Architecture Research Office

Recorded on May 6, 2024

Architecture Research Office

Adam Yarinsky and Stephen Cassell founded Architecture Research Office in New York City in 1993 with the belief that curiosity and inquiry could be the basis of a new type of architecture practice. In 1997, they were joined by Kim Yao. In its more than 30 years of operation, the firm (now headquartered in Brooklyn) has engaged with a broad range of typologies in order to design spaces that inspire people, further institutional missions, and advance equity and resilience. ARO’s work spans art and educational institutions, housing, private homes, speculative urban and development plans, interiors, and products, as well as material and institutional research, adaptive reuse, and significant “ground-up” work.

Recent projects include the Kayak Pavilion at Long Dock Park, Khalil Gibran International Academy, PS 456 in Brooklyn, a series of Knoll showrooms, the renovation of the Judd Foundation and home in Soho, and the Rothko Chapel in Houston. Yarinsky and Cassell, both currently teaching at MIT, have influenced students across the US educational landscape.The firm is the recipient of the 2020 AIA architecture firm award, the AIA New York State Firm of the Year Award, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s National Design Award for architecture. Yao served as president of AIA New York in 2020 and currently sits on the board of the Center for Architecture. Adam is a former Places journal board member and Cassell is the former board chair of Van Alen Institute.

About I Would Prefer Not To

Conceived and produced by MIT’s Critical Broadcasting Lab and presented with The Architectural League, I Would Prefer Not To¹Herman Melville, “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street,” The Piazza Tales (1856). tackles a usually unexamined subject: the refusal of an architectural commission. Why do architects make the decision to forfeit the possibility of work? At what point is a commission not worth it? When in one’s career is it necessary to make such a decision? Whether concealed out of politeness or deliberately shielded from public scrutiny, architects’ refusals usually go unrecorded by history, making them difficult to analyze or learn from. In this series of recorded interviews, I Would Prefer Not To aims to shed light on the complex matrix of agents, stakeholders, and circumstances implicated in every piece of architecture.

Transcript

This transcript was created using speech-to-text AI software and was lightly edited for continuity. The text may not accurately capture all information or aspects of the conversation.

Ana Miljački  00:22
Hello and thank you for tuning in. I’m Ana Miljacki, Professor of Architecture at MIT and director of the Critical Broadcasting Lab. And on behalf of the Architectural League of New York and the Critical Broadcasting Lab, I welcome you to our architecture podcast series titled, I Would Prefer Not To. This season of the podcast is supported in part by the Graham Foundation. I Would Prefer Not To is an oral history project conducted through audio interviews on the topic of perhaps the most important kind of refusal in architect’s toolboxes, refusal of the architectural commission. By definition, the topic of refusal stays hidden from public scrutiny, and thus also hidden from history. Withdrawals of this kind tend not to leave paper trails and are not easy to examine or learn from. And yet, the lessons contained in architects deliberations about and decisions not to engage are politically relevant and urgent. Decisions to not engage a commission, or types of commissions, or commissions with certain characteristics, inevitably forfeit potential profit, placing other values above it, at least momentarily. Today, I’m talking to the principals of the Architecture Research Office, Adam Yarinsky, Stephen Cassell and Kim Yao. Thank you all for joining me. 

Kim Yao 01:37
Thank you, Ana, for having for us. 

Adam Yarinsky  01:38
Thanks for having us.   

Stephen Cassell 01:39
Yeah, thanks for having us  

Miljački 01:41
Adam Yarinsky and Stephen Cassell founded ARO in New York in 1993, believing that curiosity and inquiry could be the basis of a new type of architecture practice. In 1997. They were joined by Kim Yao, who then stayed on. Over the last 30 years of its operation, the firm has participated in many different types of projects. Their typology’s include art and educational institutions, housing, private homes, speculative urban and development plans, interiors, products, or to slice it a different way, material and institutional research adaptive reuse as well as significant ground up work. Their hope is that they are designing spaces that inspire people, further institutional missions and advance equity and resilience. There are too many projects to mention, but the most recent ones include the Kayak Pavilion at Long Dock Park, Khalil Gibran International Academy and PS 456 in Brooklyn, a series of Knoll showrooms, renovation of the Judd Foundation and home in New York, as well as of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and their own office’s new headquarters in Brooklyn. individually and together, the partners are on the record saying that their practice is their most important design project, which we will definitely discuss today. They each have their own individual teaching careers. together, through them, they have influenced students across the US educational landscape, and are all currently teaching at MIT. ARO received the 2020 AIA Architecture Firm Award, the AIA New York State Firm of the Year Award, and the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture. its partners have each received individual accolades as well, and they’re all stewards of architecture and architectural discourse. Kim was president of AIA in New York in 2020, and serves on the board of the Center for Architecture, Adam served on the board of Places Journal, and Stephen is the former chair of the board of the Van Alen Institute. Now, I know that the boards in your office are teeming with work. But as always, in this program, we will start by talking about the work that is not on them. So let’s talk first about your most memorable decision to not engage or to drop a commission. And if that has not happened yet, can you imagine it happening? And on what grounds? I realize this is a big question, or many questions. And we will go into them in finer grained detail as well. But let’s start with the most memorable. Would you like me to call on one of you? 

