Zaha Hadid came to visit us when I was working in Philip Johnson’s office. Philip said to her, “Build something, even a dog shed in your back yard.” She had won the Peak competition, but had no built work, and this recommendation started her career as a true architect.

Edward Barnes, my first employer in New York City, told us a story during his 60th Birthday lunch. He said that he almost gave up around the age of 50, until a small addition to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis could not be done due to poor foundations in the old building. Because of this, Barnes was commissioned to build an entirely new museum. This was his first major success, and caused him to be catapulted to the I.M.Pei / Philip Johnson league.

NYC Architecture

Philip Johnson, my 3rd employer, got a start from a quiet residential architect when Mies needed an office in New York City for Seagram, to a high rise master with full spectrum class A clients. His part in MOMA architecture department and donations also kept him well exposed to media giving him all important intellectual insight to what ever was going on every minute.

Steven Holl, with whom I had the pleasure to help creating Kiasma in Finland, had a long story to tell. Like most of us, he had almost given up when a student’s parents chose him to do REAL architecture… and live like a monk in order to afford living and designing, as he was one without parental trust fund to survive, unlike Johnson and some others.
It was Philip Johnson who picked up the design of Piano + Rogers for the Pompidu Center in Paris. Rogers was biking bare-footed to teach when he found out about their success.  Eero Saarinen picked up the floor design of the Sidney Opera House. This proposal had been rejected by others.

Architects have gotten their major commissions from attending a game at a baseball park (Peter Eisenman), or being in an elevator at the right time with Donald Trump (Costas Kondylis). A visiting Japanese gentleman said to James Polshek, “Why not come to Japan and build some nice buildings?”  The rest is history.

So how did I get started?

At age 5 I loved Japanese images of structures and temple gates.

At the age of 11 I fell in love with the images of F. L. Wrights Taliesin East, which I found in a Life Magazine article.

At 14 my art teacher wanted us to draw a perspective study. I said I wanted to design a house. Her architect husband had a collection of JA (Japan Architect) and Detail Magazines from Germany. After couple of months I did my design, and her husband said to me, “That will be your career.”

My House at 14

Throughout my teens, I lived at Alvar Aalto’s designed university Campus at the Technical University. I loved the way each building sat beautifully, forming comfortable and ever-changing vistas.

I worked all hours that could while I was a teen. My jobs ranged from being a press photographer and congress technician/sound engineer, managing student cubs and being a DJ. As a consequence, my grades were not good enough, as my department was the MOST difficult of all University departments.

My second love, apart from painting and photography, was music and sound engineering. I thought it would support me better than painting in a small country like Finland. But I had managed to get international recognition in photography by doing an album cover for John Mayall. Through this, I met people in music who wanted me to continue to learn sound engineering in London’s Apple Road studios. This included a conversation with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant telling me how they made their music sound so different. From there I was recommended to study at George Martin’s AIR Studio at Oxford Circus, London. Eight weeks later an opening for Rolling Stones Mobile came up while I was visiting their office to see if I could join them in recording the Black Sabbath European tour – and I got the job (after one week trial).

Jimmy Robert

The 24/7 music world and associated travel allowed me to compare environments. I was attending live recordings for acts like Traffic, Deep Purple, Bad Company and others. On the way back from one such trip in London City, I looked over Hammersmith overpass and said to myself, “there has to be a better way,” just as I had said about photography and music before.

And thus my search for how to study architecture was reignited. A year later I found myself at NELP Department of Architecture, though still continuing to do special recordings with the Stones in Germany and others in Stones Mobile Studio. The combination of being able to travel and study projects around Europe while also designing school projects was a blast. I particularly enjoyed my 3rd year thesis about art museums. It allowed me to see dozens of museums is short succession while doing research and thinking of design. My findings from the thesis still apply after some 35 years.

Finnish Embassy for Australia

I applied for an internship at Aalto’s office, but a few days later he passed away. So my plans shifted. I went to Central Europe, but they didn’t seem to like British education. My professors suggested that I go to United States…

And this is where the practical and philosophical comparisons between Europe and US start in this book, including earnest and ‘not just fun’ pictures from the rock and roll period, and architecture travel images from European architecture.

Also:

Tips for 1. ‘Pre’ architecture phase, 2. For each year in architecture program, 3. And perhaps the most important one: how to choose the all important first job, as this sets the stage, THE foundation for entire career.

