The DNA of a Design
By Barry A. Muskat
Western New Yorkers know pie-in-the-sky developers’ schemes and unfulfilled architectural dreams only too well. B
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Hauptmann-Woodward Medical Research Institute in progress, showing the exterior from Washington Street.
Photos by Jim Bush. |
Buffalo is a city known for the historical associations of its rich urban fabric and an amazing collection of buildings whose images are featured on the pages of architectural history textbooks. At the turn of the twentieth century, Buffalo was one of the richest cities in the United States and home to work by architects Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Daniel Burnham, McKim, Mead & White, and H. H. Richardson. Happily, some of those historic architectural jewels are finally being restored, including Wright’s Martin House and Greycliff, and, quite probably, Richardson’s Psychiatric Center
At the turn of the twenty-first century, architectural production of any significance slowed considerably. Ever since Gordon Bunshaft demonstrated the best that modern architecture could offer in his refined addition to the classical Albright Art Museum (1958-1961), there have only been occasional moments of great contemporary design on the Western New York architectural scene.
How many times has it been said that the University of Buffalo’s Amherst campus—constructed on the spine of Rockefeller’s dream—represents some of America’s very best modern architects doing some of their very worst work? While many still find such a statement hard to accept, over the years things look a lot better as buildings have been added and as landscape and trees have matured to lend a greening of the campus. But aside from UB and the Bunshaft addition, over the course of the last thirty years our region has seen woefully little flowering—or seeds—of a memorable building stock.
It finally seems that Buffalo may awaken from its contemporary architectural coma. Its pulse is beginning to grow stronger. The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus is helping to energize and stabilize the heartbeat. And prognosis for recovery is hopeful with projects at the very cusp of approvals and funding: a downtown Federal Court House (architects Kohn Pedersen & Fox) and a new Burchfield-Penny Art Museum (architects Gwathmey Siegel) to name just two. Bright spots are beginning to shine—literally—on the skyline.
The new Hauptman-Woodward building is one of three major medical institutions under construction at the BNMC, and the closest to completion (the others being the University of Buffalo’s Bioinformatics Center and Roswell Park’s Center for Genetics and Pharmacology).
At Hauptman-Woodward, the standard explanation from staff when justifying the need for a new structure goes like this: “The best way to show we need a new building is to take people through our old building.” The typical follow-up comment: “People are amazed at the science that comes out of the old building in spite of the inadequate facilities.”
Their current building on High Street is a non-descript yellow brick rectangular box. Formidable and solid, it is punctuated with undersized square windows. Its interior is divided into small spaces
which must truthfully be described as cramped and dingy.
Dr. George T. De Titta [Hauptman-Woodward Institute’s Principal Research Scientist, Executive Director, and Chief Executive Officer] agrees that their old space is inadequate to the tasks and affords no opportunity to grow. “In the past we lost good candidates because we couldn’t accommodate them as groups,” De Titta says. “We were literally at a point where we could not recruit another scientist to the lab.” The scientist then asserts, “We are now in a position to recruit the next generation of scientists to Hauptman-Woodward Institute, assuring that there will be a future!”
De Titta recalls that at the beginning of the planning process, they “thought like scientists as to how the building should function.” They wanted a place that felt like a spacious lab in which to work. They were aided by a “superb laboratory design group from California whose work we had seen at Stanford,” where they visited purely functional space with no need to be beautiful.
In Buffalo, efforts were made to build a very functional laboratory space and at the same time to enclose it in a very beautiful building. “We seem to have done both!” De Titta continues, “When I think about the new building, I am continually struck by how well the form and function are going to meld.”
The building’s architect, Mehrdad Yazdani, states that throughout his career he has worked with institutional clients in the private, university, and public sectors, and then says, “Of all my clients in the past twenty years, this was the most delightful group—the most collaborative group—I have ever worked with.” Considered by many to beone of the upcoming stars in the country,
Yazdani’s practice has centered in California. He found the Buffalo commission to be “a tremendous opportunity to explore new ideas, from climatic, cultural, and urban design standpoints.”
Yazdani confirms that the basic idea of the building came from an early discussion with De Titta who described scientists who tended to work individually on their experiments, go to their offices, and not interact. Indeed, interaction among scientists became the “jumping-off point” of Yazdani’s mission and the DNA for the building.