Cassell 04:28
We say no to so many potential projects. It’s hard to figure out what’s at the top of that list. Because I think it happens often in our office that we say no to things. Sometimes, I was thinking about this, thinking about a while ago and I won’t say who it was. We were contacted by a wealthy couple that was having architects that we knew designing their house and they wanted to, at the same time, interview us even though the process was along, and we declined, we didn’t feel like it was right or ethically right, to do that, too. I’m sure Adam and Kim can think of others. 

Yao 05:16
Yeah, that’s a good refusal. I mean, I was thinking more along the lines of there are many projects that we choose not to pursue. And those moments, and generally speaking, because the pursuit is complex, and is the beginning of the relationship, there’s a pivotal moment where we consider the pursuit. And we can talk more about that conversation, because that conversation is one that we’ve honed and developed over many years in terms of what are the criteria? What are the considerations? We are very careful and deliberative and try to make those decisions thoughtfully. I think it’s less frequent, it’s very rare, and in fact, I’m trying to think of instances where this has occurred, like we’ve never, quit a project, nor I think have we ever dropped out of a pursuit, once we’ve made it in the selection process, or in the sort of solicitation process, although Adam and Stephen, you have better memory than I do.   

Cassell 06:39
I don’t, I don’t think we have. I mean, we have a — used to be just implicit — set of criteria that we’ve developed that started with intuition and just experience, that over the last three or four years, we’ve made explicit into really a rubric. That, how we think about those things, and they fall in different categories, you know, categories from, is there, you know, does the client have a clear and compelling mission? Do they know who they are in a clear way that they we know we can do great architecture for them? If they can’t, if they don’t have a clear mission, then we can’t do good work. Is there design to be had? Do they want design excellence? Do they want great design? And will that be something that is aligned with what their values are, and also, do their values align with our values? Like if, projects, at least in our office, The Rothko Chapel or Judd for being good examples of them, stay in the office for a long time. And we want to make sure we’re sort of values-aligned, and that we’re working for people, who believe in what we do, in a deep way. 

Yarinsky 07:57
Yeah.  

 Miljački 07:58
There is something that I read, you say, Stephen, something about “quiet tenacity.” And that kind of line is “when challenges come up, we persistently work the problem, we never say we can’t do it.” But that’s a little bit different than the key question, we want to sort of get at here. So already in 20, or in 2003, you talk about your office as a design project in itself. Can we talk about what that means? And has it always meant the same thing?  

Yarinsky 08:28
Well, at its core, it means that we’re trying to always learn and improve what we’re doing. And we’re mindful of how we teach people within the office, how we practice itself, the process with which we work. And so we’re always trying to improve that. And again, because we generally pursue a pretty broad range of work, what that means takes different forms in different projects. And there’s different skill sets involved. So I think that’s kind of the core of it for me.  

Yao 08:58
Yeah and we’ve always, I think some values that have consistently been important, since that time are about wanting to have fun, and enjoy who we’re spending time with on a daily basis. So the designing the practice has a lot to do with thinking carefully about the dynamics and interactions that are choreographed, for lack of a better word, in how we work and spend time together. So that’s a really important piece of it. The other part, I think, that has been consistent but has evolved in terms of how we try to engage and establish it’s importance and because it’s variable is the research piece. and the fact that we like to say, because it is, that research is our middle name, but the reality is, research is a very broad term for certain threads of work and interest in inquiry that we have and embrace in the firm. And designing the office means many things simultaneously, which is where the evolution comes in. But what we mean by research and how we are thinking about it is something that we strategically stand back and reflect on in order to continue to do what Adam just said, like, continue to create opportunities for learning, and growth and engagement so that we can continue to have fun and mentor and do projects that we’re interested in spending our time on. 

Cassell 10:45
Yeah, we’re lucky. I mean, we feel, I feel lucky that, you know, we, I think I can speak for all three of us. We love what we do. Right? And we all feel like doing it for a long time. And we try to make sure everyone in the office loves what they do. And that means working for people and organizations that we care about, and designs that we believe in. 

Yao 11:07
Of course, it’s not always perfect, right? 

Cassell 11:10
No it isn’t. And that’s why we always have two partners on the project. 

Miljački 11:15
We’re warming up imperfections, wait.  

Cassell 11:17
Exactly. 

Yao 11:19
It’s a perfect rosy picture. And then the reality is it’s really difficult and hard and slow. 

Cassell 11:23
And the reason we have two partners on every project is so we can complain to each other…  

Yao 11:28
Yes 

Cassell 11:28
… at the same time then we are jaded in different cycles. 

 Yao 11:32
Or so the client can complain to one of us about the other and that they have an opportunity to go back and forth. Like it just creates a little bit more like, like it greases the wheels for open conversation.  

Yarinsky 11:44
Well, and also this gets back to your question initially, is, because we think of the connections we have to clients as being relational, not transactional, that same quality of relationship and the ecosystem of people who we collaborate with, whether they’re people in the office, or external collaborators, consultants, specialists, and of course, the client, are all equally important. And we want to make sure that we’re, you know, that there’s a level of engagement and, and joy. 