And as we don’t have any more professional fee structure as it was until middle of 1970′s based on the difficulty of the project, how can one protect and still grow to become solid professional him/herself from endless hiring firing due to fluctuations in project flow in the office.

The other day I was driving from New York to Boston while listening to news about the freak storm that hit the North East 10 or so days ago.  The complaints were about how long it took to get power back after the storm.  And yet, North America is the location of the cheapest power in the world.  As a NYC commercial architect, this surprised me.

This reminds me of the relationship between citizens and their government; we want everything our way, but never want to pay for the staff and services that make the system more robust.

One simple solution for the best protection from storms is having twice the code insulation.  Code insulation is a generation behind what is useful now and in the future.  Therefore, insulation that is merely up-to-code is less than ideal.

Solar panels, wind generators – local or school district-based ones – geothermal heat and cooling, heat and AC recovery ventilators for fresh air are all important.  This is especially true for Westchester NY.

With the proper insulation, a NYC home could come across any storm or natural disaster without any loss of comfort at home.  An NYC office is the same way. Transportation is another issue, but at least it’s an issue that does not cause us to freeze in the winter and boil in the summer.

Lighting in NYC homes can now be LED lighting, therefore directly fed from batterys or PV solar panels.

Try putting extra insulation in place along with a few primarily fixed windows (there is only a need for so many operable windows). Fixed windows are much more efficient and do not leak air.  The placement of these windows in your NYC home can lead to a great decrease in the loss of heat or AC.

Geothermal heating and cooling–which uses the free energy from the earth’s crust–coupled with solar electricity, has been around for decades (most people gasp at this due to amazement) .  The technology can be compared to that of a hybrid car.  Yet, it is the least utilized technology, as normal NYC architects, contractors, heating and cooling engineers, and suppliers do not want to change.

The end result is that a small wood burning fire place in the winter will suffice for heat and some cooking when all else fails. In the South, solar panels take care of electricity and hot water 90% of the days, providing cooling and hot showers – both of which are the most expensive items on the utility bill.

Welcome to the 21st century in style!

Tapani Talo, AIA

Principal

11 Heatherbloom Road, White Plains,

New York 10605, USA. Tel: 1- 914 – 645 2940,

Fax; 1-914-313-1641

 Email: NYsuperstudio@gmail.com

www.NYSUPERSTUDIOARCHITECTS.com

Today’s architectural income was not dependent on market gyrations, or the usual fluctuations in stock evaluations– just smart bottom line directive. “Green” as it is called these days, was called smart, and just plain savvy in the past. One thing for sure, this type of investment returns profit many times over when compared to the return on Wall Street.

Today the press their publications are too open, glossing over an overused term in US.  While the name has changed, the services have not.  Green is not always what companies claim it is. Instead of 15 to 20% improvement, those of us in the architecture and engineering field want to see and provide an 85% improvement.  We truly wish to create HIGH return on investment now and in the future.

Most corporations lack an overall view, which combines health, lessening absenteeism, diminishing the hiring of new people (hugely profitable but almost never included in building design evaluation) efficiency in all buildings (easier to quantify without the health aspect), transportation, and production (which is the most scientifically studied aspect). The Bank of America tower in NY City is perhaps one of the only buildings trying to it all.

I propose to give a short overview evaluation in about one month’s worth of hours.  This means 150 or so spread over 4 months time.  This leaves a decent amount of time to think things through thoroughly (very economical to say the least).  This can then be followed by precision consultants in each sector identified as potential for both immediate and long-term profit.

From my website one can see a few green architectural projects ranging from 1000 sq ft to 10 million, all of which I have single-handedly been in charge of in terms of high designer and project architect. What cannot be shown are the professional services that I have done during and before these architecture projects.  Those professional services have enhanced my ability to understand and provide a quality green architectural service to my clients, with the consistent approval of each client.

Many of the high-end architectural projects (even when done with a tight budget) were ended right at the time of full documentation due to markets collapsing.  Of course, that is something that is beyond our control.

Tapani Talo, AIA

But very quietly we had also passed a major point in the world without any fanfare or alarm. It was roughly the date when we exceeded the use of raw materials as what the earth can supply to us at a time when the planet was growing in population at alarming rate.

As I recalled that bright beautiful day and the moment my sister called from London to say that a plane had hit World Trade center tower, and I just said: Oh, it must be a small plane and no worries.

On the train at 125th street station, a conductor ran through the train and said this train stops here.. as the first tower collapsed. We still didn’t believe that it was serious and so I joined two UN in a cab, and so were off and running as usual.

