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Up with the new
Recent and current projects
By Barry A. Muskat
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The Public Safety Building.
Photo courtesy of Cannon Design.
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Downtown dynamics
on Elm Street
One of the newest buildings in the downtown corridor is the Erie County Public Safety Building at 45 Elm Street. This is not your typical public structure. There is an angular energy in the reduction of its lines. It is visionary, it’s high-tech, and, for a utilitarian governmental building of its type, it’s got some character.
That character is reminiscent of the avant-garde architectural designs conceived by the Russian Constructivists: practitioners like Melnikov, Tatlin, and El Lissitzky who designed during the years of change and turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Their inventive, abstract designs contained powerful ideas, although their provocative political messages were more visionary than build-able.
Constructivist politics may no longer be relevant, but a vestige of their energy is seen in the Public Safety Building, where technology and design have synergized into a structure appropriate to an era of change. Taking the universal language of form to serve the themes of a revolution may just have some underlying resonance in this building. It could represent echoes of change in the way government operates, looking towards an era of consolidation where resources can be pooled to efficiently maximize usage of the latest advances in the science of law enforcement.
The building is state-of-the-art. It incorporates sophisticated technology for daily tasks, but also has the ability to kick into gear to respond to natural or man-made emergency situations and disasters. It includes a regional emergency 911 Communications Center, the County Emergency Operations Center, headquarters for Central Police Services, Regional Computer Forensic Services, and DNA and Trace Evidence Laboratories. It also houses the County’s Ballistics and Police Analytical Laboratories, access to the statewide Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the FBI’s Regional Computer Forensic Services, and will soon be home to the Wireless Division Office of the New York State Police.
Kevin Comerford, Commissioner of Erie County Department of Central Police Services, sees this building as “an opportunity for all the public safety disciplines to come together and look at new ways of delivering their services.” He recalls an early meeting when the concept was in its infancy when he invited first responders to a meeting and posed the question, If you had the chance to reinvent the way that you deliver services, what would it look like? “There were lots of great ideas,” says Comerford, “but the singular great impediment was the lack of an infrastructure.”
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Architect Harry Warren and Kevin
Comerford, Commissioner of Central
Police Services for Erie County
Photo courtesy of Cannon Design.
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Erie County commissioned Cannon Design to design and manage construction of the resultant Public Safety Building. The lead architect and design principal on the project was Harry Warren. In discussing the materials, cost, and appropriateness, Warren notes, “This is a public building that needs to stay in place for a long time—as a civic building it is every citizen’s and needs a quality and a substance to it.” Metal panels and concrete are used in a modern interpretation of a traditional civic building. “As the most sophisticated building of its type in the region and a hi-tech building, expressing that technology in its design can be a source of pride for the community.”
The building is not only hi-tech, it’s hi-security. Designed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, security was a key consideration in its planning. Warren reflects, “There were no building codes that specifically addressed security in a post 9/11 environment.
“There were many concerns about what a secure building needs to be,” he continues. “It had to be the best practices, to be secure, but not overly so.” That accounts for why there are large areas of glass, plus large areas of solids for safety and security.
An urban grid dictates the shape of the building, and Warren notes that an urban design strategy keeps its profile narrow. The grid set up the strategy of the narrowness which then borrowed from the architect Louis Kahn’s philosophy of served and servant spaces. Kahn’s hierarchical distinction between the primary rooms (the served) and the zones devoted to supporting functions (the servant). Here, the served spaces are open and flexible. The adjacent service cores of mechanical shafts, utilities, elevators, and offices are grouped along the south side of the building to serve the laboratories and communications center to the north. That’s why as you view the building, it’s expressed as a more glassy side and a more solid side.
The building’s glass façade is difficult to read from the exterior, even when studied from different vantage points. It appears to be a full atrium, but turns out to be stacked two-story spaces in a pairing of floors. When asked about this configuration, Warren explains that many components of the planning and design were dictated by security and circulation concerns.
Warren also notes that it is significant socially that this is one of the first facilities in the state and the nation that really integrates multiple communities and shares cost savings as well as the ability in an emergency situation to foster communications and interaction. He points out the involvement of the Law Enforcement community in the plan. “In Kevin Comerford we had a fabulous client who really wanted to listen and do something great for the community.
“At the high point,” Warren continues, “we worked with seventeen different groups from across Erie County, including municipalities, police, and emergency communications.”