Yao 12:17
Thinking about your question about evolution, and how has it changed, the things we just talked about there, I feel like we’re more rooted in what we care about and the values. When we think about, we just celebrated our 30th anniversary, when we think about the arc of the firm from the 90s, to where we are today, to the 20s, we’re doing all of this work, all of this work on the firm and thinking about how we work together and our processes internally, in order to do great work that we care about, which is the architecture. And our focus in that architecture, you know, earlier in the office’s career was about how we actually execute and build and learn to go from designing to building projects with impact. And then there’s that arc of the kinds of work, I think mirrors our trajectory in terms of how we as an office have evolved from when we were founded until today. And one example of that might be Stephen just used the word engagement. But we didn’t talk about community engagement or site histories and certain issues that are very prevalent in how we think about the importance of why we would take on a project or that values alignment, or how we then enact our processes, so, the way we sort of think about the design of the office mirrors the fact that we recognize that how we work, it’s not static and needs to be able to evolve and be sort of nimble and to react to what we’ve learned as a culture. 

Miljački 14:05
So I usually leave this question for a little bit later. But in this case, because we’ve started from the design of the office, and it’s evolution in a way, I feel it’s an appropriate follow up. Do you have any procedures in place by which you both expose the office to the realities of running the office and invite your team to think collectively about the commissions that you will and will not take?  

Yarinsky 14:33
Absolutely, yes. I mean, several different layers of doing it and several different ways that that happens.  

Cassell 14:38
I mean, COVID really, I would say in March 2020, we moved towards a sort of more radical transparency. Because everyone was so worried, and we were included in that worry, and we decided to every week, every Monday morning, [to say] this is what’s happening, this is the project that’s gone on hold, this is the PPP funds that we’ve applied for. 

Yao 15:11
We had Monday mornings, we always had weekly meetings. But the tenor of the conversation and the transparency, right Stephen, evolved in response to that. 

Cassell 15:23
And now in our weekly Monday morning, is Angela Estevez, who’s director of business strategy and communications. She says this is what potential projects we have. This is what we’re going after. Pretty much every week we talk about pursuits.  

 Yarinsky 15:46
Yeah and she’s also canvassing people, you know, when we do have a pursuit, she’s canvassing people in the office, not just the immediate team, but hey, what do you know about this location, or you’re from that city… 

Yao 15:46
She’s really helped us hone this criteria for how we’re thinking about pursuing work over the past few years. And her team also pursues the research on, you know, is this a client we want to be working with? Like, what are the ethics there? Are there bad actors or not? Is it a contested location? And in what ways is it, is it maybe contested? All of those kinds of pieces, we all think about that, but she leads the effort on doing that research to help eliminate those things. The decision making at the end of the day, like, there’s a process where there’s this conversation, and we’re also talking about all the other criteria, like, what do we think our chances are, do we have staff available, is this really like the project where we want to be spending our time for the next five or eight years or three years, whatever. But at the end of the day, it’s still an emotional process for us, where sometimes we just really want to work on something. And sometimes we just don’t, and at the end of the day, that decision is ours. And we have to come to an agreement about it. 

Miljački 17:06
Well, let me ask you, maybe it’s a follow up, maybe it will repeat some parts of it. But, Adam, you start a short article for Places with this question, “how can the client-driven model of architectural practice more fully engage the urgent challenges of our time, foremost among them, climate change and social inequity?” And in one or more articles, I read in preparation, I learned that you have teams or something that sounded like task forces in the office, on large topics, and with the capacity to produce something like blueprints for the practice. And there are many things that I’m interested in with regards to this. So what are the topics that you have identified as urgent on that, on that meta level? What are the mechanics by which these teams are formed and how they work? How often do you share your positions with clients on these topics? And what is in that holistic rubric for vetting new work? 

Cassell 18:04
That’s a lot of questions. 

 Yarinsky 18:05
Yeah, there’s a bunch of questions there I’ll try to unpack some of that. I think, clearly how buildings perform relative to material and energy are things we have control over, you know, in terms of the way that we design and what we design. And so we have within the office a Healthy Materials Working Group, and these really originated out of people who work in the office’s interest, and they meet independently of us, but also provide information and resources and events, and… 

Miljački 18:41
On specific topics? 

Yarinsky 18:42
Yeah exactly. We have an interest in mass timber, you know, we’ve completed one building so far and we’re toward the end of the second building that’s used mass timber. And Passive House, another one that, we have a person in the office who’s a certified Passive House expert, but also finishing up the schools that you mentioned earlier, in Brooklyn, with Passive House. So I think those are areas where, and in the case of the second project that we’re doing with mass timber, we recommended that to the client seven years ago, when they started the project at the concept stage, they didn’t have any idea what this was. And through the process of just developing the design and helping them understand it, it became something that they realized was actually really important to their mission, and helped them achieve funding for other things in the project. And so when it’s possible, I wouldn’t say it’s our normal path but absolutely at every step that we can we try to advocate for those areas of material and energy. And projects that are more cognizant of that as well as just the general ethos of the firm being to work with an economy of means, just philosophically, and reusing existing structures, all of that being central to our practice since we started. So there are certain things that we don’t even talk about or think about, but are really core and other people have realized, “Oh, we really shouldn’t be building any new buildings.” Well, we do new buildings, as well as adaptive reuses and renovations, but a large part of our practice actually, is the reuse of and renewal of existing buildings. 

