Consultants: David Kefferman, PE (Structural Engineering)

In this significant AIA Honor Award winning Addition / Alteration to an existing 1960’s Modern house on a sloped site in Pound Ridge, NY – our office was asked to reconsider three major aspects of the current condition – creation of a formal entry, an addition of a master suite, and a sustainable re-cladding of the entire house. Our approach centered on a qualitative response to the inherent characteristics of the site, which included intrusion of large old growth trees into the immediate area of the house, the dramatic coloration of the site’s seasonal foliage, and the daily use of the occupants which prescribed clear articulation of private and public space. Our response to these challenges entailed floating a new master suite on a forest of columns that reinforce an existing line of trees and create a procession towards the newly organized formal entry suspended underneath.  The columns themselves operate as a sophisticated structural system where each tips towards a projected point at the center of gravity, giving an innovative balance, stability and equilibrium to the new addition.  The cladding begins to conceptually organize and index the interior space.   Public areas are detailed with a rain screen of warm cedar finishes reflecting the outdoor environment in which they are situated.

Consultants: David Kefferman, PE (Structural Engineering)

Method Design was commissioned to situate and design a new prayer chapel for the expanding garden and field areas of the Rain Forest International School near Yaounde, Cameroon.  In addition to fulfilling the program of a gathering and worship space for the community, the School’s leadership required full maintaining of views from school buildings into the chapel, as well as additional exterior amphitheater-style seating and gathering space.  The design team’s response was to utilize a single, shifting wall system of CMU fins oriented towards a central, internal point to negotiate a landscape that provided private, intimate worship space to the interior, and an exterior gathering and amphitheater space.  The mahogany and corrugated steel roof system–designed with David Kufferman, PE and the RFIS Team, provides for areas of shading and entry to the chapel.

Consultants: CODE LLC (Expediting)

Method Design collaborated directly with Interior Designer Nina Blair on this project to renovate a 2000sqft Tribeca loft.  The primary condition the design team chose to combat in the alteration of the space was the lack of natural and direct sunlight into the main living spaces of the residence.  This is due to the construction of opaque partitions when the loft was converted to residential in the 1980′s blocking out direct sun from the south end of the residence.  The response from Blair+Method focused on the removal of the partitions to be replaced with 10′ tall all glass wall which flood the interior with light.   Within the general renovation of the rest of the apartment bathrooms were reorganized and expanded and the previously roomed in kitchen was designed into an open plan with the walls removed.  The material palate of the space mixes crisp contemporary materials and finishes fluidly with colorful details.

Street fairs offer up an astonishing diversity of wares, food and entertainment. Less engaging are the ubiquitous tents that spring up like mushrooms. They discreetly (and economically) get the job done, but offer little in the way of spaces that captivate the imagination. The souk, the bazaar, the seaside New England tourist booth, the Coney Island stand – all herald the inexpensive thrill.

In the distance, Heightened Reflection emerges from a sea of white and anonymous tents, in which visitors engage in typical street fair browsing. The project builds on the squat geometries of the tents, but pulls them skyward, creating sweeping interior volumes and dramatic exterior facades that mirror the urban scene around it. Merchants conduct their business adjacent to unique, colorful and soaring cloth ceilings. Customers, who are still able to browse and buy, can also engage with a variety of interior installations: in one, saturated red walls lead to a clerestory; in another, a periscope yields views far down the street. In one scenario a disco ball lazily spins, casting a thousand reflections, and in another Chinese lanterns swarm toward the sky.

The profound interior environments allow the participants a moment of intimacy and a place of personal reflection within the vibrant collective experience that is amplified by the exterior mylar skin.

Chloe + Isabel is a dynamic and socially innovative jewelry brand whose new headquarters in New York City required new consideration of how the space was divided giving its rapidly growing needs.  Method Designed proposed a series of private and semi-public work spaces inside the main area already established.  The private spaces, while providing acoustic separation, required full visual connection to allow light to flow into the main open areas. To achieve this, a custom steel and glass wall was designed and fabricated from a series of modular frames, within which the door is seamlessly situated.  Individual pieces of glass shift in and out of plane to add a subtle depth the to system and to help offset the pure grid.

Consultants:  Akustikmiljö

The D151ort Pavilion is an architectural device to transform our experience of sound and light.  It explores the potentials of parametric design, is informed by material logic, and is inspired by the urban experience.