The county’s DNA Laboratory is greatly expanded in its new home (and bathed in natural light flowing through broad factory-style expanses of glass.) The Trace Evidence Laboratory identifies drug samples, tests blood, and analyzes fire debris samples. Scientists employ sophisticated automated instrumental analysis. The building also houses a unified city and county Emergency Operations Center.
An FBI regional computer forensic laboratory is newly completed and is one of only thirteen in the country. Evidence that formerly was sent to Albany for analysis will now be handled here. The 911 Call Center will service both Erie County and the City of Buffalo. The communications system is expected to be operational by this fall.
In the lowest level of the building, there is a dining/vending area. Large windows look up a hillside that is excavated, sloped, and planted with greenery, and the spacious area is flooded with light. This, too, is flexible space that can be called into action and used as part of an emergency operations center if needed.
Attention to details and materials is apparent in the building’s interiors. Wood trim, doors, and cabinets are light natural maple with stainless hardware. Floor tile patterns repeat on each floor with variations of color groupings. When asked about the choice of finishes, Warren explains in terms of hi-tech hi-touch. The selected materials are consciously used as a warm balance to the hi-tech finishes. “It’s a hi-tech building, but where you touch things, there’s a concern for human sensory input. ... Wood, brushed metals, and soft surfaces,” he says, “bring more of a human texture to things.”
When the construction was near completion, the county financial crisis and budget fiasco stalled the progress. Comerford recalls, “When it was about two months from completion, things slowed down to a crawl.” Stating an analogy for the setback, he says “It’s like falling off your bike with the finish line in sight.” Nevertheless, the building was completed in twenty-seven months, from shovel to move-in. Despite build-outs of additional space, it came in under-budget.
Phase Two of the project is a planned training academy to be built on a site directly across Elm Street. A ramp spanning Elm will pierce through the glass façade and connect the two structures. The educational function of the Training Academy presents the opportunity to share space and interact; the ramp will give direct access back and forth between the buildings and, in the case of extreme events (natural disasters, blizzards, or emergencies), it will also maintain security between the buildings.
The ramp will also form an arch—almost a gateway—into the city. Warren notes that in some ways, the complex could be thought to be like a Bauhaus, with an urbanist approach to architecture that defines forms as much as expression. As far as defining form, it’s pretty safe to say that the handsome new Public Safety Building will be the anchor that defines the form of a new direction for an important piece of downtown Buffalo.
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Rendering showing different views of the proposed Federal Court House by 3D-WIN.
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The Federal Court House
At the time of this writing, the New Federal Court House was still in limbo. Despite President Bush’s tabling of the federal project, our region’s senators and representatives have worked to reinstate it into the budget process. At the time of this writing, it was passed by the Senate, waiting for action in the House. The extensive delay has been extremely unfortunate. One of the most important sites in the heart of the city has been on extended hold, waiting for one of the most visible projects in Buffalo’s recent building history. In the interim, the exceptional site is exceptionally unsightly—half-demolished, half-forsaken—and the contiguous and surrounding properties are abandoned.
The site is on Niagara Square, at the very heart of Joseph Ellicott’s plan for the city of Buffalo, from which the street pattern radiates. Some of the city’s most famous architecture is a stone’s throw in any direction. City Hall, Buffalo’s exuberant example of Art Deco civic architecture dominates (Dietel, Wade, and Jones, 1929-31). There’s the City Court Building (Phohl, Roberts and Biggie, 1971-74), a Brutalist concrete slab whose windowless façade is best recognized as a backdrop to Kenneth Snelson’s steel tubular sculpture at grade level. There is also the Buffalo Athletic Club (E. B. Green, 1921-24), and Ellsworth Statler’s prized hotel (George Post, 1921-23).
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Rendering showing different views of the proposed Federal Court House by 3D-WIN.
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When and if the delayed Court House is funded and released, it will bring civic and aesthetic pride back to this site. Construction plans are ready to be implemented by the General Services Administration and were designed by the firm of Kohn Pedersen Fox. (This firm also designed the Greater Buffalo International Airport, which was completed in 1997.) In the same year, two federal court houses of their design were completed—one in Portland, Oregon, and the other in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The new design for Buffalo seems very different from the other two in their portfolio. It features an elliptical shape and a curtain wall of glass. Security factors such as blast control were integral to the planning, along with concerns for sustainability and budget constraints.
Buffalo Life Sciences Complex
The Buffalo Life Sciences Complex at Ellicott and Virginia Streets is the Buffalo and Niagara Medical Campus’s newest building and a major complex in itself. It houses the State University of New York at Buffalo’s New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences as well as Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s Center for Genetics and Pharmacology in a truly dynamic 290,000 square-foot-complex.
