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The plans strategically transform the church interior to expand its use while leaving the exterior of the church in its original form. The project aims to be both local and global.

The church is an anchoring institution for the neighborhood, echoing the role the church played in East Village as a space for community gathering, while also serving as an art gallery, lecture hall, and performance space for global art audiences. Part of a 3.75 acre master plan that Library Street Collective is developing for the area, the adaptive reuse of The Shepherd is the first phase in the creation of a new creative core for the East Side of Detroit. Future projects will include new artist live/work spaces, a bar/restaurant/cafe, and expanded exhibition space with art storage. True to the core mission of the Library Street Collective, the master plan will feature key partnerships with local artists and community members including, McArthur Binion’s art foundation, a residency for Cranbrook students, an art/playscape by local artist Charles McGee, and a public sculpture walk with permanent and changing artworks commissions by local and global artists.

The flagship store transforms the original quirks of the exposed steel-framed building into design opportunities. Visible steel beams and girders are accented with rust paint, while a grid of decorative columns, serving as pathways for electrical service, creates a system of merchandising podiums that define display areas.

Perforated acoustic panels, set between columns, form partitions and display nooks for individual furniture pieces. Sheer curtains at the perimeter’s floor-to-ceiling windows diffuse light, offer privacy from the Lexington Avenue traffic, and provide a unified exterior identity. A graphic steel stair, inserted into a dramatic slab cut, physically and visually connects the main showrooms.

The project repositions the university’s works on paper collection from a siloed Arts Campus designed by Roche and Dinkeloo to sit between two McKim, Mead, & White structures at the heart of campus, forming a bridge between them and creating a modern entry point into the main university library.The new gallery presents an opportunity to literally mix the visual arts into the central campus, to extend a sense of interdisciplinary fellowship between departments, and to provide a clearly defined place with a distinct identity for this very important university resource.

It will be a connective building — a social condenser — one that ties multiple groups of people to one another and to the visual arts.  In a relatively small area, the new gallery building accommodates several complex and sometimes contradictory functions. On the one hand, the new building will be open, porous, and connective, linking adjacent buildings and creating new campus connections.  On the other hand, the gallery itself must be a highly controlled environment, devoid of sunlight, and protective of the delicate works on paper.  Our design carefully overlaps these seemingly opposing characteristics in the service of both the connective and protective nature of the program.

At a distinct moment of expansion and aesthetic difference within the museum, the integration of light and a series of fine metal mesh partitions separate, yet visually connect, the four quadrants of the multipurpose space organized around the museum’s central stair.

A product of meaningful collaboration, the Mandala Lab was completed with input of museum leadership, curators, exhibition specialists, cognitive scientists, Buddhist teachers, contemplative humanities researchers, and features contributions from a diverse group of contemporary multidisciplinary artists. Designed for all ages, the Mandala Lab also functions as the new home for The Rubin Museum’s School and Family Programs, hosting weekday art and mindfulness classes in partnership with the NYC Department of Education.

Perrotin is an international art gallery with six locations worldwide. Over the course of three years, we spearheaded a move from a 2,000 square foot (sf) space, incapable of supporting their artists and program, into a 23,000 sf multi-level facility. This project restored The Beckenstein Building, constructed in 1890, from residential lofts back to commercial use.

Although it is a private art gallery, Perrotin is a very public building — unlike many museums, it is free and open to all. The gallery spans five floors connected by a new half-inch blackened steel plate stair, and includes exhibition spaces of varying proportions to accommodate a variety of media and scales of work: from works on paper, to installation, to large-scale sculpture. Because of its scale and varied uses, the building functions more like an institution than a commercial art gallery. The building includes a bookstore, a café, offices for 25 full-time staff, and an entire floor of climate-controlled art storage. In addition, the gallery hosts varied programming including lectures, private dinners, concerts, and large events. Every new installation harmonizes in its own way with the space and transforms your perception of the galleries — seeing them anew with each show.

The painter Nina Chanel Abney recently commissioned Peterson Rich Office to convert a dilapidated garage building in Cold Spring, NY into a live/work studio space. The design is an adaptive reuse of the existing structure, strategically re-purposing concrete block walls for a new layout and building structure.

