One of the most controversial projects a co-op or condo can do is to redesign its lobby. One person likes green, another likes blue. One likes marble, another likes wood. Even if everyone can agree on the redo, last minute changes can cause tumult. On today’s episode, Louis Lipson, senior associate at the architecture firm Ethelind Coblin, shares the story of a lobby project at 785 Fifth Avenue in New York City, when last minute changes to a feature wall almost derailed everything. Louis Lipson is interviewed by Carol Ott for Habitat Magazine.
Thanks for listening. Subscribe to this podcast for more stories on how New York co-ops and condos have solved a myriad of problems. Brought to you by Habitat Magazine, the "bible" that hundreds of board directors turn to every day!
One of the most controversial projects a co-op or condo can do is to redesign its lobby. One person likes green, another likes blue. One likes marble, another likes wood. Even if everyone can agree on the redo, last minute changes can cause tumult. On today’s episode, Louis Lipson, senior associate at the architecture firm Ethelind Coblin, shares the story of a lobby project at 785 Fifth Avenue in New York City, when last minute changes to a feature wall almost derailed everything. Louis Lipson is interviewed by Carol Ott for Habitat Magazine.
Thanks for listening. Subscribe to this podcast for more stories on how New York co-ops and condos have solved a myriad of problems. Brought to you by Habitat Magazine, the "bible" that hundreds of board directors turn to every day!
[00:00:40] Carol Ott: Welcome to Problem Solved, a conversation about problems that have been solved in New York's co-op and condo buildings. I'm Carol Ott, publisher and editor in chief of Habitat Magazine. My guest today is Louis Lipson, an architect with Ethelind Coblin Architects, a New York City architectural firm.
One of the most controversial projects a co-op or condo can do is to redesign its lobby. One person likes green, another likes blue. One likes marble, another likes wood. Even if everyone can agree on the redo, last minute changes can cause tumult. Louis is here to share the story of a lobby project at 785 Fifth Avenue, when last minute changes to a feature wall almost derailed everything.
785 started out with a relatively low budget. Then, during the project, the board found more money and increased the spend. Tell us about the project and what happened during the transition.
[00:01:48] Louis Lipson: This project started out in 2018 when the building came to our office requesting a proposal just for a simple lobby renovation. Over the course of a few years, our involvement with them led to the development of the project in such a way that the budget and the scope nearly tripled from what was initially envisioned. Some of that had to do with a misunderstanding of how much construction cost at the time, but a lot of it had to do with a change of scope.
Initially the project was a refresh of the original 1960s lobby, but by the end of 2019 it had really transformed into a project where all of the finishes were removed. It was a full gut renovation everywhere in the lobby except for one critical area, their existing water feature wall.
[00:02:47] Carol Ott: What is a water feature wall?
[00:02:52] Louis Lipson: Think of it as a waterfall, but far more gentle. It's a slow trickle of water. In the case of 785, the feature wall itself is a continuous plane of granite, perfectly vertical and flush and flat. Essentially, water would gently pour over the top edge of this granite wall and fill a pool at the bottom. So it would be a gentle trickling sound against the wall and gentle splashes at the bottom.
[00:03:29] Carol Ott: And the board wanted to keep this water wall.
[00:03:33] Louis Lipson: That's exactly right. Like in any lobby project, obviously there are some board members and residents who wholeheartedly want to renovate the lobby, remove everything and start anew. But my understanding is that the majority of the building residents really loved that water wall feature and thought as long as it was cleaned and polished and all of the equipment used to make the water wall function properly was maintained, it would be an ideal element that would tie the original lobby into the new lobby.
[00:04:08] Carol Ott: When did a problem appear and what exactly was that problem?
[00:04:13] Louis Lipson: As I stated at the beginning, the project went through a series of aesthetic changes. The original lobby was this dark walnut color, and it worked very well with the cool tones of the granite water wall. And initially the redesign had included a very similar dark walnut wood paneling around the lobby with absolute black stone. It tied very well with that cool dark gray feature wall. Over time, through negotiations with different board members and various team members, the finishes went from dark walnut to Carrera marble, and then finally ended up with Avorio limestone and rift cut oak wood paneling.