The block-spanning Life Sciences Complex is recognizable by its unique façade: a series of sculptural elements clad in white. The exterior materials are aluminum, zinc, glass, and brick. The glazed panels are a pure, crisp white. (The color white made a huge architectural splash when it appeared on CitiCorp’s iconic Manhattan skyscraper in the seventies.) In the palette of earthtones that seems to form much of today’s built environment, the selection of white seems new and daring all over again.
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If you view the building from Virginia Street, there’s a vertical mass of red brick that subtly delineates the division, with UB’s four-story building to the left, and Roswell’s five-story section to the right. The internal connections will allow the two institutions unique capabilities to collaborate while maintaining their individual identities.
In their design, the team from the firm of Francis Cauffman of Philadelphia aimed to express the world-class research and technological innovation happening within. The cantilevered sculptural volumes on the Roswell side of the façade are a combination of conference meeting areas and stairways. Those mid-floor stairs are designed as a place for staff to interact: they’re surrounded by conference rooms to encourage collaboration and discussion.
In fact, the building is really about those interior spaces: large laboratories, wide spaces, and a great use of clerestory windows. Mechanicals are boldly exposed throughout the building, as is a fantastic glass-enclosed service stairwell, an element that in another facility might have been hidden in concrete block.
The interiors of the building are sophisticated and contemporary. Natural maple mixes with brushed steel and glass. Lobbies have terrazzo floors whose grays and charcoals continue through carpet tile, rubber, and linoleum flooring. The laboratories are oak with black composite surfaces. Perforated maple (almost like a retro pegboard) pops up on an occasional ceiling and on stair-walls.
For Roswell Park, this is the most recent expansion of an institution that was founded in 1898 and was the first cancer center in the United States. The Center for Genetics and Pharmacology was built to house its internationally renowned cancer genetics research team and innovative drug development program.
UB’s New York State Center of Excellence merges high-end technology (such as supercomputing and visualization) with research excellence in genomics, proteomics, and bio-imaging. It was founded to study the mechanics of disease and develop diagnostic tools, therapeutic interventions, and preventative treatments. Bioinformatics merges aspects of applied math, biology, statistics, information technology, and computer science to solve biological problems and is known as a powerful weapon in the fight against disease.
The momentum is just starting at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, with substantial plans for landscaping and the extension of Allen Street. My hopeful prognosis is that in the organism of the city, this spread of healthy cells can continue to regenerate adjacent blocks of urban stock.
Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute
When I first wrote about Hauptman-Woodward’s new building (Spree, 11/04), it was barely finished and just about to be occupied. The exterior was intriguing, slightly daring, and definitely exciting. The interiors were still at the hard-hat stage: almost ready but without many of their final surfaces and materials. With the project fully complete and the building humming with activity, the analysis has crystallized and is even better both inside and out.
Now that the landscape is in place and HWI is a functioning building in the context of a streetscape, it is even more impressive. The building works in its context, not only functionally, but visually.
In the construction phase, Mehrdad Yazdani, the lead architect on the project for Cannon Design, had spoken to me about his fascination with natural light and his exploration of light as a phenomenon. We talked in terms of light penetration to the interiors, and the way he skillfully staggered fenestration on the curved wall in a handsome patterning of window placement. Light flows differently into each office, bringing substantial variation to rooms of the same size and shape.
I also think of Yazdani’s use of light in regard to the exterior of the building. The grey material of the office wall seemed like a cool material in the state of construction (cool in the sense of both warmth and hipness), but in its finished state it has taken on a life of its own as it responds to the natural light of its environment. There is a warmth and glow that changes drastically with the sun’s position in the sky, weather conditions, and daylight to HWI as a structure seems truly content to experience the full four seasons and color of Buffalo’s weather calendar. Its aura stays with the observer, even when the building is no longer in view.
In my first article on this structure, I mentioned the remote elevator placement and emphasis on the stairway, likening the unfinished stairway to the grand stairway at Garnier’s Paris Opera, a famous space where opera-goers parade and exchange greetings. It was an analogy that was over-the-top and that I regretted as soon as it appeared in print. But truth be told, I was right on target. Despite its simple, clean lines and materials, the HWI stairway is as important to this building as is the stairway that epitomized the showy wealth of the Second Empire. Its drama and placement encourages a moment of pause. The interaction and intimacy of the HWI building wouldn’t be the same if it relied solely on its elevator banks.