The result of a transatlantic collaboration between architecture students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture in New York produced an innovative sound installation for the most progressive international music festival located in Denmark: The Copenhagen Distortion Music Festival.

The D151ort Pavilion is the centerpiece of the festival, a digitally fabricated, reconfigurable, acoustic pavilion made up of 151 sound absorptive cones arranged in a hexagonal geometric configuration. The graphic quality of light projected from the triangular cones emphasizes the shape and structural character of the installation. The mobile installation visited four venues during the festival, taking center stage in an outdoor plaza, in a small nightclub, in a grand hall, and in a teeming lobby. The project would not have been possible without the expertise, knowledge, and generosity of Akustikmiljö of Sweden. Special thanks  for time and resources donated by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture, CITA, Method Design, Krydsrum Arkitekter, Statens Kunstfond, and of course the Copenhagen Distortion Music Festival.

Method Design Team: Reese J Campbell, Demetrios A Comodromos, Alexander Chu, Ted Davis,  Rachele Louis, Angela Pasquale, Leigh Stewart.

The skyscraper is the ultimate (western) ‘formal typology’ created by the urban booms of the last century and most recently appropriated as the agent of rapid globalization. However, as a means of densifying urban fabric—and consequently reducing sprawl and congestion—it is conspicuously ab­sent from some of the world’s densest cities, particularly those within the Middle East. This project investigates the lack of tower constructions in Cairo’s dense urban and medieval fabric—and ultimate­ly proposes a speculative skyscraper that verticalizes the complex interrelationship of informal social networks and urban/civic form.  For full text  accepted by Journal of Architectural Education, click here.

The proposal from Method Design, which led an international team, attempts to project heavy traffic infrastructure into the future by submerging it underground, affording Cairo the ability to continue and extend the social logics of the highly pedestrian city which already exists. Submerged highways and trains begin to create and fulfill underground networks by connecting to the existing tunnels in place. With high velocity traffic and mass transportation below ground, the surfaces along those routes become fully pedestrianized paths, plazas, parks, markets and open public spaces, all of which are needed to transform the choked megalopolis of Cairo into a projective world city.

Consultants: Eurodent, David Kufferman, PE.

The infrastructure of the surgery center, including laboratories, sterilization areas, 3D X-ray machines and ample storage, is grouped together in a centralized core and formalized with a custom material pallet that creates the architecture of the entire facility.  Infrastructure, which is normally an ignored or hidden area, becomes the center piece of design by turning it into glowing volumes of frosted glass or lacquered volumes of custom millwork.   To offset the sterile nature of the glass surfaces, warm walnut paneled walls trisect the space into three efficient programmatic bays: Client Reception and Business in the front, the infrastructural core in the center, and Operatories along the back.  To mitigate the both public aspect of reception and the private necessity of business negotiation, the wall separating the lobby from the business area was developed with layering opacities of translucent and transparent glass in front of a purposefully booleaned wall.  The specifically designed openings allow for light transmission and monitoring of waiting patients, while obscuring business operations and client negotiations.  The effect of pragmatic planning combined with innovative use of material strategies creates a highly efficient surgery center with the highest caliber of design.

Builder: Steve Caputo

In Enrique Norton’s (TEN Arquitectos) newly completed 1 York residential project in New York City, Method Design was charged with re-programming a partially finished unit.  By using a single integrated piece of infrastructure, the space was capable of being transformed based on the client’s daily use.

A media wall, which acts as a spatial object offset in the center of the space and houses necessary infrastructure and storage, allows the apartment to be divided or joined together into continuous space through the operation of two oversized sliding partitions hidden within.  The media wall includes power, data, and A/V hookups on both spaces (public living room and private bedroom) for flush mounted televisions and a recessed niche on the main space side to set back the screen from protruding.  All data and A/V equipment is hidden away in a separate area of the apartment so not to be prominent on minimal aesthetic of the media wall.

Treating the noisy and obtrusive mechanical units in the space, Method Design used the same ideas of integrated infrastructure to develop a sophisticated cover that acts as a peeled-away extension of the wall surface to encapsulate the heat pumps.  Whereas mechanical units are normally left exposed in spaces, by treating them with a perforated cover which helps baffle noise while allowing for ample air flow, the units bleed away almost seamlessly into the wall.