Architectural Record 06.2022

99 stakeholders to best deliver resources and inform strategic actions. During heat waves, the plan outlines the rollout and expansion of the city’s network of air-conditioned cooling centers to include community organizations; greater utilization of public outdoor spaces for tot sprays, pools, and other forms of relief; and pop-up outdoor cooling kits that include misted tents, for summer public events. The Boston Extreme Temperature Response Task Force will also collaborate with public-education channels, and other public, private, and civic organizations, to educate Boston residents on heat resilience. Furthermore, the Task Force will facilitate fan and air conditioner giveaways, and amplify information regarding utility assistance. Longer-term mitigation strategies are more capital-intensive. At the building level, the plan seeks to provide funding and technical guidance for energy retrofits and other interventions, such as a cool-roofs program that aims to replace dark-colored roofs with sun-reflecting lightcolored materials, and the installation of green, planted roofs. In collaboration with the existing Urban Forest Plan, which has budgeted $500,000 to hire an arborist and the planting of 2,000 trees annually, the Heat Plan aims to expand Boston’s tree canopy and vegetated space in both the public and private realms through, say, new planting in parks and public rights-ofway, as well as the acquisition of privately owned land for conversion into open space. At the level of zoning and conveying permits, the plan calls for the incorporation of temperature analysis, alongside wind and shadow analyses, into the new development-review process, and the potential use of overlay districts IMAGES: COURTESY SASAKI (TOP); PETE VOELKER (BOTTOM); CITY OF BOSTON AND SASAKI (OPPOSITE) PERSPECTIVE Elizabeth Yampierre Co-chair of the Climate Justice Alliance and Executive Director of UPROSE, a community group focused on environmental justice in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York People talk a lot about sea-level rise, because that’s sexy and violent and you can see it, but it’s really extreme heat that’s going to kill a lot of our people. For those of us who are in an industrial waterfront community, it’s really important that there be investments in infrastructure. We want to take what is the largest significant maritime industrial area in New York to become a model of how an industrial sector that was bleeding jobs can pivot to a green economy and manufacturing—and, instead of following the market, creating the market for investing in food sovereignty, in clean water, in renewable energy, and in an industry that makes it possible to build for the challenges that climate change brings. It will prevent the local community from being displaced. It will be walk-to-work jobs that pay well. We need to engage in what we call deep green reindustrialization, and really reclaim these industrial sectors and have them be the economic vehicle for addressing our climate adaptation and mitigation needs. The Heat Plan’s air-temperature maps are based on data gathered during a weeklong analysis period in July 2019, which corresponded with a heat wave. or zoning adjustments to ameliorate urban heat islands. Boston’s new mayoral administration is putting its money where its mouth is, and its first proposed budget places the city firmly as a leader in the Green New Deal movement, with nearly $200 million related to the objectives of the Heat Plan. Although the plan is particular to the City of Boston, its community-centric approach and comprehensive implementation process can be emulated in cities across the country. “We are experiencing an incredible moment of increased awareness of the impact that climate change has had on our lives, and the Covid-19 pandemic has additionally established a newfound appreciation for and willingness to invest in the public realm,” says Warburg. “These cultural shifts will lead people to seek models like Boston’s heat resilience strategies and explore how they can be adapted in their own communities.” n Matthew Marani writes about architecture and urban design and is studying city and regional planning at Pratt Institute. DAYTIME (3 PM) AIR TEMPERATURE CHINATOWN Extreme heat day and night DORCHESTER Pockets of heat ROXBURY Cooler Franklin Park area but hotter elsewhere LESS THAN 92° F MORE THAN 107° F CITY MEDIAN: 99.5%

100 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 CEU CLIMATE JUSTICE: POLICY screening tool now in development, using such data points as household income, education level, life expectancy, and the presence of health hazards like lead paint or nearby superfund sites. Race, however, is not a criterion, despite Biden’s campaign promises to address the environmental burdens borne by communities of color. As numerous news outlets have reported, the color-blind approach is intended to avoid legal and political challenges. But some advocates worry the strategy will leave out the very people the program is intended to help. “The research tells us that pollution corresponds with race more than income,” says Dana Johnson, senior director of strategy and federal policy in the Washington, D.C., office of WE ACT, an environmental-justice group. “It is difficult to solve a race-based problem without acknowledging race.” She also worries that because Justice40 was created by executive order rather than legislation, it can easily be undone by a future administration. That is why, she says, getting the funding processes in place is so critically important. Still, if Justice40 works as intended, it could radically alter how federal dollars are distributed. “We are changing how the federal government operates,” says Mark Chambers, senior director of building emissions and community resilience at the White House Council on Environ mental Quality. “We are changing its DNA.” Some cities, too, are creating their own programs and funding for battling climate change and inequity. Ithaca, New York, with 31,000 residents, has a bold plan to electrify all its buildings by 2030, approved by its Common Council last November. It will retrofit about 6,000 public, private, residential, and commercial structures so that they no longer rely on natural gas, propane, or fuel oil for space- or water-heating, or cooking. The work will be performed along with such energy-saving measures as replacing windows, improving insulation and air sealing, to make the building stock—80 percent was constructed before 1940—more efficient. Other U.S. cities are turning to electrification as a carbon-cutting Federal and local governments take on carbon emissions and a long legacy of racial and social inequities. BY JOANN GONCHAR, FAIA THE RESEARCH is sobering, but not surprising. The data tell us that communities of color are on the front lines of the environmental emergency. In the United States, racial and ethnic minorities are more than two times as likely as white populations to live with air pollution levels above the 90th percentile. In almost all large U.S. cities, the average person of color lives in a census tract with a higher surface urban heat-island intensity than those that are predominantly white, and those neighborhoods are also 50 percent more vulnerable to wildfire than those of majority-white residents. And, while property loss due to flooding disproportionately impacts poor white communities, scientists predict that, by 2050, increased flood risk will disproportionately affect Black communities. This racial divide only threatens to widen as the climate crisis accelerates. But, as the world heats up, environmental leaders, community activists, and policy makers are working to create funding programs to address these inequities while decarbonizing the built environment. One federal program that could help reverse a legacy of environmental neglect is Justice40, part of President Biden’s January 2021 executive order “on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad.” It commits to delivering to underserved communities at least 40 percent of federal investments in climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other areas. Agencies will be able to identify communities to target with a Making It Right As the nation’s grid becomes increasingly cleaner, with a growing share of energy coming from renewable sources such as wind, many localities are turning to building electrification to lower carbon emisions.

101 strategy, as the grid becomes cleaner and electric appliances more efficient. Berke ley, California, jump-started the electrification movement in July 2019, banning gas connections in new small and midsize residential buildings. Since then, 77 jurisdictions across the country have instituted so-called “gas bans,” including the most populous city—New York. (Electrifi cation has become such a trend that many states with Republi cancontrolled legislatures, where the fossil-fuel interests are strong, have rebelled and passed so-called “pre-emption laws” that prohibit cities from instituting gas bans.) These building-electrification policies aim to affect health as well as reduce carbon. According to research from MIT, in 2018, combustion emissions from the buildings sector was the most significant cause of air pollution– associated premature deaths (in 2005 it was fourth, behind vehicle emissions, electricity generation, and industry). Meanwhile, a study by the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and its collaborators found that levels of nitrogen dioxide—a gas associated with learning deficits and increased risk of asthma—were 50 to 400 percent higher in homes with gas ranges, not electric stoves. “Improved air quality is the biggest benefit of electrification for our communities,” says Annie Carforo, WE ACT’s climate-justice campaign coordinator. Electrification, its supporters say, is not more expensive. An RMI study found that, in most new-construction scenarios, electrification reduces costs over the lifetime of appliances compared with fossil fuels. With so many cities adopting electrification policies, Ithaca may not seem so notable. But it is the first to focus on existing buildings rather than just allelectric new ones. The initiative includes creating a “green jobs corridor” in conjunction with nearby cities. Apprenticeship programs will be geared toward groups with high unemployment or underemployment, including members of tribal nations and the formerly incarcerated, says Luis Aguirre-Torres, Ithaca’s director of sustainability. Financing will come from private equity, providing low-cost loans to property owners, which they will pay back through energy savings. The city has already secured $250 million in capital— about half of what will be required to retrofit all 6,000 buildings, he says. The program appeals to investors interested in social impact, says Keith Kinch, a cofounder of BlocPower, the Brooklyn-based climate technol- “is fundamentally about addressing climate change and a community that has been excluded to date,” says Sam Baraso, its program manager. The inaugural round of grants last year awarded $8.6 million to 45 projects that are estimated to achieve a savings of 11,500 metric tons of carbon. They include installation of rooftop solar on low- to moderate-income households of color, deep energy retrofits to Black-owned homes, and the replacement of impervious paving with native landscaping and shade trees at two schools with majority BIPOC student populations. Baraso expects to award the second set of grants, totaling $60 million, this summer. Initially projected to generate between $44 million and $61 million annually, the retailer surcharge brought in $116 million in FY 2020–21 alone. But along with this influx of cash has come controversy. Earlier this year, the city council voted to rescind one grant after a local paper brought to light that the director of the recipient nonprofit had been convicted of fraud. She has subsequently sued the city. Then, the Portland Business Alliance called for a freeze on disbursing funds after the City Auditor’s Office recommended the PCEF re-evaluate its oversight, set a timeframe for completing a workforce-equity plan, and create guidelines to assist young nonprofits, among other improvements. Baraso declines to comment on pending litigation but says that the audit results are entirely what one would expect for such a new and ambitious program. Many changes are already under way, he says, including structured support for less established nonprofits. “We can continue to implement the recommendations while moving forward with the next cohort of projects.” Given the magnitude of the environmental-justice problem and the urgency of the climate crisis, forging ahead with such innovative local and national funding models may well be the most practical option. The same old financing formulas won’t achieve building decarbonization or address equity on the scale or with the speed needed. The innovative thinking behind strategies like PCEF, Ithaca’s electrification plan, and the federal government’s Justice40 could be our last and best chance for creating a low-carbon future PHOTOGRAPHY: © JOAN SULLIVAN (OPPOSITE); CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS, COURTESY SASAKI in America. n It is difficult to solve a racebased problem without acknowledging race. — Dana Johnson, of environmental justice group WE ACT ogy company that will manage the program. Portland, Oregon, is financing a climate justice program through a 1 percent surcharge on large retailers. Established in 2018 via a ballot measure approved by 65 percent of voters, the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) was devised with the help of a coalition of Portlanders of color, faith-based organizations, and labor and environmental groups. PCEF, which will fund clean-energy, green-infrastructure, regenerative-agriculture, and workforce development, By 2030, Ithaca, New York, plans to decarbonize all of its building stock, 80 percent of which was constructed before 1940.

