In the Irish Channel area of New Orleans, 12 new homes cluster on a former warehouse site. Angular, covered in corrugated metal, and painted white, the homes are jigsawed in a way that makes room for patios, courtyards, and parking. Inside, they have polished-concrete and wood floors, energy-efficient fixtures, and soaring ceilings. But what’s most special about these houses isn’t just their modern design: it’s the creativity that went into building on a site where the law, at first glance, only permitted three single-family houses.

In a bid for density, sustainability, and affordability, architect Jonathan Tate conducted legal alchemy and found ways to subdivide the land and use multifamily zoning ordinances to construct 10 fully detached homes and a duplex.

“I tried to push the land as far as I could,” Tate says.

Tate purchased the land and developed the project himself—an unusual scenario for an architect. Using design to maneuver complicated zoning and ownership laws, he was able to build an experimental infill project that adds high-quality, much-needed housing to New Orleans. Though Tate considers his firm to be a traditional architectural practice, this isn’t the first time he’s served as his own developer. In 2016, he designed and built the first of his Starter Homes—compact single-family houses built on inexpensive and oddly shaped infill lots—which helped establish his reputation as an experimental and forward-thinking designer.

“If anything, our idea of developing was just to implement an idea. It was also a form of advocacy for the discipline so architects can engage in projects and possibilities that precede [the traditional design process],” Tate says.

A closer relationship between architects and developers—and sometimes a blending of the two—is unlocking more creative construction and problem-solving in the built world.

The design-development duel

Buildings can be constructed by a number of different entities: architects, engineers, developers, contractors. One scenario—common for custom homes—is that architects design a building, then bid it out to a contractor who subcontracts to tradespeople. Sometimes architecture firms develop their own projects and call themselves “design-build” firms.

Architects design buildings, so the assumption goes that all buildings are designed by architects. That’s not always the case, especially when it comes to multifamily developments, tract housing, high-rises, and master plans. Developers, along with engineers, come up with the program of a structure, using guidelines from zoning and building codes to shape the size of rooms, number of floors, footprint, and setbacks. Sometimes a developer requests proposals from many architects and chooses one. Sometimes an architect is brought in in the middle stages of a project to style the building’s envelope or to address a particularly sticky problem. They’re not always involved after something breaks ground. And the builders aren’t involved in the design process, which has led to some high-profile blunders.

In Brooklyn, SHoP Architects, the developer Forest City, and prefab builder Skanska worked on a residential high-rise, which was the world’s tallest modular building when it was proposed in 2011. The 32-story building was plagued with stop work orders, delays, leaks, and lawsuits. The builder sued the developer, alleging a bad design, and the developer sued the builder over faulty construction.

Meanwhile, the lack of design in development—particularly in multifamily residential projects—has led to a proliferation of the same bland and boring buildings in cities across the country.

Developers often perceive architects’ contributions as expensive, unnecessary, and time consuming. Architects often worry that developers will value-engineer the “design” out of a project or focus too much on practicalities. “There’s an antagonistic relationship because the sense is [architects] don’t share the same values and goals as other disciplines involved,” Jonathan Tate says. “Builders don’t care what it looks like, developers are looking at the bottom line… it’s a financial transaction versus a design and experience. And that’s a really poor way to see the world.”

Michael Samuelian—an architect who has spent much of his career working for developers and who led the Hudson Yards megaproject and post-9/11 reconstruction of lower Manhattan—believes architects and developers need to learn from each other. Recently appointed to lead the Trust for Governors Island, Samuelian is taking a design-lead approach to preserving and redeveloping the historic site in New York’s harbor. And this fall, he is teaching an advanced design studio on developing Governors Island at the Yale School of Architecture.

“Each profession shares optimism,” Samuelian says. “Architects believe design can solve everything. Developers believe the world will be better with their building in it. … Architects should be more sensitive that they exist in a project for a very limited time: A project starts well before they’re involved and lasts well after. Developers can benefit from valuing design, but knowing it’s not equal: Just because a building is well designed doesn’t mean it’s expensive, and, vice versa, just because it’s expensive doesn’t mean it’s well designed.”

The dichotomy of architecture and development exists partly because of how these professions are traditionally taught.

“The culture of architecture is that of a high art and being careful not to get too sullied and dirty with reality,” says Chris Calott, an architect, developer, and chair of Real Estate Development and Design master’s program at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. “Particularly in architecture school, it’s a mindset and tradition that’s hard-fought. I always say you can ignore [the realities of development] but you do so at your own peril.”

