by Gideon Fink Shapiro

Summary: When construction budgets are cut, does architecture suffer? The recession has given new impetus to this perennial question of ends and means. Conventionally speaking, more generous budgets allow more generous architecture, and vice versa. But beyond the common concessions to value-engineering, how is the economic crisis affecting design practice?

For one answer, just ask the designer responsible for the exterior of the planned 76-story Beekman Tower in New York City—Frank O. Gehry, FAIA. The developer, Forest City Ratner, has halted construction around 40 stories, pending labor negotiations, and has substituted a flat curtain wall for Gehry's undulating design on one of the building's seven faces.

A contrary school of thought sees the slackening market as an opportunity for architects to rediscover the core values of their profession. "What designers do really well is work within constraints, work with what they have," MoMA architecture and design curator Paola Antonelli told the New York Times in January. She predicted that the recession will bring "less design, but much better design.” If this notion sounds idealistic, it also echoes the sentiments of some practicing architects. "I think it's an exciting period we're in now," says Mark DuBois, AIA, a partner at Ohlhausen DuBois Architects in New York, "It's really about getting back to basics, focusing on what works and what makes sense." DuBois believes the former period of untrammeled showmanship may be giving way to a new ethos of "responsible innovation."

While architects relied on the ingenuity of engineers and builders to realize experimental designs during the boom years, design-build collaboration is now more important than ever. The constructability of a design can mean the difference between having it built as planned and losing control of the project. According to Michael Tower, AIA, co-founder of the Brooklyn-based Studio Tractor, "A bid number is going to come in more reasonably if we're very specific about how to build it." In this way, Tower and his partner, Mark Kolodziejczak, AIA, embrace value-engineering within the design process, believing that it contributes to the harmony of form, function, and materials.

Studio Tractor communicates closely with contractors to find ways in which less specialized workers can complete more of their highly refined detailing. If a carpenter can do some of the work normally reserved for a metalworker, for example, the cost of construction decreases. The epitome of architect-contractor synergy may be the Empire State Building, completed in 1931 as the Great Depression continued to worsen. "So brilliantly conceived and executed was the building campaign that the Empire State was completed ahead of schedule and under budget," wrote the historian Carol Willis in a 1998 exhibition at the Skyscraper Museum.

The “post-luxury” approaches to design
Retrofitting existing buildings has emerged in recent years as an eco-effective alternative to new construction. In the context of the recession, it also makes fiscal sense. The firm BNIM was recently commissioned to renovate 200,000 square feet of office space in One Kansas City Place, a 1980s skyscraper. Although the client, Kansas City Power and Light, commissioned grand new buildings in previous eras of expansion, this time the company favored the less costly strategy of renovation. BNIM is also helping clients in Kansas City to redevelop vacant lots, engaging in a kind of "retrofitting" at the urban scale.

Calling on design intelligence to transcend economic constraints, New Orleans-based Billes Architecture has launched a student design competition seeking new 1,000-1,500-sq.-ft. homes that cost less than $150,000. Ten finalists will be flown to New Orleans April 11, where a jury of architects and editors will select several to receive cash prizes and the potential to develop their concepts into buildings. As with the earlier Make It Right New Orleans housing program organized by a nonprofit association including Graft architecture and the actor Brad Pitt, the Billes competition aims to beat tight budgets with creative wit.

Regardless of shrinking budgets, architects are continuing to educate their clients about the value of good design. In pitching a concept for a new volunteer-firehouse and community center, Ohlhausen DuBois is working to persuade the client that the cost of a glass wall is more than offset by the benefits it will bring to its users, from simply feeling good to lowering energy bills. Studio Tractor hopes to show a current residential client that a beautiful slab of natural stone is a better investment than a high-end kitchen stove.

"We're looking at this period as post-luxury rather than a return to the cheap days," says Kolodziejczak. The difference between the two is open to interpretation. But as extravagance gives way to utility, the design process will increasingly focus on making sophisticated use of inexpensive materials and efficient building techniques. The challenge, in other words, is to find the poetic within the prosaic.