Yao 20:26
So one of the other groups, which I think you’ll be interested in a bit is the Social Equity Group, which was really created in 2020, you know, in the context of all the rightful turmoil and conversation happening that year, about power structures and equity. And we, that group came together in the office, They meet regularly, it’s a group that we don’t sit in on those conversations, because it’s, but we monthly or quarterly or something, we connect and talk about, talk with a few people about what’s coming up so we can have open dialogue about issues and themes. And as an outgrowth of those conversations, and our own sort of self-reflection and feedback that we’ve provided and ideas that they’ve had, we’ve very closely tried to scrutinize and improve our own processes, and to take those processes to how we run projects and take those to clients. So to your question earlier about, do we share these values when we’re with our clients? And are they part of our rubric? I think the answer to both of those is yes. So, for instance, we’ve changed our hiring practices, because we want to make sure that we have as diverse an office as possible, to represent different viewpoints and different backgrounds, to represent different socioeconomic classes and schools. And so the ideas that have come out of this have changed how we hire and, and [how we] put our teams together. We also have said from a design team standpoint, we want to hit certain targets, you know, our metrics for representation within the design team. And we have established a 30%, minority, women, LGBTQ target for representation within teams. And we take that target to our clients. It’s an internal goal. We don’t hit it at all the time for a variety of reasons, but we’ve established it as a marker. And then we have open dialogue with clients about, hey, we’d really like, we have this target, we’d like to see if we can think about these consultants. So there’s a lot of effort on the research and to try to build those consultant lists to help us meet those goals. 

Cassell 23:08
I guess I would say that it all sounds perfect the way we say it; it’s a big, messy process. And there’s a limited number of hours in the day, and we have deadlines. 

Yao 23:16
Yeah we are trying to get better. 

 Cassell 23:16
Always. That’s why one of reasons that the office is a design project. We’re never done, or we try things and it works. Sometimes it doesn’t work.   

Yarinsky 23:26
And what’s interesting is that certain of the kinds of pursuits that we go after, for universities, or certain cultural organizations and businesses, those things that Kim just talked about matter, in terms of showing that we have a set of values and communicating what those are. And so those are actually explicitly communicated. And I don’t think of them as just kind of, you know, boilerplate. We actually try to stand behind it. And that’s why something like the Just label, even though it’s a self-reported thing, it establishes a set of criteria and metrics that you can use to talk about and it’s not done really. We didn’t do it for business development purposes, to be honest with you. That wasn’t the point at all. It was really for internal. You can communicate that and it shows it’s about finding the right partners. It turns out even office as a design project benefits from some requirements. Yes, parameters.   

Yao 24:27
Exactly! 

 Yarinsky 24:27
Criteria, exactly, measuring. 

Yao 24:30
Exactly. And we’re, you know, that trickles down to saying okay, now when we kick off projects, how do we establish those goals? Those are both goals around resilience, resiliency or sustainability, or material health. That could be goals around community engagement, the levels of engagement, what those processes are going to be like, who are we talking to, you know, etc. And they can be goals around diversity on the design team. 

Miljački 24:58
I have many more questions. Just so you know.  

Yarinsky 25:01
Okay. 

Yao 25:02
Good. 

Miljački 25:03
In your 2003 book introduction, you introduce research or describe research of the context and its complexities. ARO’s research has also involved reimagining, reimagining tectonics, you also engage in product research and development. On occasion, you have described this dedication to research as a particular kind of commitment to curiosity. In your new monograph, you sort of define each of the three letters A R and O, but I wanted us to speak about the R, I know that Kim started talking about that a little bit earlier. But here we are. Now I’m interested in sort of these prompts: research and the role of full size mockups, research and representation, the role of speculative imagination and friends in research. And for this last one, I’m thinking a bit of a project like the Rising Currents project, but in general, I think this is useful. So some prompts around what research is, what it has been, and how you’re thinking of it now. 

 Cassell 26:12
Yeah, I mean, it started as research as the methodology for making architecture. And when we started the office that’s really, put together the name, it’s like this is how we’re going to approach how we work as an ethos, and it’s, it’s evolved. And I wouldn’t say it’s settled in one place, I think, I think what’s helpful for us, it’s a word that can be reimagined from project to project or from opportunity to opportunity. But it means making you think consciously about what it means at that time. So whether it’s Rising Currents, which was really, you know, started from a Latrobe Foundation grant and worked with Guy Nordenson and then into the Rising Currents exhibition, the project that we did for that where it was really, let’s take a conceptual project, and push it forward and create a conceptual framework to address these set of ideas. So we’ve done that same with converting offices to housing or other projects over the years. Sometimes that research is inversely proportional to the strength of the economy. The slower we are, the more we can do [with] that type of research. And then other times it’s applied material research. And here’s the interesting material that either comes up within a project or an opportunity. So sometimes it’s really engaging a specific material or process, when we were working with Knoll, we first started working with Knoll over a 10 year relationship, the first showroom we designed was their offices and their flagship showroom, we visited some of their factories [for] Filzfelt and Spinneybeck, a leather and felt company. They had amazing machines, we realized there’s things we can do with that sort of material transformation, which has always been really from the start of our office, something we looked at, that came from understanding their production capabilities, and then really playing with those materials that ended up in the first project and then ended up into a line of architectural products that deal with acoustics and the specific research of acoustics. Others, I think Kim could speak to some as well.  