A workspace with a living room
The building itself is actually formed by a circle and a square. The circular portion is the office complex: the laboratories are housed in the glass square mass. Although it has been traditional to place scientists’ offices next to their labs, here the offices are moved to the curvilinear building. The two volumes are separated and interconnected by an open atrium. According to Yazdani, the atrium “becomes the civic space of the building, or its living room. As scientists cross the atrium to get from office to lab, the hope is that they will engage in informal conferences and interact.” The concept that “there be no place for anyone to hide” is bolstered by Dr. DeTitta’s explanation: “We do a collaborative kind of research. We depend on one another greatly.”
A skylight runs the full length of the atrium, making the light-filled area an inviting, pleasant space. A three-story-high glass wall faces the street. With the intent to make both the Institute and the science visible, the labs needed to be in a transparent box. However, Yazdani thought it a leap of faith to expect scientists who were used to working in closed spaces to “go into a fishbowl.” And the glare afforded by clear glass and direct light was not practical. A solution was found using channeled glass to create opaque but light-transmitting interior and exterior walls. (Think of the channeled glass as a handsome alternative to glass block.) Their translucence offers privacy and diffused natural light while still giving the interior participant and the exterior viewer “a ghost of activity, of scientists moving and their equipment.” Punched openings with clear glass offer views to the street and frame activities inside.
The elevator is de-emphasized at the new Institute. Elevator doors are placed in a less visible location. Instead, the focus is on a grand stairway. Despite its simple clean lines and materials, it will be as important to this contemporary building as the grand stairway is to Garnier’s Paris Opera, where it epitomizes the showy wealth of the Second Empire and offers a sense of drama. Just as the grand stairway is a space where opera-goers continue to parade and exchange greetings, the stairway at the Institute is designed to promote interaction and to be a place where people congregate.
The Hauptman-Woodward building is not an edifice in isolation but is part of the Buffalo Life-Sciences complex. Its immediate proximity to Roswell and U/B will encourage and symbolize scientific programs that are becoming more closely-aligned. De Titta notes that the ability to walk just a few yards to see your neighbors will be a great boost to interaction and collaboration.
Let the sunshine in
Yazdani is fascinated with natural light and recently completed a series of sketches and paintings exploring light as a phenomenon: “You think of a building as a solid object, but light penetrates through windows and openings.” Reviews of his Federal Court House building in Las Vegas called him an “architect of light.” He looks for ways to bring light into space that makes the interior spaces comfortable and unique, and here relies on channeled glass as the medium.
The architect skillfully plays with window openings in the curved wall of the office complex. By staggering the fenestration in handsome patterning, he assures that the window placement will be different in each office. From the interior, offices that are exactly the same in size and shape appear more diverse by having windows appear at different heights and positions along the curve. From the exterior, the curved wall mixes metallic grey painted aluminum panels with the cascade of windows, resulting in a simple rhythmic composition.
Yazdani says the materials were chosen and put together in a “classical way,” adding that “science and experimentation are talked about through the building’s architectural vocabulary, materials, and detailing.” Yazdani maintains that by not using “hip or trendy architectural moves, refinement can be found in the expression.”
Yazdani sees the new Hauptman-Woodward Institute as a signature building but is quick to clarify that the signature is not that of the architect. He feels that a building signifies the institution that occupies it: “The Institute’s current building could appear to be anything: It doesn’t talk about science.” The new structure’s design was based on certain ideas and challenges: it has taken a shape and form that now represent the Institution. Elaborate signage that was initially planned (one early design called for six foot HWI letters floating in the landscape) has been scrapped. The building itself is a sign for the institution, and lettered signage will be simple.
Instead of adding a separate visual art component to the interior of the building, a glass artisan will execute a series of sand-blasted patterns on the exterior glass. Designs will represent formulas and molecular patterns. Rather than using art as decoration inside, glass imagery will be on the face of the architecture, mirroring the scientists’ work and triggering the public’s curiosity.
Despite notions that there is a lot of experimental work in Los Angeles and the west coast, Yazdani says that many of his firm’s clients tend to be fairly conservative and not open to new ideas. He found the Hauptman-Woodward design experience to be “a breath of fresh air” and states the unspoken irony, “I had to go across the country to find the kind of client who’d embrace the kind of talent we have in Southern California.”
The new Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute building is scheduled to open in January 2005 with a formal grand opening to beplanned for the spring.
Barry A. Muskat is a regular contributor to Buffalo Spree. Muskat teaches Architectural Historyat Canisius College, where is a Professor in the Department of Art History.
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