102 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 CEU CLIMATE JUSTICE: OPINION for both ecological and political stability in the 21st century. Nowhere are these achievements more evident than in the statistics coming from the solar and wind industries. Solar electricity generation is now growing exponentially worldwide, doubling between 2016 and 2019, and doubling again by 2021. Wind electricity generation is following a similar trajectory, doubling between 2016 and 2021. In the U.S., solar and wind electricity generation is growing at an impressive rate as well. Solar electricity generation doubled between 2015 and 2017, and again by 2021. Wind generation doubled between 2010 and 2015, and again by 2021. So why do we think it’s so difficult to accelerate this growth, and address both climate change and energy security? We are accustomed to thinking of growth and change in linear terms, because that’s what we’re most familiar with: a child growing about 2½ inches a year, for example, or a car rental billed at a fixed daily rate or per mile traveled. We’re not used to exponential growth—very gradual growth followed by an explosive increase over a very short period —and, as a result, we tend to underestimate it. Consider the lesson of the following legend: a clever courtier presented a beautiful chessboard to his king and requested in return one grain of rice for the first square of the chessboard, two grains for the second square, four for the third, eight for the fourth, and so on, with each square having double the number of grains as the square before. The king agreed to what he thought was a modest request, only to discover that he had promised to deliver more rice than he had in his storerooms. The fifth square required 16 A proposition: Putin loses, the West unites, and the movement to kick our fossil-fuel habit pays off. BY EDWARD MAZRIA, FAIA THE RUSSIAN invasion of Ukraine has generated the headlines of the fossil-fuel industry’s dreams, with articles claiming that the transition to green energy will be more difficult, or that the 1.5-degree goal is all but dead—or even calling for more drilling and fossil-fuel development. But these assessments are clouding the extraordinary progress currently taking place worldwide: the development of sustainable, resilient, and zerocarbon built environments; and the unprecedented and explosive growth of renewable-energy generation, a promising solution The Renewables Gambit Coal-fired power plants, like this one near Fruitland, New Mexico, could soon be a thing of the past.

103 grains, the 15th 16,348, the 40th a million million, and so on—so his entire supply would be exhausted long before he reached the 64th square. Wind and solar energy are now the cheapest sources of electricity generation for much of the world, and they continue to become cheaper each year—between 2010 and 2019, the unit cost of solar energy decreased 85 percent, and that of wind energy decreased 55 percent. The cost of lithium-ion batteries, essential for storing renewable energy that is generated at variable rates, also fell by 85 percent. With such quick progress, the remarkable solar and wind growth numbers are not unfathomable. And— with market forces, increasing pressure for energy security, and the implementation of emissionsreduction plans by governments and institutions, including incentives for sustainable development and electrification policies—explosive growth will continue to be the norm. The price of fossil-fuel-generated power depends on the cost of plant construction and operations, geopolitics, and the respective prices of fuel, storage, and transportation. Solar- and wind-generated power, on the other hand, are very different: their fuel sources (sunlight and wind) are delivered free worldwide; they are not encumbered by fuel supply-chain issues; their installation and operating costs are comparatively low; and they require minimal rare earths or other difficult-toobtain materials. Today, 40.2 percent of the global power sector is supplied by zero-carbon-generated energy, with renewables—wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower— making up three-quarters of the supply. If solar and wind sustain their present course of exponential growth, 60 to 75 percent of global power will be generated by renewables in 2030, and we will be able to phase out carbon dioxide emissions and transition to a zerocarbon power sector by 2040. The war in Ukraine has reminded us once again of the catastrophic security and humanitarian costs of fossil-fuel dependency. With Vladimir Putin using fossil fuels as a geopolitical weapon, the struggle in Ukraine, coupled with the climate crisis, has united the West around a struggle to rapidly wean ourselves off fossil fuels. A global transition to renewable-energy generation will dramatically reduce the power wielded by autocratic petrostates like Russia, whose economies are heavily dependent on the extraction and export of oil and natural gas. In short, the renewables gambit is paying off. With an impressive foundation in place, now is the time to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon built environment by implementing IMAGES: © TED WOOD (OPPOSITE); COURTESY ARCHITECTURE 2030 the following actions: CONTINUING EDUCATION To earn one AIA learning unit (LU), including one hour of health, safety, and welfare (HSW) credit, read the “Climate Justice” section on pages 81 to 103, review the supplemental material found at architecturalrecord.com, and com plete the quiz at continuingeducation.bnpmedia.com. Upon passing the test, you will receive a certificate of completion, and your credit will be automatically reported to the AIA. Additional information regarding credit-reporting and continuing-education require ments can be found at continuingeducation.bnpmedia.com. Learning Objectives 1 Discuss how climate change disproportionately affects disadvantaged communities. 2 Describe low-carbon solutions addressing the global housing crisis. 3 Outline policy initiatives that encompass building decarbonization and social justice. 4 Discuss worldwide trends in electricity generation. AIA/CES Course #K2206A New Buildings—Adopt zerocarbon building codes, standards, and policies. This ensures that all new buildings are highly efficient, use no on-site fossil fuels, and generate or procure enough renewable energy to meet building demand. Existing Buildings—Enact policies that leverage building intervention points—or moments during a building’s life cycle when construction is likely to occur—in order to accelerate energy-efficiency upgrades, shift to electric or district heating systems powered by carbon-free renewableenergy sources, and generate or procure carbon-free renewable energy. Aligning work with these intervention points can help mitigate the cost barriers and disruption associated with renovations. Embodied Carbon—Enact policies and incentives that accelerate existing building reuse and renovation, use recycled and low-carbon or carbon-sequestering materials, design for deconstruction, and reduce emissions by designing carbon-sequestering sites and landscapes. Implementing these policies will hasten the transition to renewable energy, building on the growth of renewable-energy generation and the recent movement toward electrification and reducing or sequestering carbon in the built environment. The present global crisis illustrates that doing so is an imperative, not a choice. n Edward Mazria is the founder and CEO of the nonprofit Architecture 2030 and the 2021 AIA Gold Medal winner. WORLD WIND ELECTRICITY GENERATION FROM 1990 TO 2021 WORLD SOLAR ELECTRICITY GENERATION FROM 1990 TO 2021 Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Energy Outlook

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BLUEPRINT FOR COLLABORATION AN EVENING WITH THE GLASS AND FENESTRATION INDUSTRY FOR THE DESIGN COMMUNIT Y O6.23.2O2 2 SKYDECK,CHICAGO 6:00 - 9:00 PM YOU’RE INVITED The National Glass Association (NGA), in conjunction with the United Nation’s declaration of the International Year of Glass, is hosting a private reception for the architectural community alongside the AIA Conference on Architecture 2022. Join thought leaders from the entire glass and glazing supply chain for an evening of spirited conversation, engaging education (1.O AIA LU), and food and drink with good company. Pre-registration is required and space is limited to practicing architects and students only. PRESENTED BY EDUCATION PANELISTS Scan this QR code or RSVP at glass.org/blueprint-collaboration

HOSPITALITY BUILDING TYPE STUDY 1,042 108 Hotel Marcel New Haven Becker + Becker 114 XOMA Mexico City Belzberg Architects QUALITY HOTEL HASLE LINIE, IN OSLO, BY GHILARDI+HELLSTEN ARKITEKTER PHOTOGRAPHY: © ROLAND HALBE 120 Shangri-La Shuogang Park Beijing Lissoni Casal Ribeiro 126 Quality Hotel Hasle Linie Oslo Ghilardi+Hellsten Arkitekter 107

PHOTOGRAPHY: © ZACH PONTZ 108 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY

Roadside Attraction Becker + Becker transforms Marcel Breuer’s Armstrong Rubber Building into a net zero–energy hotel along I-95. BY IZZY KORNBLATT A DRIVE through Connecticut along I-95 takes you past a parade of signagebedecked strip malls, stucco-clad motels, and brightly lit gas stations—the American commercial vernacular, experienced, as intended, at 70 miles an hour. But among these decorated sheds is a duck, to borrow Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s term for a building formally distorted for symbolic effect. Marcel Breuer and Robert F. Gatje’s 1970 Armstrong Rubber Building stands just a few hundred feet from the highway in New Haven, its heavy concrete mass floating incongruously above an Ikea parking lot. Thick stilts leave a yawning vertical gap between a two-story base and a five-story block hanging above: building as sign, or, perhaps, sign as building. Either way you can’t miss it. The building had sat vacant since the 1990s, after Pirelli purchased Armstrong Rubber and later downsized its offices. (In the early 2000s, following Ikea’s purchase of the property, a low-lying rear portion was demolished to make room for a parking lot.) But this May, it reopened as the Hotel Marcel, a 165-room hotel that is operated under Hilton’s Tapestry flag and named in honor of Breuer. In keeping with preservation standards, the building’s distinctive exterior has barely changed —although new windows and a power washing have done wonders to brighten up its facade. Westport, Connecticut–based architect and developer Bruce Redman Becker, who bought the building in 2019 and oversaw its renovation, has instead focused on reworking the interiors and investing in cutting-edge sustainability 109

