GLUCK+: Thinking making making thinking

Peter Gluck founded New York City-based GLUCK+ in 1972 with an integrative approach to design and building. In this architect-led design–build practice, which the firm describes as “single-source responsibility for the design, construction and commissioning of buildings,” the designers are also the construction managers for nearly all projects.

For Current Work, the firm’s principals illustrate the “two inseparable acts of thinking and making” through a series of recent projects.

• Thomas Gluck describes a house on Chicago’s North Shore that counteracts a steep bluff and poor soil by employing an innovative cellular concrete foundation and stretching the house into a procession of indoor and outdoor spaces.
• Stacie Wong presents the island campus of Duke University’s Marine Lab in Beaufort, NC, detailing the distinct massing, design, and material decisions the firm made to deliver a higher-performing building within the university’s budget.
• Marc Gee presents the Blue Ridge House in North Carolina and the process of working side-by-side with craftsmen on the intensive detailing of a distinctive lumber wall as well as an affordable housing project in Aspen, in which the firm acted as the developer, architect, and builder.
• Charlie Kaplan details the Lady Liberty Academy Charter School in Newark, which employed pre-fabricated off-site construction that allowed the school to welcome students only nine months after construction began, and a house in Colorado that minimized energy use through sustainable technology and post-occupancy modifications.

Following the presentation, the principals sit down with Jared Della Valle, co-founder and president of New York City-based real estate development company Alloy, for a conversation on the challenges and rewards of taking on risk, learning to solve problems along the way, and the shortcomings of Building Information Modeling.