Lecture: Greg Pasquarelli

The Porter House - New York City, New York

The Werner Seligman Lecture at the Syracuse University School of Architecture presented New York City architect Greg Pasquarelli on Tuesday, November 10. Pasquarelli, a principle at architecture firm Shop, delivered a talk titled “Out of Practice” to a full Slocum Auditorium.

Shop, a relatively young firm, has had a meteoric rise since its inception. This is due not only to intelligent solutions to design problems but by harnessing non-traditional business practices in order to get projects off the ground.

After a short introduction about the make-up of the firm (principles and employees alike come from varied backgrounds), Pasquarelli presented a number of projects in depth. The projects varied in size and program but all showed innovation and ingenuity.

“We want you to be able to go to any Shop project but not be able to tell that it’s a Shop project,” said Pasquarelli. “It’s called the drive-up test: no two projects should look that much alike.”

The firm designed a camera obscura at Mitchell Park in Greenport, N.Y. as a kit of parts rendering traditional construction drawings unnecessary. Two workers assembled the prefabricated pieces simply by putting them together according to detailed diagrams.

To complete the Porter House, a residential project in New York City’s Meatpacking District, the firm became part owner. In addition to taking on the financial risk of ownership, the firm devised a system of zinc parts to fabricate a cantilevered addition to an existing historic building. The cantilever allowed for additional saleable footage in the apartments, and the modular zinc system allowed for easy building assembly and manageable material costs. The slick, eye-catching project sold out in nine weeks.

As the firm has grown, garnering press attention in the process, so too have the projects. Shop is now working on large-scale urban designs for both New York City’s East River Waterfront and South Street Seaport. Most recently, the firm has been tapped to design a new $650 million stadium for the NBA’s Nets.

Pasquarelli closed by talking about an upcoming software release and a transparent photovoltaic wall system the firm developed. The wall system will be unveiled first on architect Toshiko Mori’s Center of Excellence in Syracuse, N.Y. later this year.

“Sustainability isn’t about putting photovoltaics on your building though,” Pasquarelli said. “It’s about building buidlings that people love and take care of – that’s what being sustainable is.”