UC Berkeley’s program welcomed its first students this fall. It teaches people with an architecture background how to better understand development, and encourages design appreciation in people approaching development from a real estate perspective. The inaugural class of 16 students is composed of designers, house flippers, and people working in affordable housing and policy.

A handful of architecture schools offer graduate degrees in real estate development, which is typically the purview of business schools. Columbia University’s GSAPP launched its master’s degree program in 1985 and has graduated 2,185 students since then. Woodbury University also has a master’s program, and so does Pratt University. MIT offers an interdisciplinary course of study. Before establishing UC Berkeley’s program, Calott led Tulane University’s master’s program in sustainable real estate development. Teaching design and development together fast-tracks the appreciation and expertise each side needs to really understand the other, he says.

“The best development companies are doing the best projects by working with very good architects and solving problems together,” Calott says.

The business case for design-led development

If architects and developers collaborate closely, both sides see advantages. But architects who have embraced development work say they’ve experienced windfalls creatively and businesswise.

When Lightstone, a developer of residential, hospitality, and commercial projects, embarked on 40 East End Avenue, a forthcoming 29-unit, 20-story boutique condominium on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, it integrated design, development, and marketing from the beginning, betting that the approach would assure the project’s success in a fluctuating market.

Lightstone enlisted Deborah Berke Partners to design the building and Corcoran to create the marketing strategy. The three worked together to make sure the building would be unique, desirable, and, ultimately, financially successful. They conducted detailed demographic research about the target market for the building—which informed structural detailing and interiors—and examined New York City zoning code for opportunities to increase buildable space and therefore profitability.

The team ended up selecting energy-efficient mechanical systems, using thermally resistant walls, adhering to “quality housing” rules like maintaining neighborhood character architecturally, and including amenities like landscaping. The end result? A residential building that’s stylistically distinctive and structurally ambitious.

The building—with its a masonry facade, punched windows, terra-cotta detailing—references historic structures found around the neighborhood. Inside, marble floors set in a black-and-white herringbone pattern and a sweeping staircase greet residents and visitors. The interior palette of natural materials and richly textured textiles appeals to the senses. The architects also added extra storage and a coworking space to appeal to prospective buyers.

The financial boons of becoming a developer aren’t just in the rates a building fetches. To Jonathan Segal, becoming an architect-developer made sense creatively, as well. “We can do what we want and answer to no one,” he says. “I feel bad for architects that get pummeled and hammered and work cheaply and become bag boys when they could do this.”

In the more typical business structure, in which a separate owner, architect, and contractor work on each project, creative differences or rising costs can quickly sour relationships. When things go wrong, it’s the architect who gets blamed.

“The triangle is problematic from the start,” Segal says. “If you remove two of the points and I’m the architect, owner, and contractor, when I do mess up I’m able to fix the issue on my own. If something doesn’t turn out how I wanted, I can fix it.”

Trained as an architect, Segal worked for two firms before launching his own. For his first solo project, he tried shopping a row-house development, which he designed for his thesis, around to different developers until one of them encouraged him to develop it himself. “He told me: ‘You’re an idiot. Don’t be an architect; develop it yourself.’”

Segal found some inexpensive land and constructed his row houses. The profit he earned the first year exceeded his expectations, and he continued on his trajectory as a developer who designs his own projects. He specializes in mixed-use residential and commercial infill projects.

Because his firm is essentially the sole point of contact for a project, his subcontractors receive swift responses to questions and issues that arise on projects. He has strong working relationships with them as a result, which leads to faster construction and more leverage in cost negotiations for future projects. There are also legal benefits, Segal points out, that ultimately save time, money, and creative energy. He says he’s only been sued three times in the past three decades of business, which he claims is a low rate for the construction industry.

“We have control and we’ve utilized it to keep out of trouble,” Segal says.

Since launching his company in 1988, Segal constructed 245 buildings in San Diego and concentrated much of his work around the city’s Little Italy area. His projects include micro-unit apartments, luxury lofts, adaptive reuse, and more. His business structure has allowed him to build a cohesive, intentional body of work.

“My goals are to influence and change urban San Diego,” he says. “It’s not about making money or creating an object; it’s about creating change and a legacy. If you made a shit ton of money on bad things, who cares. But if you have a legacy on improving something, that’s great. It’s important that happens.”

Creative problem-solving in a world where it’s harder to build

For architects to create measurable change, scale is needed, which is where either becoming a developer or partnering with a like-minded developer becomes essential.