HWI will not only be renowned for the excellence of its science. Here, the crystal molecule has turned into a jewel. This building is a classic.
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Rendering of the Health Now building
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Health Now
Health Now will bring almost thirteen hundred employees to downtown Buffalo, and is doing so with an exciting new signature building, scheduled for 2007 completion.
However, the Health Now construction project has not been welcomed with open arms by architectural skeptics and the preservation community—and the press it’s received has been less than overwhelming. As an observer of architecture and the construction progress of this complex, and as a preservationist myself, I’m here to say that this project hasn’t been given a fair shake.
In the year 2000, a decision was made to save a portion of one lone wall of the original Buffalo Gas Light Company. The building had been designed by Buffalo’s first architect, John Selkirk, and built in 1848-69. It’s a Buffalo landmark and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Unfortunately, only an asymmetrical, side wall remnant of this important early structure was saved, hardly what anyone could call meaningful preservation.
Health Now made an extremely significant decision to build in the city instead of moving to the suburbs like its competitors. It committed to this site, a parcel that many would not have chosen as prime land.
The location is what we euphemistically call a brownfield. The site was the seat of the coal gasification process, and the ground was loaded with petroleum-based contaminants. Health Now has remediated the site, spending ten and a half million dollars in the process.
The historic façade is being preserved in situ and contrasted with a hi-tech twenty-first century building, which incorporates an eight-story building and a six-story building, connected by an atrium. Steve Risting, the building’s architect and a design principal with CSO Schenkel Shultz of Indianapolis, notes that a variety of schemes were considered before deciding on “the simplicity of an L-shaped building that played off the downtown grid with a sweeping curve to create a gateway to downtown.”
The orientation of the glass curtain wall is directly to the south, providing a panoramic view of Lake Erie and bringing lots of natural light into the workplace. The corporate and architectural goal was to create a landmark building respective of the historic content of Buffalo, but also to create a healthy, sustainable building. It’s registered with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), and it’s especially admirable that this certification will have been achieved on a site that was formerly a brownfield.
When asked about criticisms that the building looks like it belongs in a suburban office park, Risting explains that they’ve tried to “create a variety on the massing to fit into the character of downtown.” He says he’s always been careful of the materiality: here, the material is pre-cast, but is a red granite architectural pre-cast, a durable modern material that provides a reference to the older brick warehouse buildings.
In a nod to Buffalo’s rich history, a seven-story rectangular atrium space is being created with references to the iconic Larkin Administration Building. Although codes now require that such a space be enclosed in glass, it will be surrounded by conference and team rooms so that it becomes a place of interaction.
On the fringe of downtown and on the edge of new energies for the waterfront, let’s hope that Health Now can represent a symptom of positive things now happening for Buffalo.
The Burchfield-Penney Art Center
I find it remarkable that intensely negative comments keep surfacing about the new design for the BPAC. This is an important building that will take the Burchfield out of its inadequate facilities in Rockwell Hall, boost the institution from the minor leagues, and enhance the museum district. It’s been years in development and is designed by Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel, who, at this point of their productive careers, are world-class architects with an impressive portfolio.
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Rendering of the new Burchfield-Penney Art Center.
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The BPAC will be moving to a freestanding building at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Rockwell Road. I had the privilege to spend time with Gwathmey and Siegel in their New York offices and was extremely impressed by the thought, attention, and logic that went into every minor detail of the scheme. I’m also very confident that the Gallery’s interiors will be amazing. (Spree, 3/06.) The building’s exterior, however, has generated a lot of whining: It doesn’t match the fabric of Elmwood Avenue; Its principal entry should face Elmwood; The wall is just too plain; It should be red brick to match Clifton Hall.
The very nature and beauty of the arts is that we’ll all never agree on stylistic issues, but it strikes me that some of the most vocal protests against the new BPAC have substantially more volume than validity.
Matching the fabric of Elmwood Avenue: Just how does that all-encompassing and threadbare catchphrase relate? I think the fabric that is being referred to really begins at the corner of Forest Avenue and weaves southwards from there. The Albright-Knox, Clifton Hall, the Psychiatric Center, and Buffalo State College all are a part of a quilt of different sorts. Mercantile storefronts that meet the urban sidewalk are nowhere to be found on the section from Delaware Park and the Scajaquada south to Forest. The majority of this section of Elmwood has a more stately quality, formal buildings, and a hint of Olmsted’s landscape plan for the Psych Center.