Yao 28:30
I was thinking about your question about the partners in these processes. And we haven’t touched on it super explicitly. But we’re very, very collaborative office, how we work together in terms of the two partners on every project and all of that, the transparency, the mentoring, is because we like to work that way. And we don’t assume that we have all the answers or are the most knowledgeable person or people around certain topics. And so I think the majority of our research evolves from a collaborative space, where you know, like Stephen mentioned, Rising Currents and that kind of pre-work and then that particular project, our entry there, “A New Urban Ground” was with Susannah Drake of DLANDstudio. And understanding that sometimes the opportunities for design impact can be best realized through the kind of process of collaboration which is so integral to how we create architecture in urban space and environments anyway. Knoll is another level of research where the collaboration was a really, really important part of that. Where you’re doing research and development through conversation with those partners and understanding how making can happen and how we can take that back. We take these threads, I was thinking about, about our house or like an early collaboration we had we had with Della Valle Bernheimer for this tiny little house in Syracuse, it was part of a competition. And we wanted it to be Passive House, it was earlier on in passive house certification in the US. And we decided, let’s make this, ours, passive house. So we could learn about passive house design, which is now something that we’re able to implement on other projects. So, often, for us, it’s opportunistic, sometimes it’s about knowing a place and site histories and understanding structures and thinking about the impact of the work within a very specific place. But other times, it’s about the sort of, you know, process of inquiry and the fun of design and saying what are the opportunities, opportunities we have working with a material or working with a particular owner or a client who has access to certain types of people or things or, you know, places. And how can we engage that opportunity through a research-based process, and then take that idea, and apply it to the next project or take it to a new level. And that’s why the research piece is rewarding. I think one of the reasons is it’s rewarding for us. 

Yarinsky 31:21
I agree, I think it’s also indicative, the examples that we’ve mentioned, are indicative of the breadth of our interests. And the fact that inquiry for us, you know, revolves around, of course, positively affecting how people live, but it can be on the scale of like, acoustic absorption in a room and color and pattern and how that activates the space, all the way to kind of a regional plan. Partly, so it’s a kind of expanded view of design, but also one that says, maybe, and this relates to what Kim mentioned a minute ago, maybe what we overtly think of as architectural design isn’t always the most effective tool, sometimes it’s about the design of infrastructure, or the design of a process that can be more impactful than what we might think of as a building, you know, design. 

Cassell 32:08
And we’re pretty strategic about that. Like we’re realizing we work hard at the beginning of each project, to have a set of clear principles and goals that we create with the people we’re designing for, designing with, and then finding out what are the best tools to achieve those goals. Right. And it’s not, architecture is not always the answer. Sometimes landscape is more impactful, sometimes graphic design is more impactful, sometimes the combination between those. And really, we always look at the goal rather than, rather than what tools are best.  

Miljački 32:42
I want to go to Principles next. But I just want to sort of maybe mention again, or say how I like the idea that research is many things in the office. And in a way I think your description of practice has always relied on that kind of research that is versatile in a way or that may mean many different epistemic, let’s say, frameworks. But I am also interested in how practice inflects research, speaking from an academic institution, what that means, and maybe I’ll just let you sort of try, or throw something at that. That’s a self-serving question for me. Is there a way that practice when we look at research refracted, through practice, we see a different kind of thing than we might in a university? 

Yao 33:44
Absolutely. 

Cassell 33:45
Good question. Yeah.  

Yao 33:48
There is, I don’t know if I’m going to get at what you’re asking Ana, but I think that there’s a desire, there’s an, there’s an applicability, mandate or requirement that is important. That’s foundationally important to us. Because at the end of the day, we do all of this, because we want to build, [to] design spaces that can be built and experienced. And the research and all of its many facets, is geared towards that application, whether we want to call it applied research or not is maybe, a parallel and related conversation. 

Yarinsky 34:37
We’re generalists, and actually what’s interesting to me when you have, whether we call them sometimes on projects a brain trust that we put together or we have specialist collaborators that we work with, usually those collaborators love working with us, because what I said earlier, we don’t come in with an a priori, a sort of agenda that we want them to just implement. But that there’s an actual interest on our part to understand their area of expertise and what it can have to bear on the project. And how that can be made impactful, you know, which we were talking about earlier. So I think, especially given how specialized things are, being generalists I think, has real value. And so I think that’s a key part of our, our practice. 

Cassell 35:19
I think there’s a different sort of, a further part of that, Adam, which is where I think we’re good at, or over the years gotten good at knowing who to bring to the table for specific projects.  

Miljački 35:59
I want to now go back to, or not go back, but go forward to a set of principles that you articulate in your forthcoming book that drive your work. You talk about doing that, sort of, consciously and as a, as a real project for the book itself. And I can list them to you, to remind you what they are. So they are: “Strategize for Maximum Impact,” “Approach Architecture as a Social Act,” “Engage the Complexity of Contexts,” “Elevate the Ordinary,” “Design for Use and Experience,” “Work with Integrity,” and, “Always Keep Learning.” So I’m hoping that you can tell us about, or help us understand how these principles tend to manifest in specific work and in ways of working. But let’s look at or let’s talk about a project that you can land these with in some way. So we can understand where to look in the work. 