The building industry is facing a number of challenges, including labor shortages, a volatile materials market, and escalating construction costs. Meanwhile, bureaucracy has slowed new development and land is becoming prohibitively expensive in areas where new structures are needed most. Macro issues, like climate change, are also affecting the characteristics of buildings and neighborhoods. Developers and architects have to get more creative with how—and why—they build.

Allison Arieff—an architecture critic, editorial director of the urbanism think tank SPUR, and lecturer at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design—sees a real mismatch between the buildings being built and what people need from their buildings, particularly as it relates to housing. Most housing in the U.S. is designed and built by developers, and that’s led to generic homes and neighborhoods tailored for investment rather than livability.

“Ultimately, there are a lot of deeply ingrained concepts of what homeowners want that have a lot more with the building industry and realtors than the reality [of what homeowners desire],” Arieff says. “You’re not thinking about what’s useful to the person in it. In a resale-obsessed market, they build to perceived future value versus what meets someone’s needs.”

She advocates for addressing sustainability head-on in housing, designing homes for community, and making spaces that will work for different genders and age groups instead of an archetypical buyer. Architects’ input on residential developments could go a long way toward improving the quality of life.

“If you look out at developments across the country, there’s homogeneity and repetition and lack of appreciation for context and planning for creating neighborhoods. It’s pretty stark,” Arieff says. “I think we’re suffering from the results of not doing that… For example, a development might have a shopping center next to it, but you can’t walk to it. It’s tiny little details like that that are super frustrating and don’t have to be that way.”

David Baker Architects, which specializes in multifamily residential projects, leverages strong relationships with like-minded developers to construct affordable and environmentally minded housing, including collaborations with Bridge Housing, a mission-driven nonprofit developer, and Holliday Development, a for-profit company known for mixed-use projects and rehabbing industrial buildings into live-work spaces. The firm has become nationally recognized for its civic-minded body of work, much of it in San Francisco, amid an unprecedented local housing shortage and stringent construction regulations. The architecture firm usually sticks with a project through construction to make sure the most important elements endure the inevitable value engineering.

To Daniel Simons, a principal at the firm, having that strong working relationship with development partners and a willingness to see the bigger picture helps ensure a project will be successful, even if it has to be redesigned due to cost.

“Projects get messed up for lots of reasons—it’s like death by 1,000 cuts,” Simons says. “Sometimes it’s because of a big decision at the beginning, but a lot of times it’s little things that get lost on the way, from a bad choice or a lack of vision. It’s really important to stay involved and keep involved at all stages.

“As architects, we have the opportunity—and I think the responsibility—to always be advocating for the things we think are right for a project—like sustainability, livability, thermal comfort or whatever it is,” Simons says. “It’s easy for developers with lots of experience to say ‘We don’t do that,’ and for architects to say, ‘Okay, we don’t do that here’ instead of saying, ‘Things change.’”

David Baker Architects learned how to be a good development partner through years of experience and trial and error. Jonathan Tate was able to build his infill projects because his curiosity about zoning and insurance regulations led him to building opportunities most architects and developers would overlook. At Hudson Yards, Michael Samuelian created a high-rise neighborhood on top of active train tracks by taking a design-led angle to development. The marriage of design and development is creating some of the most exciting built work today.

“Real estate development needs to take design seriously because it can add so much value, solve problems, and make better urbanism,” Calott says. “[Architects] naturally think about cities and development. We are inherently working in the real estate industry already. Why not be mindful and be better?”

In the Fall of 2013, I sat down with Gregg Pasquarelli (SHoP), Brad Cloepfil (Allied Works), Paul Lewis (Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects), Dan Wood (Work.AC), and Stephen Cassell (Architecture Research Office). I wanted to understand and document how each of them formed their respective offices. I was after the nitty gritty details not typically published in the glossy magazines. I was looking for the hard times, the struggle, and the projects that were never published, but paid the bills. This interview is part of a series of 5 posts that will go through each of these architects and discuss their beginning.

Gregg Pasquarelli is a founding partner of SHoP architects. What initially began as a side project between Gregg and his now partners (including his wife) has turned into one of the most successful and now larger design studios in New York. More information on SHoP can be found on their site.

Gregg Pasquarelli: When we graduated, it was basically a recession. We decided that there were some jobs you could take at offices, but none of them were ones we were interested in working at. So we did whatever we could. We had a large communal space, two of them actually. Ed Keller and Jack Phillips and I had a loft downtown. Bill and Chris and Corey Sharples had a loft in Midtown.

James Petty: Did the Sharples have their own office at that time?

