taking a leap of faith

why would a client entrust a young, small, untested firm with a project?
december 2002

New York architect Lindy Roy had never had a project, other than a temporary installation, built before this year. That did not deter Vitra, the furniture manufacturer based in Basel, Switzerland, from selecting Roy's firm, ROY, to design the company's New York showroom, which opened last month in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. In giving the young firm its first commission to be realized, Vitra took a risk with the uncertainty of new, untested design ideas and capabilities. Vitra relishes that.

Constantly seeking to define "new" in the culture of design, Vitra is a proponent of the design vanguard. But why would the company, which has only a handful of showrooms in the United States, select ROY for its New York home? For Vitra to tap a new talent is not unusual, but for a small, young firm to get a high-profile commission as its first built project is. Every architect has to get that first project somehow, and Lindy Roy was lucky, in some ways, to have attracted the right attention in New York with a compelling portfolio of conceptual designs.

"When I looked at Lindy's dossier, I was completely taken," Rolf Fehlbaum, the C.E.O. of Vitra, told record. "It's important to look for a new voice—a new promise."

Not all clients, though, are as experienced in selecting designers as Vitra, and not many young architects have the same access to connections in the New York design world as Roy has had. Why would a client—any client—take a leap of faith to go with a young architect for a project? As record presents its third annual Design Vanguard in this issue, we posed that question to young firms that had been featured in previous Design Vanguard issues or in archrecord2, as well as to one of each of their clients with work in progress at press time. How did the client come to select the architect for a given project, and what was the learning curve, for both architect and client, as the job proceeded?

In New York, Roy completed the Vitra showroom after having only one other realized project—a summer 2001 installation at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. In Chicago, Studio Gang/O'Donnell has designed its first community center, with both child and adult day care, for the Chinese American Service League. La Dallman Architects of Milwaukee had completed a few smaller projects before being chosen by a local developer—a recent Ukrainian immigrant—to design a 30-story condominium tower in that city. And in San Francisco, a German couple with multiple homes in Europe and the United States hired Kuth/Ranieri Architects for a second time to execute a major reconstruction of a residence. These four cases offer a diverse selection of client and project type, but all of the clients share one thing in common: They chose younger firms with developing practices when they could have gone with larger, more experienced companies.

A case for the new
Institutional clients, in particular, are increasingly looking to smaller, younger architecture firms because of the unique, fresh approach and attention that they can bring to a project. Brad Cloepfil, 46—whose Portland, Oregon–based, 15-person firm, Allied Works Architecture, was named last month to design the new home for the Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design in New York City — has noted the trend. "A lot of the next generation of architects are getting opportunities that, say 30 years ago, I'm not sure a small 10-to-15-person firm would have gotten," says Cloepfil, who received his first major East Coast commission with this winning competition and was also recently selected for the Seattle Art Museum expansion.

The Museum of Contemporary Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum) intentionally focused on smaller, younger, or emerging firms in its selection of an architect for the renovation of Edward Durell Stone's Two Columbus Circle for its new home. It did not invite larger firms with more museum experience to apply. Competition finalists included Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, Zaha Hadid, and Toshiko Mori.

Holly Hotchner, the director of the museum, explained: "The museum has always advocated for emerging artists—that's what we do. And since we are also very much in the world of design, it seemed appropriate to look for a person to design our building—which we think will be the greatest object in our collection—who would be in the same spirit as the artists we show. We want this project to be the cornerstone of [Cloepfil's] career."

Cloepfil described his relationship with the museum thus far as "an exciting fit. Institutions that hire emerging architects are really looking at ideas rather than objects. In this and other recent commissions that I've gotten, clients are more interested in a way of thinking and investigating and a way of exploring ideas, rather than just getting a product."

Making a name in New York
For Roy, 39, the opening of the Vitra showroom was, in a way, her debut as a New York architect on a par with the most innovative thinkers in the profession. A pair of New York innovators and mentors—Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio—helped her along the way. Andrew Goetz, Vitra's New York–based director of development, said Vitra had initially considered a wide range of top design talent for the New York showroom, including Greg Lynn, SHoP, Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas, Annabelle Selldorf, as well as Diller + Scofidio. Vitra had seriously considered Diller + Scofidio after the husband-and-wife pair had designed the company's showroom installation for Neocon in Chicago, but they were too busy after winning recent competitions. Diller + Scofidio offered a list of architects that they thought would be appropriate for the high-profile job, and Roy's name was on the list. After reviewing portfolios, Fehlbaum selected Roy.

"In looking at Lindy's portfolio, we definitely thought she had the makings of somebody special," Goetz said. "It would be very easy to pick Rem Koolhaas at this time, but we wanted to invest in a younger talent that we believed in. It reinforces the concept that risks are important to take and are worth taking."

Investing in new talent is something that Vitra has done for decades. Vitra handed Frank Gehry his first European commission, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, in 1987, and selected Zaha Hadid for her first built project—the Vitra Fire Station, completed in 1993. "Zaha was, at the time, more of a promise than a proven reality," Fehlbaum said. "We take a lot of effort to find the right people, and then we work with them to interpret what we are and what we want to be."

