Studioteka was asked to rework the design of an existing medical office suite in Manhattan’s Midtown East for a successful, high powered plastic surgeon. The existing suite lacked a consult room where the surgeon’s upscale clientele could meet with the doctor or staff to discuss procedures and options. The doctors sharing the 1,865 SF office suite had been holding patient consultations in the existing procedure rooms, rather than in a designated space. They felt that this limited their ability to really connect with clients in a safe space, and wanted the new consult room to feel warm, inviting, and luxurious. A connection between the consult room and an adjacent procedure room was suggested by the design team, effectively turning the two rooms into a new spa consult suite.

The consult room, which had been a cluttered administrative office, was completely transformed by Studioteka. A BDI desk with a white top and warm walnut accents was chosen, along with a Lumi Source office chair for the doctor, and a pair of Liam office chairs, both in white with walnut accents, for clients. A Safavieh rug provides a contrast with the warm brown of the hardwood floor, while two new linear suspension chandeliers brighten and warm the space. A sleek custom display case by Alinea was mounted on the eastern wall, allowing the surgeon to prominently display her own line of spa facials and products. New custom draperies with sheer white fabric from Knoll, were made for both the consult and spa treatment rooms. Both spaces had new Maharam wallpaper installed along with sleek metal chair rail around the perimeter of each room completing the transformation.

Studioteka also designed custom cabinetry for an administrative office in the space in order to maximize storage in the busy practice. A new floor to ceiling unit was built along the eastern wall of the space which incorporates two lockable file drawers for confidential documents, a fold down laptop desk, and a series of storage areas with sliding doors in white Wilsonart laminated mica. The workstations on the opposite side of the room had a new wall unit installed above the desks with three sliding, lockable doors for the doctors’ medical supplies. This allows for a much more efficient use of the space, and keeps everything tidy and organized.

The reception and waiting areas were given a much needed face lift with the addition of dimmable overhead fixtures as well as accent lighting which washes the front of the reception desk as well as the wall immediately facing it in the waiting area. The reception desk top was custom refinished and hand painted to have the feel of warm brown leather, contrasting with the cool white tiles below. Sleek metal chair rail behind the desk and in the waiting area both accents and matches the metal of the chairs, with their custom upholstery. New subtly contrasting wallpapers from Maharam finish the space off and add to the new Zen effect, creating an atmosphere which is both relaxing and welcoming for the doctor’s busy clients. Project Team: Vanessa Keith, Yuhui Huang, Tae Hyung Kim.

Project featured in AIA New York, Center for Architecture, Featured Member Vanessa Keith, See: Featured Member: Vanessa Keith, AIA — AIA New York (aiany.org)

Consult room palette and details

Consult room facing entry to treatment room

Waiting area for patients

Reception desk seen from waiting area

Reception desk and entry to treatment, OR and office areas

Waiting area seen from behind reception desk

Entry to office and surgical suite

Treatment room

Treatment room details

Treatment room details

Treatment room facing entry to consult room

Admin room and custom cabinetry

Admin room and custom wall unit

Workstation with wall mounted unit

Custom wall unit detail

Consult room before/after shot!

Consult room palette and details

Consult room facing entry to treatment room

Waiting area for patients

Reception desk seen from waiting area

Reception desk and entry to treatment, OR and office areas

Waiting area seen from behind reception desk

Entry to office and surgical suite

Treatment room

Treatment room details

Treatment room details

Treatment room facing entry to consult room

Admin room and custom cabinetry

Admin room and custom wall unit

Workstation with wall mounted unit

Custom wall unit detail

Consult room before/after shot!

This building is envisioned as a showcase of sustainable materials and systems appropriate for developing countries, and began as the subject of a Design/Build course at City College in New York.  In the Spring of 2006, a group of enthusiastic students began exploring the many possibilities of sustainable architecture and green building design in Jamaica along with professors Oisin Clancy and Vanessa Keith. Both are founding members of Inter-Build.org, the building and architecture arm of Edu-Tourism, an NGO based in Jamaica. The first phase of design was taken to Jamaica and presented to the WCJF as well as teachers and other end users, and the valuable feedback gained from this exercise was brought back to New York for further development. The current project is a revision conducted by Studioteka over the course of the past year, and features the introduction of a system of structural bamboo connections as the building’s primary structure, which is configured and oriented for passive cooling. Also included are an integrated wind turbine, graywater treatment and an alternative sustainable septic system.