Its principal entry should face Elmwood: Why is that dictum at all appropriate for an art gallery and for an institution that is integrally tied to an academic campus? The BPAC is layered in mission and purpose with Buffalo State College, its Fine Arts program, and its Art Conservation program. Why would the entry turn its back to the campus and its students?
The wall is just too plain: Oh, give me a break. The fabric of the building is balanced with interesting sustainable materials—limestone, glass, magnesium bricks, and zinc panels—and is designed as a backdrop to outdoor sculpture. The building is set back to maximize the greenspace of the five-acre site. The natural material of the zinc-clad wall will develop a patina with age. As it weathers, it will form an appropriate backdrop to a sculpture park for the permanent collection or rotating installations.
It should be red brick to match Clifton and Rockwell Halls: Lasting architecture does not always match. If it did, every structure in the built environment would be made of one perfect material. That’s just not the way it works. Individual buildings have individual character, yet relate to their context in proportion and rhythms.
I believe that the people who are demanding matching brick as the only appropriate material for any building on that site are the same people who, in 1964, would have protested Gordon Bunshaft’s proposed addition to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. E. B. Green’s original Albright is an exquisite Greek temple. Bunshaft’s rectilinear masterpiece is the ultimate refinement of classic Modernist simplicity and as such is the perfect foil to respect the original structure.
The BPAC is on a winning track and the city will be better for it. Indeed—thanks on its plans for a new building that can professionally hold and conserve a world-class collection—the museum has recently received substantial new donations. The BPAC’s new home is a well-designed building that will serve the university and the community well. Let’s get on board with the full support this project deserves.
The Cobblestone Lofts: Adaptive reuse on Mississippi Street
The website is aptly named. Cobblestonealive.com represents a block of the city that was architecturally, economically, and socially near-death.
The Cobblestone District itself represents a vigorous piece of Buffalo’s history and prosperity in an era when the city thrived as a transfer point of the Erie Canal. While the area represents a long-ago high point of prosperity, it is also emblematic of urban decay and neglect—neglect that is now being reversed.
A series of red brick and concrete buildings were built as trans-shipment points in the early twentieth century when a booming railroad industry was replacing canal transportation. One particularly nondescript, four-story warehouse building is now at the center point of a transformation by Savarino Construction, which has transformed the structure into handsome office lofts. They’ve moved their suburban headquarters to the city and have fashioned the first two floors for their offices. The two upper floors are occupied by additional office tenants.
In many ways, the building’s cube has the perfect critical mass for this type of project. Its concrete, fireproof construction offers wide-open spaces and high ceilings. Sam Savarino describes the structures “like pillar and post construction out of concrete.” This enables great flexibility in the installation of windows of any size. Walls were opened to accept huge windows that bring tons of natural light and afford great views. From the exterior, they allow the building to glow like a beacon at night.
The great-looking offices are loft-style with exposed mechanicals. As a professional commercial contractor, Savarino had the resources to design any new building to fill his company’s needs. But “not with the character we have here,” he explains. “You just can’t manufacture the funkiness we have in our offices—the exposed brick, the exposed concrete. It’s a lot more interesting to come to work.” He also talks about the historic significance and pedigree of the area, “what this community was all about.” Substantial structural columns could be seen as a negative, but here they become a feature that is enhanced with architectural lighting.
After years in the suburbs, his employees found the traffic at Sheridan and Transit “difficult at best,” and find this location at the edge of downtown more convenient. Incentives to locate in Renewal Communities like this also make it economically advantageous to invest in these areas.
Other parts of the Savarino project envision a mixed-use complex, including rehabbing the five-story Knowlton Warehouse at the corner of Mississippi and Perry into thirty-six luxury condominiums. This is particularly exciting since most all of the series of recent successful residential rehabs have been rental projects. Repairs to the concrete skin and all new fenestration will maintain the character but give the structure a much more vital different look. Occupants will enjoy loft living, private balconies, a health facility, and enclosed or sheltered parking. There will be retail space on the ground floor and a small Irish pub. A low terminal building between the two structures will be converted to a restaurant or entertainment center.
Cobblestone Lofts is located near a variety of other development projects, such as a proposed outdoor Faneuil Hall type market, a possible Bass Pro, a redeveloped inner harbor, and the reconstructed Erie Canal terminus. This section of the city is hot—and, yes, very much alive!
Barry A. Muskat is Buffalo Spree’s architecture critic and a regular contributing writer.
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