110 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY 1 RECEPTION 2 LOUNGE 3 RESTAURANT AND BAR 4 PREFUNCTION 5 EVENT ROOM 6 KITCHEN 7 BACK-OF-HOUSE 8 RESTROOM 9 GUEST ROOM 10 MEETING ROOM 11 COURTYARD 12 LIGHTWELL THE HOTEL MARCEL in context (left). A wall of clay tiles by Dutch East Design is a highlight of the hotel’s ground-floor public spaces (above). 1 3 2 5 8 8 5 6 7 A A LEVEL-ONE PLAN 0 20 FT. 6 M. LEVEL-SIX PLAN 10 9 9 9 9 9 9 SECTION A - A

upgrades that he projects will enable the building to achieve net zero energy. Solar arrays, a battery system, all-electric mechanicals (including water heaters and laundry equipment), and a high-performance envelope put the building on track to be the country’s first Passive House–certified hotel. Becker, whose past work ranges from one of the world’s first large apartment buildings with a hydrogen fuel cell (New Haven’s 360 State Street) to the restoration and mixed-use conversion of the former Pauper Lunatic Asylum on New York’s Roosevelt Island, finds himself drawn to challenges that require both design and development creativity. “There’s no client who would hire me for these projects,” Becker says, “and I don’t think they could be done without our integrated approach.” So, when he pitched Ikea, the Armstrong Building’s then owner, he did so with an unusual proposal: that he would create a hotel capable of generating as much energy from its solar arrays as it consumes, while fastidiously respecting Breuer’s design. Ikea, which had rejected numerous previous offers for the property, loved the idea and sold the building to Becker for $1.2 million. Perhaps the first thing visitors to the Hotel Marcel will notice is the geometric interplay PHOTOGRAPHY: © ZACH PONTZ (ALL THIS PAGE PLUS OPPOSITE RIGHT), COURTESY BECKER + BECKER (OPPOSITE, LEFT) of shadow and light across its facade, where 111 THE RECEPTION AREA (top, right) and bar (above) retain a midcentury feel but feature contemporary furnishings and a warm material palette. An original stair has been preserved (top, left).

THE CORNER guest rooms feature sweeping views and Bauhausinspired furnishings (above). A former executive office (left). board-formed concrete contrasts against precast panels inset with punched windows: Breuer knew how to do texture. Solar panels shading the parking lot and a simple black entrance canopy, along with updated signage, are among the only outward indications of the reuse. But, after passing through a compressed vestibule lined with board-formed concrete, visitors encounter a bright, contemporary interior designed by New York–based Dutch East Design. Here Breuer-inspired midcentury nostalgia, visible in rich fabric patterns and a rebuilt drop ceiling with original light fixtures, meets the Anthropologie aesthetic of globe lights, blond wood, and white terrazzo. Behind the front desk, a wall of reddish clay tile, lit indirectly from above, seems to embody a little of both. Dutch East partner Larah Moravek calls the interiors a “soft underbelly to an iconic exoskeleton,” and, to the firm’s credit, the interior design does engage with Breuer’s architectural language: at no point will visitors forget where they are. On the ground floor, the open sweep of the original space is gently broken up into an informal lounge to the right of the entrance and a restaurant to the left, with the building’s 5-foot module, expressed through the windows and ceiling, providing a useful demarcation of scale. These spaces are adorned PHOTOGRAPHY: © SEAMUS PAYNE (TOP); COURTESY ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART (BOTTOM) 112 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY

Credits ARCHITECT: Becker + Becker Associates — Bruce Redman Becker, Kraemer Becker, Violette de la Selle, Alice Tai, Vivie Lee ENGINEERS: GNBC Consulting Engineers (structural); LN Consulting (m/e/p/fp) GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Babbidge Construction Company; Consigli CONSULTANTS: Dutch East Design (interiors); Blades & Goven (landscape); Land-Tech Consultants (civil); Philip R. Sherman (code); Steven Winters Associates (envelope, sustainability); Hoffman Architects (roofing) CLIENT: 500, LLC (developed by Becker + Becker Associates) SIZE: 107,100 square feet COST: withheld COMPLETION DATE: May 2022 Sources WINDOWS: Klar Studio NANOGEL INSULATION: Cabot Corporation ACOUSTIC CEILING TILES: USG CASEWORK: Stickley CARPET: Mohawk Group TERRAZZO TILE: Wausau Tile with artworks selected by—and a few created by—the artist Kraemer Becker, Becker’s wife and the manager of the hotel’s art program. Upstairs, the guest room floors are similarly respectful of the 5-foot module—“a perfect system of a building,” as project architect Violette de la Selle describes it. Becker and his team reserved their largest formal intervention, the addition of open-air lightwells, for the center of the floor plates where daylight otherwise wouldn’t penetrate, enabling the addition of several guest rooms on each floor. Within the rooms, tripleglazed windows—part of a comprehensive envelope upgrade that also includes highperformance thermal insulation—block sound from I-95 while decreasing energy use. Power-over-ethernet lighting further reduces energy waste and enables guest control via touchscreen. But in many ways, it is the Hotel Marcel’s top floor that is its most remarkable. Formerly housing mechanical systems, it has no outward-facing windows. Traversing its 16-foothigh interiors are seven colossal steel trusses, each weighing in at 50 tons, from which the entire upper volume of the building is suspended. Becker and his team are making this floor accessible for the first time, converting unused space to meeting and event rooms and adding exterior courtyards in place of mechanical wells. The exposed trusses will become central features of these spaces—a sharp contrast to the rest of the building, where the precast-concrete facade conceals a steel structure. The reimagined level is “about making sense of Breuer’s original facade,” Becker says, and, indeed, exposing the trusses—already hinted at on the exterior—reveals the building’s hidden structural logic. Breuer’s work is easy to appreciate in its new incarnation, and that is one mark of the project’s success. Once you leave the hotel’s urbane interior and return to the outside world of Ikea and I-95, however, the strangeness of the Armstrong Building again starts to set in. Like Philip Johnson’s Kline Tower at Yale University (1966) and Kevin Roche’s Knights of Columbus Tower (1969), Armstrong is a monument to New Haven’s urbanrenewal frenzy—a relic of a heroic vision for the city in which monoliths dot the cityscape and buildings hang from trusses. The more subtle strength of the Hotel Marcel is that it brings the ordinary back to the heroic by inserting into a concrete relic the tried-andtrue program of the roadside hotel. At long last, the commercial vernacular has caught up PHOTOGRAPHY: © SEAMUS PAYNE with the Modernist master. n 113

114 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY POROUS facades are composed of open masonry blocks.

115 WHEN YOU imagine billowing, diaphanous sails, you probably don’t think of concrete blocks. But the recently completed XOMA, a boutique apartment hotel in Mexico City, sheathed in swooping screens of open masonry units, could make you think again. Designed for Viadora, a luxury hospitality brand, by Belzberg Architects of Santa Monica, California, in collaboration with Neme Design Studio of Long Beach, the 52,000-square-foot development sits on a corner site in the Roma Norte neighborhood. At six stories high, with three levels of parking below grade, it is taller than the area’s prevailing context of two- and three-story buildings. Many of these display an eclectic mix of Belle Époque European styles known as “Porfirian,” in reference to the Mexican president Porfirio Díaz, who launched an ambitious modernization plan for the capital in the early 20th century that included the establishment of this area as an enclave for the affluent. Later development added Art Deco and Modernism to the mix. The district’s decline began in the 1940s and was hastened by an earthquake in 1985. Recent gentrification has reversed its fortunes, and it is now a magnet for an international crowd of the young and chic, in a manner similar to neighboring Condesa. XOMA is one of 12 projects designed by Belzberg for Grupo Anima, a Mexico City–based real-estate developer whose founding partner, Alberto Djaddah, toured the Belzberg-designed Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust in 2013 and liked what he saw. Djaddah’s brief to the architect was to exemplify modern Mexican luxury. “We intended to make a statement that this is no longer ‘your father’s Mexico City,’ ” says the developer. “But we wanted to use an efficient local construction method that would translate to lower costs and a traditional tectonic quality. Since the building is in an historic neighborhood, the mix of old and new also had to be considered.” Belzberg obliged with a concrete structure that stacks five compact floors of guest suites, organized around an atrium, above a street level that includes a lobby, an outdoor lounge, a restaurant, and a demonstration kitchen. “The plan parti,” explains founding partner Hagy Belzberg, “takes advantage of a local planning-code allowance to project up to 1 meter beyond the property lines with outdoor spaces and facade elements, as long as the walls and floors are porous.” This allows balconies—a desirable amenity in Mexico City’s temperate climate—for all Sail Away In Mexico City, a hotel by Belzberg Architects meets the street with a lightness that belies the concrete block composing its facades. BY JAMES GAUER PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRUCE DAMONTE

0 10 FT. 3 M. GROUND-FLOOR PLAN A A 2 1 3 4 7 6 9 9 5 8 12 11 12 12 0 10 FT. 3 M. GUEST-SUITE-LEVEL FLOOR PLAN 116 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 3 14 12 13 SECTION A - A 0 10 FT. 3 M. HOSPITALITY 1 ENTRY 2 OUTDOOR LOUNGE 3 LOBBY 4 CHECK-IN 5 RESTAURANT (TENANT) 6 KITCHEN 7 DEMONSTRATION KITCHEN 8 STORAGE 9 RESTROOM 10 GUEST SUITE 11 ATRIUM 12 BALCONY 13 ROOF DECK Axonometric diagram showing two 14 PARKING blocks bolted together through their steel-reinforcing C-plates.