Yarinsky 37:03
Well, one that comes to mind, where we’re about to start the second phase of construction on, is the Rothko Chapel in Houston, where there’s a complex physical and social context that this organization and institution is situated within, and was founded to be both a place and a program. Place being the Rothko Chapel, and the neighborhood in which it sits, and the program being a social justice mission. So I think that’s sort of “complexity of context,” but the “social act” in a way is completely bound up in that strategy, had to do with, you know, how we looked at the entire context within which the Chapel is situated, and studied how it could grow to accommodate and to support it’s mission in the future. The way in which the architecture is resolved in terms of scale and materiality is all about use and experience, and a kind of directness of connection to the context. I’m trying to think if I can take any of these other categories and pull them together! But, what I think is funny about the principles is we have projects in the book grouped within each one, but actually projects could be in multiple categories and more than one, obviously. The point wasn’t that there wasn’t a one-to-one correspondence [to a principle], but so, Stephen and Kim could name, we all could name like five projects that would do everything I just mentioned, ideally, to different degrees maybe, and that kind of holistic quality of how we approach is really important to us. I mean, that’s what for us makes the most successful projects, is when they transcend an easy categorization or explanation.  

Cassell 38:55
Curious, it’s funny, the, working on, on the book, and trying to be more explicit about these principles, which clearly have been within the office for a long time, it’s been a really interesting task. And it’s, on the one hand, some of the things that we talked about are pretty obvious and straightforward. But really, the goal is to make sure you’re doing all of them on every project, that you’re like, using all the tools that you have to make a project that has impact. And in as many different ways and positive impact, I should point out by the way. And so it’s been a really fun exercise of trying to spell these out. And I think you can see the evolution of our office, if we did the principles at the start of our office, it would be probably two or three of the principles as opposed to all of them. And then the evolution as the office, as the design practice has been expanding the field of what we see as excellence in architecture, from when we started, which was really material and formal qualities of architecture, materiality and rigorous in form… 

Yao 40:18
Like capital D-design a little bit, right?  

Cassell 40:20
Exactly. And then slowly expanding out to sort of understanding, Rising Currents being a sort of seminal project in our office of how can the, even some early projects we did at Brown University, where we’re really thinking strategically about design, strategically who we bring to the table or how, within the resources that the project has, can we be the most impactful, whether that’s who we work with, or the design moves that we use.  

Yao 40:152
The final one is to always keep learning which is something that we’ve talked about for a long time and we’ve talked about it with you today. But that is more about the office project and our desire about like how, why we do what we do and how we enjoy what we’re doing. Stephen says it’s been really fun; it’s also so much work and it’s been arduous and painful. And we’ve taken it, to Adam’s point, we’ve taken the projects and shuffled them between the principles, it’s sort of, you could do that forever. But as we were talking and as you asked that question, I was thinking that, a little bit is because we really felt like the book was a tool, it was a tool for us to clarify and think about and reflect on how we work and what’s important to us, back to the values. And we wanted it to also, hopefully for somebody, be a useful tool or window into the life of a practice like ours, to, like laugh or learn from or, you know, ignore. So the principles are a useful way to do that. 

Cassell 42:11
I think one of the most basic things also is, which we haven’t talked about so far, always be learning in the book, is mentorship. And really we’re a teaching office, right? [The] people who are in our office, we rarely hire people with 10 years’ experience, people come in young. Kim came in right out of school. And a lot of our Project Directors in our office came right out of school. And then we slowly grow people within the office and give them skills and sort of teach them how we work and then also learn from them as well. And so the principles are, both for us to have a little bit more intellectual clarity, about how we work, and hopefully we’ll do a better job for that, but also to teach. And as the office has grown some to 40 people, [we] make sure we’re being explicit about what our values are and what we care about.  

 Yao 43:12
Intentional.   

Yarinsky 43:14
Yeah. 

Miljački 43:16
Maybe I’ll go back to something you’ve referred to in this conversation, which is, you’ve described architecture as relational, as networks have relationships across different concerns, maybe or types of work, and already about collaboration, but I’m wondering if we can talk about that in a little finer grain? So what are the kind of mechanics of collaboration with clients, with people in the office, with users, contractors and fabricators? Are these different? Like literally? Is it, you invite them for an office visit? Drink? How do you sort of find and cultivate these relationships? 

Yarinsky 44:01 

Well, one of the things that we find is that we like clients who really know what they’re doing well, but they don’t have a preconception about what, how that can be served through architecture in a really specific way. And so that we can engage them and there can be a dialogue, where we can better understand, you know, their operation, their goals, their mission, and then begin to conceive of possibilities, which again, as we spoke before, maybe aren’t always architecturally explicit, they could be about certain ways of using existing spaces that is not about designing something new. And so I think that’s an important component to sort of how we think about our collaborators in terms of client collaborators. I also think we really like, it’s funny, I was writing down the word, it’s not just relational, I think reciprocity is really important. I think the notion that there’s, and maybe that’s another way of saying genuine dialogue or sharing of information, which, to me, is the hallmark of kind of the best client relationships we’ve had, whether they’re, and many of them tend to go on for more than one project. Or, or in the case of certain cultural organizations, they can be a very long like, you know, 8 to 10-year process from beginning to end. And so making the journey really enjoyable just on a personal level, because you like the people you’re working with, but also that kind of dialogue and ability to feel that you can share information. And be honest is important. 

