nydailynews
In the last eight years, NYC-based SHoP has gone from five graduates of Columbia Architecture School sitting around a kitchen table in a Murray Hill loft to one of the best architecture firms in the world, redesigning the Fashion Institute of Technology, building Google’s first-ever ground-up structure and transforming the South Street Seaport from an outdoor shopping mall for tourists into a grid-based waterfront neighborhood for actual New Yorkers…
(the brick is not part of this city project but i love it …so that’s why its here…)
“We take everything into account when we design a building,” says Christopher Sharples. “If the building is on the waterfront, we can get bigger panels there by boat. If it’s inland, we have to take into account the size of the truck transporting it.”
In the past, where material suppliers such as lumber companies would have excess material due to mistakes in cutting or charge inordinate prices for different-size planks of wood, a SHoP project leaves no waste because the exact sizes are output by the computer in the manufacturing process, making their projects environmentally more correct. The exact amount of materials is used with each machine cut.
“We were known as the ‘avant-cheap’ architects for a while,” says William Sharples, referring to the firm’s early period, when they designed the Manhattan retail outlet for fashion’s Costume National. “Hundreds of years ago, materials were very expensive and labor was very cheap. Now it’s the other way around. We found a way to work with that.”
At the new South Street Seaport, SHoP beat out some of the world’s top architects for the task of re-creating this well-known area. After being awarded the right to design the East River Esplanade by the Department of City Planning and other city agencies, SHoP’s work on the Seaport ensures that one firm controls the continuity of design for the entire lower East Side waterfront.
“General Growth, the client, came to us and asked what was wrong with the site,” says Pasquarelli, who smiles as if that’s his favorite question. “This part of lower Manhattan is the fastest-growing residential section in the country, but it’s the least authentic part of the city. It’s a suburban mall at the edge of the water. We came up with a master plan that extends the city grid, takes away dead ends and puts a park at the end of the pier.”
Site owner General Growth Properties holds the lease to Seaport for the next 73 years. They could leave it like it is for as long as they want and charge retailers higher rent, but General Growth’s Michael McNaughton sees the benefit of hiring SHoP to breathe new life into misused space.
