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.

Type: Institutional/ Cultural
Scope of Work: Renovation
Location: Chelsea, NY
Status: Completed 2012
Team: Method Design Reese Campbell, Demetrios Comodromos, Tony Policastro
Builder: G. Fazio Construction Co, Inc
The RELAY Graduate School of Education – NYC’s first accredited graduate teaching school in 80 years commissioned Method to design new Operations and Classroom space. The studio’s proposal focused on analysis of Relay’s pedagogy and operations structure, and developed a planning strategy that treated all constituents–including administration, finance, operations, faculty and students – as functional groups. These functional groups were assigned loosely defined ‘territories’ with advantageous proximity to related functional groups. A combination of flexible meeting space and functional islands of shared program expressed as material environments achieved the ‘setup,’ without creating overly prescribed space. The result is an architecture of social interaction, a ‘mini-urbanism’ of spatial types and material environments.

Type: Residential/ Competition
Scope of Work: Micro-unit Housing Schematic Design
Location: Kips Bay, NY
Status: Not Built
Team: Method Design: Demetrios Comodromos, Reese Campbell, Kyle Baumgardner, Angela Pasquale, Ted Davis, Steve Andenmatten, James Wisniewski, Charlie Sonders, Veronica DiPasquo
Macro-Sea:  David Belt, Elise DeChard, Rebecca Birmingham, James Neu
Builder: McGowan Builders, Inc

DOMICILE, a proposal jointly designed by Macro Sea and Method Design, reimagines the meaning of “home.” At what point does the pressure of rent per square foot and lack of social interaction with our neighbors inhibit our capacity to have “home,” “place,” “community?” DOMICILE contends that as responsible designers and developers, we cannot just shrink or scale down the size of a dwelling unit. People need space to cook feasts, greet guests, drink beer, and be happier, more productive citizens. To solve this dilemma, we amputated the space that allows people to nest in a large apartment or home, and gathered that amputated program to a larger shared version, accessible to all residents.

The result is 42 functional living units averaging 300 square feet, that keep individual apartment size to a minimum to focus on thoughtfully programmed, dynamic, and fun common spaces. We firmly believe that just because you live alone doesn’t mean you don’t have a ton of friends.

Type: Office/ Commercial
Scope of Work: Alteration
Location: Soho, NY
Status: Completed 2012
Team: Method Design- Reese Campbell, Demetrios Comodromos, Kyle Baumgardner
Consultants: Mottola Rini Engineers, PC

This project for a group-practice psychology office allowed our studio to interrogate the cause and effect of how a typical doctor’s contributes to elevated levels of stress in patients. Particularly, the use of the typical ‘collective waiting room,’ and circulation that hides destination points while eliminating natural light were areas we identified as design opportunities. Our response was the implementation of a surface /landscape that organized the doctor’s offices to the dark side of the corridor–but whose formal manipulation created mini-waiting rooms along a hallway oriented parallel to the windows into the space. One panel of the tessellated vertical ‘landscape’ became a 10’ wide trapezoidal window to allow indirect and controllable light into the office. The resultant spaces create the effect of aggregated stand-alone office and waiting rooms, strung along a continuous ribbon surface through the space.

Type: Single Family Residential
Scope of Work: New Construction of 2500 sq ft residence
Location: Wilmington, DE
Status: In Progress
Team: Method Design- Reese Campbell, Demetrios Comodromos, Angela Pasquale, Kyle Baumgardner
Consultants: Laufs Engineering Design

Method Design was retained to redevelop the schematic design for this concrete bar house and complete the design process. The main focus of this project is based around several key factors, view to the surrounding Brandywine, strategic volume geometry, and clean lines. In order to maintain the long concrete bar geometry, the roof had to be developed in such a way that it could help structure itself while spanning about one hundred feet. Method Design’s response was to utilize light wells with a geometry that allows for ample interior natural light, a green roof, and structural system. Additionally, a fifty foot infinity pool will be floated off of the front deck that describes the horizon from most views. Within the house, the program is differentiated by serviced and servant that allows for material strategies to be applied.  The simple massing provides opportunities to be creative in terms of storage location and display areas for the unique collection of the client.

Type: Urban
Scope of Work: Competition
Location: Brooklyn Bridge, NY
Status: Not Built
Team: Method Design: Reese Campbell, Demetrios Comodromos, Jessica Bristow, Kendall Baldwin
Studio Rede: Julia Watson

Can urban spaces help resolve concern over health, biodiversity and public education? The Brooklyn Bridge Bastions or B3 proposal looks to re-appropriate the underside infrastructural space of the Brooklyn Bridge – transforming it from a vacant to a civic venue where previously unmatched urban activities can create a new infrastructural hybridization. Urban ecological habitation and outdoor rock climbing will be synthesized with rappelling, belaying, bouldering and traversing, while situated amongst green walls and ecological nesting sites for migratory bird, bat, and butterfly species.

Recognizing some of the concerns of the City, including the incidence of obesity and diabetes, nature-deficit syndrome and the loss of wildlife habitat that has accompanied urban sprawl, the B3 design proposal manipulates a series of vertical interventions and modular wall panels to programmatically merge an outdoor classroom with a vertical gymnasium. Biodiversity is embedded within the series of vertical interventions by a system of habitats designed for a range of endemic animal and plant species.

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.