|
|
|
Putting People in Their Place
In creating working spaces, architect Barry Svigals never overlooks the human element
|
Business New Haven
6/9/2003
By: Melissa Nicefaro
|
For most of us who toil for a living, work is our home away from home. And for the majority of those people, their space at work is not nearly as comfortable or personal as our homes are.
But one local architect, blessed with more than his share of the creativity gene, focuses on bringing comfort, intimacy and a human environment to the buildings and workspaces he creates.
Barry Svigals, managing partner of the architectural firm of Svigals + Partners, tries to bring that creativity into the many laboratory spaces he designs throughout New Haven.
"People spend a tremendous amount of time in these spaces, and they are in a certain way a home away from home," he says. "Some are spending more time there than they are in their own homes.
"To bring that sense of intimacy and humane environment to what is generally seen as a largely technical environment is something that we promote," he adds.
Svigals believes that with the ability to interact in a workplace, creative productivity flows.
Svigals studied at Yale as an undergraduate and graduate student and was looking for work in Boston when one of his professors offered him a job here in New Haven.
And so it began. From 1976 to 1983, Svigals worked for New Haven architect Herbert S. Newman.
"I thought I'd spend six months to a year getting my portfolio together in New Haven and that was that," recalls Svigals. However, "The job was too good and the firm was terrific. Herb Newman is a wonderful architect. I learned a tremendous amount from him."
Included his Newman career was a year in Paris, where Svigals studied sculpture, which has become something of a hallmark of his over the years.
After his stay with Newman came to an end, Svigals launched his own firm headquartered in Science Park, where he stayed for 18 years.
"We started there and got involved in doing work for creative companies," Svigals says. "From the outset that was a kind of a target for us, that designing spaces for creative enterprises." He did work for Kodak and Genaissance Pharmaceuticals, and also worked on the master plan for Science Park on a number of occasions.
Two years ago Svigals' firm moved to Ninth Square.
"We really wanted to be downtown and the Ninth Square was a developing area, there were a number of other creative enterprises down here, a few other architects, and we loved the feeling and the energy of this place becoming something. It has a somewhat of a SoHo feel to it," Svigals explains.
Something that New Haven offers that even SoHo lacks is a multitude of laboratories.
Laboratory work is a big chunk of what Svigals does -in research laboratories such as those at the Yale School of Medicine as well as for smaller spin-off companies.
"These spaces are intended to be representative of not only the basic science of what they do with the equipment, but also of the creative energy that they clearly possess in order to start a business like that," Svigals says.
There are several elements to designing the perfect laboratory, Svigals says.
"We now realize that the laboratory environments are equally important to people as they are to mice, which wasn't the case 30 years ago when people did it in a hole. The result of having open laboratories where people can interact and creative interaction can happen has now become a standard."
With the biotech firms on the ascendant and Yale nearby, Svigals' architectural business is strong. Svigals likes to think that he's the go-to firm for laboratory design, especially for startups, as well as for medium-sized and large firms.
Some of his local claims to fame include involvement in the original architectural master plan at the University of Connecticut. UConn 2000 was a $920 million plan that included a bioscience complex, the School of Education and the Center for Undergraduate Education.
UConn's 21st Century project, a $1.3 billion master plan, which Svigals is also involved in, has just begun. For those without architectural savoir faire, a master plan creates a framework for growth for the investment. Through the process of the master plan, buildings are sited, infrastructure to support buildings is planned, suggestions are made as to where the money should be invested in terms of the types of spaces that need to be built.
According to Svigals, the product of the process is a blueprint for the billion dollar-plus investment over a ten-year period.
"We do such a wide range of different types of projects, from furniture design and sculpture, residential projects and laboratory planning," Svigals notes. Clients have included Rolling Stone Keith Richards and cartoonist Gary Trudeau. It was Svigals' firm that created and built th
e new FBI building on State Street.
"Our role and our interest has to do with making places for people. That seems like such a simple and obvious thing: to create environments where people can do not only what they need to do, but feel good about it," Svigals says.
"The sculptural aspect is a hallmark of what we do, contributes to that. Evidence of the human touch and a handcrafted dimension to the work adds a connection that sense of humanity that is important to everyone."
An example of the human element can be found in the elementary schools Svigals is working on.
"If I was forced to say which project is really representative of what we wish to do, I would say these elementary schools we're working on now."
Work on the Edgewood Avenue Arts Magnet School, including a 30,000-square-foot expansion, is complete. Work on the Fair Haven School is under way, and Svigals is preparing to start on Beecher School.
"Children have such a wonderful vitality and to provide an environment for them, what could be more important?"
Svigals adds: "They are also really great clients for the fun that we like to provide. When we did Edgewood, we had several sessions with the students drawing their version of what the school should be like and they hung all over our office."
Children aside, Svigals explains: "Creativity is essential because we are asked to make something, some physical representation of a description of what people need to do in a particular place. It requires not only bringing together a budget, but the often contradictory goals of the client. And how to create an understandable hierarchy among those pieces and embody it into a built form is what we call a creative act.
"It is making a physical thing out of nothing, from a coalescing of ideas," Svigals says. "What's unique about the creativity of both architecture and business, is that by definition it needs to be collaborative. The openness that one needs to have in doing art is a prerequisite for pulling together disparate elements into a recognizable whole. So the collaborative creativity is really at the heart of what we do as architects. That is essential to any business that is growing and is going to be successful."
"I love architecture," says Svigals. "I think one of the great blessings about what we do is you don't get involved in this business unless you love it. It's a very, very difficult business because of this creative element that's unpredictable. But it is incredibly rewarding."
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