Project Team: Vanessa Keith, Marcus Brooks, Laura Charlton, Gaby Rodriguez, Allison Schwartz, Ruud Van Hemert, Stijn Van Oorschot, Sebastian Weiss

Contributors: Ute Besenecker, Oisin Clancy, Harry Knoll

CCNY Design/Build Team: Mubeen Ahmad, Robert Benson, Marius Calin, Vanessa Despot, Max Driscoll, Jamie Foresta, Dylan Gould, Larry Jacquette, Hong Wen Kuang, Elizabeth Shipley, Neil Schwartz, Lisa Wan

Located in Morant Bay, Jamaica, this building has a dual function.  It has a childcare area and a skills training section, as well as an ample multipurpose area at the entry which can be used for eating, congregating, and informal gatherings in the shade. The inside and outside spaces are envisioned as areas of lively activity and play, with the different wings of the building humming with purposeful activity at different times throughout the day.

The first level, which contains the multipurpose room, a kitchen, pantry, and bathroom with two toilets and two sinks, is a generous 1,482 square feet. The second level, on which are located the childcare wing, the skills training area and small sitting area which serves as a lounge, is 1,430 square feet. The childcare area has a changing table, padded play area, lockers for storage, and space for 10 cribs, as well as a staff desk. A second bathroom is accessible from the childcare wing, and contains a bathtub, sink and toilet.

The skills training area contains a meeting table which can accommodate 10 people, as well as workstations and computers for 8 people who can use them to learn valuable workforce related skills. The small sitting area at the top of the stairs has room for a couch and an end table, and is a place of conversation or repose, enlivening the zone at the top of the stairs. The surrounding landscape has been activated by the insertion of seating which rings the trees, as well as a series of planting beds which create an informal garden atmosphere.

Studioteka worked as a design consultant for Leni Schwendinger, Light Projects Ltd., on Tidal Radiance, a public art piece for the city of San Diego.  The Port Pavilion, at the tip of the Broadway Pier in San Diego, opened in December 2010.  For the Port Pavilion on Broadway Pier, a 45- by 16-foot exterior wall sculpture, Tidal Radiance, is combined with an environment of projections to evoke tides and sea life.

After dark, Tidal Radiance becomes a shimmering, organic form seen from near and far. The artwork is visible to boats, pedestrians and motorists along the Embarcadero promenade.  Featured on the building’s exterior, custom cast glass and metal forms are mounted to a unique framework of tension wires.  To set the stage for Tidal Radiance’s dramatic and luminous transformation during the darkened hours, it was important that its sculptural materials remain neutral by day.  To accomplish this, Light Projects collaborated with Studioteka on material selections and other media that influence light and shadow qualities by sunlight, as well as on the structural details required to manage an asymmetrically loaded composition subject to high winds.

Project Team:
Artist: Leni Schwendinger

Design Studio:
Leni Schwendinger Light Projects, LTD (Leni Schwendinger, Eric Chenault)

Architectural Services:
Studioteka (Vanessa Keith, Dongsuk Lee, Ana Sucena)

Installer:
Basile Studio

Custom Cast-Glass:
Architectural Glass Art

The interplay between viewer and artwork is integral to Tidal Radiance. The spectator becomes a participant through spatial and sensory immersion in the luminous stenciled projections along the entry and perimeter of the terminal. This environment is composed of a complex line drawing, which is echoed in the cast glass of the wall sculpture. Through the medium of light, chromatic seasonal compositions evocative of San Diego Bay culture and environment materialize.  Luminous greens express the whale watching season, and glowing golds the cruise season. During the moon cycles, the full moon is expressed and emanates pale blues, while the new and quarter emanate deep and medium blue hues.

Like all of Leni Schwendinger’s work, Tidal Radiance contains the element of change. Whether animated patterns or a calendar of seasonal light sequences, one of the continuing challenges is to utilize the property of light to brighten, fade, and disappear–and to respond to controlled voltages through highly sophisticated computer programming. This element of controlled changeability–combined with color symbolism–allows the artist to create public art that not only pleases the eye but communicates and displays nuanced messages about the environment we live in.

