Thinking about space is second nature to New York architects Michael Silver, Glynis Berry, Stephen Tilly and Lee Skolnick. All four are involved in shaping the landscape of urban, suburban and rural New York through major projects that question the premises of space, its meaning and use. Each project has a particular set of concerns that range from technology to illumination, from historic preservation to the interpretation of site. All are united by a common motivation: they give meaning to social interaction using the architecture of the everyday. Recognizing that moving through space is a ritual intimately linked to everyday experience, they construct structures that simultaneously contain and create stratas of meaning for both the individual and their community. In the hands of these architects, space metamorphoses the everyday experiences of going to the library, driving on a rural road at night, visiting an observatory or a nature preserve into moments of plenitude.

While many architects rely on two-dimensional drawings to map a space, Michael Silver prefers three dimensions. Silver's latest proposal, "Digital Stone: New York Public Library Stacks Expansion," embraces new technology, especially the utilization of digital mapping techniques. Located adjacent to the New York Public Library Annex on 10th Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan, Silver's project is designed to expand the limited reading and book storage space of the current facility.

Rather than use the computer as simple conduit, through which a three-dimensional architectural model can become a three-dimensional object, Silver uses digital technology to transform space. Beginning with a PIX-3 3d Scanner, a scanner with a finger-like probe that moves over the surface of an object to record its shape, Silver scanned a maquette of the library's existing interior space. Unlike other architects' use of computer modeling for simply representing a space, Silver uses the scanner as a creative tool. He angled the direction of the probe so that, as it crept its way over the surface of the maquette, it couldn't reach every nook and cranny of the space. This generated a map full of what Silver calls "blind spots" or "shadows," a map that, while technically incorrect, offered new ways of imaging the redesign for the library. He further transformed the scans using various software tools designed to shape, recode and analyze space. His final map of the space is an abstraction of the original site, a process that, as he describes, "maps the act of mapping."

For Silver, the nature of the scanner makes it a tool of design and not, like more traditional forms of architectural modeling, merely a technique for raw description. He says, "While I have to choreograph the function, I'm letting the scanner be the author. With this technique it's the tool that is producing form rather than the tool reproducing a form that's been given prior to the scan."

While Silver is extremely interested in the theoretical implications of digital processing, he insists that his digital products are meant to exist in real space. The technological processes behind the spaces that he designs can be experienced directly through the intuitive connection between the final forms that comprise his projects. In the library expansion proposal, he used templates based on his scans to create plates of granite that are stacked to form a wall for the library. The process comes full circle as the stone plates, laid flat and stacked, actually look like the scanned models Silver generated on the computer. Books can be stored on the inside of the wall, while the outside of the wall resembles a book's stacked pages. His digitized map has been transformed into an actual physical space.

Glynis Berry's project "Reflective Light in Rural and Suburban Streetscapes" focuses on the particular lighting needs of rural and suburban areas. She is interested in using these spaces to combine safety and aesthetics. Berry's project stems from personal experience: driving to her home in Orient, New York along roads with different levels of lighting, she noticed that roads with harsh lights beaming onto black, absorptive asphalt pavement only made her tired. They detracted from the natural beauty of the landscape and seemed wasteful and unproductive. On unlit roads, however, she remarked that the constant, diffuse light allowed for a wider field of vision and emphasized the beauty of the natural surroundings. Reflectivity—light reflected on local structures—seemed to Berry to be a solution that served illumination needs while increasing awareness of the positive in the environment.

Berry is only at the beginning of this project. Her first step is to learn more about existing lighting fixtures such as the quintessential streetlight, the cobra head. An evaluation of the cobra head's history, its impact on vision, energy use, cost and the environment will allow her to question some of the premises at the heart of traditional rural and suburban lighting.

