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

Situated near the college’s principal south entrance and adjacent to the campus’s primary north-south circulation route, the design of a new amphitheater for Lehman College converts an underutilized plaza into a fully-supported multi-use outdoor theater for 120 spectators. The design concept is to sensitively integrate the spectator seating into a gently sloping extension of campus landscaping which focuses on a stage backdrop that is unified with, and elevates the existing architecture.
Terraces with board-formed architectural concrete retaining walls and stone seating are merged with a gently sloping ramp which provides access to seating areas and an accessible route to the adjacent Speech & Theater Building. To provide both a backdrop for the stage and permit views out of the ground floor spaces in the adjacent building, a field of closely grouped steel columns provides a porous and sculptural barrier. The network of 3” stainless steel columns spaced roughly two feel apart, will screen the existing building and provide a unique background to light and inhabit. Actors will be able to move within the ten-foot depth of the screen. Provisions will be made for the support of additional scrims and scenery.
Over-stage lighting will be supported by slender steel tubes cantilevered from the soffit of the existing building. Additionally, two platforms will be provide locations for light fixtures positioned in front of the stage. Infrastructure will be in place for easy hook-up of sound boards and projectors.
In addition to hosting various theater programs, screenings, and concerts, the new landscape creates an inviting space for students and professors to informally gather and relax during the day.

(Currently in design)

The proposed design for the permanent home for the Hauppauge Public Library directly reflects the community’s desire for a modest, economical structure which is closely connected to nature. The design integrates the building massing with the surrounding landscaping by keeping all functions on one floor, in a long, low mass sitting below the existing canopy of trees that will seem to have grown up from within the wooded site.

The s-shaped floor plan encloses two outdoor courtyards that will permit daylight to enter the building from the north and south and establish a focus for the interior spaces. The north courtyard serves as the entrance from the west parking area. A bridge-like path will cross a water garden, immediately indicating that one is entering a special place. The water will be a link to its life-giving, restorative associations, to the site’s location at the source of two north-south rivers and to the name Hauppauge -“Land of Sweet Water”. The water garden will also function as a teaching tool to demonstrate an environmentally sensitive approach to retaining rainwater and returning wastewater to the ground. The south courtyard is contiguous with the virginal wooded, eastern portion of the site. From the interior, library visitors will use the south courtyard for reading and other passive activities and as a route to garden paths through the trees.

The entrance leads to an open lobby/display area with adjacent circulation, public computers, and periodical seating areas. This will be part of a continuous zone of open public space which will be the connective thread through the library. A series of spaces will unfold as patrons meander through the building. From any space in the library, patrons will be able to see directly into the courtyards and to the north and south gardens, and be able to take note of the weather, time of day and colors of the seasons—giving them a direct connection to the natural world.

Plan Layout

Three primary user groups will be identified with the three wings of the structure. The quiet adult reading area will be located in a rectangular zone to the North. The central bay will house the young adult reading area and the children’s area will occupy a more free-form volume to the South. Each of the three major user spaces will have a unique quality. The adult area will have a long-span roof structure that will permit column-free flexibility for future changes of use. The young adult area will have open table seating area and a semi-enclosed living-room like space with lounge seating and flat panel screens. The children’s room will be the most colorful and dynamic space, with curving walls enclosing a large program area, columns partitioning space for older children, and a ramp down to a sunken play and story time area for the youngest children.

Support spaces, including a large community meeting room and staff areas will border the public user areas. Bathrooms, mechanical rooms, music/video rooms and other support spaces will occupy a compact, linear volume along the East edge of the site. The staff will occupy a bar of space stretching North-South along the west façade with open-view corridors to the children’s and young adult areas. The multi-use meeting room will be located near the entrance and have access to the South courtyard.

A palette of natural materials is proposed for the interiors. Mahogany window frames and natural wood wall panels will add warmth and color. A living wall, proposed at the building entrance will bring a field of plant materials into the building adding color and texture as well as increasing the interior air quality. Architectural concrete will serve as the building’s structure as well as a robust finish material. Most of the raised-flooring will be covered with carpet tiles.

The Library’s Exterior

The horizontal, moss-green glazed brick walls of the exterior volume will blend in with the existing tree canopy on the site. The East and West elevations have few windows so that the interior is protected from the glare from low sun angles. Low planters will breakdown the scale of the wall surface and introduce planting above grade level. The planters will continue beyond the edges of the library and enclose gardens on the north and south of the building. The garden walls will be another way to tie the building to the landscape while separating it from the adjacent roadway and parking lots.