GP: We basically had places that we lived that we slept in. They were open giant spaces that we had desks in. Those were the offices. We basically did whatever we could. We would do things like measuring as-built drawings for our professors or other architects to even building models for them. We even ghost-wrote chapters in books and put together RFPs, even kitchen renovations for friends of friend’s mothers in apartments on the Westside. Whatever we could do to do these little jobs and keep the rent going. It was never under the auspices of an office. But what we had was an office that we did competitions for. So we would do all of these pickup jobs for cash flow and then together in different configurations between all of the graduates. One competition might be the eight of us. You would be doing your job to pay shit, but then at night, you would work on the competition. Each time it just reconfigured into a different group of people.

JP: Doing this all simultaneously must have taken up your entire life.

GP: Yeah. That was great. We did that, and we rendered for people. We did whatever we could, some crazy projects. Kim and I built a scaled model of the tenement building that the Grand Rebbe of the Lebonature of the Jewish sect was born and would be put into a temple in Australia. You know, bazaar stuff. Where we got paid $3,000 and could live for four months on that. So that was all we did. All of those jobs were the kinds of ones where people would say, “well, I’m not doing a suburban bath or kitchen.” But we learned how to win a project. We learned how to sign a contract. Put a proposal together. How to build. How to collect. How to deal with the contractors. We were doing all of these little projects, but none of which we felt were part of our “offices.” But they funded thinking. They taught us how to actually practice. Then we would do competitions and we started placing in them. We started doing well.

JP: The Mitchell Park was the first one that you got. Did that help fund an actual establishment?

GP: Absolutely. Then Gregg [Lynn] got the Korean Presbyterian Church project and asked me to be a project manager. So then we had a real full-time job. But we were doing competitions with Gregg; we were doing competitions of our own.

JP: That was at the same time as Mitchell Park?

GP: No, this was before Mitchell Park. I had a full-time job then, and then Bernard [Tsumi] asked me to start teaching. I was building Gregg’s church, teaching three days a week and then at night doing competitions with the Sharples. It kept going like that for years, probably five years. Then the Sharples got Greenport. Kim and I worked for Gregg. When we finished the CDs and the building went on construction, I went on site as the full-time manager, and Kim took a job doing SCA school projects. Then once the Sharples got Greenport, Kim quit that job since she didn’t know how to put CDs together. So we started that and I would come in and help at night. Eventually, that was enough of a project. Then I brought in a few things such as Casa National and a couple of little stores. We had enough that we didn’t have to work for anyone else. But it was about a five-year period of a sort of dove-tale. We were never funded. We started the firm with zero capitalization. If we wanted a computer, we had to buy it with a personal credit card. If you needed a chair, you had to save up for three months to get a chair. We used a zip-disk instead of a network. We just figured it out. Over the next few years, literally every cent we made went into building the infrastructure of the office.

JP: When do you feel like that infrastructure was really into place?

GP: Well it was still pretty small when we were on 32nd street in a 2,000 sq. ft. loft. We were about 15 people and that was all that could fit there. We seemed to be getting a lot more jobs. Things were starting to come together. So we signed the lease here. We moved into this place with 16 people. It was where is now the entry of our current office. We had 24 desks. This was exactly nine and a half years ago since our ten-year lease ends in February. I remember saying to Cory, “Wow, we’re 16 and there are 24 desks. Do you think we will ever fill up the 24 desks before the lease is over?” Now we’re over 150. Literally, as every space on this floor became vacant, we took it. Which is why this place is now a labyrinth. Now we are building out a new space across the street and we have taken like 34,000 feet and building out a mega-office. It is really coming together. I think the big jump was from that loft where everything was off of our credit cards and where we were just trying to make it happen to come here where we went to a bank and got a loan. By then we had contracts and we had a proven track record and we could borrow half a million dollars. Which seemed like an immense amount of money. Now we are talking about borrowing $10,000,000 to build out the new office. That was when it really started changing. That’s when we began to build a really great network and servers. We were able to buy the real Mies chairs. We just continued to build things. But I don’t think we took a distribution, a profit, for a long time. Every cent that the office made just went back into the office. We continued to build it. It’s a huge expense to do all of this stuff. Architecture is a pretty low-margin business. It can be tough. You want to build out half a million worth of office, that means you would have had to have billed five million dollars in fees. So it’s hard. Think about going out as a young guy and getting five million dollars in contracts. That’s what it takes. And doing it right and collecting all the money. Just to invest half-a-mill in an office, which doesn’t go very far. It is a real struggle up the food chain.

JP: Were you guys still teaching at the time? Did you use that to help fund some of it?