A new sawtooth roof will transform the interior space into a bright, daylit studio space while redefining the building exterior with a bold graphic form that references the industrial vernacular of the region. Selective new openings in the walls frame views of the Hudson River, while creating a private building that is screened from a popular pedestrian pathway at the street. The building will contain space for production, commerce, and living. A generous painting studio, spray booth, and office will provide daily workspace for Ms Abney and her assistants. She plans to sell merchandise and artist multiples from a small commercial space on the street. Ms. Abney will live in a two bedroom apartment separated from the studio by a shared corridor.

At its core, P&T is a bookstore. It will display roughly 10,000 volumes, making it the largest independent bookstore in the area. However, the store will also be home to a series of civic spaces, designed to encourage public discourse.

A lecture space with raked seating is set up for readings and symposia. When there are no events, the built-in seating will provide a place to sit, read, and talk. A full service cafe will serve coffee and light foods, further encouraging visitors to stay for a while. A children’s reading space beside the cafe, outfitted with soft seating and custom carpets will serve small children and young adults, providing space for families. Finally a podcast studio, fit out with the technical and acoustic infrastructure for professional recording is at the front of the store, facing the street through storefront glass, reminiscent of the historic East Village Radio window which once lived a block away, this space will make a public-facing event out of podcast recording and conversations. The podcast studio is available for any number of the public to use, free of charge.

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This mix of civic and commercial program will make P&T a place of intellectual activity, day and night - a new focus for intellectual dialogue on the Lower East Side.

With over 600,000 people living in New York City public housing, NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) is both the largest public housing system and landlord in North America.

Owing to decades of neglect, the buildings, which were primarily built between the 1940’s and 1960s and had once been sought-after communities and national models for publicly managed middle income housing – have faced severe maintenance issues and significant disinvestment by the Federal and State governments over the past 25 years. It is a crisis that poses not only a quality of life problem for tenants, but also for the City of New York more broadly, as the largest employers of NYCHA residents are city agencies. If NYCHA housing were to become unlivable, its tenants, who work for the MTA, the Department of Sanitation, the police and fire departments, and many other key city agencies, would have nowhere to live in the very city they help make run.

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Although it has been underfunded for decades, NYCHA does have tremendous assets that could be leveraged to help tackle the agency’s myriad issues: NYCHA owns some of the most valuable, yet underdeveloped parcels of land in the five boroughs, much of which is currently used for surface level parking.

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With this in mind, in 2014, PRO embarked on a fellowship with the Institute of Public Architecture that led to the first study of how to best use these assets. While the concepts were highly lauded, years spent by NYCHA pursuing strategies for infill development to raise additional revenue on these parcels ultimately did nothing to improve the conditions of current residents, leaving them languishing and frustrated.

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In 2019, after five years of ongoing research and dialogue with NYCHA, PRO embarked on a fellowship with the Regional Plan Association to explore a more integrated approach to development that would instead begin with the restoration and rehabilitation of existing buildings. To best understand the needs and challenges of the existing buildings, principals Miriam Peterson and Nathan Rich began by establishing a participatory design process with residents, gaining their direct input and authorship into the renovations they so desperately needed.

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PRO took as their starting point a basic, pressing issue echoed among residents across NYCHA’s 277 sites – constantly breaking down heating and aging infrastructure – and then looked at how many other issues they could solve through the design process, all while piggybacking onto NYCHA’s carbon neutral goals. Their solution came in the form of a balcony strategy which would provide each apartment with an outdoor structure to both house condensers for individual heat pump units and also provide much needed access to outdoor space in a post-covid world. The balconies in turn, became the foundation for a larger architectural strategy that would extend outwards, creating new units and space for amenities through a series of low-rise structures that meet the existing buildings at oblique angles, and upwards, creating a rooftop surface for a solar array. The new unit extensions reframe public space on campuses by creating new, brightly-lit lobbies closer to the street, enabling a safer public perimeter, while providing crucial 21st century amenity spaces to residents. Meanwhile, the balconies would transform the monolithic building facades into something more porous, more open, and more dynamic.

