Greenpoint EMS Station

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The Greenpoint Emergency Medical Service (EMS) Station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is a new, two-story, 12,400-square-foot facility that is part of an NYC program to improve response times to medical emergencies throughout the city. Located on a prominent site in the growing Brooklyn, NY neighborhood of Williamsburg, it supports the Fire Department of New York ambulance vehicles and crews who have come to consider the station a second home. Commissioned by the Department of Design and Construction as part of mayor Bloomberg’s Design Excellence Program, the building is a trenchant example of the new paradigm for New York City municipal architecture.

The station’s requirements for vehicles and staff led to a four-part organization of the interior. The east side which houses the four ambulances and command vehicle requires higher ceilings than the rest of the station and this increase in height helps organize the building’s functions. On the lower west side are the lieutenant’s office, captain’s office, and other administrative spaces. On the second floor above the vehicle bays are locker rooms and bathrooms for the 54 women and 97 men who maintain the station’s three shifts. Across the atrium, to the west, is a fitness facility, training room, and 700-square-foot combined kitchen and lounge area. The first floor’s different ceiling heights repeat at the roof line. The architects mark it with a skylight that extends from the front to the back of the building bringing daylight to the second floor and through an opening in the floor to the ground level. The double height glass-enclosed entry also marks the division between functions and is filled with natural light.

On the exterior, FDNY-red, roll-up doors on the vehicle side introduce bright color for what is otherwise a cool, glass facade. Providing a diagonal sculptural break is the transparent exit stair, covered with glass-enclosed perforated aluminum panels, that runs parallel along the street facade, connecting the entrance with the second floor. The 90-foot-long, second-story translucent glass wall with a honeycomb pattern set into the glass, appears to float above the ground floor and helps to form the building’s strong identity. Aglow in the evening, the Greenpoint EMS Station has become a distinct presence in the Williamsburg community.

Awards and Publications:
2018       AIANY Architecture Citation Award
2017       Delancey and Essex Parking Garage / Michielli + Wyetzner Architects Arch Daily November 24, 2017
2017       SARA NY Design Excellence Award
2017       Metropolis Magazine May 2017 City Designer’s Picks for New York
2013       We Build the City, NYC’s Design + Construction Excellence Program. ORO Editions
2013       NYC Chapter AIA Projects Merit Award
2011     NYC Public Design Commission Excellence in Design Award 2011
2011       Oculus,”From NIMBY to YIMBY”,Winter 2011
2011       Architectural Record,”Investments in Public Architecture Pay Off for the City”,September 2011
2011      Real Estate Journal, “Michielli + Wyetzner Architects to begin $4 million cable façade renovation, August 9, 2011
2011       New York Observer, “Finally! A Pretty Parking Garage”, June 29, 2011

ICS Brooklyn

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This new 6,000 square foot office fit-out for Independence Care System (ICS) is an expansion adjacent to an existing outreach and office center in downtown Brooklyn.

ICS is a not-for-profit advocate organization for the disabled providing community center functions, counseling, workshops, and wheelchair maintenance services. This is one of three centers located in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Located on the 5th floor of what was the JW Mays Department Store, the new office retains many of the existing decorative features that were part of the original store construction from the early 20th Century. Combining original pressed tin ceilings and ornate wood moldings, the space is an amalgam of old and new, with the ghost of a demolished staircase visible on an existing demising wall.

In addition to their constituents, many of the employees are also disabled and a broad central corridor allows ample maneuverability for wheelchairs. Running parallel for its entire length is an illuminated fascia. With natural light entering at the west end of the space, this glowing surface symbolically extends the light from the café area at the windows along the entire 150-foot length of the office.

An existing brick bearing wall intersects the illuminated fascia where an opening was created to allow access to a new call center at the rear of the space. In addition, a neighboring tenant space to the north, with only one exit stair, required the inclusion of a new public corridor through the new ICS space as part of the fit-out design. Bifurcating the plan, the passageway was conceived as a tunnel that does not reach the ceiling allowing the volume of the space to flow above it. Painted red to signal its emergency egress function; glass doors on hold-opens allow passage through it.

