In The New York Times, explore the sustainable retrofit of New York University‘s Rubin Hall through a series of interviews with Michael Syracuse AIA LEED AP, FXCollaborative Partner; Cecil Scheib, Chief Sustainability Officer at NYU; Edwin Arnaud, building engineer; and Hayden Hyun, freshman and Rubin’s student government president:
“One of the critical things with these existing buildings is getting in early and understanding the building and what it is, and then designing the new project to take advantage of that. Work with it, not against the existing building. We were fortunate to be able to open up some walls and do some exploration before the construction to understand what this building was.
These renovation projects are all about understanding the existing building and being super strategic. What do you really need to touch, and only peeling back as much as you need to. That has benefits in terms of time, cost and construction, but it also has benefits in terms of not constructing more stuff, more embodied carbon, in this world.”
– Michael Syracuse AIA LEED AP