Competition Entry, 2014. The new Guggenheim museum in Helsinki connects the city with the sea, bridging local and international scales and connecting Helsinki’s past with its future. Building upon the evolution of Helsinki’s shoreline, we adopt a vocabulary which incorporates a series of folded interconnected planes and volumes which embrace city and harbor, thus fostering the import and export of local and international culture and exchange, and embracing the city’s new and prominent international vision. The building sits upon a wooden promenade, which forms a grand public gesture along the harbor side of the museum, activating the site with outdoor concerts and guerrilla theater events, as well as café, restaurant and retail space.

The city entrance sits at the northern end of the site, and is accessed by way of a covered indoor/outdoor passageway which can be opened completely to the elements during the warmer months, and which also connects to the harbor side of the building. The northern entry is flanked on one side by the museum shop, while the other side is the main museum point of entrance. The northern entrance opens upon a large public lobby containing ticketing and information, as well as a generous open flexible space, suitable for exhibitions, gatherings, and events, which can also spill out into the large outdoor plaza.

The permanent and visiting collections are accessed from the lobby by way of a gently sloping ramp, which loops around the entrance hall with an adjoining stepped area that boasts a view of the entire harbor. Accessed by way of the lobby’s grand ramp, the elevated outdoor exhibition space affords visitors breathtaking views toward the city and the sea, as well as connecting directly to one of the museum’s exhibition galleries. The outdoor observation deck sits above, also connected to a third gallery level. The exhibition spaces on both the second and third levels can each be separated into two distinct spaces. The observation deck can also be used for mounting outdoor exhibitions. Thus the project has a lot of spaces which are flexible and multipurpose in nature, being suited not only to the display of artwork, but also to conferences, and public and private gatherings and events.

The form of the building responds to solar angles, as well as to parameters related to program adjacency and access to light and views, as well as levels of activity and acoustical concerns. The roof is supported by a criss cross wooden waffle structure, as well as a series of monumental columns, also clad in wood. The volumes of the building’s programs are enveloped in translucent, transparent and opaque panels, which form a gradient from entirely permeable to entirely opaque depending upon the needs of each space. The building’s structural skin is revealed through the panels, creating a dramatic glowing volume which provides a cultural beacon on the harbor. From the roof, two arms reach out toward the sea, in a culminating gesture that represents the harmonic union of opposites and a symbol of the city’s emerging status as an important international cultural destination.

The New England Regional Performing Arts Center will be a multifunctional arts and entertainment complex, with a live music venue, theater, and club as the anchors of the project. The Riv Theater will be a 1,500 seat performance hall and will also feature the works of dance companies and choreographers, as well as featuring Broadway touring shows and the works of regional companies. The Riverboat Music Hall will feature live music and will host both national and international touring acts. This space is the showcase of the entire site, encompassing some 87,000 square feet, and will become the venue of choice for artists from around the globe due to its easy proximity to Boston. The Downstream Club will be a live music and dance club, set high in the building facing the river, and will have a capacity of up to 1,000 patrons.  Live music and dancing are the main focus of the club, which will feature the music of smaller national touring acts, regional artists and both established and emerging DJs. The club will have two bars and a VIP open seating area adjacent to the stage, as well as a fully equipped state of the art DJ space and sound booth.

Project Team: Vanessa Keith, Cheolyong Kim, Simona Regolo, Joana Barros, Mary-Jo Schlachter, Wen Wu, Pablo Dominguez, Chenyang Lu.

The Kids Entertainment Complex will be a two story, 15,000 square foot facility and will be devoted to arts, science and physical activities for the children and families of the area. Included will be spaces for computer labs, arts, dance and music classrooms, an indoor playground, a circus arts and gymnastics area, a martial arts area and an indoor skate park, as well as cafe and multipurpose spaces.  The Music Extension School will feature labs,rehearsal rooms, recording and production studios, a lecture and concert hall, and will also house a state of the art film and video editing suite.  The Factory Museum encompasses the entry lobby and three floors of circulation and adjacent space and galleries featuring local, regional and international emerging and avant garde artists. Openings will activate the common spaces of the building, and allow for patrons to see first class works of visual art, as well as experiencing all that the facility has to offer.

Each project component answers the call to fill a void, benefitting both the arts and business communities. The music venue, theater and three restaurants alone have the potential to draw 1.4 million patrons to the site with only an estimated 70 percent of their capacity. These elements are combined with the Kids Entertainment Complex, the Factory Museum, the Music Extension School, the Billiards and Games Complex, Downstream Club, and 13 commercial retail and 11 office spaces into a 133,000 sf integrated complex that will draw people from far and wide. Our project brings two dormant factories back to life thus revitalizing the town, the region and its people.