Gateway II

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Located in East Harlem at the intersection of Lexington Avenue and East 126th Street, this new 50,000 square foot mixed-use building incorporates retail, office, and residential uses. The developer requested a unified design that provides the separation of uses and respects their different scales.  The six-story building has a ground floor of retail space followed by two floors of office space. The remaining top three floors house a community facility with a residential health-care component.

The primary exterior material of glazed brick is articulated with a varied fenestration pattern that expresses the programmatic divisions of the floors: larger fixed windows for the lower office floors, smaller scale operable windows with related mechanical grills for the upper two floors of community facility and residences. Two entrances serve the different uses, with a lobby for the offices located along the commercial Lexington Avenue and a lobby for the residential community facility portion located along the smaller-scaled 126th Street. The top floor is set back from the street wall providing a terrace and green roof for use by the residents.  The overall massing and floor to floor heights allow for a potential future connections to an adjacent existing building owned by the same developer.

Awards and Publications:
2011      Building Design and Construction, “Harlem Facility Combines Social Services with Retail, Office Space”, January  2011
2010       Real Estate Weekly, “Hybrid building making life in East Harlem Better All Round”, December 8, 2010
2010       e-Oculus, “Gateway Opens Doors to Harlem, December 2010
2010      Dexigner, “Unique Mixed-use Building in Harlem by Michielli + Wyetzner Architects”, December 2010


Water Mill House

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This 2,000 square foot addition to an existing 3-bedroom house in Water Mill, New York transforms a standard 30′ X 30′ developer house into a horizontal composition that anchors it to its two-acre wooded site. The image of the house was upgraded and new program elements were added, including a screened-in porch, two-car garage, entry porch, and exterior terraces. By raising the existing offset gable roof and recomposing the facades, MWA created a double-height living volume that connects the structure with the landscape and allows greater amounts of daylight to penetrate deep into the space. The newly relocated kitchen opens onto the double-height living/dining space that opens to the exterior by full-height, wall-to-wall sliding glass doors. A series of terraces step down from the living room level to the pool integrating the house with the landscape. The clear cedar cladding on the ground floor links the lower level of the main house with the new mahogany screened-in porch and garage addition that extends horizontally from the house. The bedrooms are enclosed in a black-stained second-story volume above.

EDAW/AECOM

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Occupying the top floor of a 1910 New York City landmarked building, this new 10,000 square foot office interior for the global urban planning and landscape architecture firm EDAW/AECOM is the first of a comprehensive design upgrade of its North American offices. Intended to foster creativity among its staff and inspire its clients, the open office space has a new skylight opening located above a central glass-paneled meeting room. Tracks suspended from the ceiling-mounted steel trusses allow individual steel-framed glass panels of the meeting room to slide across the office creating a number of different space configurations for conferences, displays, and office-wide presentations. This flexible design element meets the ever-changing needs of the office while providing a vibrant and dynamic focal point. The project’s construction methods, mechanical system, lighting design and material selection achieve a rating of LEED Gold reflecting the commitment of the EDAW/AECOM organization towards sustainable and environmentally responsive design.

Awards and Publications:
2010 Winner of AIA NYC Chapter Interiors Honor Award

LEED Certified Gold

Mount Sinai School of Medicine

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Located within an urban campus on the upper east side of Manhattan, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine occupies the 12th & 13th floors of a 26-story tower completed in 1975. To meet the 21st century needs of the students and faculty, Michielli + Wyetzner Architects designed new offices for the Dean of Medical Education (construction completed 2006) and a phased project for student spaces, including a new 150-seat auditorium, teaching laboratories, seminar rooms, student lounges and study spaces.

MWA reconfigured the floors so that corridors are wider and open to views to the exterior, bringing natural light deep into the interior. New sustainable materials such as cork, marmoleum, and recycled nylon carpets are combined with glass walls and baffle ceilings to provide a warm, maintenance-free environment.

The design of the teaching spaces reflects the new direction of medical education. State-of-the-art distance learning and audio-visual and computer aids are incorporated into all classrooms. The free-form auditorium on the 12th floor provides an identifiable center for the program while the space surrounding it acts as the informal gathering area for the school. These new spaces for informal interaction create a campus-like atmosphere for the floors.

In addition, Michielli + Wyetzner Architects have completed projects for various other constituencies at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine including the Department of Orthopaedics and the Department of Oncological Science/Cancer Prevention Control.

