Acceptance
C’est la vie
Swanke Hayden Connell Building
CORPORATE | NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA
ARCHITECT: SWANKE HAYDEN CONNELL
DESIGN DIRECTOR: DANIEL MUROZAK
PROJECT DESIGNER: AYUMI DATE
FF&E: AYUMI DATE
平
Taira
While navigating the corporate architecture and design world, I owe much of my accomplishments to my diverse cultural understanding that the success of the project relies on everyone doing their part. I always arrived ready to be useful, not to procure any title. At Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, I felt a defining moment of recognition. I held my own as an interior designer, side by side with the architects of the firm. It was the late 1980s and I was a woman in a man’s world.
Swanke Hayden Connell Architects hired me fresh out of Cornell as interior designer in 1987 and ten years later, they invited me back as a licensed architect. They fully accepted me, championing the versatility of their designers. In return, I offered them my seasoned skills in the design of Citibank’s penthouse executive dining suites in Long Island City while I transitioned as an architect on a Fifth Avenue townhouse renovation.
“A large firm makes a team effort”
-Richard Carlson, Principal, SHCA
I was fortunate to experience integration early in my career. I participated in the simultaneous building and interior planning of Swanke Hayden Connell’s flagship presence at Columbus Circle in 1989. I holistically wove design intent together by honoring the building fenestration and having it echo inside.
I recall spending hours on presentation drawings for the “skin” of this building, hand drawn and rendered elevation studies. I remember burning through prisma color pencils, learning to tape color pencils ends together to get them through electric sharpeners. I had to get the color of the limestone “just right.”
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Ultimately it was a reinterpretation of the exterior and interior environments expressed in more organic white maple. Classic and weighted with American Bauhaus tradition and modernism, the furnishings were in metal, stone and glass. The space and volume study and attention of the metal railing reflect the shape and firm of the reception desk. This is a reflection of my classic training and background.
I loved the camaraderie between architects and interior designs at Swanke Hayden Connell. Architects and interior designers worked on new projects together, submitting drawings side by side. This was an environment of non-dominance; the interior/exterior disciplines were balanced in the design process and team hierarchy. There was unity and mutual respect.
How do we build teams based on mutual respect? We need to simultaneously adapt to and sensitively challenge the American architectural practices and lexicon. Recognizing the paths and choices you can control–the path of mastery and the path of versatility–and there is value in either approach.