117 IN THE LOBBY, asymetrically vaulted ceilings echo the forms outside (above) and weatheringsteel panels rise behind the reception desk (right). rooms fronting the streets, and enough depth for the facade to take an expressive form without reducing interior floor area. The design team used the creative opportunity provided by this extra layer of space to fashion three flowing vertical “sails” made of open concrete blocks. These partially enclose the balconies—providing privacy, shade, and framed views while allowing ventilation—as they curve in two directions, tapering as they touch down at street level. To form complex curves that could withstand earthquakes, Belzberg worked closely with architect and facade consultant Becher Neme and structural engineer Stephan Kordt in developing a technique for assembling the blocks. They are incrementally offset, to create curvature, and connected vertically by C-shaped metal plates, which are embedded in each unit and fastened together with only two bolts. “The continuous metal supports eliminate the need for grout, mortar, and

118 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY AN ATRIUM (left) is surrounded by guest suites (bottom and opposite, bottom). A roof terrace and pool cap the six-story building (opposite, top). rebar, and enable the entire assembly to flex as a mesh under lateral force,” explains Belzberg. “This liberates concrete-block construction aesthetically and enables the facades to exceed seismic requirements.” The geometry of the masonry units, the modeling of the curved forms, and the positioning of the metal plates were all designed digitally and tested with numerous full-scale mock-ups. The concrete blocks have a smooth texture and pale creamy color, thanks to a mix that includes polymers and white pigment. In combination with the subtle curves and seamless assembly, the effect is surprisingly soigné. This quality carries into the lobby, where asymmetrically vaulted plaster ceilings echo the swooping forms outside and hover above a richly veined marble floor. A wall of weathering-steel panels rises behind the reception desk into the atrium above, which is surrounded by guest suites rendered in a rich palette of dark wood floors and millwork, pale neutral walls and fabrics, and crisply detailed white marble bathrooms. The client got the modern luxury he requested. Not everyone in Roma Norte is happy with the project’s relationship to its context. “Even though it’s not substantially taller than the buildings around it,” says one resident, “the vertical sweep of that perforated skin makes it seem enormous, looming over the street in a way nothing nearby even remotely does.” Obtaining approvals was not easy. “The biggest challenge was getting the historic commission to accept a contemporary design,” recalls Djaddah. “We worked with them, making case studies of old and new in cities like Paris and Barcelona.” Belzberg’s experiential approach to urban scale and surroundings ultimately prevailed. “The pedestrian experience here is defined by tree canopies, historic architectural features visible beneath the trees, and street life within the first two stories,” he explains. “Our facade lifts off the ground at various points to this same height, providing continuity.” It’s a persuasive argument, buttressed by his creative take on masonry, which, notes the architect, “has a long and rich history in Mexico City. It can be made by hand, laid by hand, and take on a variety of shapes, sizes, and textures. All of this speaks to the culture of place.” n

119 Credits ARCHITECT: Belzberg Architects — Jessica Hong, Brock DeSmit, Hagy Belzberg, Jennifer Wu, Josh Hanley, Joseph Ramiro ARCHITECT OF RECORD: Grupo Anima — Alberto Djaddah, Carlos Pacheco, Hugo Balderas, Jacobo Levy, Daniel Balmori CONSULTANTS: Arup (structural engineer), Neme Design Studio (facade consulting), Kordt Engineering Group (facade engineering) GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Grupo Anima CLIENT: Viadora OWNER: Grupo Anima SIZE: 52,000 square feet COST: withheld COMPLETION DATE: October 2021 Sources FACADE SYSTEM: Arista Taller WINDOWS: Extrusiones Metálicas GLAZING: Crisvisa CUSTOM METAL DOORS & METAL PANELS: Lámina Industrial Manufacturas y Acabados HARDWARE: Assa Abloy WOOD PANELS: Valchromat STONE: Stones Piedras Naturales LIGHTING: Bandido, Diez Company ELEVATOR: Kone

120 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY THE MAIN public spaces of the hotel (this page) sit within the 67-foot-high space of the old factory building, which has been clad with a new, mostly glazed, skin (opposite, bottom right).

121 Second Life Lissoni Casal Ribeiro transforms a giant steel factory on the outskirts of Beijing into a luxury hotel. BY JACOB DREYER PHOTOGRAPHY BY TSING LIM OVER THE PAST several decades, China has become an industrial superpower and hired architects like Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas to bring new architectural vocabularies to its capital. But something is changing now, as China’s society undergoes a structural transformation from working to middle class; futurist Beijing has given way to a nostalgic Beijing, one that fondly recollects its own heritage. Mirroring China’s economic shift from industrial production to domestic consumption, Piero Lissoni’s new Shougang Shangri­La hotel transforms one of China’s cathedrals of socialist labor, the former Shougang Steelworks, into a monument to a consumerist society. At its height, the Shougang Steel Works employed 60,000 workers, who all lived on­site, according to their work unit, or danwei. Like a military barracks or a college campus, China’s enormous socialist factories were a community format all their own. Shougang was founded in 1919 and grew piecemeal during much of the 20th century; the building recommissioned for use as the Shangri­La was erected in 1986. In recent years, as new supply chains and environmental regulations have moved the blast furnaces 150 miles away, to Caofeidian, in Hebei Province, Shougang has made plans to turn Shijingshan, the Beijing suburb that it calls home, into a new urban core, with the Shangri­La anchoring it. The 2022 Winter Olympics saw the debut of this vision, with Shougang’s new town hosting many of the events and its preserved blast furnaces offering a dramatic backdrop for the aerial stunts of competitors like gold medalist Eileen Gu. From central Beijing, Shougang is only 25 minutes away by subway, but it feels psychologically distant. The area has been transformed into a museum of industry en plein air. Shougang plans to make it into a new high­tech and engineering hub, and lure outdoor­sports enthusiasts to the Olympic facilities. As architects from the Milan­based firm Lissoni Casal Ribeiro brainstormed with their client in the winter of 2019, they brought the historical orientation of Italian architecture—the cathedrals, the piazzas—to the table, and the Shougang executives liked what they heard. PHOTOGRAPHY: TSING LIM@AGENT PAY

122 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY 1 GUEST ENTRANCE 2 PUBLIC ENTRANCE 3 BALLROOM ENTRANCE 4 LOUNGE BAR 5 DINING 6 KIDS CLUB 7 RECEPTION 8 BALLROOM 9 POOL 10 LOUNGE 11 OFFICE 12 LUGGAGE 13 READING AREA/BAR 14 MULTIFUNCTION/PRIVATE DINING 15 HEALTH CLUB ENTRY 16 GYM 17 CHANGING ROOMS 18 GUEST ROOM That winter, as Lissoni himself visited Beijing’s old hutong neighborhoods, the Forbidden City, and the 798 Art District, he was reminded of the importance of public spaces for communities to gather in; 798 gave a sense of how a sprawling factory complex can be transformed into a popular mixed-use attraction. Lissoni’s design for Shangri-La Shuogang Park called for stripping the facades off a 400-foot-long factory building and retaining its concrete frame and steel roof trusses, which were still in good condition, says the architect. Today, the exposed bones of the building house a variety of lounges, restaurants, and bars on the ground floor, all open to the public and punctuated with enough potted trees and plants to create the sense of an indoor garden. In a grey city like Beijing, plants are particularly welcome, and the team carefully combined daylight with customdesigned light sources, as well as a water feature in the lobby bar, to tie it all together. To reduce solar loads inside, Lissoni designed the new skin with low-E glass and operable windows that allow natural ventilation. In addition, vertical strips have back-painted glass in front of insulated wall panels, protecting interior spaces from the sun while retainMAIN HOTEL BUILDING BLAST FURNACES SITE PLAN 7 9 8 4 0 30 FT. 10 M. SECTION A - A A A 1 6 3 2 LEVEL-ONE PLAN 0 50 FT. 15 M. LEVEL-THREE PLAN 15 16 9 12 7 11 11

123 ing the look of a fully glazed elevation. Taking advantage of the 67-foot height of the old structure, the architects inserted a mezzanine that holds the hotel lobby and more lounges, and then enclosed these spaces in a “nest” of wood slats. A fully glazed volume, also nestled within the old structure, contains a fitness center with swimming pool and gym, while a new concreteframe building, running parallel to the old one, houses 280 hotel rooms and is connected by an elevated steel bridge across an outdoor courtyard. Although a five-star hotel, the Shangri-La hopes to attract locals to use its recreational facilities and restaurants and will host markets for local producers—giving life to a new community in a way that echoes the history of Chinese danwei work compounds. “When designing the buildings, we had a great opportunity to work between architecture, interiors, and landscape—a total environment— creating the sense of being in the middle of gardens, inside and out,” says Tania Zaneboni, a partner at Lissoni Casal Ribeiro and the interior design coordinator for the project. Beijing sits in a desert zone, so making the project sustainable wasn’t easy. To meet codes that limit the overall opacity of the project’s facades to 30 percent, Lissoni used specially glazed tiles placed one by THE ARCHITECTS contrasted elegant materials and greenery (above) with the concrete frame and steel roof trusses of the factory (below, during renovation).

