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 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 ...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group On every building I have worked on that had few precedents, there has been at least one assembly sitting in a laboratory with nothing behind it in any code table. The thing is real. It is fabricated, instrumented, waiting for a load, and it has no permission to be installed in the building it was made for. That gap, between a product that exists and a product a city will accept, is the subject here. I am writing it for developers about to commit to something unusual, for architects of record who will carry the filing, and for construction managers holding a schedule around it. The route through the gap is well worn, and almost nobody plans for it the first time. A code carries what has already been proven, written down as classifications, standards and acceptance criteria. A product outside that record is not forbidden, only unrecognized. Unrecognized is a condition with a procedure attached to it. What happens when the building code has no ...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group Photo by Gio L on Unsplash A shop drawing comes back from a fabricator with a note in the corner saying the radius shown can be held on three of the four unit types and not on the fourth. That one sentence decides more about a facade than the elevation it was submitted against. On a building with few precedents it usually arrives before anyone has agreed what the building will finally look like. This is written for developers and architects working on buildings whose assemblies no product line already answers. The note records the boundary of what one particular shop can make. That boundary is the governing constraint on the piece, and it appears nowhere in the drawings the design team produced. What a Shop Drawing Actually Governs A shop drawing is produced by the company that will make the thing. The architect draws intent, dimension and performance, and the fabricator draws the object that will exist, including its joints, its tolerances...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group A bid set for an unusual building goes out to a short list of contractors, and the first thing that comes back is a list of questions. Sometimes that list runs to several pages, and it arrives well before the date the numbers are due. Developers, construction managers and architects working on buildings with few precedents learn to read it as the first honest feedback the documents have ever had. Reading it that way is possible only because competitive bidding has a formal question period built into it. That period exists for a reason worth understanding before the first answer gets written. Why Bidding Acquired a Formal Question Period Competitive bidding rests on a single assumption, which is that every firm pricing the work is pricing the same work. The assumption holds only if every firm is reading the same documents and reading them the same way. Nothing about a drawing set guarantees that on its own. A drawing is a description o...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group The building standing at the edge of my excavation has been there for a century and is not permitted to move. That one condition governs how deep the cut goes, the order in which soil leaves the site, and the shape of the foundation that eventually replaces it. This is written for developers, geotechnical and structural engineers, and construction managers who are about to open the ground beside something that is protected. Most foundation work is designed forward. You know the building you want, you know what it will weigh, and you work down to something that will hold it. Beside a designated structure the sequence runs the other way, and the drawing set reads differently because of it. What a Landmark Can Tolerate Sets the Design The first quantity that matters on a site like this belongs to the old building rather than to the new one. Old masonry has a limited appetite for movement, and it has a different appetite for each kind. Vertical...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group A foundation is completed on a Thursday and the zoning that governs the site changes the following week. The building that foundation was designed for is still legal. The building the new text describes is a different one, and nobody is building it on this lot. This is for developers, land use lawyers and construction managers working on sites where the rules move while the schedule runs. The mechanism that decides the outcome is a recognition, written into zoning itself, of work that has already substantially begun. What it protects is progress in the ground, and what it turns on is a very small number of dates. What Zoning Protects When Construction Has Already Begun A zoning amendment does not reach backward through every project on every lot. Text and maps change constantly, which is ordinary work in the planning profession and a standing condition for anyone developing on a long timeline. A project that has reached a defined stage of ...

By Michael Stern, JDS Development Group Photo by Bekky Bekks on Unsplash On most assembled sites in New York City there is a masonry wall standing directly on a lot line, shared by two buildings that were never designed together. It is the oldest structure on the property and it is usually the only one still standing when the new building opens. This is for the developers, architects and structural engineers who are looking at a site like that and working out how much of it they actually control. A party wall is inherited structure. Everything the new building does along that edge gets arranged around masonry that was built for another purpose, by people who are gone, to a standard nobody wrote down. A Party Wall Straddles the Lot Line A party wall sits astride the boundary rather than beside it, with part of its thickness on each lot. Both buildings bear on it, which is what distinguishes it from a wall that merely stands close to the line. Two independent walls built tight agai...