One of Berry's motivating forces is the wish to protect rural and suburban environments from getting on the bandwagon of traditional lighting. She explains that, "just one light in a fairly dark atmosphere destroys the nighttime. People forget that there is a landscape at night—they think that once the sun sets, that's it. The whole reason for this project is to come up with an alternative that doesn't destroy the rural environment." This interest on the impact of lighting on a person's experience of the environment stems from Berry's body-oriented approach to design. She firmly believes that design can control "the sense of body, how you relate to spaces, your experiences."

At the completion of her study, her goal is to offer two design concepts for village and rural lanes typical of the North Fork of Long Island. One model of reflective lighting will be subtle, almost invisible, while respecting safety and guidance needs. The other will be more visible, as it highlights the environmental and social character of the site. This dual model of lighting is partly a result of Berry's involvement in a project sponsored by the New York City Department of Transportation. In collaboration with Linnea Tillet, a lighting designer, she immersed herself in questions of lighting and its impact on a community in East New York. In that project, Berry used lighting to emphasize the positive aspects of the neighborhood by flood lighting vertical surfaces like the facade of a church, a library and the interior of potentially foreboding tunnels and by using lighting as a marker to lead pedestrians through the safest areas in the neighborhood. In that instance, the design of the light fixture was not the priority. Instead, it was the function of the light as a symbol within the community that became all important.

The impact of architecture on the local community also plays a major role for Stephen Tilly whose projects along the Hudson River acknowledge the intellectual and historical importance of each site for those who reside nearby. Tilly "recycles" historic buildings for modern uses—preferring to resuscitate rather than demolish structures—thereby conserving them as artifacts for the community while making them functional again.

In 1993, Tilly was selected to renovate the Burnham Building at Irvington-on-Hudson, a landmark mill building assembled from five different structures starting with the Queen Anne style main building and carriage house built in 1881. Since April 1998, he has been converting the ground floor into the 10,000 square foot Irvington Public Library which will include 30,000 volumes, a browsing area, a large children's library with preschool and story telling rooms, an archive for local history documents, a multipurpose room and cabling for up to 24 computer work stations. The upper floors of the building are being converted into 22 units of affordable housing available to village employees, volunteers and the elderly.

For Tilly, incorporating a center of learning and habitation into a once defunct building emphasizes the overall resuscitative gesture of the project. He says, "bringing a building to life is a positive experience for everyone. The clients become the custodian of their own cultural tradition and the contrast of the old with the new provokes them to ask questions about their own community." To juxtapose old and new in the Burnham Building, Tilly kept the original, exposed tree trunk columns next to the newly installed steel columns and maintained the arches of the old carriageway as the entranceway to the library. He also used environmentally sensitive materials throughout the building.

This productive, transformative use of energy and materials is an embodiment of Tilly's architectural philosophy and is also present in his restoration of Draper Park in Hastings-on-Hudson that he undertook between 1991-1997. The nine acre property contains five 19th century structures that were willed by Antonia Draper Dixon, youngest daughter of the scientist, historian and pioneer photographer John Draper, to the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society before being taken in trust by the village of Hastings. When the village leaders realized the cultural value of the site, they commissioned Tilly to create both a "Historic Structures and Landscape Report" and a "Protection Plan and Preventive Maintenance Manual." These documents helped the village construct a public/private model of land use for the site. This lead to the auctioning of four of the five 19th century cottages belonging to Draper Park. Purchased by private owners, the sales were for the houses only; the land on which they sit remains park property and is leased by the new tenants. The money generated by these sales was used to support the parkland and to permit it to remain a viable historic site.

Central to the identity of Draper Park is the Observatory Cottage, used by John Draper’s son Henry for astronomical photography. Tilly was commissioned to adaptively restore the interior of the cottage and to design an addition to be used as an archive. The archive was built with the history of the observatory in mind: Tilly recycled the plan dimensions of one of the long-gone observatory wings and replicated the diameter of its dome in a new cupola. Today, the new archive is a living museum-connecting people through architecture to the history of their village.

