CASE STUDY: EXPRESSING THE ESSENCE OF STRUCTURE

Photos courtesy Gerner, Kronick + Valcarcel, Architects (www.gkvarchitects.com)

Project: The Beekman – Restoration and Adaptive Reuse
Architects: Gerner, Kronick + Valcarcel, Architects (GKV)
Location: 5 Beekman Street, New York City
Size: 340,000 square feet

The Project: The Beekman is actually a multi-building project. The project includes the restoration and adaptive reuse project of an historic 10-story landmark office building, known as Temple Court, into a boutique hotel, as well as construction of a 51-story, 68-unit condominium addition on an adjacent lot. The first 10 floors of the new building, aligning with Temple Court, are joined to the hotel, and the upper floors are designed as residential condominiums. Built in 1883, the Temple Court Building was the first “fireproof” building in New York and is an early example of the use of brick and terra cotta for an office building. The restored building and the new building combine the best of historic character with modern amenities and design values.

Design Approach: The firm is known for reviving the notion of expressing the essence of structure, particularly through the use of cast-in-place concrete. It draws inspiration from well-known architects of the mid 1900s, including I.M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, and Le Corbusier, who used exposed cast-in-place concrete to create many great buildings. As other construction technologies became available, however, cast-in-place concrete became comparatively more expensive and even cost prohibitive in some cases. GKV has innovated new design and construction techniques based on roadway construction that could be adapted to architecture. This allows it to design buildings, like The Beekman, that have more character, are greener, more cost effective, safer, and most importantly to the architects, to create a brand new aesthetic. The firm is known for using carefully designed exposed concrete frames created by using custom concrete form liners, often with artistically inspired patterns to create decorative facades.

Three-Dimensional Design: These innovative solutions are accomplished through the use of three-dimensional, computerized design software that has become the norm for everyone in the 60-person firm to use as their work platform. Firm Founding Principal Randolph Gerner, AIA, says, “I don’t think my career would be where it is today without 3-D design software.” He notes that it allows him to easily and readily visualize details or entire buildings in three dimensions. And the software that it employs is not intimidating at all—he boasts that he can create designs with it “all by myself” before passing them on to others in the firm to work on.

CASE STUDY: HARMONIZING EARTH AND ARCHITECTURE

Photos courtesy of Norihiko Dan and Associates

Project: The Sun Moon Lake Administration Office of the Tourism Bureau
Architect: Norihiko Dan and Associates
Location: Sun Moon Lake, Yuchi Township, Taiwan
Size: 6,639 square meters (71,462 square feet)

The Project: Sun Moon Lake is the largest body of water in the country of Taiwan (Republic of China) as well as a popular tourist attraction. When the Tourism Bureau of Taiwan sought to locate its administrative offices there, it used the “Landform Series” of the New Taiwan by Design International Competition as a basis to select a design firm. Japanese architect Norihiko Dan and Associates received first prize in the competition and went on to design the facility. A well-known architect and urban designer, Norihiko Dan is also a passionate environmental activist. Born in 1956 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, Dan studied architecture at Tokyo University and won the Graduation Design Prize in 1979. For his postgraduate work at the same university, he studied under the notable Fumihiko Maki. Dan then went on to complete his master’s degree at the Yale School of Architecture in 1984. He founded his own firm, Norihiko Dan and Associates, in Tokyo in 1986. Presently, the firm employs about 15 people, and it concentrates on public and private architecture and interior design, as well as landscape design, civil engineering, urban design, and art and furniture design.

The Design Approach: Dan’s visions are guided by what’s best for the planet, and this is evident in his design of this project as well as many others done by the firm. “My favorite part about this particular project is that it is half architecture and half landform, which creates a beautiful and uninterrupted whole,” explains Dan. The firm spent a lot of time considering the actual site. “The design approach for modern architecture lies in breaking down the architectural mass into parts, or to compose them, to create the building,” he begins. In the interest of working with nature, it considered ways that the need for excavating thousands of cubic meters of earth could be turned into a benefit for the site and the overall design. Then inspiration struck. “If we compare this project to curry, the cubic meters of dirt would be the ‘sauce’ and the cubic meters of architecture would be the ‘rice, meat, and vegetables.’ So we would actually make a larger amount of curry in total. I decided to use this idea as my starting point.” He reasoned that if it did not actually remove the dirt from the site, but rather used it again within the same site, it could avoid damaging the environment, even on this small scale. If the “curry” mix were comprised of half-architecture, half-landscape ingredients, the team could create a green hill to balance and recover the surface area that the building had eaten up. If it started with the “sauce,” it could modify their design to fit any site formation, just as curry or stew can fit in any pot, no matter what form. “I named this curry-like architecture and land mixture a ‘universal form’ to lead this conceptual solution to a more solidified state.”

Joyful Design: The design team needed to build the bridge between internal and external logic, meaning ‘internal’ functional requirements, and the ‘external’ influencers like the surrounding area or even the mountains framing the site from a distance.” In the Sun Moon Lake Administration Office Building project, great care was taken to bridge these internal and external logics. The result was a seamless mix of earth and architecture. Part of the structure is built into the hillside with a green roof cover that helps to regulate internal temperatures. Dan and his team use three-dimensional building information model software to create all of their designs from conception to completion. They commonly make use of powerful 3-D modeling tool sets, specifically using NURBS curves to draw an incredible number of freeform shapes and surfaces. They found that the ease of use and efficiency offered by the programs design-focused tools helps increase their productivity dramatically. Further, the ability to visualize in three dimensions and create dramatic renderings likely contributed to their selection as the competition winner.

Norihiko Dan has created many other notable works that have garnered praise from the New Taiwan by Design International Competition, such as the Floating Tea House, which also received first prize honors in recent years in the competition’s “Landform Series.” The redevelopment of the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Terminal 1 won first prize in the “Gateway Series” category of the competition. His philosophy is simple. “We try to work earnestly and joyfully on every field of architecture design,” he says. “We’re inspired by every formative natural art—by their very existence and especially their interesting and complicated histories.” Dan continues to produce work according to his Universal Form Theory, garnering great recognition—and bettering the world around him—along the way.