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Since publishing their report in 2020, PRO has continued to work with NYCHA as design and community engagement consultants.  They are currently working to build a system for realizing a participatory design process across 14 NYCHA developments and are shepherding design excellence for many of NYCHA’s current and future renovation projects, working directly with resident groups to create concept designs for campuses across all 5 boroughs.

The exhibition underscores how architecture can play a vital role in fostering participation and a sense of belonging. In a context where our social lives are shaped by real estate and economic forces, Peterson Rich Office’s ethos diverges from previous recommendations to demolish entire campuses and neighborhoods. Instead, PRO provide guidelines to maintain and improve the existing urban fabric and the communities that compose it.

One in every 16 New Yorkers live in public housing units owned and managed by the New York Housing Authority. Many of its complexes are in need of routine maintenance and costly repairs, often after decades of neglect. Over the past eight years of research, teaching, and professional practice, Peterson Rich Office has developed a series of projects that focus on the New York City Housing Authority as a public resource that should be valued by all New Yorkers. Our work has focused on this unrealized potential as an asset that could help preserve and improve NYCHA across its vast portfolio.

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Like many NYCHA campuses, Cooper Park features several repeated buildings set back from the street edge. Situated on a super block with 550,000 square feet of available area for development or sale, the site posed challenges. Given the requirement for 60-foot window-to-window distances, few available sites emerged to unlock NYCHA’s latent unbuilt FAR (floor area ratio). Instead, our proposal focused on new construction as extensions of existing buildings, facing the street. This approach not only provides an urban edge to the campus but also enhances the existing green spaces.

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The introduction of new lobbies directly accessible from the street activates common areas, seamlessly connecting interior programs to exterior spaces and natural light. Additionally, ground-floor units offer opportunities to right-size older residents into contemporary apartments that cater to the needs of NYCHA’s senior population. Vertical extensions leverage existing load-bearing footprints, creating additional interior community spaces on the rooftop. These extensions take advantage of the unique perspectives afforded by the tower-in-the-park housing typology.

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We created a deep-set shadowed eave, invoking the horizon, which is omnipresent in the artist’s work. Above the eave is a matte, anodized aluminum roof that evenly reflects the sky. Below the eave are blackened cedar walls, mimicking the dark wooded trees that backdrop the building.

The site is a flood zone, therefore the studio floor sits 30” above grade and extends to a wooden deck surrounding the structure, floating just above the tall native grasses. At the interior, the artist works on several paintings at a time, in the round, incorporating similar tones into each series. The main studio space is therefore scaled in plan and volume to accommodate her method of working. She requires mostly opaque walls, however the studio offers calculated views to the outside without allowing direct sunlight to enter the space. These vertical openings frame a single view through the entire building, toward a lone grove of river birch trees. The main source of natural light, two large banks of skylights, frame the sky.

The space is characterized by a curvilinear, smooth, and thick-bodied stair. Its commanding presence anchors the deep, public-facing spaces, serving as a point of orientation when moving across the open layout of this home.

We proposed three simple moves for making this cavernous undifferentiated space a home. First, by expanding the openings to the exterior we connected the interior space to the large exterior space, maximizing natural natural light exposure and creating a yard in the city. Second, we created an open communicating stair in the thin overlapping zone between the two levels. Third, we created a hierarchy of spaces, scaled to domestic life.

Wood frame townhouse buildings are highly unusual in New York City, but this area of Williamsburg is full of them. We responded to this context by reconstructing a 2,000 square foot wood frame building in place of the original structure that was on the site. A steel-and-glass structure on the upper levels adds another 2,000 square feet. The bay window, common to so many townhouses, is interpreted here as a dramatic floor-to-ceiling prismatic glass wall on the upper levels.

PRO takes a unique approach to design and construction, collaborating with engineers and contractors in the early stages of the project. This townhouse is an excellent example of the benefits of that approach, with design details that push the envelope in terms of material use and technology.The building is primarily clad in a Manganese Ironspot Artisinal Brick, Mahogany Frame windows, and Flush-Glazed Large Panel glass. These textured, refined materials at once relate the building to adjacent brick structures, and set it apart with contemporary detailing.