The north and south elevations will have low planter walls and be fully-glazed above, allowing transparent connections between the interior and exterior. The garden walls enclose outdoor rooms which will be experienced as extensions of the interior. The concrete roof parapet on the north and south walls will have scuppers sculpted into them to highlight the path of rain water collected on the roof as it flows down and moves to basins where it will be collected for irrigation or returned to the soil.

Scuppers with rain chains will also be introduced in the courtyards. They will be smaller in size and be coordinated with recessed text in the concrete parapet which will wrap the two courtyards. The text will be another opportunity to accentuate the uniqueness of this place in Hauppauge. Text proposals to be considered might include the following quote from Simeon Wood’s A History of Hauppauge, Long Island, New York (1920):

“Humanity, like water, is ever in motion. The babbling brooks of Hauppauge still
wind their way to the silent Nissequogue, whose waters ceaselessly flow to mingle
with the vast and mighty ocean”.

The design team’s intent is to make the project as uniquely Hauppaugian as possible and to reflect the Library Board and the community’s goal that the new building support the Library’s mission to serve locally yet reach globally.

The Mastics, Moriches, Shirley community’s design challenge was to craft a new 60,000 square- foot library that does not overwhelm its natural, park-like setting. The site is located within a former 100- acre golf course that will be developed as a community park with active and passive uses. To reduce the impact of the building, MWA proposed a single-story structure that uses earth berms to permit the surrounding meadow to rise over the roof of the building, providing continuity to the park. The result is a solution that shapes and is shaped by the landscape being completely unified with it.

Patrons cross through a wooded buffer of remnant pine barrens, which separates the parking area from the building’s three entry courtyards- one for the main adult library entrance, a second dedicated to the teen / children’s library, and a third for the multi-use community spaces. The community rooms are grouped in a zone separated from the secure area of the library for access after-hours.

The reading areas for each constituent group line the glazed southern perimeter of the structure. This edge follows the shoreline of an expansive lake, providing exceptional views of the water and distant landscape, connecting it in spirit to the community’s unique natural resources- namely the Smith Point County Park Beach and the Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge.   The building’s layout supports the Library’s mission is to be a place of growth, discovery and life-long learning.

Awards and Publications:
2018       AIA Long Island Chapter- Commendation, Unbuilt 

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 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.

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.

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.

Submitted in response to the RFP issued by the R.O.C. government of Taiwan for a new pop music center, Michielli + Wyetzner Architects’ design is a cloud-like nebulous form that is designed to change and grow with the natural development of the city while meeting the rapidly changing demands of the pop music industry. The framework of the design is an armature that supports an infrastructure built to serve various types of public events by lantern-like, multi-function cubes assembled on the roof place above. The solution of a tractable infrastructure allows elements to be added or subtracted. The design is pliable and scalable; it can be altered to meet specific project needs, budgets, and schedules.

This proposal for the Air Force Village Chapel competition is composed of four independent pavilions that are similarly unified in purpose and common goals. The design satisfies the need for communal worship while at the same time providing places for independent contemplation and inspiration. The design concept begins with an investigation of the threshold; the passage from the outer, secular realm of everyday lives to an inner, sacred space that is the place for individual devotion and communal worship. Traditionally, this threshold is not much thicker than the door above it: here we see this passageway as an expansive garden with the chapel at its center. The path through the garden makes us aware that we’re entering a special place, one where the quotidian gives way to the divine. The chapel is conceived of as a series of pavilions; their spaces designed to give the feeling of clearings in a forest, of calm amidst the unknown. Protected and uplifting, these rooms are defined by the densely planted, indigenous southern Texas landscaping surrounding them. The garden – the threshold – mediates between the secular realm and sacred one. All the pavilions – the Narthex, the Sanctuary, the Multi-Faith Chapel and the Blessed Sacrament – will have glass walls and be set directly into the lush, densely planted landscape, drawing nature into the sphere of the divine. The slim, steel columns that support the roofs will echo the trees outside. The ceilings and roof are composed of cloud-like transparent membranes that will filter daylight and in the evening, when lit from within, have the glow of a lantern.

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.

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.