GP: Yup. The teaching took care of our home and personal stuff. The office paid everyone and the partners always got paid last, if we ever got paid. Usually, there was something left and we would say, “we could each take $5k or we could buy a 3D printer.” We would always go with the 3D Printer. You have to remember. In 2001, SOM didn’t have a 3D printer, but SHoP did. We were only twelve people.

JP: Do you feel like your time with Gregg Lynn helped you push technology as an important factor in staying new and fresh?

GP: Absolutely. I did a summer internship at Frank Gehry’s office. Watching him work on Disney Hall and Bilbao was very informative for me. Working with Gregg while he was learning software and writing Blob essays. I think the thing that differentiated us was when I went out and had to build the Korean Presbyterian Church with a fairly unskilled labor force trying to build a very complicated building on a very tight budget, I had to really think about how one draws buildings that were to be made. I think that’s why we always had a very strong sense of making. If we were just going to make beautiful objects and hand it off, they would be value engineered or the projects would die. If we went in with highly explicit instructions sets on how to make it, we could convince the contractors that it wasn’t that complicated. Then we could get it built. There is literally a direct trajectory with that and the risk-taking that we did with the development stuff, which gave us the freedom to test things on a bigger scale like the Porter House.

JP: You mentioned last year in an impromptu talk at the Yale School of Architecture that risk was something you have to take on as a firm to go from a little office to go after the work that the bigger offices were working on. You used the risk taken with the Porter House to help you guys make that jump. Could you talk about that?

GP: We kept realizing that we were being really smart about how we were both designing and making things that were affordable while at the same time making our clients a lot of money. So why shouldn’t we partake in the upside if we were really smart? The only way to do that is to take a risk. We risked everything we had as a firm and put it into the deal. That generated enough revenue to help fund the next level of growth.

JP: Were you putting in actual equity along with sweat equity?

GP: Yes, both.

JP: Are you guys continuing to do that?

GP: We haven’t in the last few years because we haven’t found the right opportunity. But we would absolutely do that if the right opportunity came along.

JP: You have really documented well how that is a very viable source of finance for architects at the moment which ten years ago was not a thing. Outside of developing, you guys have a few more ventures going on as well. We all know SHoP construction, but are you guys writing software now as well?

GP: We have a product called Envelope, which is a zoning mapping and analysis tool. You can enter an address and it analyzes what available air rights exist and what can be built.

JP: Were these set up as separate businesses, which run, profit and take responsibility in terms of risk for themselves?

GP: Yes.

JP: What about your life balance? When you started out, everything was a twenty-four-hour job, between the teaching, working for Gregg Lynn and getting SHoP off the ground. How is it now that you have an established firm? Has the workload eased up?

GP: It has not let up at all. I think I have worked harder in the last six months than I ever had in my career. It is intense. If you ever let down the partnership, the quality really starts to go. You have to be fully on. It’s full-on forever. But it is fun. This I what I had dreamt of and what we all had hoped could happen. We never knew if it would. We’re pulling off serious architecture in what not be the traditional realms, government, institutional and even developer type stuff.

JP: Does SHoP try to keep the work diversified to avoid being too much into one particular field?

GP: Absolutely. We try very hard to curate along with the diversity of the office. The office culture is a project of itself. And you have to attend to it just as if you are attending to a multi-million dollar project. We don’t run like a corporate office and it doesn’t run like a boutique studio either. It’s just fun. It’s the place I want to be.

JP: It seems like a lot of young architects get stuck in the rhetoric of doing small renovations or small kitchens in New York. How did SHoP stay out?

GP: You have to go after both. You don’t want to be an expert in anything. You have to continue to challenge yourself. To this day, I still have people tell me, “well you haven’t done so and so.” My response is always the same. “Every project we just showed you, we were totally unqualified to do. Get over it.” We had never done a sports arena before, and what would be really easy for us right now is to do four more sports arenas. They have been offered, and we’re not taking them. But what is more challenging is to go after different realms. We have to go after as many different things as possible no matter what we do, and it is hard.

If you enjoyed this interview, take a look at some of the other interviews in this series:
Brad Cloepfil (Allied Works)
Paul Lewis (Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis Architects)
Dan Wood (Work.AC)
Stephen Cassell (Architecture Research Office)

Also, take a look at interviews of architects who are developing their own work at architectanddeveloper.com. I spoke to Architects & Developers:
Peter Guthrie (DDG)
Jared Della Valle (Alloy)
Kevin Cavenaugh (Guerrilla Development)
Jonathan Tate (OJT)
and many more…