124 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY

125 one on the new building, to create ventilated facade walls that allow air to flow between them. “Old structures need to be respected, and this building connects to another moment of Chinese life,” Lissoni told record. As Beijing has grown, its ring roads have marked time, like the rings of a tree. Now the capital city has engulfed Shougang and is incorporating its heritage into the middle-class metropolis that Beijing has become. n Jacob Dreyer is a writer and editor based in Shanghai. Credits ARCHITECT: Lissoni Casal Ribeiro — Piero Lissoni, Miguel Casal Ribeiro, Tania Zaneboni, Ricardo Hernandez, Mattia Susani, Francesco De Matteis, David Pouliot, Ilia D’Emilio, Sara Cerboneschi, Marco Gottardi, Tianzhou Chen, Iacopo Taddeo, Roberto Berticelli, Rodrigo Tellez, Patrizia Manconi, Samuele Savio, Laura Cucchi, Mario Rizzotti, Santiago Villa ARCHITECT OF RECORD: CCTN Design ENGINEER: CCTN Design GENERAL CONTRACTORS: Shanghai Kang Ye Construction & Decoration (public area, level 1); China Construction Eighth Engineering Division (level 3); Beijing Shougang Construction Group (level 5) CONSULTANTS: Tino Kwan (lighting); Debut Studio (art) CLIENT: Shougang Group SIZE: 580,000 square feet COST: withheld COMPLETION DATE: December 2021 CONTEMPORARY design animates a guest room (above), the mezzanine (top and opposite, top), and first floor of the hotel (opposite, bottom left). An old blast furnace remains on the grounds (opposite, bottom right).

126 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY Get with the Program Ghilardi+Hellsten’s richly layered scheme for a hotel and office complex in Oslo invites future adaptation. BY ANDREW AYERS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROLAND HALBE “THIS IS REALLY a very simple project,” says Franco Ghilardi, founder (with Ellen Hellsten) of Oslo-based Ghilardi+Hellsten, about their Quality Hotel Hasle Linie in the Hasle district of Norway’s capital. Over the past decade, the firm’s client, developer Höegh Eiendom, has been transforming this formerly industrial area into a mixed-use neighborhood of offices and housing. “The developer thought the hotel would be an interesting addition, to bring some life to a bedroom community and office park,” says Ghilardi about a part of town that, though 45 minutes’ walk from the center, is considered a far-flung suburb by residents of the city. “There’s an increasing effort to inject some urbanity and city life into these peripheral neighborhoods, where rents are far cheaper,” continues Ghilardi. “They’re trying to make them attractive, which means bringing in cafés, restaurants, etcetera.” Ghilardi is very clear that this is a budget chain hotel, aimed primarily at domestic business travelers—but “budget” in Norway buys you something rather grander than elsewhere. The program also includes an office component, realized as a discrete though connected wing at the far end of the site, next to tracks for freight trains that still THE BUILDING navigates a steep slope and faces a new plaza (this page) with an inviting hotel entrance and tall daylit lobby beyond (opposite).

127

0 30 FT. 10 M. 0 30 FT. 10 M. HOTEL EVENT FITNESS CENTER TV STUDIOS OFFICES KITCHEN STUDIO CONFERENCE CENTER CONFERENCE HALL LOBBY MAIN ENTRANCE ENTRANCE EVENT LOBBY BAR BAR TERRACE GREEN TERRACE GREEN TERRACE ROOF TERRACE ENTRANCE FITNESS ENTRANCE LOBBY SHARED SPACE DROP OFF SHARED SPACE DROP OFF NEIGBOURHOOD STREET CORPORATE STREET RESTAURANT INNGANG CO-WORKING ENTRANCE LOBBY ENTRANCE RESTAURANT 1 ENTRANCE 2 LOBBY 3 ATRIUM 4 BAR 5 RESTAURANT 6 CONFERENCE CENTER 7 LOBBY PASSAGE 8 OFFICES 9 PLAZA 10 GUEST ROOMS 11 FITNESS CENTER SECTION A - A 1 6 8 A A 9 1 1 1 2 5 2 7 6 FIRST-FLOOR PLAN 0 30 FT. 10 M. SECOND-FLOOR PLAN PROGRAM DIAGRAM 128 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY

129 cross here. The railroad is one remnant of the area’s industrial past; another is a former power station (currently awaiting conversion into a wine bar), whose lofty brick tower punctuates the public plaza that Ghilardi+ Hellsten created in front of the hotel’s main entrance, at the other end of the site. The architects initially imagined a small street separating the office building from the hotel, but Norway’s long, hard winters made them think again. Covered with a factory-style sawtooth roof (a nod to Hasle’s industrial past, realized as a self-supporting structure in steel), the “street” links directly to the hotel’s generous spinal lobby, the two together forming a triple-height T-shaped atrium with three entrances. The hospitality wing of the complex rises seven levels from grade, with bedrooms stacked around the perimeter (some overlooking the lobby), so that light can enter the wide structure via the central atrium. A 16-foot change in level from the northwest of the site to the southeast allowed for the inclusion of a public fitness center on the lower ground floor, while level seven is entirely given over to HVAC and other mechanical equipment. Since time and budget were of the essence, ONE OF three entrances (above) straddles hotel and office wings with a passage and stair— topped by a glazed sawtooth roof—that exit on the lower street (right). the building’s carcass was entirely prefabricated, as is now common in Norway—factorycast concrete columns, beams, and floor decks for the structure, and factory-assembled cladding for the facades (glass and black metal for the hotel, wood-veneered panels for the office wing). Ghilardi+Hellsten did everything they could to break up the hotel’s rather boxy bulk, with shallow recesses on the long lateral elevations and four types of facade treatment. They also fought hard to have taller-than-standard slab-to-slab heights at every level—12½ feet where many hotels make do with just 10— even though this meant dipping slightly under

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SEVERAL guest rooms and corridors (opposite, top left and right) overlook the lobby’s atrium, which is also borderd by a plaza bar (opposite, bottom) and a restaurant and lounge (right). 131 the 200-room count requested by the operator. “With these more generous floor heights, the structure can easily be converted into offices or other uses at a future date,” explains Ghilardi. “We consider this very important in terms of sustainability.” Budget restrictions also meant that Ghilardi+Hellsten had no say in how the bed - room floors were handled—that part of the program was farmed out to a company selling standardized solutions—though the architects did ensure natural lighting for the corridors. “Where the client and the operator realized they perhaps ought to spend some money was on the ground-floor public areas,” says Ghilardi. “The idea was that the T-shaped atrium would be - come a bit of a shortcut—you can walk in and out and use it as an indoor street.” Lobby facili - ties include a large restaurant and a generous bar on either side of the main entrance, both of which open up in summer on to an outdoor terrace on the plaza—“only really useable one month of the year,” jokes Ghilardi—as well as a “ballroom” for functions, and a business center beneath the office block. Unlike the case in warmer climes, where the outdoor appearance might receive the most attention, here it is the indoor spaces that constitute the real public realm, and the architects went to considerable lengths to create an attractive, hospitable ambience. Two types of cladding break up the lobby’s 158- foot length—birch-veneer panels and folded, perforated-steel cladding—while the concrete floor has been polished to reveal a terrazzolike aggregate. Solid-wood floorboards provide a variation on the industrial theme in the restaurant and business center, while shards of colored glass brighten up the concrete flooring in the bar. Furnishings, in streamlined Scandinavian style, were designed or customized by Ghilardi+Hellsten, who chose a soothing forest color palette for the dining space and enlivened the bar with jazzy LED lighting features. The design team also took great care when creating the plaza in front of the hotel, giving the board-formed retaining wall to the side of the outdoor stairs a sensuous kink worthy of Oscar Niemeyer, and extending the Norwegiangranite paving—loose-jointed for permeability—into the upper roadway, where it is textured for tire adhesion. Even so, with the limited means at their disposal, there was no chance of

THE LOBBY bisects the hotel to the glasstopped passage, where guests can either relax and view the offices opposite or exit the building. 132 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 HOSPITALITY Credits ARCHITECT: Ghilardi+Hellsten Arkitekter — Franco Ghilardi, partner in charge; Henrik Poulsson, project architect; Heleri Nommik, Federico Iannarone, Anna Maria Grossi, architects ENGINEERS: Rambøll (structural); Lysteknikk (electrical); Gupex (ventilation); AF EMT (plumbing) GENERAL CONTRACTOR: AF Bygg Oslo CONSULTANTS: Scenario Interiørarkitekter (interior design); Grindaker (landscape architecture); Fagehult/Ateljè Lyktan (lighting design); Oslo Brannsikring (fire) CLIENT: Nordic Choice Hotels; Nordic Entertainment Group; Sterk Helse Fitness OWNER: Höegh Eiendom; AF Eiendom SIZE: 226,000 square feet COST: $41 million COMPLETION DATE: August 2021 Sources CLADDING: Stacbond, Parklex Prodema, Rimex Metals CURTAIN WALL: Schüco, PressGlass SKYLIGHTS: Bolseth Glass altering the “anywheresville” ambience that pervades Hasle’s bland, orderly streets. This is a simple project, yes, but one that Ghilardi+Hellsten did their best to enrich through attention to detail and to render urbane through their handling of space and layout. n

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PHOTOGRAPHY: © TKTKTKTKTKTK Design Vanguard 2022 PHOTOGRAPHY: © EMA PETER 137 FEATURED FIRMS Erbar Mattes London Only If Brooklyn, New York Ja Architecture Studio Toronto CO Adaptive Brooklyn, New York Line+ Hangzhou, China Group AU Pittsfi eld, MA Freehaus London Kwong Von Glinow Chicago Worrell Yeung Brooklyn, New York Leckie Studio Vancouver, BC UBC ARTS STUDENT CENTRE, VANCOUVER, BY LECKIE STUDIO