Stern College for Women

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Michielli + Wyetzner Architects has been working with Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women to redesign and upgrade their Lexington Avenue Beren Campus. In addition to library, dining, and laboratory planning studies, MWA renovated an existing 40-year old building, updating the front elevation with a new entrance and façade treatments and designing a new lobby and study hall. The new recessed entrance and striped patterned-glass curtain wall give the college a new identity and a strong presence in the neighborhood while also providing an increased level of privacy for the occupants.  MWA reconfigured the existing ground floor to increase the size of the lobby and add new classrooms that can be combined into one large event space. Electronic glass separates the classroom/event space from the lobby, enabling the separation to become transparent or opaque at the flip of a switch. Bamboo wall panels, terrazzo floors and glass combine to create a warm, bright and inviting entrance lobby for the school.  As part of the design for the new Beit Midrash study hall, MWA enclosed the roof area of the existing seventh floor set-back in glass, creating a beacon for the school in the neighborhood. A bamboo ark containing the Torah is recessed in a custom decorative glass wall.

Watermill Center

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The Watermill Center is a 20,000 square foot collaborative performing arts workshop under the directorship of the renowned theater artist Robert Wilson. Th building includes workshops, performance rehearsal spaces, artist’s residences, and dining facilities. Located on a large wooded lot in Southampton, New York, the center also includes outdoor spaces for performances and exhibiting sculpture.  Michielli + Wyetzner Architects’ work to renovate the existing structure includes a new corrugated zinc exterior enclosure designed with custom welded aluminum plate window surrounds and extensive site design. The interiors are serene and spare, designed for a number of uses dedicated to the creation and experience of art.

Awards and Publications:
2006       Interior Design, “The Idea Mill”, Sept. 06
2006       New York Sun, “In the Summertime, Go Where the Money Is”, July 10, 2006
2004       East Hampton Star “New Art Center’s Fits and Starts” by Jennifer Landes

Bridgehampton House

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This 8,000 square foot vacation home for a retired business executive and his artist wife realizes their wish for a warm, comfortable, and modern environment, where children and grandchildren could visit, while still ensuring the couple’s privacy. Located on the east end of Long Island, the house sits on a 3.5-acre site on the banks of a wetland creek, which flows out to the ocean nearby.

The home’s two rectangular volumes form an outdoor landscaped court with a swimming pool as the focus.  The main wing includes the couple’s sleeping quarters on the upper level with the living, dining, and kitchen and screened porch on the ground level. The smaller volume contains guest bedrooms and a with a small living and kitchen facilities.

A two-story glazed entrance separates the two wings, providing privacy for both the owners and their guests.  The narrow, linear plan maximizes the amount of natural light and ventilation entering each room, all of which have two exposures. The projecting second floor balconies and the louvered wood sunshades control the amount of direct southern sun entering the house.  A post and beam structural system made of Brazilian hardwood, Demarrera Greenheart, maximizes the clear spans and allows interior walls to be used solely for partitioning space. The exposed framing and infill panels modulate and order the interiors. Demarrera Greenheart was also used as the exterior cladding because of its natural beauty and its ability to weather well in the harsh salt air environment.

Awards and Publications:
2001       New American Houses 2, Edizione L’ Archivolto
2001      The Perfect Room, Rockport Publishers

Pre-Fab House

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This design for a 2,000 square foot, two to three bedroom house is one in a series of collaborations between practicing architects and artists and a German modular building manufacturer. With the goal of creating zero-energy buildings, the project uses modular stud-wall panel construction and exterior zinc cladding to create homes for couples or small families. The cube volume is vertically divided with two enclosed floors and an open roof terrace. Entry stairs lead to the second floor, which contains the living, dining and kitchen spaces. The abstract quality of the Platonic solid is enhanced by the simple void of the double-volume living area that cuts through the cube. Immediately above is a roof garden accessed by a glass-enclosed circular stair that connects all levels of the house. Study and bedrooms are on the first floor.  The strength of the scheme is based on the geometry of the pure exterior form and the proportion of the primary interior space. The compact modular design will be energy efficient, cost effective and efficiently flat-packed for delivery.