Competition Entry, 2011. The new opera house in Busan connects the mountains with the sea, bridging local and international scales and connecting Busan’s past with its future. Building upon the evolution of Busan’s shoreline, we adopt the vocabulary of the harbor pier as a reference for the import and export of local and international culture and exchange. The result is a conceptual knot: two becoming one.

Project Team:
Vanessa Keith, Cheolyong Kim, Dongsuk Lee, Michelle Fowler, Simona Regolo, Nicholas Reiter, Xiao Chen, Tiffany Jin, Haeshin Park

The building sits upon a landscape plinth, or ribbon, which forms a grand public gesture surrounding the opera house, activating the site with outdoor concerts and theater events, a public pool, yacht club and marina, urban parkspace, cafe, restaurant and retail space. The undulating planes of the ribbon transition three dimensionally to create both interior and exterior spaces. The opera house has two primary access points located at either end of the ribbon. The city entrance sits at the edge of the new island and is accessed by way of a ramp which also connects to the plinth, while the seaside entrance is accessed by way of a protected marina and a pedestrian bridge which ties back in to the city. The city entrance opens upon a large public lobby containing an open performance stage, the volumes of the opera and multipurpose theaters, two restaurants, a bar, gift shop, exhibition space and a multimedia music library. The outdoor amphitheater and public pool/recreation space can be accessed from the lobby by way of a gently sloping ramp, which joins a stepped seating area with a view of the entire harbor.

Accessed by way of the lobby’s grand staircase, the balcony level affords visitors breathtaking views toward the city and the sea, as well as overlooking the activated gathering space below. The plinth level sits above, linking the two major theater spaces, a 2,000 seat performance venue for opera and a 1,200 seat multipurpose arena with the outdoor space of the ribbon. At the crown of the theater complex sits the special events level, here envisioned as a space containing a VIP lounge, high end restaurant and banquet hall with stunning 360 degree Busan city views.

The facets of the knot are enveloped in translucent, transparent and opaque panels, the placement of which are dependent upon program as well as elevation. The building’s structural skin is revealed through the panels, creating a dramatic glowing volume which provides a cultural beacon on the harbor. A series of gently shifting columns move up and through the building, while internally, the volumes of enclosed spaces reflect the building’s dramatic form. At the plinth level, two arms reach out from the knot to connect to the ribbon, in a culminating gesture that represents the harmonic union of opposites and a symbol of the city’s emerging status as an important international cultural destination.

Competition Entry, 2009 — Honorable Mention. A highly contested site in a formerly industrial zone characterized by crumbling factory ruins, artist workshops, immigrant families and an influx of former Manhattanites, the Gowanus is subject to the ever-present pressure of development and outward expansion.  The formulas of old, luxury high rise waterfront condos and the eventual displacement of a thriving artists’ community, have thankfully been put to bed by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  One may now ask, what’s next for the Gowanus?

Project Team:
Vanessa Keith, Ana Sucena, Dongsuk Lee, Kyungyoon Song, Nanna Wulfing, Matt Standeven, Belinda Jolly

Project Collaborators and Advisors:
Achva Benzinberg Stein, FASLA, Jerome Balas, Jessica Marvin, Murali Nallamothu

The vibrancy of this site, and its industrial past, were a source of fascination and interest to us.  In a world which is increasingly interconnected, there is no longer a ‘somewhere else’ to which our problems may be exported.  The locations of pollutants in the area were mapped in plan and section, and a strategy emerged.  What if, rather than trucking the toxins elsewhere, we were able to incorporate the renewal and remediation of the site into a series of structural and streetscape devices?

Site contaminants, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene), PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and HM (heavy metals), were analyzed and classified according to their chemical properties and location on the site, and programs were linked to each category.  They were further broken down based upon scale, flexibility of space, materiality, activity level, ability to mix with other programs, location in section, and density.  BTEX programs, for example, were those we classified as light and highly volatile, like the gallery/bar, artists’ live/work studios, some of the exhibition space, and the environmental research and development.  This strategy, which resulted in design moves such as placing the lecture hall at the top of the building, also allowed us to find commonalities between programs that we may not have considered otherwise.

Our project emphasizes public space for the community, a YMCA with a twist: art spaces, plus community spaces, plus research spaces.  The main building, located to the North along Fifth Street, combines space for art with an environmental research and remediation program, including offices and research labs, which makes the project economically sustainable.  We were intrigued by the concept of industrial symbiosis and the notion that the site’s industrial legacy could be transformed into an amenity for local residents.  By incorporating site remediation within the program and structure, the project serves as a demonstration of a new locally focused strategy.