 Yao 45:43
The nitty gritty, or to touch on the nitty gritty a little bit, that we could talk about engagement. And when we, the conversation really begins when we’re pursuing the work.  

Cassell 45:55
I can go back to your first question, too, because our, when we put together proposals, we do a lot of research, and sort of really a deep dive, and are really explicit about how we’re going to engage the process and engage the project. And people will either look at it and go “yes, I’m really excited by that and they are the right fit,” or immediately weed people out like, “I don’t want to work of these people! You know, come in with answers, please.”  

Miljački 46:28
The red light doesn’t go off midway. 

 Cassell 46:31
Yeah, so it’s a self-selection process. Yeah. 

Yarinsky 46:37
Another component of this too, is that I think people realize we don’t come in with an agenda. And people respond. I think back to it, like probably one of our first higher education projects was an addition and renovation of the music and art department building at Colorado College, which was a mid-1970s, Edward Larrabee Barnes building. And we were like Solomon splitting the baby, you know, we had the music department and the art department. So there was a very complex dynamic between those two, there was a programmatic split, how do you serve both of them. But I mean, I, on a personal level, gained an ability to sort of be equanimous and sort of be just genuinely, what is the best for the project? And it turned out, it was the music people got the new part of the building, and the art people got the renovated part. But we brought everyone along, and we didn’t come in with that notion. But that’s how we wound up and people realized that that was the best way to go about the project. So it was a, it was a process that unfolded.  

Miljački 47:41
Alright, so in 2019, in Architects Newspaper, Adam, you write about “posthumous collaborations,” and you describe the work of the Judd Foundation, but also following it, the Rothko Chapel in similar terms, and I’m wondering what is the use of thinking in these terms, the posthumous collaboration? I like it a lot, this is something I would find interesting and include in an issue about co-authoring, but I’m wondering if there is use of thinking in these terms about restoration, or adaptive reuse more generally?  

Cassell 48:25
The most basic benefit is we always get the last word. 

Yarinsky 48:29
Yes, well, it’s funny, you know, on one level, every project that you do is an addition to something else, right? So you’re always, it’s more explicit when it’s a new thing attached to an old thing. But you know, we certainly think of anything in a physical context being an addition to it that didn’t exist before. 

Cassell 48:51
But the posthumous collaboration really means, that is the research, right? That’s the sort of fundamental aspect of research, of trying to deeply understand how Judd or Rothko saw the world around the chapel that he designed for a while with Philip Johnson, afterwards with others, in a way that then we, if we understand it well enough, and of course, we never will completely, that’s a given about any knowledge or anything, that we can be their advocates, as we’re within the design process and start to understand how what we can do that will support that initial vision, even if it’s not a direct restoration. It’s doing something new on a, in a way that is more aligned with in certainly, in the case of the restoration of the Rothko Chapel, we’re aligned with Mark Rothko’s original intent. 

Yarinsky 49:56
And in some cases, like the restoration of 101 Spring Street, the fundamental goals of the project were not in alignment, they were, there was a misalignment. So preserving the place as he intended, but making it accessible to the public had to be reconciled through the process of design and intervention. So the fundamental tenets of what was in Judd’s will, when he bequeathed the foundation to run this place, were, had to be, again, a process of deep engagement with the client and collaborators and dialogue to achieve something that would bring them into a form of alignment so that that authentic experience — as he intended it — could be still experienced. 

Ana 50:38
So I know you’ve been saying that you, the vetting process is important, you do a lot of research upfront. But did you ever regret taking or not taking a commission?  

Yao 50:55
Definitely.  

Miljački 50:57
Which one?  

Yao 50:59
Well, I know, I’ll say, I’ll talk about regretting not pursuing, because again, I think for me, it was just an important distinction, I feel like it comes down to, pursuing. In the past we’ve had opportunities to work on some government work, that could be interesting and challenging and design-forward, we like to say, in really positive ways and there’s going to be better examples than this, this is what I think about, and have walked away from those opportunities because they are contractually or bureaucratically punishing, essentially, for a firm of our size. 

Yarinsky 51:51
Yeah. 

Cassell 51:51
I think one thing we certainly learned over time is, is the process of selection is indicative of how the process of design and construction will go. 

Yao 52:05
I feel like we didn’t talk about one criteria Ana, which is, one of the things we think about when we decide to pursue something is the likelihood of it actually happening. So because the time investment is so great, well, we’ll be like, do they actually have the capital to build this project? Or do they have the ability to raise the capital to build this project? And if it’s maybe, maybe not, we want to know that there’s some learning opportunity or design opportunity or research opportunity for us in the pursuit, or in the award, that it’s okay, and it doesn’t matter, because we’re going to build relationships, ideas, products, whatever, as an outcome.  

Miljački 52:45
I did skip a question, but maybe we can, I can bring it up again now. But, we know that work begets work. So it’s interesting to me to think about how you’re describing the diversity [of work]. And I’m wondering if different strategies are needed for different types of work, or for pursuing different types of work to use your word. 

Cassell 53:11
I mean, when we started our practice, because we started with a clear, articulated goal of having a diversity of work, really this real idea that we thought that different project types would sort of inform each other, and we’d do better work, but it was much harder without a track record. You know, now, we can, whether people buy into it or not, and if they don’t want to do it, we don’t get hired, it’s fairly simple. But at least we have a clear track record and a clearer way of articulating how we approach architecture that either makes sense for someone or doesn’t make sense for them, even if we haven’t done a specific type of project before. 