Until 14th street. I saw this wall of dusty and bloody wall of people heading our way and I said to the cab, I guess I won’t make it for the meeting in Down Town after all.

The floors at World Trade center had pancaked one after the other from the tremendous heat and so the weight of one hitting the other created a cascading collapse.

———

Conceptually it is very similar to the last century. The 20th century started with tremendous explosion of industry, transportation, science, and everything was turning better, like the blue sky I saw September 11 morning. Until the 60’s when first alarming notes of impending global heating, seas losing their fish, unusable rivers, water shortages, presented by few people who saw this happening and making a very simple equation that if this goes on, there will be a cascading event like the World Trade center Towers collapse.

And here we all thought, oh well, just a small event, nothing to worry about: we can fix things. But things are 100 times more difficult and dangerous geo politically than the 70’s oil embargo nuisance, and we still think that way, but we cannot afford to change the course. The world is suffering from ever increasing prices for raw materials, energy, and commercial competition. Our way of living cannot go down we think, and so we do more each year, consume more.

During WW 2 there was an interesting parallel during and after Normandy landing: the MOST important commodity was oil. Nothing moved without it, so the highest efforts for the central command were to make sure oil and gasoline shipments went to front line. Everything else was secondary, bridges were built for this purpose, police made made sure the supply was not interrupted.

Single tanks consumed 8000 gallons of fuel per week. One Division needed 125000 gallons to move 100 yards.

Today in the USA we are like this army division. We need unreal amounts of energy to do simple things. Small disruption, the doubling and then quadrupling of energy and raw material costs has a dis-proportioned adverse effect on our economy as we have BLOWN it by not protecting ourselves in any way. 150 years ago each farmer knew that if he hadn’t stored grain, grass, firewood etc, he could not survive the winter. They knew that self reliance was the key.

The saddest of all, it was Jimmy Carter who put it bluntly that saving energy and raw materials was moral equivalent of WAR, and since we didn’t take to heart, we surely will have one as we all compete for the same – raw materials. We would have had almost 40 years to change our ways.

Instead we build cheaper, more temporary energy hungry buildings, and cars etc. And architects and engineers fees are made completive in bidding instead of being based on levels of professionalism. Hence there is no real long term training for young architects and engineers to do better, as we have to hire and fire at will to cut down on cost.

For instance, when we do Green, it comes out of our overhead, making us truly even poorer each year. And thus very little in effect is done to green our country. Building a little bit more expensively and making buildings save the nations’ future is a very poor calling card to present to future clients.

In my previous blogs I have pointed out means and methods for the Government to address some issues, as developers cannot change their habits until there is a tax or other incentive to DO so.

Regards,
Tapani Talo, AIA

For the sake of humanity, I am taking a break from being just ‘Green’. As everything in life really is about sincere love and art when it is at its best.

So August is the time when we renew ourselves mostly, and this poem that my fiancée and I read to each other in Nantucket reminds us of the higher calling whenever engaged in making life worthwhile.

And changed it had from my first visit working there some 12 years ago on the most exclusive private club near The Forbidden City.

The food was even MORE excellent than I’d remembered from my first visit and I ended up buying 6 cookbooks on Beijing and Northern Chinese cooking as a consequence.

Traffic had become more like in LA. The wide boulevards were now packed, but the subway was extraordinary; with full 3G connectivity.

The entire city (which is about the size of Manhattan) seemed to have been rebuilt in the last 12 years, and because if that now rivals anything in our seemingly connected small planet. The buildings have detailing, fun, and use materials that I can dream of in New York, for instance. It also has an art district where art and energetic people abound. Walking around the Olympic Stadium, even the concrete seemed to have qualities of marble with fine craftsmanship. And just like in New York, real Green approach is still a misnomer, instead like most architects it is about image for its own sake.

Local architects have grown into their own, and thus having their own impact on the future of the world of architecture. The only wish is that enough ‘seemingly old Beijing’ is left in order to keep pedestrian richness within the city proper.

The real delight each morning was to walk through different gardens and palace grounds. This is where the hundreds of years of culture are apparent, and like anywhere else with similar history, soothes our minds by being able to touch base with our past artistic minds.

If Beijing transforms itself at an equal pace in next 12 years to be Green, we have a true 9th wonder in the world.

In the University known for its high reputation in China and abroad, the students’ work indeed was fabulous in its rigor and execution. Focus was on real programs and real buildings that are buildable within budget, unlike too many of our students in our universities in the US.