The ground floor contains both the digital and analog workshops, which serve the artists’ level on the second floor.  The first floor, accessed by way of a stair/ramp/seating area which faces Smith Street, contains the gallery/bar and additional exhibition space for the environmental program, located on the third and fourth floors.  Environmental research and development labs as well as a lecture hall, library, media lab and offices complete this portion of the building, which is capped by an occupiable green roof open to the public.  A wetlands park serves as the entry to the site, along which are placed artists’ live/work studios to the South, culminating in a gym and wellness center with a boathouse for kayaks and rowboats that is a much needed amenity for local residents.  The placement and scale of built elements on the site has a direct relationship to the locations of the most highly contaminated areas, where direct access to the ground would be problematic.  Remediation devices cleverly merge with parkscape elements and playfully dot the site; a long bench is also a biopile, a streetlight or a swing doubles as a bioventing device and even the structural columns incorporate a heavy metal stabilization system which works deep within the ground.

The project, thus, is an art factory of the post-industrial age.  Artists, community residents, and scientists mingle in a project which has the potential to become a hub for economic and environmental renewal, innovation and the fusion of both halves of the brain:  in short, a new Silicon Valley deep in the heart of Brooklyn.

Project published in Mark Magazine ,issue #25:

http://www.mark-magazine.com

Also published in the Architect’s Newspaper, Honors section:

http://www.archpaper.com

WHAT IS PLACE?

Competition Entry, 2004. In considering Kakolanmaki, one begins to ponder the linkage between past and present, old and new, then and now.  Place is always a fusion of elements, a palimpsest, the fragments of past memory which blend with the cacaphony of daily life.  Kakolanmaki is this and much more.  As a culturally significant place, our scheme treats the ground as a significant datum line, and aims to respect this place by folding the new gently into the old, and thus providing an element of discovery, surprise and delight.

Project Team:
Vanessa Keith, Laura Stedman, Ute Besenecker, Marsh Kriplen, Monisha Nandy, Kevin Kleyla, Koby Sczcepanski, Quency Wallace, Carlos Soubie, Matti Ponkala

CULTURE

The nature of Kakolanmaki’s past, and the fact that the function it once served as a prison is no longer needed, is something which struck us as both utopian and liberating. The chance to engage in a discourse regarding its future has been a fascinating and uplifting experience. We chose to approach the subject in search of a transformative space worthy of such a historically and naturally charged site.

Early societies who stayed in one place to establish the cities and towns we now know, soon found the need to remove certain dangerous elements from among their midst with an often severe and violent gesture. The knitting together again of Kakolanmaki as a part of Turku, and indeed, a destination within its own right, provides the kind of liberated and enlightened reform experienced by the newly freed former prisoner, emerging again into society full of hope and renewed enthusiasm.  In the case of Kakola and Remand, the sub levels of their existing plazas become a bustling zone filled with galleries, theaters, and boutiques, spaces to eat and congregate, as well as spaces which serve a civic function. These are places where important lectures, events and world class exhibitions may be held, lit beautifully by the natural light passing through the translucent glass surface of the plaza above. Enclosed volumes create smaller galleries within the Remand, providing differing qualities of light and space.

Two principal elements form a link between Kakola and Remand and find their connecting piece in the Hub, which is at once a health and relaxation spa, a fitness center and gymnasium, and a place of learning and socializing for both adults and children.  The circulation spine of the Hub weaves its way through the project, and the building has a plaza of its own, hugged closely by the earth.  We respect the presence of the old, and its place in the city by gently tucking the new built elements into the ground.

SITE: THE PATH BETWEEN HERE AND THERE

A path inscribes a circle around the project, engaging both sides of the horizontal datum of the earth; at times one walks as through on air through the trees, and at others may dip into the ground, allowing a full range of experience, as well as breathtaking views of the surrounding region.  In this way the parkscape is always new, and engages the visitor in a new way of seeing.
Our interpretation of the competition requirements attempts to respond to certain constraints in a manner that respects the site’s constructed topography and explores the relationship between solid and open.  In throwing off the physical and cultural shackles of the site and its former institutions, we carve into the rock, revealing the figurative bones of man and nature, and weaving a balance between proposed and existing elements.