 Yarinsky 53:54
Yeah. And what I was going to say is that it’s so satisfying when someone already understands that. So an example being like the Nippert Stadium addition project that we did, where the university architect at the time, Mary Beth McGrew, and others involved in the process just understood, well, they’ve never done a stadium where they’re going to work with a sports facilities, architect, architect of record, collaborate with them closely. But that this is about complexity of sight and context, because the stadiums in the middle of the campus.  

Yao 54:21
Urban condition.   

Yarinsky 54:23
And so, to, what’s amazing to me still, after having done this for more than 30 years is occasionally you get a client like that, and you will get a project that in that case, was a $85 to $100 million total project cost, from like one interview and a couple phone calls and a little proposal! 

Yao 54:41
Compared to like, what we used to have to go through. 

Cassell 54:45
Right, yeah, we’re still waiting for more of those where they just call up and say, would you like to do this. And that happens, sometimes! 

Yarinsky 54:48
Exactly, yeah.  

Yao 54:50
You’re scratching at something appropriately, which is that we also spend time questioning or wondering if we need to reposition or change, change how we’re pursuing and how we’re presenting ourselves in order to get the work that we’re not getting, or the work that we want. Right? And, and maybe that’s not where you went here, but there’s a little bit of, there’s a little bit of that. It’s not a constant thing, but there are moments, and this might fall into the regret, should we have pursued that or not? They were asking for this. And we didn’t agree with that. But then there’s always, it’s always a little bit of like, oh, that was such a great thing. Maybe we should have broken our rules. And of course, we do in moments, bend the rules. We don’t pursue competitions generally, there’s stuff like that, you know, like open competitions, open design competitions. 

Miljački 55:51
I’m just curious, you know, how the generalist practice is managed, right, and how you actually manage to pursue different work that you’re interested in. So I think that’s sort of where these conversations become a value to others. So I’m putting that on the record and are helping you put that in the record for the rest of us. Maybe here’s the kind of the final set of questions: How would you describe the conditions in which ARO does its best work? Are all commissions equally exciting? Are there ideal commissions or ideal circumstances for commission? 

 Yarinsky 56:32
I mean, we’ve touched on aspects of that, I think, and other comments we’ve made. But I think the alignment of the values of client, the understanding that there maybe isn’t an a priori solution to the problem, and that there’s going to be a process of understanding more deeply what the goals are, or the mission is, or the purpose of the project is, or the communities that it serves, the larger context. So I think those are, those, in some respects make for ideal projects for us. I think our clients. 

Yao 57:06
All commissions are not equally exciting.  

 Yarinsky 57:10
Yeah. 

Yao 57:11
Right? I mean, to be honest, we always focus on [a project], but we don’t take work we don’t want to do.  

Cassell 57:20
I do think there are ideal projects, though, not in project types. But there are projects or potential projects that come along, where there is such a compelling mission of the people you’re designing for where you know, that good architecture can support and further that mission, that others can be in alignment, where you just push them further and forward, with interest, what we would say is interesting, challenging design problems, where there is an alignment of scope, and budget, where they can actually do that. And those projects come in, in different ways, and you can see them as like, oh, wow, that’s just such an amazing opportunity. 

Yarinsky 58:05
I think the one thing that I’m certainly mindful of these days is, and certainly, in formulating how we work, we thought about creating a virtuous cycle of being able to, you know, take deep dives, and work on complicated projects, deliver value and create architecture through it, and thereby get more of that. But I think it’s also, one has to be careful not to do so many complicated projects that you sort of feel as if your intuition… 

Yao 58:32
Known for that? 

 Yarinsky 58:33
…or just [your] kind of sense of what you think is right has been clouded, because you’re just managing complexity. And so that’s why having the mix of work is really good, because there are some projects that just aren’t as complicated. And they can happen a little bit quicker, or there’s a narrower range of potential solutions. 

Miljački 58:54
Is there anything else you would like to put on the record? 

 Yao 58:59
I’m trying to think.  

Yarinsky 59:00
You know, it’s funny, one thought I had was realizing that a lot of the decisions we make are based upon the value that we think we provide and wanting to make sure that clients understand that and appreciate that both in terms of the way we relate to them, and how we’re compensated. And I think that is part of a much bigger ecosystem, about just architects in general being compensated, and younger people being interested in the profession and feeling as if they’re valued and whatnot. So I’m sort of mindful of how, when we choose not to pursue a project, because we think that they’re not valuing our time, or even though we love the project, and would love to do it, it’s a tough decision to make, but by not doing that [project], we feel like we can make a better office that values the work of people who are here, and who are collaborators within the office, and colleagues. So we don’t always connect those dots. But I think it’s the whole big ecosystem of how work is done is something that ultimately is manifest and kind of make what makes this profession attractive to people to come into, you know, what are we doing? 

Yao 60:19
That’s perfect, Adam. 

Miljački 60:20
That’s a good place to end. So, Kim, Adam, Stephen, thank you very much for talking to me today. And listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of I Would Prefer Not To.  

Yarinsky 60:34
Thank you.  

 Cassell 60:35
Thank you.  

Yao 60:36
Thank you very much.