Rift cut oak and Avorio limestone are neutral, and the water feature wall was also neutral, but they're on opposite sides of the spectrum color-wise. You have a cool gray versus a light beige, which was the limestone and the rift cut oak. At that point we recognized that there could be an issue with integrating the two, but that happened right around the time of Covid. The project started in 2018. It was in development for a couple of years, had two rounds of bidding, and by the time the general contractor was selected and the contract between the client and the contractor finalized it was March 2020. At that time, the finish selection hadn't been fully finalized.
I think what ended up occurring is that the board recognized that if we delayed starting the project by trying to resolve this water feature wall before the project even commenced, the delay would be too dramatic. They had already waited two years for this to start.
[00:06:12] Carol Ott: So what was the pivot, which I assume happened?
[00:06:17] Louis Lipson: Throughout demolition and construction, this feature wall was covered up by plywood and plastic to protect it because the intention was to salvage, restore and reuse it with slight modifications. Towards the end of December 2020, demolition was well behind us and installation of new finishes was underway. They had just started installing the new Avorio stone that was arriving from Italy and putting up the wood paneling on the walls. So it was time to remove the protection around the feature wall and look at it together to see what really needed to happen. That was when the board committee recognized that there was an issue aesthetically between the old water feature and the new finishes of this really contemporary lobby.
[00:07:16] Carol Ott: So the water feature at that point looked old and dated and a bit tired.
[00:07:23] Louis Lipson: It almost appeared like a vignette into the past. It looked completely out of place. You could put a picture frame around it and it may have helped, but this feature wall was the entire wall. It's about 25 feet bin height. It encompassed quite a large area. The only real way of dealing with it was either accepting that there would be this uncomfortable contrast or coming up with a change everyone could agree upon quickly.
[00:07:57] Carol Ott: Tell me what happened then. Somebody must have suggested a change .
[00:08:01] Louis Lipson: We had weekly meetings, in some cases twice a week, on site — somewhat unusual for a lobby project of this size. But the details were so refined it was critical to have eyes on the project weekly or twice a week. The discovery happened at one of these meetings. We were meeting via Zoom with some additional stakeholders who couldn't be at the building, and we all pointed to the same problem essentially simultaneously.
We decided to have a follow-up meeting to work together and resolve the situation. It was very quickly understood that it had to be something simple, easily implemented and also as impactful as this water feature. There were really two options. One was to remove all of the stone, replace it with a stone that would complement the beige tones of the oak and the limestone, and recreate the exact same waterfall feature, but with a new palette.
That was an easy solution, but it wasn't too exciting. We quickly recognized that this lobby has very crisp, clean lines. The details are elegant and simple, but there's really no texture. Nothing softens the space. Recognizing the benefits of having natural plants in indoor spaces that filter the air and provide clean oxygen in the midst of Covid was a very easy sell to the board committee. So we ended up taking what was once a waterfall and converting it into a mini garden.
[00:09:51] Carol Ott: Is the impact the same?
[00:09:56] Louis Lipson: When you enter the building, the wall is directly across from you, about 45, 50 feet away. It’s in the distance, but it's the first thing you see. If we had replaced the granite with a stone that was neutral and blended in with the other beige finishes, the impact would've been minimal at best, until you went up to it and sat next to it. The new wall is mostly green of course, but there are pops of white and other colors in this quilt pattern that we came up with. From a distance, it's really powerful because it's bright. This building faces the park, so it really feels like you just left the park to enter a new park when you're entering the building.
I think it is probably the most impactful thing we could have done other than commissioning a piece of artwork, which of course is probably the most contentious thing you can do in a building lobby.
[00:10:51] Carol Ott: I expect that it's not such an uncommon thing that in many lobby designs, there are some last minute changes. What would be the takeaway for other boards who are embarking on a lobby redesign?
[00:11:06] Louis Lipson: The key to getting this done was that the committee members involved in making the decisions were not indecisive. They made a move, got approval from the rest of the board, and entrusted their professionals to get it done right. If they teetered on a decision for more than a few days, it would have posed an immense problem to get this done in a timely manner, especially during the midst of Covid. By the time this was finalized, it was nearly March 2021, and there was the blockade at Suez Canal. Shipping containers were hard to find and the stone that we had to use was being shipped from Italy. If we had waited another week or two, this project could still be ongoing.