So tonight when I leaving studio I had this internal dialogue about how my night would go. I hadn’t done a lot in studio and felt pretty burned out. Right before class had ended Semra, the visiting professor from Istanbul Technical University was saying her goodbyes for the weekend and had asked me if I was attending the lecture at MIT. I didn’t know anything about who was speaking and it hadn’t crossed my mind until then. It was a 15 minute bikeride away that I could spend at home being lazy before uneventfully turning in for the night. That’s the point when I decided, “what the hell, I’ll regret it if I don’t go, I need dinner anyway, it’s only 15 minutes away and the title “Out of Practice” sounded like it may be related to how a good architecture firm operates.
Man am I glad I went.
Nader Tehrani introduced Pasquarelli as one of five principals to SHoP Architects, a New York City based design firm. Lots of prestige and recognition. Columbia graduate. His firm started as a group of five Columbia graduates who wanted to run a design practice that combined the paths in the profession from when it split in the 1970s when architects became paper architects or practicing architects. While working on one of their first projects, an older 6 story building in the Meat Packing district of New York City, they decided to test a synthesis of intelligent design (related to program and how the space function, work, etc) with intelligent construction that utilized digital, CNC technology, etc. They wanted to find out if you could design a building well without considering increased construction costs. Their final solution for the skin was a series of Zinc panels that they had purchased from a manufacturer in France, flown back to the United States and had custom cut, prepped and shipped to the site for installation without dimensioned drawings. That part blew my mind. They still had exacting shop drawings with instructions for how each panel was assembled, but no dimensioned drawings?!
After construction was completed and they managed to sell the developed apartments at about a 14% higher than market rate. Pasquarelli mentioned that the construction costs for the building (and modifying the existing one below structurally, etc.) were only 4% higher than if conventional methods were used. They had developed technologies including an iPhone application that allowed one to scan codes on each of the constructed panels at any point and it would give you 3-d model of exactly where the panel was to be installed, all the metadata for it etc. The neat thing about installing all this without dimensioned drawings? They found they were only 1/32″ of an inch off when they got to the last corner of the skin.
Pasquarelli presented other projects the firm had worked on: the redevelopment of an area of Southern Manhattan by the waterfront. They noticed that the existing neighborhood nearby functioned well. It was in an area of Manhattan where common sense said that southern facing waterfront real estate a few blocks away from one of three financial hubs of the world (Wallstreet) should be much nicer than the storage space and dump it was used for. In order for residents of nearby neighborhoods to get to the water they would have to cross a 120-160 ft wide road, go through fourteen chain link fences, go under an overhead highway, and then pass behind several storage sheds. The area had great potential as it also offered great views of the Brooklyn Bridge.
What SHoP did was shorten the width of the street to 60ft. Next, they integrated the existing highway as part of a roof system for a series of pavilions below that acted to infill in a way which continued the successful street block of the nearby neighborhood. The areas in which there were no pavilions placed (voids) continued the paths of the streets across the now 60ft wide road and framed views of the harbor beyond. Using existing dock spaces they terminated the approach to the waterfront by designing a double decker dock space that was part leisure activity park on top and with a sloped green space that obscured views of the boxy storage buildings. Below, space was dedicated to studying marine ecosystems. The larger plaza that this all opens up to provides a perfectly framed view of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Some other notes were that the grassy sloped spaces terminated with an amphitheater that allowed you to look onto the decks of the historical ships docked next door. The only criticism of the project has been that they need more seating alongside the water’s edge because demand for their solution of barstool height chairs and 3′ deep countertop type spaces has been so high.
Barclays Center was the final project presented. The skin is also all intelligently designed using the same types of processes Pasquarelli discussed for the Garden Street Apartments. Not a big deal, just that in the end they got to design the new stadium for the Brooklyn Nets, an NBA basketball team down to input about the uniforms and had fun designing the club spaces inside the stadium with part owner Jay-Z, who according to Pasquarelli was a fantastic client to work for and extremely thoughtful about architecture and design.
There was also mention of a government campus for Botswana, the country in the southern part of the African continent. I couldn’t find any image files for it though. Great crowd, packed hall. Even saw one of the professors from my school there!
Awesome night.