Because this was her first built project, designing the showroom was clearly a learn-as-you-go process for both Roy and Vitra. Working with Peter Himmelstein Design and graphic designers 2x4, Roy imaginatively employed a palette of steel, wood, industrial rubber, and polycarbonate panels in the 13,400-square-foot space that includes a gallery, showroom, retail, and offices. "Having a client acknowledge that there were no expectations that I would be more advanced in terms of building experience was incredibly liberating," Roy said. "Once that was on the table, it was a very open relationship, and it never was an issue."

Evolving client = challenging program + more time
Chicago's Studio Gang/O'Donnell has had a bit more experience in having projects built, but it has recently been working with perhaps its most challenging client group—the Chinese American Service League (CASL)—on a project with an extremely complex program, the city's Chinese American Service Center. The $5.3 million, 36,000-square-foot facility will accommodate 14 different programs for the Chinese community, including adult and child day care, a community hall, youth center, chef-training kitchen, and offices. Led by partners Kathleen O'Donnell, Mark Schendel, and Jeanne Gang, the eight-person firm was chosen for the CASL project in 1998 and construction just began last month. What took so long?

"We started talking about a two-story building with 20,000 square feet and now we'll have a three-story building with 36,000 square feet," said Bernie Wong, the executive director of CASL, which has served Chicago's Chinatown community out of a number of disparate locations for 25 years. "We had a large growth spurt with our programs at the same time as they were planning [the building]."

Studio Gang/O'Donnell architects undertook an extensive study of CASL's programmatic needs. The design went through a number of iterations, including a courtyard scheme that had to be abandoned when the need for more square footage increased. CASL had considered a number of larger and more experienced Chicago firms, and narrowed the list down to five. Studio Gang/O'Donnell was ultimately chosen because Wong said CASL was not convinced that the larger firms would give them the attention and time needed, even if they had experience with community centers or day care. "One of the things that we were concerned about is whether the principal making the presentation would really be managing the project. But with Studio Gang/O'Donnell, we were sure that Jeannie [Gang] and Kathleen [O'Donnell] would be working on it, and that gave me more confidence."

"Energy was important," Gang said. "We won the job after numerous interviews, and we showed that we really wanted the job. They wanted a firm that would be able to go the full nine yards and not just turn out a repeat solution, because this is a unique program."

"Studio Gang/O'Donnell is more creative, slightly out of the ordinary, and we wanted a building that stands out," Wong said. "There are enough buildings that look like each other in Chicago's Chinatown."

Husband-and-wife firm selected for 30-story tower
Further up the Lake Michigan shore, the City of Milwaukee initiated a request for proposals for developer-architect teams in 2000 for a downtown residential development on a site with fantastic views of the lake. Peter Park, the director of planning for the City of Milwaukee, said, "What we were really asking for was a whole team, a competent team that could design a building commensurate with the site. We called for a building that would be a real signal to the city overall, and to the market, of what the potential for urban housing in Milwaukee can be."

Milwaukee developer Boris Gokhman, who emigrated from the Ukraine in 1990, asked La Dallman Architects—the husband-and-wife practice of Grace La and James Dallman—to team with him for this competition even though they had only recently started their firm with much smaller projects. Gokhman, who had built a number of residential developments in the city in the past decade, chose La Dallman because "they're not a mass-production firm. This is kind of a unique project, and I saw them both as creative and very much design-oriented."

La Dallman, in conjunction with TDI Associates and Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates, won the competition with Gokhman, and have designed a 30-story, 59-unit condominium tower for the site. More than half of the units have sold, and construction may begin this month.

What was the major hurdle for the six-person La Dallman office and Gokhman to overcome on the $45 million project? An understanding of timing in order to design and detail a 30-story tower. "For me it was a learning process of how to be detail-oriented. Grace and James brought a new level of detail," said Gokhman. "It's been a good balance."

"A building of this quality requires a certain amount of time, and I think Boris's sense of design time frame is shorter than ours," La said. "But he has been very receptive, and that was surprising, because we talked with other housing developers that did not bring the same energy."

Like taking Architecture 101
With two projects on a much smaller scale, the husband-and-wife team of Byron Kuth and Elizabeth Ranieri, of San Francisco, have been fortunate to have had design-savvy repeat clients—Adriane Iann and Christian Stolz, a married couple who have several homes abroad, including a castle in their native Germany. The couple hired Kuth/Ranieri Architects in the late 1990s to design a Nob Hill residence (bottom right) after seeing an exhibition of the firm's design work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. "I think they wanted to find an American voice," Kuth said. "And Adriane said, 'What I want is something that I never would have thought of in a million years.' "

Once their new home was built, Iann and Stolz purchased a small cottage directly across the street and called on the seven-person Kuth/Ranieri firm again. This time, the architects will completely gut an existing structure and create a guest house and gallery featuring a new double-height space and a large skylight puncturing the original roof. Construction will be complete in a year. "It has been a little bit like taking Architecture 101," said Iann, "because [Byron and Elizabeth] were very patient in explaining the theoretical background."

It comes down to patience, effort, and passion
Patience, it seems, is a virtue when a client takes the plunge with a young firm, as well as passion about the project. "We not only feel that we were taking a risk," Iann said. "But they were taking a risk as well, because they put all their heart in it. If you put your heart in it, it's more of a risk."

by john e. czarnecki, assoc aia
lifted from architectural record 2 "for the emerging architect"