But at the same time, real zero energy buildings were equally lacking in consideration as much as in the other Universities around the world. This is truly sad as it seems that only in the 70’s did we address and tackle what I consider most normal issues like energy, comfort and ‘low mileage’ buildings.

As students it is the only time in our lives when we really can do buildings that WORK in ideal way so far, as rest of the world with our clients, incentives by local and national governments is still struggling to ‘grow up’.

Regards,
Tapani Talo, AIA

Since our Government, House and Senate are not able to pull away from their sources of re-election (established industries rather than new smart ones), and allow us to do what we can do – what about…

Google, Facebook and LinkedIn?

The use of online tools and social networks could help show our nation some real spirit by supporting little extra cost in the creation of a couple of sample projects. We need to have building departments, builders, architects, engineers, and clients all aboard without them feeling like they are constantly pioneers in a Green Movement that has actually been with us for FOUR DECADES.

Look at the ‘green’ houses in the South — the houses in the North. Look at the small office buildings (or buildings similar in scope like small educational buildings or health centers) in both climates.

We need this innovation to be shown to our entire nation and since companies like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn have the databases, we would be able to access and share this sort of material and samples from anywhere in the world.

Engineers like Ove Arup showed us in the Sidney Opera House in Australia first what an excellent humanitarian curious mind can do, and now they are the largest engineering firm in the world; not just in structures but in all kinds of well-meaning aspects, including Green.

I met Ove Arup in the 1980’s when he was an elderly man. He gave me his own version of a Chess Game he had designed. The mind never stops! He was very proud of a bridge that had noise and rain reduced for pedestrians crossing the river. His staff has been a similar delight to work with throughout my career on issues that almost no one else is willing to tackle.

Fritz Gartner, an engineer near Munich, has produced in his factory the most beautiful curtain wall solutions that, lately, are competitively priced if one (owner) thinks beyond ten years of operation. I had proposed one of his economical solutions for UN HQ, but the architects following Arup and my own firm NY Super Studio Architects had to tackle the ever so cumbersome UN bidding and building process, and could not apply any sensible solutions.

Standing in Gartner’s factory, it makes one wonder why more curtain wall producers cannot expand their vocabulary in the same way. Sheer beauty and elegance is so breathtaking.

So, hopefully we will get some beautiful minds together this year and steer our economy to a brighter, happier future. Our goal should be no imported oil – PERIOD.

Regards,
Tapani Talo, AIA

The buildings in the following pictures have zero energy considerations, and could not be recommended to anyone these days. Stone and concrete conduct heat and cold like electricity in copper. No shading provided where it counts, outside.

Princeton

Princeton- Main Area

Princeton Gwathmey

Princeton Architecture School

This same process was repeated with each assignment; research, field study and a presentation to the entire class by students working in three-person teams.

We all vowed NOT TO REPEAT the previous generation’s mistakes of NOT being fashionable at the expense of owners and neighborhoods. (This helped to prepare me for life as a NY Architect).

So, how is it then that we are back to MOONSCAPES? High profile buildings and architects have again lost their tactile quality. These buildings are shapes hovering above ground, NOT OF IT and, just as in our field trips, no one is gathering under them or next to them as the wind blows and shadows creep. Instead we go to inside malls.

One can tell which generation CAD software these buildings were created on as people are looking for gimmicks rather than substantive acknowledgement and an understanding of architecture as a broad development where we are supposed to learn from our mistakes.

Magazines that publish architectural design need desperately to show off projects that look good on the cover, or they headline the article worded in such a way as to attract advertisers — much like our TV news or general shows these days. Green is a byword, not a reality. The smallest features are exaggerated in order to call a project green. Real Green Building, like practiced in some European countries, is truly green and not a gimmick. But this form of architecture is done by architects that are paid professional fees, unlike in the U.S and some other countries where we bid against each other, and end up with such a small fee that we cannot train our staff or ourselves, or keep staff long enough to develop essential skills.

Many editors have visited my projects and they say that they are not splashy enough, despite the fact that every normal person visiting them, including building inspectors, love them.

Media selling is a must for an architect’s or landscape architect’s survival too, but at the expense of quality of purpose. No one goes to a restaurant that does not serve food that is not based on a chef’s years of experience with best possible teachers. One can change a menu but not ignore our palette, habits, and the basic enjoyment we get from dining with friends who have many different personal preferences. So we are forced to be more of a ‘Harlot’, as Philip Johnson once said, than professional like a doctor for instance.

