Michael Stern

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group On the facade drawings of a tower there is a note, small and usually pushed to the corner of an elevation sheet, that says every exterior surface must be reachable by the building maintenance unit. Nobody argues with it in a design meeting because it reads like housekeeping. It governs the shape of the building more than most of the lines drawn beside it. I am writing this for developers, architects and facade consultants who are about to draw a setback or a slender floor plate and have not yet asked who will clean it. The note is the first place that question gets answered, and on a tall narrow building the answer is a good deal more physical than the note suggests. A window gets cleaned and a panel gets inspected by someone, standing somewhere, held by something. That sentence is the whole subject of this piece, and each of its three parts takes up room in the building. The facade note decides roof equipment What the note says is short. A...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group On a designated building the masonry pier standing between two ground floor openings is usually what decides the storefront. It carries load, it is part of what was designated, and the width it keeps is width the display window never gets. I am writing this for developers taking on a conversion, for the restoration architects who will draw the base, and for the retail teams who arrive late and find most of their decisions already made. The base of an old building is the part a person can touch and the part that has been rebuilt the most. Floors above the second tend to survive by neglect. The ground floor has been reworked for whatever business occupied it, which is why by the time we buy the building the storefront is often the least historic thing on the facade and the most closely reviewed. That gap between what is there and what is protected is the first thing to establish. The designation report describes the building the city chose to p...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group The question comes up on almost every building with few precedents, and it almost always comes from an architect. Why is the fabricator sitting in this meeting when the drawings are not finished? It is a fair question, and the answer decides whether the detail on the page can be built at all. The knowledge of what can actually be made sits in the shop that will make it, and it has to arrive while the drawing can still change. This is for architects, structural engineers and development teams deciding whether to bring a trade contractor into design, and how early. What does design assist mean on a building with few precedents? Design assist brings the company that will fabricate a system into the design phase, working under the design team, to test whether a detail can be made. The drawings remain the architect's and the engineer's. The shop is there to answer a narrow question. Can this joint be cut, welded, shipped and hung in the ...