138 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 DESIGN VANGUARD Erbar Mattes LONDON Glisson Road This proposal replaces a conservatory and derelict garage with a lightweight timber structure. Conceived as an outbuilding and extension to a semidetached Victorian house, it is unified by a single mono-pitched roof, forming a series of interstitial outdoor spaces, and interior spaces connected by an open pergola. FOUNDED: 2015 DESIGN STAFF: 2–4 PRINCIPALS: Demian Erbar, Holger Mattes EDUCATION: Erbar: University of Westminster, Post-Graduate Diploma in Architecture, 2009; RWTH Aachen University, Diplom-Ingenieur in Architektur, 2006 Mattes: TU Berlin, Diplom-Ingenieur in Architektur, 2001; TU Delft, 1998; RWTH Aachen University, 1997 WORK HISTORY: Erbar: Demian Erbar Architects, 2013–15; David Chipperfield Architects, 2008–13; AFT Arquitectos, 2006–08; Hahn Helten Architektur, 2004–06 Mattes: Mae Architects, 2013–14; David Chipperfield Architects, 2007–13; Allmann Sattler Wappner Architekten, 2003–04 KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS: Plykea Workshop, 2021; Blockmakers Arms, 2021; Cecilia Brunson Projects, 2019; Noblefield Heights, 2016; Harvey Road, 2016 (all in London) KEY CURRENT PROJECTS: Wimbledon House; Alford Mews Development (both in London) erbarmattes.com The word intense crops up a lot in conversation with Demian Erbar, 41, and Holger Mattes, 48, founders of London-based Erbar Mattes. It captures something about the work of the sevenyear-old practice, whose robust, solid-seeming buildings are rich in sensation and ideas, yet retain an elemental simplicity. The architects describe design as a process of distillation, much as in the reduction of a sauce to enhance flavor. “We begin with the identity of a place,” says Mattes, “and condense that into a strong image that is both strange and familiar.” Most projects to date are modest in size—houses and residential renovations—but have a powerful physical presence. Massive walls of exposed masonry appear monolithic, lending a palpable sense of density and weight; clever detailing disguises the complexity of modern construction. Natural, self-finished materials add texture and warmth. “Architecture is an experience for all the senses,” says Erbar. “Surfaces you touch and sounds you hear are as important as appearance.” Buildings are further enriched by a kind of double-coding, with esoteric references worked into locally recognizable forms. In remodeling apartments within an old London pub, Erbar Mattes added an extension in rough brown brick, with a garden-facing loggia inspired by monastic cloisters. It has an ambiguous character—both crisply contemporary and archaic—but resonates comfortably with the 19th-century building through subtleties of scale and proportion. Fluency with the idioms of London architecture is notable, since Erbar and Mattes are working in a second language. Mattes is originally from Germany, and Erbar from Argentina. Both studied at Aachen, but didn’t meet until they arrived at David Chipperfield Architects (DCA) in 2008, following periods in Berlin, Delft, Rome, and Buenos Aires. During seven-year stints at DCA they collaborated on the Turner Contemporary gallery in England and a hotel in Qatar. Despite shared backgrounds, the soft-spoken pair bring strong individual sensibilities to their own practice. “I enjoy defining how a project is structured,” says Mattes. “Demian is perhaps more interested in idiosyncrasies, playfulness, and sculptural qualities.” All projects are joint efforts, strengthened by the synthesis of different concerns through “intense” dialogue. Work happens in an airy warehouse down a quiet alley, accoutred with shaggy plants and bikes. Open shelves laden with models line the walls. The maquettes are used to explore atmosphere and the play of light, but all projects start with a laser site survey and a detailed 3D digital model. The process allows a small team to get a lot done, and the partners are keen to preserve a “family feel” as commissions grow in size and geographic scope. Current projects include a house in upstate New York and multiunit housing in London—a concrete block with classical accents set among modernist apartment buildings. They show a linguistic evolution in response to circumstance, but the principles are consistent. “Our aim is to create strong character, but to know when to stop,” says Erbar. “Architecture should leave room for life.” Chris Foges PHOTOGRAPHY: © STÅLE ERIKSEN (TOP; OPPOSITE, MIDDLE); SIMON MENGES (OPPOSITE, TOP 2); COURTESY ERBAR MATTES (BOTTOM; OPPOSITE, MIDDLE AND BOTTOM, RIGHT)

139 Blockmakers Arms This 19th-century pub was extended and completely refurbished to form a generous five-bedroom duplex while retaining a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor. The new ground-floor loggia with solid masonry columns forms a sheltered space, offering a layer of privacy from the neighboring buildings (top, right and left). Harvey Road This extension of an Edwardian house features a restructured and enlarged ground floor that inverts the previous layout by refocusing the attention toward the rear garden and southwestern light. The new open-plan garden room houses the kitchen, dining, and play areas, with a deep upholstered bench along a folding oak-framed window (above). Frohnauer Hammer For this competition entry for a museum and visitor center on the site of a former mill in Saxony, dating back to the 14th century, Erbar Mattes designed a building whose form draws inspiration from the historic structures nearby. It is clad in untreated rough-sawn larch planks and shingles, and sits atop a plinth of rammed concrete (right and below).

140 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 DESIGN VANGUARD Only If BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Big Ideas for Small Lots Only If was one of five teams selected to proceed to the second phase of this 2019 competition New York launched to dispense 23 of its vacant, small, and irregular lots. FOUNDED: 2013 DESIGN STAFF: 3–7 PRINCIPALS: Karolina Czeczek, Adam Frampton EDUCATION: Czeczek: Yale University School of Architecture, M.Arch., 2015; Cracow University of Technology, M.Arch., 2010 Frampton: Princeton University School of Architecture, M.Arch, 2006; University of Colorado Boulder, B.EnvD., 2002 WORK HISTORY: Czeczek: OMA 2010–13 Frampton: OMA 2006–13 KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS: Narrow House, 2021; City of Saints Bryant Park, 2018; Irregular Development (Exhibition), 2017, Shenzhen; Triboro Corridor, 2017; Voyager Espresso, 2015; Office for Three Companies, 2015 (all in New York, except as noted) KEY CURRENT PROJECTS: Big Ideas for Small Lots, New York; Myrtle Multifamily, Brooklyn; Public Bench, Krosno, Poland; Fire Island House, New York; Cedar Road House, Delaware only-if.com Married architects Adam Frampton and Karolina Czeczek met while working at OMA’s Rotterdam headquarters in 2010. Frampton had migrated there in the aughts after completing his M.Arch at Princeton and found the firm’s methodical approach a refreshing contrast to academia. Czeczek, who grew up in Krosno, Poland, found freedom at the Dutch firm for the opposite reason—OMA’s commitment to a conceptual foundation for each project was in contrast to her very “pragmatic” education at Cracow University of Technology. When Frampton moved to Hong Kong in 2009 to work on OMA’s Taipei Performing Arts Center, he convinced Czeczek to join him. Then, in 2013, when Czeczek decided to pursue her M.Arch at Yale, they moved to New York and established their office, Only If. Frampton had just conceived and written Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook, with coauthors Jonathan D. Solomon and Clara Wong, and it was a confidence boost; he realized he could pursue projects independently. Though the couple had no commissions, an e-mail to hundreds of former mentors, clients, and colleagues announcing the launch of Only If resulted in unexpected opportunities, from a Bryant Park coffee bar to an office shared by three different companies united by black floors and white walls and ceilings, punctuated by islands of furniture and accessories in felt, stone, wood, and mirrored storage modules. Subsequent projects furthered their interest in housing typologies and urban planning and a desire to experiment at the borders of a conventional service-based practice. “We balance commissions, competitions, and teaching with seeking alternative forms of agency,” says Frampton, referring to lectures, writing, and research such as Irregular Development, a project that identified and catalogued small vacant properties in New York and proposed affordable-housing prototypes. From 2016 to 2018, Only If worked on a scheme for affordable senior housing in Brooklyn. The building’s 84 apartments, common spaces, and community facilities were devoted to elderly and formerly homeless residents. Although a change in leadership at the nonprofit developer put an abrupt end to the project, “we remain really interested in its possibility—and demographic shifts will continue to force its need,” says Frampton. “Housing is a territory for experimentation and invention that is far more relevant for a current generation of architects who are more socially oriented.” The couple has explored this in their teaching, he, most recently, in studios at Columbia University that looked at Tokyo’s aging population, and she in studios with Frida Escobeda and Tatiana Bilbao at Yale that aim to rethink current living conditions, domestic labor, and family structures in order to generate contemporary and future housing types. Research into the potential of New York’s vacant lots to address the lack of affordable, quality housing led Czeczek and Frampton to their most important experiment yet: their own Narrow House, completed in 2021 on a 13-foot 4-inch-wide lot in Brooklyn. “Finding a vacant lot was the outcome of a six-month search for undervalued, unusual, or leftover spaces,” says Frampton. Large-format glass windows and a lack of interior walls and corridors allow daylight to penetrate, as does a central lightwell and perforated-steel stair that connects the house’s split levels. “I’ve been most surprised about the presence and impact of landscape on the feeling of space inside the house,” says Czeczek. “The change of seasons, shadows, colors, and movement of the trees keep us very aware of the natural environment in an otherwise densely built neighborhood.” Laura Raskin IMAGES: © ANNA MORGOWICZ (TOP); COURTESY ONLY IF (BOTTOM)

141 Narrow House Located in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, this house for the architects, completed last year, is situated on an atypical lot measuring only 13-feet 4-inches wide by 100-feet deep. Front and rear elevations consist of large-format glass, detailed flush to adjacent black stucco (above and right). Brooklyn Senior Affordable Housing Designed for elderly and formerly homeless residents for whom the architects say “housing is often scarce and beset by institutional design,” this building is located on a former industrial site. Only If created a centralized double-height “loggia” as a flexible central living room, where residents could gather, linger, and create community. IMAGES: COURTESY ONLY IF (EXCEPT AS NOTED); © NAHO KUBOTA (TOP, RIGHT) Triboro Corridor A collaboration with One Architecture, this proposal for a new passenger-train service between Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx creates tangential connections and new spatial relationships among diverse communities, people, and jobs. While some stations are envisioned as simple platforms, other, more complex infrastructure nodes act as catalytic projects to speed up the transformation of local economic sectors (below).