We took a unique approach to the existing conditions. By leveraging the existing columns and brick walls, we crafted a space that is both specific in its design and flexible in its functionality.

Despite its small scale, every detail was meticulously considered. Customized furniture, bespoke doors, and carefully chosen handles enhance the comfort and functionality of this charming home.

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Known for its emphasis on high-quality, minimalism, texture, and material, we aimed to create a space that at once complemented these aesthetic values, and stood as a backdrop to their clothes, handbags and accessories.

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The space is shaped a series of curved plaster walls and ceilings, creating even light and minimal shadows throughout. The emphasis was on millwork and metal detailing throughout.

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Zaria’s work documents climate change through pastel drawings. Her creative process involves traveling to remote regions across the globe, capturing images and finding inspiration for her artwork. These pieces are then exhibited worldwide. Her new studio, the "Working Barn" features expansive working walls, a necessity given the large scale of her drawing formats. Additionally, the studio boasts an expansive curtain wall, framing breathtaking views of the Upper New York landscape.

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The proposed structure is a way to investigate efficient building methods, incorporating a SIP panel system into the glulam structure. Unlike other artists studios, the large window openings in Zaria's studio are oriented towards the East-West axis, allowing the artist to enjoy of sunrise and sunset from inside the studio.

The project transforms the facade of a historic Chinatown loft using light as a tool to affirm the brand’s identity from the exterior and draw visitors inside. A custom architectural feature stair, a focal point in the design, connects customers from the street to a second-level retail showroom.

PRO worked incredibly closely with fabricators throughout the design and construction process to accomplish a series of bespoke architectural and display elements with masterful craftsmanship quality. The end result is a space in which every square inch is executed to represent the brand, and a partnership that extended to design four additional permanent retail locations.

Since its inception in 2012, Library Street Collective (LSC) has presented artists and programming that connects Detroit to the international arts community while maintaining crucial support to the local creative renaissance of the city. The gallery's influence extends beyond its brick and mortar location into the city's public, private, and heritage spaces. A crucial aspect of Library Street Collective's efforts involves raising awareness and funds for nonprofits and other worthy causes, particularly those based in Detroit. Through a new holistic venture, LSC is seeking to extend services and access for artists in the Detroit community through the creation of mixed-use work and living spaces in the East Village neighborhood. Targeted for working artists making 50-80% of the area median income, 48 affordable housing units will be above or adjacent to ground floor retail and artist studio space, which can be rented out for artists to work.

The unique design and interwoven green space will provide a new connection for artists to the LSC galleries nearby, affordable working space and a network of artists through their neighborhood. Through its intentional design of small duplex, triplex, or fourplex homes scattered throughout the site, the development seeks to build porosity with the neighborhood, encourage community through shared spaces, provide private and collective outdoors spaces, creative flexible ground floor artist studio space and innovate with construction to ensure affordability.

Under pressure to create new investment opportunities, the City Planning Commission has up-zoned Manhattan and eliminated height restrictions. Their intent was to immediately generate a near endless bank of air rights, effectively printing money for investors. Instead they inadvertently spurred an entirely new building typology: a site-less tower.

These slender forms, tapered to the sky exposure plane, touch terra firma in the most minimal way. Cores and basic structure anchor into micro-sites, alleys, and rear yards. These stilted structures sidestep the ground level boundaries of Manhattan Island, and unlock the full potential of the air above it.

Many of the existing buildings in this neighborhood are constructed from stucco and wood - cheap materials that are not meant to last. In reference to New York’s great, lasting tenement buildings, 624 Metropolitan will be of load bearing masonry construction.The design has evolved into a deep study of masonry building technique. At each edge, corner, or transition, we are pushing the boundaries of what the material can do without undermining the integrity of the construction method.   Corners are curved, giving the brick an appearance of softness that will change with the sunlight over the course of the day.  PRO developed two custom bricks to work with standard brick dimensions in order to achieve the formal objectives with an economy of means.

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The building is designed to accommodate a varied community.  Units include a townhouse, three floor-through family apartments, two one bedrooms, and a duplex penthouse.  The reasons for this are both economic and social. The varied units enable the developers to reach many levels of the real estate market and will encourage diversity within the building.

