Hey, It Looks Just Like the Picture

New York Times: By ANTOINETTE MARTIN -- Nov.19

DEAN MARCHETTO, an architect in Hoboken, considered this bit of news so important that he put out a press release to publicize it: Two condominium buildings that his firm had designed came out looking just like the renderings.

Set side by side, the drawings and photographs of the St. Louis on 14th Street in Hoboken, developed by Michael Stefano and built by T&M Construction, and the Grand View on Grand Street in Jersey City, a Metro Homes project built by Paul Fried, do provide a quick slap of recognition: Wow! Twins!

But, actually, Mr. Marchetto is trying to make a number of serious points. They include his concern over cost-cutting measures taken by some builders that sap class and pizazz out of designs. They include his belief that many local planning boards need to be more muscular and more alert, establishing strict standards and enforcing them with painstaking care. And they include a rallying cry to ordinary citizens ? as Mr. Marchetto explained in a post-press-release interview ? who may not even notice as the overall look and ambience of their communities start to decline.

Mr. Marchetto sees urban communities as being particularly at risk. ?As our inner cities undergo continued pressure for redevelopment,? he said, ?it is increasingly important that the new buildings at least match the standard of quality prevalent in the older buildings that made these cities great when they were first built a century ago.?

?If not,? he added, ?the redevelopment of the inner cities will continue to degrade the very nature of that which they are trying to improve.?

Several other architects working in New Jersey?s urban areas said they understood Mr. Marchetto?s disdain for builders who engage in wholesale substitution of materials that are cheaper than what a design calls for, and who strip facade detail that might be crucial. Many also share his concern over the way attractive renderings of proposed buildings submitted to planning boards sometimes turn out to be just ?pretty pictures.?

None wanted to single out a particular edifice, describing it as too difficult to pinpoint blame after a design becomes reality. But all said they could think of buildings in New Jersey cities that wear the look of cost cutting like bargain-basement suits.

?Dryvit,? said Paul Drago of Morristown-based NK Architects. ?I see Dryvit and fake stucco, and I tend to cringe.?

Dryvit is a polystyrene foam product that can be used to form the exterior walls of a structure. Builders can then use spray-on artificial stucco to create the building facade, giving it a coarser and more porous appearance than concrete stucco.

A few years ago, in a move that Mr. Marchetto called ?inspired,? Hoboken officials passed a ?facade ordinance? that effectively bans the spray-on practice. It requires that the 75 percent of a building?s facade that is not windows be either stone or brick.

All-glass buildings are quite a bit more expensive to build than masonry structures, said Erica Tishman of Manhattan-based DeWitt Tishman Architects, whose firm has designed numerous buildings in Hoboken and Jersey City. Buildings made of precast stone panels, like those at Rockefeller Center in New York City, are generally the most expensive to build, she said.

DeWitt Tishman came up with a precast stone design for the Trump Plaza residential tower now under construction in Jersey City, but it was deemed too costly and the architects moved to a brick design, Ms. Tishman said.

?We spent a whole lot of time on the exterior, because the developers are really marketing an image,? she said. ?We designed a brick building, articulated with setbacks and different colors of brick, and many large windows. It is perfectly possible to design a beautiful building with those materials.?

?Value engineering? ? that is, making the most of a developer?s money ? can often be achieved with creative use of brickwork, Ms. Tishman said. She and other architects talked about reserving use of the most expensive materials for the most public parts of a building, like its street-level facade and the lobby.

The 55-story Trump building?s lobby is distinctly lavish, with a huge limestone fireplace, oxidized bronze details, ebony woodwork and white onyx walls, she noted.

As Mr. Drago put it: ?You have to design smart, understand your budget and concentrate your resources. When you pour a lot into the lobby and main facade, you should be smart about the rest of the building and realize the other areas where money can be saved to compensate.

?To do that,? he added, ?the architect and the builder both need to be involved during the different phases.?

He noted that his firm had been called in to testify recently in a suit brought against a builder whose construction work had failed to live up to his firm?s design plans.

When developers simply hand architectural plans to builders and let them translate those into construction documents, problems are inevitable, according to Mr. Drago.

An architectural rendering that may delight a planning board could turn out to be just a ?glam shot,? he said ? a gussied-up depiction of what turns out to be a mediocre building.

Mr. Marchetto said he commended the developers and builders he had worked with on the two midrise residential buildings in Jersey City and Hoboken for being very careful about securing the ?right? materials for his designs. ?In fact,? he said happily, ?with the type of brick they found, these buildings may actually look better than they did in the drawings.?

The Grand View is a 40-unit condo on the edge of the Paulus Hook Historic District of Jersey City. Mr. Marchetto said it was designed to blend with the neighborhood?s classic brownstones and pick up on the Richardsonian Romanesque style of its more prominent buildings.

The St. Louis, a six-story building with 22 condos, features a repeating arched relief on the brick facade, and a projecting cornice at the roofline, that are designed to reflect similar elements of adjacent historic buildings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/realestate/19njzo.html