Rolltop Observatory

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The Turner Farm roll-top observatory building will include an orientation room for presentations and the study of sky charts as well as a 700 square foot observatory room housing four permanently mounted telescopes. The lightweight, folded-plate roof structure of the observatory room is moveable and rolls open, exposing the observatory to the night sky. Earth berms around the observatory room minimize the mass of the structure and protect the concrete retaining wall from heat gain so that disruption of viewing by thermal currents in the evening is minimized.  A simple, low maintenance material palette is used throughout, including poured-in-place concrete, ground-faced concrete block, and stained plywood millwork. This will be the first of a series of projects constructed at Turner Farm, an astronomy museum and study center and an international sundial garden will follow the completion of the rolltop.

Observatory Park

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Observatory Park is a six-acre astronomy park and complex in Great Falls, Virginia, which will include an education/museum building, a planetarium, a roll-top observatory and a sundial garden. The education building will house a lecture hall, classrooms, a library, a sundial-building workshop and a museum space for didactic displays and historical objects related to astronomy as well as the site’s use during the Cold War by the Defense Mapping Agency.

Located in a residential neighborhood, the building will be set into the ground to reduce its bulk and retain the park-like quality of the site. The museum building can be either entered from above, through a glass pavilion that will enclose the dome of the planetarium, or, via a ramp into a sunken courtyard. The 40,000 square foot education building is earth-sheltered on the south and west sides. The north and east elevations are gradually exposed as the park slopes down to the northeast. A green roof continues the plane of the sundial garden that covers the site. The building will include a number of sustainable design features and the landscape design will use a variety of local plants and low-maintenance field grasses.

Italian-American Cultural Center

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This competition entry for a new Italian-American Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York, was based on the importance of the garden as it contributes to the cultural identity of many Italian immigrants and their descendants.

The massing of the building is designed so that the bulk of the structure is weighted to the rear of the site to provide large areas for gardens and outdoor gathering spaces along the street. A terra cotta sunscreen, which has been designed to maximize the introduction of controlled natural light into the building, will enclose the second floor. This screen will be animated by the movement of the sun so that the shade and shadow it produces will change as the day progresses. The program includes a full-size gymnasium, counseling and study room and a swimming pool.

Temple Beth-Am, Reform Synagogue

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To enhance community visibility and attract new members, Temple Beth-Am commissioned Michielli + Wyetzner Architects to design an addition to update the image of its existing structure and provide new facilities for celebrations and community functions.  The new 7,000 square foot addition will house a ballroom on the main level and classrooms for the Hebrew school and pre-school on the lower level. The project will also include a new entrance and the renovation of the existing 1960’s building designed by Percival Goodman.  Lit in the evening, the glass-enclosed ballroom will be a glowing presence in the community, unifying the disparate pieces of the existing facility. The glass will be treated with a leaf patterned ceramic frit that reduces solar heat gain and forms an integral decoration that is consistent with its palm house aesthetic and traditional Judaic symbols.  Similar materials and details will be used to create a new, open and inviting entrance and plaza which will be seen from the main thoroughfare along Merrick Avenue.

Big Mountain

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IN COLLABORATION WITH GILDAY ARCHITECTS. Located in downtown Jackson, this 20,000 square foot mixed-use infill building includes residential retail and office space. Each of the three top-floor apartments opens onto a private terrace. A skylight in the central courtyard permits natural light to enter the center of the 140 foot long open office floor on the second level. A moveable mahogany screen, supported by standard hanger-door hardware, protects the south-facing spaces from direct sun and provides open views of the mountains.

Hotel Quito

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This renovation and expansion master plan for the Hotel Quito envisions this 1950’s modernist hotel as the core of an “urban resort” in downtown Quito, Ecuador. The goal of the plan is to recapture the tourist and business market and become a destination for city residents.  To do so, the complex will provide high-quality living, shopping, work, health and recreation facilities, most significantly a new 60,000-square-foot residential tower and a new 40,000-square-foot office building on the ten-acre site.  The enlarged complex builds on the original design of the late Edward Durrell Stone, who sited the hotel with sweeping views overlooking a mountainous landscape and downtown Quito.  The expanded complex will also offer a much wider variety of amenities including a casino, underground parking for 500 cars, three new ballrooms, a new health club and spa, and outdoor pool, gardens and recreational facilities.  Curved single-pane glass is proposed to create an undulating transparent enclosure for the new residential tower and mixed-use building that continues the spirit of Stone’s original design. The massing of the tower will conclude a row of upscale residential towers that line this ridge of the city. Visible from all directions, the sculptural form of the glass tower will be a focal point in the city.   The climate of Quito is consistently mild year round so that minimal mechanical equipment is necessary for heating and air conditioning. The new buildings are designed to make the best use of natural ventilation and passive solar control.  The complex will be up-to-date both in its facilities and systems efficiency.