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The Glossier London store was meticulously crafted to foster a sense of community among the public. Drawing in crowds of young people, it serves as a vibrant hub where visitors can fully immerse themselves in the brand experience. This project is one of five undertaken for Glossier, spanning a total of 32,000 square feet over a three-year period. The store exemplifies inclusive and universal design principles, thoughtfully integrating staff spaces in the back of the house. Our highly customized process involved direct collaboration with fabricators to create specialized architectural elements. Integrated lighting, furniture, and display systems were strategically employed to showcase objects and spaces of varying types and sizes.

The existing building is rich with neo-classical ornament that, upon first consideration, is antithetical to a successful millennial make-up brand. Design ingenuity generated a perforated cladding system that would blend the two eras into one ephemeral experience. This interior wall system, with a blush finish to compliment Glossier branding, was custom designed outboard of the existing wall system to subtly reveal the classical detail behind.

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On NYC Housing Authority sites citywide, there is over 20 million square feet of surface-level parking, much of it vastly under-utilized. Our project considers several ways to reclaim this valuable land, allowing it to play an active role in addressing the affordable housing crisis through reducing the burden of parking requirements on private developers, and using existing parking to generate revenue for NYCHA sites.

Because a parking space is a physical, tangible asset, 9x18 represents more than just a planning or policy proposal. It acts as a common ground for community engagement, and empowers NYCHA residents to participate in the discussion around development in their neighborhood. Since 2014, NYCHA, the Department of City Planning, and the New York Times have embraced ‘9x18’ as they execute and address Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s ambitious affordable housing plan, a testament to the powerful role that architects can play in shaping policy and participating in major economic issues.

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9x18 is a collaboration between Peterson Rich Office and Sagi Golan. This project was supported by an Institute for Public Architecture Fellowship and featured in the organization's exhibition, 'Total Reset.'

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Leveraging its proximity to New York City in comparison to other art institutions in the Hudson Valley, situating it in the heart of the art and cultural emergence in the region, our proposal for this adaptive-reuse project aims to bring gravity to the institution and create a localized destination within the region.

The HVMoCA is a private, not-for-profit visual arts institution founded in 2004 to serve the communities around the Hudson Valley. The project will include a new extension, a new entrance, and an exterior re-cladding of the entire facility.

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The fundamental premise of Roof by Roof is to ask how the demand for new affordable housing and requirements for extensive repair and renovation of NYCHA’s existing stock can be met as a part of a combined approach, in the face of large-scale federal funding cuts. The proposals are a response to the ambition and analysis of NYCHA and the Mayoral Office, set out in the comprehensive range of plan documents, ‘Housing New York’ (‘HNY’) –(City of NYC/ Mayor Bill de Blasio), ‘Next Generation NYCHA’ (‘NGN’) - City/Mayor/NYCHA, and the Sustainability Agenda (‘SA’) - City/Mayor/NYCHA.

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The proposal suggests that by considering the opportunity to build on top of the robust existing buildings of various NYCHA typologies, this combined approach can be achieved. Repair work can be subsumed into a larger program of new construction at locations of highest need and demand, while capital outlay typically required for repair and upgrade to meet demanding energy saving standards can be offset by the future revenue from increased provision of dwelling units. Our approximate calculations based on floor area of existing NYCHA campuses suggests that around 30,000 new apartments (providing equal numbers of 1-bed and 3-bed units) could be accommodated through adding only two story to each NYCHA building.

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The intervention, a glass volume, provides handicap-accessible circulation and allows light to penetrate deeper into the existing structure.

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At Fieldston, PRO worked with the existing structure: inserting a new entry lobby and circulation core that increased accessibility, access to daylight, and made new connections across buildings. The proposed addition of a mezzanine level would accommodate a flexible space for a learning lab and informal study, greatly increasing common space currently available to students and staff.

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For Lygia Clark's exhibition, a series of blackened steel and polypropylene foam pedestals were fabricated. Sprinkled around the gallery, the rounded forms evoke the folding, adjustable movement of Clark's "Bicho" sculptures.

For the ADAA exhibition, PRO collaborated with Bensonwood in a series of CLT display tables.