12 BATH 13 GARDEN brick base. Brick is also used for a low wall at the sidewalk’s edge, which incorporates planters and seating, and for the entry court’s pavers. The material extends inside, down a short flight of steps, and into the lower level (which houses an office space and a study) and out to the backyard, where a terraced outdoor “room” steps up to the lush garden. The masonry, explains Abruzzo, made sense, not only for its contextual qualities but, in addition, for its ability—with the help of redundant drainage—to withstand intense rainfall or tidal flooding. (Though not technically in a high-risk zone, the house’s proximity to the river concerned the clients.) The architects also carried the new front facade’s logic to the inside walls to create grids with the baseboards, trim, and moldings—all from standard lumber—and provide a framework for hanging art. All-white walls and kitchen millwork, along with white oak floors (in many areas original), complement the light that streams in from the new, tall windows, and from an enlarged skylight over the existing stair to the second level. ABA’s moves, from expanding the house just a few feet forward, to combining typical materials in unexpected ways, have produced a project that is at once surprising and familiar. Stick House, Brick Garden is sympathetic to its neighborhood’s roots, yet is light-filled, comfortable, and contemporary. n A A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 FIRST-FLOOR PLAN 0 10 FT. 3 M. 1 2 9 6 8 13 10 11 12 0 10 FT. 3 M. SECTION A - A A brick outdoor “room” at the rear (right) steps up to a lush garden (this image).