142 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 DESIGN VANGUARD Ja Architecture Studio TORONTO FOUNDED: 2010 DESIGN STAFF: 5–7 PRINCIPALS: Nima Javidi, Behnaz Assadi EDUCATION: Javidi: University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, MUD, 2005; University of Tehran, M.Arch, 2000 Assadi: University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, MLA, 2008; University of Tehran, BFA, 2000. WORK HISTORY: Javidi: Baird Sampson Neuert Architects Inc, 2005–09 Assadi: OMA, Rotterdam, 2007–08 KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS: Underscore Gallery, 2021; Numbers Residence, 2020; Forno Cultura Bakery, 2019; Strachan, 2017; Dovercourt, 2016; Ramsgate, 2015; 1070 Queen West, 2013; Offset House, 2011 (all in Toronto) KEY CURRENT PROJECTS: 44 Foxley, Wardell, Markham, One and a Half, Forno Cultura Bakery, East Room (all in Toronto) jastudioinc.com Ja Architecture Studio works at the point where architectural formalism collides with the city. Its office occupies a former convenience store in the Queen West neighborhood of Toronto, a district of Victorian worker housing that has been remade by generations of DIYers and builders. Here, partners Nima Javidi, 46, and Behnaz Assadi, 44, who run the studio with associate Kyle O’Brien, design, make models out of wood and concrete, and hold court on the corner patio, surrounded by the domestic disorder of the street. “Our work is driven by two themes,” says Javidi. “One of them is our pure interest in architectural form. And the other is our observation, as citizens, that the city is not so much about architecture.” The couple both attended the University of Tehran. Its architecture school, Javidi says, teaches architecture and the visual arts in tandem—an approach that has influenced Ja’s focus on formal concerns. Both settled in Canada in the early 2000s and studied at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, where Javidi pursued urban design and Assadi trained as a landscape architect under Charles Waldheim. Then Assadi worked for OMA in Rotterdam for a year before returning to Toronto, where she is now an assistant professor at the Daniels school. She describes herself as heavily influenced by landscape urbanism, with its interest in infrastructure and in large-scale systems. These interests come together in their built work, which is heavily concentrated on their home turf. A consistent language of arched vaults and complex polygons shows up repeatedly on these streets; in many cases, protrusions or voids reach out toward irregular gaps in the built form or across a backyard to a new accessory dwelling. “We’re very interested in architecture being seen in multiple places across a neighborhood, of expressing a language at the scale of the city,” says Assadi. Formal ideas recur in small projects and big. In their competition entry for the Kaunas Concert Centre, a lobby space culminates at a corner with a three-story arch, pulling together oblique roof and wall volumes. At a built project on Foxley Street in their neighborhood, a steel arch defines the front rooms of a two-story row house, sitting tight between the neighboring gables and porches. “The theme of nesting an arch within a polygonal footprint remains,” says Javidi. A few blocks away at the bakery café Forno Cultura, arches show up again, defining windows within a slanted wall. This playful but measured form-making cuts against the grain of both Toronto’s Victorian urbanism and the right-angled rigidity of many of Ja’s architect peers. But the architects don’t want their work to stand in isolation. Assadi cites Underscore Gallery, a three-story mixed-use building whose front angles inward to catch the oblique line of Dundas Street. Plaster-clad volumes stretch from the painted brick facades to define inset balconies. “You can see people using them, looking out at the city, having conversations,” Assadi says. “Our favorite projects are the ones that, after they open, become part of the life of the city.” Alex Bozikovic Wardell Tucked into a wedge-shaped lot, the curved walls of this two-story house addition merge with the corbeled brick roof to create a seamless but heavy form that is rich in texture, while a cantilevered front wall suggests a lightweight tectonic. PHOTOGRAPHY: © BEHNAZ ASSADI (TOP); COURTESY JA ARCHITECTURE STUDIO (BOTTOM)

143 Forno Cultura Bakery Ja transformed a 1950’s mechanic shop into a production kitchen and café. The existing building was stripped back and repurposed by dividing the large space into two halves, each with a different function and spatial quality. A barrel vault wraps the front wall over the eating area, stopping short of the serving counter, and intersecting with the vault of three large windows. PHOTOGRAPHY: © RILEY SNELLING (TOP); COURTESY JA ARCHITECTURE STUDIO (MIDDLE AND BOTTOM) Bauhaus Museum For this competition entry for a museum in Dessau, Germany, Ja maintains the influential school’s pinwheel organization, as designed by Walter Gropius. This spatial configuration, coupled with the expressive geometry of the roof, allows for clear spans on the upper level and maximum flexibility for curating exhibitions. Themes like space, light, textures, and the crafted detail become threads that connect the studio’s design to the original building (right). The Octagon This ADU borrows from turrets found in nearby Victorian semidetached houses. A slight twist in the roof ridge— below which balconies are carved out—creates a form that is both responsive to its surroundings and dynamic (bottom, left and right).

144 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 DESIGN VANGUARD CO Adaptive BROOKLYN, NEW YORK FOUNDED: 2011 DESIGN STAFF: 6 PRINCIPALS: Ruth Mandl, Bobby Johnston EDUCATION: Mandl: Columbia University GSAPP, M.Arch., 2010; Kingston University, BA, Interior Architecture, 2005 Johnston: Columbia University GSAPP, M.Arch. 2010; University of California Berkeley, B. Arch, 2003 WORK HISTORY: Mandl: Richard Lewis Architect, 2010–12; Eisenman Architects, 2006–07; Coop Himmelblau, 2003 Johnston: Flank, 2010–11; Perkins+Will, 2006–09; Anshen+Allen, 2005–06 KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS: Mercury Store, 2021; Bed-Stuy Passive House, 2018; Gradient Office, Lynbrook, NY, 2018; Recycled Content Apartment, 2014 (all in Brooklyn, except as noted) KEY CURRENT PROJECTS: Queens Tiny Passive House, Classic Passive House, Carroll Gardens Passive House, Bed-Stuy Passive House 2, Windsor Terrace Passive House (all in NY) coadaptive.co The term “adaptive” in the name of Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston’s Brooklyn-based firm may sound like a buzzword but is an apt description of their work. They focus exclusively on renovating and adapting existing buildings. Though one of their first projects was the renovation of a classic 19th-century Brooklyn brownstone, historic preservation was aligned with a substantial reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions and an elegant, even whimsical, way of reusing existing elements. “Asking what sustainability can be has been a journey for us,” said Mandl, 39, on a tour of one of their recent projects. Their preferred low-energy path is Passive House, which relies on a high-performance envelope. Their adaptive approach to existing structures—even a nondescript 1950s former bank building—is one of reducing operational emissions but also retaining as much existing building fabric as possible to avoid releasing the carbon embodied in the materials. The couple, who met at Columbia University’s architecture school, started their practice in 2011, not long after graduating, and after short stints at various firms. Mandl, who was born in Vienna, grew up in a home renovated to the Passive House standard by her family. “I got to appreciate the quality of life in such houses,” she says, including the quiet and lack of drafts. From 2017 to 2018, they rehabilitated a brownstone in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood as their first Passive House project. After gutting the interior to add insulation, decorative interior woodwork was selectively restored and reinstalled to enrich the flush modern details and cabinetry the couple added. This home for their family—they have a daughter, Lucia—has become a selling point as word about it has gotten out, says Johnston, 41. “We tour prospective clients through, once or twice a month.” In their largest project to date, a 12,700-square-foot pair of shed-roofed, timber-framed industrial structures in Brooklyn, dating from 1902, were repurposed to serve the Mercury Store, which sponsors residencies for emerging theater artists, in four airy studios. The newly metal-paneled exterior encloses extensive insulation, as does the roof. New high-performance windows and a restored clerestory deliver ample daylight. Repurposing salvaged materials is not just a carbon-sequestering obsession but an expressive sensibility. The principals cleaned up the existing timber-framed roof trusses and left signs of use untouched on masonry walls. They replaced an existing mezzanine in one of the sheds, framing it in bleached laminated-wood columns and beams, with a structural floor made of cross-laminated timber. They inventively reused joists and other salvaged wood, as in uprights that support, and visually contrast with, sleek glass balustrades. “We grapple a lot with trying to make Passive House energy efficiency more economically accessible,” says Mandl. “If it can’t scale, it won’t have impact.” In a Queens Passive House project, “we are attempting to remove as little as possible, while still upgrading all the systems and making it a certified Passive House.” They are pushing deeper into sustainability, hoping to open a research arm. For a new office space, still in construction at press time, they are making custom demountable partitions and other elements out of carbon-sequestering materials such as wood, wood fiber insulation, cork, and wool felt. They will build their own desks and source lighting from local makers “in an effort to keep the build-out very local and carbon conscious,” Mandl says. James S. Russell, FAIA PHOTOGRAPHY: © DONILEE MCGINNIS (TOP); PETER DRESSEL (BOTTOM) Gradient Office CO Adaptive designed new headquarters for a Swiss logistics company in this 1950s bank building. During initial demolition, the architects discovered 16-foot ceiling heights that had been covered by 8-foot-deep drop ceilings. The design focused on exposing the additional space and creating a light, airy feel.

