by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Peter Schubert, AIA, is the design director for RMJM Hillier and a visiting faculty member at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at Cooper Union. Schubert currently serves on the board of directors for the Center for Architecture Foundation in New York City and is actively involved in the annual Architecture Schools Exhibition at the Center for Architecture. Schubert recently has been working with fellow Cooper Union faculty member Diane Lewis of Diane Lewis Architects, and Laurie Beckelman of Beckelman + Capalino, to save Paul Rudolph’s Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla., from demolition.

Education
I went to Ohio State for my BS in Architecture, and then I went a summer semester at Harvard, during which time I became committed to going to Columbia. There was a lecture series there, and they said that Columbia was the best graduate school in the country at that time, so that’s where I ended up going for my MArch.

Why did you become an architect?
That’s always a family story because ever since I can remember I wanted to be an architect. But my mother takes credit for it. She said she didn’t want me to become an artist because I’d never be able to support myself. So, when I started drawing—my mother was an artist—she got me into a lot of architecture courses and started pointing me in that direction. Or so I’m told, since I can never remember not wanting to be an architect. I can’t tell you the real truth.

Currently reading
I’m going back and forth between the Middle East a lot, so I’m reading a book a friend recommended as one of the great base points for understanding the Middle East. It’s A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fromkin. It’s basically the story, starting pre WWI, with the British and their involvement in the Middle East. It’s a history book, but it’s very interesting because I think Americans really don’t know that much about the Middle East. It’s very interesting to hear some of the historic ideas from the Ottomans onward. It’s a very interesting political construct.

Involvement in the effort to save Paul Rudolph’s Riverview High School in Sarasota, Fla.
I have been teaching a fourth-year urban design course with Diane Lewis at Cooper Union. It’s a design course but a lot of the work that Diane and I have been focusing on stems from a civic attitude towards architecture. Diane brought the Riverview High School to my attention six months ago, right before the competition entry form was put out. It was a developer competition. We ended up going in with Laurie Beckelman, Beckelman + Capalino [a consulting company that provides project management and strategic advisory services to cultural, nonprofit, and historic preservation clients]. Diane and Laurie teamed to reconsider the potential for Riverview High School within the context of Sarasota—not just the physical context but Sarasota the town.

The process was started by the Sarasota Architectural Foundation. They put out an RFP to engage support to save the building, because it had already been destined for demolition. There is a new high school being built on the site directly behind it. The original school was for a much smaller population, and it’s surrounded now by a lot of additions, some of which are in the Paul Rudolph manner, and others that are very functionalist additions to the school. It’s a building that was architecturally abused over time, so its importance was diminished in the community. The Sarasota Architectural Foundation came forward with the idea of a developer competition to ensure that the building itself was renovated without any taxpayer burden and that once it was occupied there would be no additional taxpayer burden for the operational expenses.

Diane came across the RFP and we talked about it after class one day. It sounded like what we’re doing at Cooper Union, which is trying to look at a building and understand both its physical context and relationship to architectural history, but also political and cultural context to the community in which the building lives. So with all of that, we thought that this was an ideal opportunity for us to explore what we teach.

Since the school board recently turned down the proposal, what’s the next step?
Well, it’s a conundrum. How do you raise the money for a building that isn’t technically offered by the city? The city is interested in hearing about how it could be reused, but they’re not willing to offer it until a financial plan is in place, and it’s difficult to put a financial plan in place until the building is technically offered, so it’s been a very round-robin proposition to get this thing through. There was a lot of support and interest in reusing the building by a number of cultural institutions, but of course it’s a long decision. The plan was that the developer would come up with a $40 million renovation plan plus a $20 million endowment to operate the building in a mere six months. In this economy that doesn’t happen quickly.

But there is a chance still, and we’re going to pursue some ideas. I think the most important thing that came out of our proposal was that we proved that they could keep the next phase of the high school operational and still keep the building. There was some dispute early on that they had to tear down the existing school in order to get enough parking to sustain the next phase of the new high school. We’ve proved that they do not have to do that. They could have a beautiful site plan that also allowed the Paul Rudolph building to remain without any compromise whatsoever to the goals of the original plan. So, if the site plan that we produced allows the building to remain while funding can be generated, it’s better in our view than the original site plan. That is our greatest hope going forward: that we can generate enthusiasm for that site plan and then maybe allow the building more time to get financed for renovation, endowment, and a new mission statement.

Architecture Schools exhibit at the Center for Architecture in NYC
My favorite exhibition is the student exhibition because I teach, so the one that we’ve been developing over the last four years allows each school to showcase its curriculum and pedagogy, as well as student work. Every year it’s gotten bigger and more important, and we get all the New York City schools in addition to a couple outside the New York area. We’ve featured Columbia, Pratt, New Jersey Institute of Technology, New York Institute of Technology, Parsons, City College of New York, Cooper Union, Yale, and Princeton. It’s a great list and since it’s sponsored by the New York AIA chapter, it’s mostly New York area schools, but there are always exceptions. There’s even been discussion of breaking out of New York City and showcasing education across the world.

Is architecture education keeping pace with the rapidly changing technology in the profession?
That’s a big and highly debated topic. I think the most important thing that architecture education does is teach students how to think. Vocational teaching doesn’t necessarily help the profession, because I think what we really need to do is get out-of-the-box thinking that’s very innovative and forward-thinking. When education is too vocationally oriented, it ends up being more or less a trade. Now, it’s part of education, but I think the most important education curricula out there are the ones that really teach architecture. They teach issues with growth and economy. They teach issues of environmental systems particularly and also may teach how to grapple with the issues of society and making the world a better place. I think certainly all the skills that are vocational in architecture are incredibly important to an education, but if it’s that alone, it’s failing the profession.

Advice for students and young architects
Think forward. There are a lot of issues ahead. In the last couple of years, we’ve really confronted in America the issues of the environment. Cities are our future, and I think it’s important to embrace what cities can be, what great design and quality of life they can offer, and what it means to be urban. We’ve been discussing, at least at RMJM, the issues of American sprawl and how probably those days are over. People are returning to cities and have a newfound respect for the urban landscape as well as for the landscape in the countryside and farmlands that are really important to our future.