A purely nice ZERO CARBON GREEN normal building is unpublishable, and thus has a very limited audience from word of mouth. Our world will not change fast enough in this way for our children.

Recently, I visited a colleague a couple of hours away and she showed me some student resume projects from some of the foremost universities that were submitted to her for employment. None of them were BUILDINGS, but abstract mathematical planes forming clouds or shapes. These poor souls were taught by professors who were not practicing architecture themselves and had no respect for or understanding of historical progress. After 5 years or so these students arrive at our doorsteps, but very few of us can start training architects to do the real work of building real buildings and real programs at a time when the economy for us is beyond AWFUL, and our own families are looking for us to feed them.

PS. These abstract mathematical programs have beautiful practical purposes too as they solve real world program and technical issues for us so that we can focus on our client’s needs more, but everything has to be in balance, historically, today, and in the future.

Regards,
Tapani Talo, AIA

The Greenest House in Westchester this Year - 6 weeks from completion

The Brave Couple who are about to finish building the Greenest House in Westchester, NY in August, are nearing completion on a total Fun House, made for enjoying life with full Green Credentials.

The house is a stylistically timeless American Shingle style but could have just as well been a New Glass House like the Philip Johnson one, if there had been a different budget, updated technology for glass and other features, and a location that accepts modernism). The Master bedroom ceiling has an open working loft for their own use and reaches 29 feet. They luxuriate in an open soaring space that overlooks a wonderful distant view, which is rare in suburban lots in general.

We started two years ago on this very modest and rickety 1950’s house with plans for a master bedroom addition on an extremely low budget. The beautiful rear yard, unfortunately, was unusable as the land sloped too fast from the house.

The existing 2nd floor had only the typical R-18 insulation on the roof (added in 80’s), low ceilings of 7 feet, and thus the upstairs bedrooms were boiling in the summer and very uncomfortable in the winter (all typical issues with American houses). This was compensated by multiple means of heating, gas, electric and under floor heating – all competing with each other due to inadequate construction standards.

At that time the existing heating system was functional and thus there was no financial incentive to change this.

In the middle of our revisions, however, the heating tubes under the floor formed a major leak, and thus we were faced with a new selection process and a full analysis of what to do.

1. We had already applied to the addition the latest recommendations by US department of Energy task force or ‘Passive Hus’ – House standards insulation standard (R=40 walls and R=60+ for roofs, the German and Swiss approach) with solar panels. These standards are about double the current North East energy codes, and as I have indicated in my previous blogs, savings and comfort beyond anybody’s imagination is the result. I had tested these standards in my own house first, and I have to admit that even I as professional was amazed – even blown away – by the results.

So we switched to geothermal cooling and heating. The difference in price was about $20,000 extra for drilling to earth heat, of the total $70,000 heating cooling package with ducts. (Geothermal units last 30 years instead of the typical 15 years for current heating and cooling units). With generous tax incentives, this is from the start win-win economically, due to applied insulation that allows us to get full tax breaks. And every month, the savings are about 50% better than average heating/cooling and with insulation 75% + better than houses built only to code in the states of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

There are no ‘noisy’ humming compressor units outside, and thus the yard is quiet in the summer. Because of this feature alone many clients want to use geothermal, as in large houses several compressors working at the same time cause a formidable amount of noise and cut down on the pleasure of being outdoors.

So why don’t we have more people doing this?

I have found out the following in the last 5 years when building totally green houses or retrofitting old ones:

1. Builders charge too much premium for doing this as it is different from their normal operation and they do not want to deal with Geothermal, solar and other applications. In my office I get around this by bidding with known contractors who have built with me and know what to expect.

2. I have the names of solar installers, and geothermal drillers, and I deal with them directly.

3. As a result, the houses are built to less cost because the tax breaks cover the extra insulation, and due to a smaller need for cooling and heating, ducting and heating cooling units are half the size.

4. Builders and consultants, mechanical equipment installers and suppliers do not like smaller mechanics as anything that is smaller and more efficient is less profitable, and thus my professional approach allows owners to gain state-of-the-art efficiency without the premiums.

5. Bankers, real estate professionals and developers do not find that people care enough to pay a little extra, (which could save them on a mortgage of $500,000 the entire mortgage amount in 15 years if savings for heating and cooling were applied to capital payments). Thus on a half million dollar mortgage, savings in 15 years amount to half a million in capital interest savings. Not bad for a little clear thinking.

Regards,
Tapani Talo, AIA