145 Recycled Content Apartment Tasked to create a family home on a tight budget, CO Adaptive reconfigured this 675-square-foot apartment to accommodate two bedrooms and ample space for entertaining. The material palette of exposed-brick walls and reclaimed materials created a distinctive and cost-effective space. A custom sliding counter, made of wood reclaimed from a bowling lane, provides flexibility by shifting to enlarge the kitchen space or to serve as a big table for dinner parties (above). Bed-Stuy Passive House Mandl and Johnston renovated this three-story 1889 townhouse for themselves. The certified Passive House retains as much of the original character of the building as possible, while significantly reducing its operational energy use. The interiors were demolished down to the building structure. The ornate woodwork was carefully removed and stored on-site for later refinishing and reinstallation (above). Mercury Store Originally an industrial site in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, this double shed-roofed heavy timber and brick building was transformed into a new developmental space for theater artists. The previously clear symmetry of the building was restored, and the existing floor was removed on one side to create a double-height assembly space. The metal-paneled exterior encloses extensive insulation (above and right). PHOTOGRAPHY: © NAHO KUBOTA (TOP 2); PETER DRESSEL (BOTTOM 2)

146 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 DESIGN VANGUARD Line+ HANGZHOU, CHINA FOUNDED: 2018 DESIGN STAFF: 114 PRINCIPALS: Meng Fanhao, Zhu Peidong EDUCATION: Meng: Nanjing University, M. Arch., 2006 Zhu: Tongji University, D.Eng., 2016; Zhejiang University, M. Arch., 2009; Zhejiang University, B.Arch., 2006 WORK HISTORY: Meng: gad, 2012–17; AZL Architects, 2009–12; Zhejiang Greenton Architecture Design, 2006–09 Zhu: GLA, 2012–18; Coo-hho Architects, the Architectural Design and Research Institute of Zhejiang University, 2009–12 KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS: Yunnan Dongfengyun Art Center, 2021; Teahouse in Jiuxing Village, 2020, Hangzhou; Tai’an Dongximen Village Renewal Project, 2020 (all in China) KEY CURRENT PROJECTS: Suzhou Pingjiang H266 Cultural Expo Park; Lishui Guyanhuaxaing Art Center (both in China); FOREST Community, San Francisco; Universal Studios Los Angeles Hilton Hotel expansion lineplus.studio IMAGES: © COURTESY LINE+; ZYSTUDIO (OPPOSITE, TOP 2); ARCH-EXIST PHOTOGRAPHY (OPPOSITE, BOTTOM RIGHT); CAAI_IMAGE (OPPOSITE, MIDDLE) As China’s economy shifts, the built environment is evolving to match a slower pace of life, and a growing middle class is searching for roots, serenity, and calm. Line+, a young Hangzhoubased studio, is among firms led by a younger generation of Chinese architects, looking to heritage and nature for inspiration—part of China’s cultural turn inward, toward reflection. Accord ing to Meng Fanhao, one of Line+’s founding partners, “Architecture is a way of thinking; design is a tool. We’re interested in the process of social change—in the countryside and urban settings at the same time.” Starting with the Dongziguan project in 2016, a revitalization of an old neighborhood in Hangzhou, and later works including the Tai’an Dongximen mountain village renewal, and Hangzhou’s Longyin temple extension, Line+ respects Chinese traditions of living together with nature. The studio’s designs can be very contemporary, but also always with a nod to the natural world. Meng, 42, and Zhu Peidong, 38, his partner, had both been working architects for nearly a decade, with Zhu going from “paper architect to practicing architect” on 2012’s Zhejiang Conservatory of Music while at another firm. “A violent clash exists between historically oriented architecture and highly market-driven societal necessities,” Zhu says, and his approach reflects the effort to strike a balance in China’s new urban skylines. Prior to cofounding Line+, Meng worked in a small design-oriented practice as well as at a big commercial firm, and saw the same trends, explaining that “the fast urbanization process has halted, and large-scale urban construction has been reduced.” The market forces that drove Chinese cityscapes to be thrown up overnight a decade ago today dictate preservation and renovation of existing structures. Chinese leaders now say they want quality GDP, not quantity; that’s reflected in the sorts of projects that Line+ excels at. “The lakes and natural environment create a humanistic setting in Hangzhou,” Meng says. Accretions of the history of humans in nature, and customs embedded in nature are everywhere you turn in Tai’an and the Jiangnan region where Line+ is based, but the studio isn’t limited to one part of the vast country, or one style. In Hangzhou, the Qiantang River Art Museum shows a more modern affinity, and in the northeastern city of Changchun—an industrial hub with a history of Japanese modernism—Line+ created a private mansion on Lotus Mountain, with spaces for Buddhist worship and contemplation of nature. In southwestern Yunnan, the team’s Dongfengyun Art Center blends into the surrounding landscape, reflecting the ancient Chinese imperative that man and nature should live as one. Rural revitalization is a government priority (and, in the Chinese countryside, local government is the biggest client), but the pursuit of a calmer way of life is widely shared. From its years of rapid growth, China is maturing into a softer, gentler relationship to nature and its own history; Line+ is leading the way. Jacob Dreyer Hangzhou Qiantang River Museum Confronted with limited land for construction, the design is organized into two pedestrian flows, inside and outside the museum, and creates the visual identity of a building born from water, resembling multiple streams circling and intertwining upward.

147 Slab Hill Lifestyle Lab Located just over a mile from the Songya Lake National Wetland Park in Changsha, Hunan Province, the building is in dialogue with nature. Spa-like interiors are arranged on an artificial hill, created around an umbrella-shaped structural unit (above). Zhejiang Perfect Production Factory With this project, completed in 2019, Line+ rethought traditional industrial sites by integrating the landscape with new courtyards and gardens around the theme of “mountain and water,” and transforming “monotonous cubic architectures” (right). Tai’an Dongximen Village Renewal While respecting the original village texture and mountain environment, and keeping the boundaries of the homestead unchanged, the design realizes the rebirth of the old village in what the architects call an “acupuncture-type restoration” (inset). Compared with the orderly cottages, the Jiunvfeng Study and Leisure facilities higher up, on Mount Tai, have soft curves and a strikingly modern appearance (right).

148 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD JUNE 2022 DESIGN VANGUARD Group AU PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS FOUNDED: 2017 DESIGN STAFF: 4–5 PRINCIPALS: Tessa Kelly, Chris Parkinson EDUCATION: Kelly: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, M.Arch., 2012; Williams College, B.A., 2007 Parkinson: Yale School of Architecture, M. Arch., 2013; Amherst College, B.A., 2007 WORK HISTORY: Kelly: Turner Brooks Architect, 2012–15; Dissing + Weitling, 2010; FXFOWLE, 2008 Parkinson: Gray Organschi Architecture, 2013–15; Amory Architects, 2008–09 KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS: Kellogg Park, 2021, Pittsfield; Westside Riverway Park, 2021, Pittsfield; Peacock Residence, 2020, Williamstown; Carriage House Library, 2017, Old Lyme, CT; The Mastheads, 2017, Pittsfield (all in Massachusetts, except as noted) KEY CURRENT PROJECTS: Williams College Natural Dye Lab, Williamstown; Six Hundred Oaks Residence, Williamstown; Agrippa Hull House, Stockbridge; Davis House, North Adams; Sweet Farm House, Williamstown (all in Massachusetts) group-au.com Tessa Kelly and Chris Parkinson, the founders of Group AU, worked at architecture firms in New Haven, Connecticut, for a few years after getting their master’s degrees (Kelly at Harvard, Parkinson at Yale). In 2016, they moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, establishing their firm the next year. What brought the architects, who are both 37 and grew up in the area, to Pittsfield was The Mastheads, a public arts project with five mobile writing studios, built by the couple, for which they received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Mastheads, completed in 2017, sponsors summer residencies and other programs, providing places for writers to work as it commemorates the famous 19th-century writers who spent time in the city: Melville, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Thoreau, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Says Kelly, “We discovered a unique niche for ourselves—to understand the needs that the community had. We learned how to write grants to support our fees. You don’t have to wait for a client to come to you with fully formed ideas; you can initiate your own solutions.” Since then, they have designed the Westside Riverway Park (2021), developed over two years with the racially diverse community. The park’s sculpted lawns and wildflower borders frame a long, slender pavilion, for concerts and block parties, with a canoe launch on the Housatonic River. Alphabet Park (2021), with its 26 concrete forms in the shape of letters, was developed in collaboration with Morningside Community School, in a high-poverty neighborhood. The park is used for readings and concerts, and the letters are used for climbing, jumping, and perching. It was this emphasis on community-based projects that led the architects to change the name of their practice last year from ARCADE to Group AU—the “A” is for architecture, the “U” is for urbanism, and the “Group” reflects their interactions with communities, schools, thinkers, academics, and artists. Kelly and Parkinson have done several residential projects, like a circular library (2017) in a historic carriage house in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and the Peacock Kitchen (2020), a thoughtful renovation of a 1970s house in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The Purple Valley House, also in Williamstown and currently under construction, is a sleek one-story building with accents of bright color, for a client in his 80s with a collection of Mies van der Rohe furniture. Parkinson notes that he and Kelly have started a general contracting business and that, even with a growing roster of residential projects (and higher fees compared to community-based ventures), “We’re working back toward public projects now.” Kelly adds, “We had to take stock six months ago. We don’t want to leave behind this work.” Three new community-based projects are on the horizon, so Pittsfield has plenty to look forward to. Pilar Viladas Sweet Farm House Currently under construction, this residence on a wooded site is meant to be an aging-in-place home. The exterior of the house engages with the verticality of the surrounding trees. The interior is shaped of soft curves. PHOTOGRAPHY: © JAMES SYLVIA (TOP); COURTESY GROUP AU (BOTTOM)