The Museum of Modern Art Film Archive

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David Brody Bond, LLP

The Museum of Modern Art’s film collection, the largest private collection in the world, contains material that is highly sensitive to airborne pollutants and can potentially combust spontaneously. Therefore, a separate facility was required to house the collection independently from New York City home. Located on 37 acres of woodland and meadow in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, this 33,000 square foot, the two-building compound is a simple and functional design with an industrial palette of materials. Building 1 contains the vaults for storing acetate or safety film, a preservation laboratory, offices and conference rooms. Because of the strict environmental requirements for archiving film, the design was conceived as a building within a building. Circulation is located on the perimeter to provide a thermal buffer between the low humidity, low temperature vaults and the varying conditions of the outside air. This 55 degree buffer reduces the work load of the heating and air conditioning units, providing substantial energy savings to the institution. Long-span trusses provide the necessary space for a thermal break above the vaults and allow for program flexibility below. Building 2 houses the nitrate cellulose film collection in 42 poured-in-place concrete storage vaults. This film was produced prior to 1950 and, due to its chemical volatility, is governed by strict National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards. Each vault is constructed of four-hour, fire-rated poured-in-place concrete and contains an explosion panel and deluge sprinkler protection.

Valeo Technical Center

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Davis Brody Bond, LLP

This 120,000 square foot technical center for a French automobile components manufacturer in suburban Detroit houses two formerly separate corporate divisions within a single building. Two levels of open office area allow for a flexible arrangement or integrated project teams consisting of project management, sales, design and testing staffs. Transparent glass walls, detailed for acoustic control, permit project team members to be in close proximity to the double volume testing laboratory. Towers containing shared conference rooms punctuate the office and lab areas, which further integrate teams of designers with lab technicians. The glazed double-volume testing lab is visible from the street, satisfying the owner’s objective to publicly display the primary function of the facility.

An exhibit area highlighting new products and a full-size vehicle is located in a glass cube entrance lobby adjacent to other non-secure program elements such as conference rooms and the cafeteria. Horizontal aluminum sunshades on the south and west protect the interior from glare and direct solar gain. The building’s design reflects not only the materials of the products made by Valeo, but also qualities such as transparency, efficiency, and collaboration that are hallmarks of the company. The building received the National AIA Excellence in Design Award and the Business Week / Architectural Record Award in 2000 for being exemplary of the positive effects that a good design can have on productivity and employee satisfaction.

East Hampton Rec Center

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Davis Brody Bond, LLP

This 22,000 square foot recreation and community center for the East Hampton Youth Alliance serves as a central gathering place for recreational and cultural activities and as an indoor pool facility for much-needed swim instruction for youths of this community surrounded by water.  Within the center, visitors will find a fitness area, multi-purpose room, cyber café, six-lane competition swimming pool and a toddler/therapy pool.  A series of ramps and terraced landings in the main loft-like interior separate different program areas and create a dynamic environment where participants can view the center’s diverse activities. Skylights, which allow natural light to penetrate the entire space, follow the diagonal path of the primary ramp, accentuating the separation of the fitness area from the tech lounge.

The cedar clad design recalls traditional Long Island agricultural structures, particularly in its simple massing, open-loft interior, and matter-of-fact exposed wood-frame construction techniques. The Center’s primary volume is structured by large-scale, balloon-framed bearing walls composed of 3 x 10 Douglas Fir studs set two feet on center.  Natural wood finishes are also used on screen walls, railings and ceilings further giving the interior texture and a warm, natural quality. Low maintenance, durable materials such as ceramic tile and ground-face concrete block enclose the pool and locker areas.  The Rec Center is an active and dynamic space which serves its purpose as a clubhouse for youths and a well- populated resource for the entire community.