Lee H. Skolnick, Principal at Lee H. Skolnick Architecture+Design Partnership (LHSA+DP), believes that architecture can connect people to the meaning of a site. He has a unique process to guide him to that goal. His work at the Trapps Gateway on the Mohonk Preserve in Gardiner, New York, a 9,200 square foot education and administration center, uses design as a tool for active interpretation. In 1994, LHSA+DP was selected to offer a solution to the Preserve's challenge: how to design a building to serve 100,000 visitors every year on a site that is meant to be preserved but not developed.

In order to construct a building consistent with the Preserve's goals of stewardship, education and preservation, Skolnick and his team which includes his partner Paul S. Alter and Jo Ann Secor, Director of Museum Services, began a four-year process of immersion in their client's world. With the cooperation of Glenn Hoaglund, the Executive Director of the Preserve, and the participation of the Board and its education staff, they set out to develop a set of criteria to guide their design. For Skolnick and his team, these criteria could only emerge from a deep understanding of the Preserve's mission and values. Over the course of many meetings, guided tours, and close teamwork with the Preserve, they understood that the best intervention they could make would be to replicate the unfolding experience that they themselves enjoyed while touring the Preserve.

Skolnick says, "Trapps Gateway is of the land and, ultimately, is an invitation to the land. Rather than existing as a destination in and of itself, it provides the visitor with a more meaningful encounter with nature. The building is a metaphor for the Preserve itself: At first it is unassuming, but the visitor soon realizes all that is going on behind the scenes. They then learn about the immense work that is needed to protect the land and its ecosystems from harm."

The means to convey such an experience was to construct a building seamlessly integrated into the site. Most notable is the use of native Shawangunk conglomerate stone in the exterior facing of the building and the retaining walls and the use of oak and chestnut trees felled as a result of clearing the site. The lower level of the building was set into the hillside and a low-pitched gable roof sheathed in green slate and copper blended visually with the surrounding trees. Additionally, the extensive use of natural materials, responsibly manufactured building products, energy efficient details, and a Geo-thermal heating and cooling system help to maintain a harmonious relationship between the building and its environment.

Skolnick and his team were also responsible for designing the Trapp's Gateway Interpretive Center's exhibition. Secor says, "It was clear from the beginning that the exhibits must act as a 'gateway' of information and knowledge for the visitor's experience out on the land, on the trails, observing nature-the Preserve's real exhibits." To craft such an experience through architecture, the design team chose to draw the visitors to the far end of the building where they are greeted with a two-story vista of the Preserve as well as an exhibit called "Where Humans and Nature Coexist."

New York architects are thinking daily about the urban, suburban and rural spaces that we naturally inhabit. Whether it's Michael Silver's insertion of architecture into the culture of information, Glynis Berry's interest in the impact of light on an individual and a community, Steven Tilly's emphasis on the intellectual and historical connection between a structure and a community or Lee Skolnick's interest in connecting people to the intrinsic meaning of a site, architecture clearly begins with a vision of space. These approaches suggest that architects can challenge the conventions of our everyday lives by conceptualizing space differently. Moreover, they confirm that our interaction with space need not be stripped of meaning, that it is full of many layers of stratified meaning. Their architecture of the everyday focuses on the integration of space into the ritual of living. It transforms the identity of both site and spectator through their mutual interaction. Through various means, all of these architects reconfigure space, using it to impart a sense of fullness to everyday experience.

Michael Silver Architects
Phone and Fax: (718) 782-3408
E-mail: js2@mindspring.com

Glynis Berry
Studio a/b
111 4th Avenue, #2m
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 677-7898
E-mail: studioab@attglobal.net

Stephen Tilly, Architect
22 Elm Street
Dobbs Ferry, New York 10522
Phone: (914) 693-8898
Fax: (914) 693-4235
E-mail: stilly8898@aol.com

Lee H. Skolnick Architecture+Design Partnership
John Rice, Director of Communications
7 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10010
Phone: (212) 989-2624
Fax: (212) 727-1702
E-mail: jrice@skolnick.com