| Market conditions now require more adaptive reuse and urban infill projects as multifamily developers face tight funding, limited land availability, and a greater need to stay on budget. Now architects have to be innovators and very cost conscious, say RKT&B principals Carmi Bee and Peter Bafitis. |
| Developers recently have either been going for expensive high design or bare-bones work, Carmi says. But by using adaptive reuse and creatively developing urban infill sites, you can still provide quality design at affordable prices, they say. RKT&B designed an affordable infill prototype for housing, a modular design that maximizes space and energy efficiency to produce substantial cost savings—it was first used in Prospect Gardens at 254-256 Sixteenth St. in Brooklyn, and then for the 48-unit Bergen Street Housing at 1509 Bergen St. in Brooklyn. Other projects the firm has recently completed include 166 Montague St., a 25-unit conversion of a landmark building in Brooklyn Heights, and Putnam Madison Housing, a 48-unit affordable housing project in Brooklyn that employs RKT&B's modular prototype. |
| For the architect, you have to wring out every last cent—but you can't produce a building that looks bad, says Carmi. In the end, attractive buildings make economic sense as developers want people to move into their buildings. For infill sites at 1465 and 1473 Fifth Ave. in Upper Manhattan, RKT&B blended a modern three-toned brick design thematically similar and architecturally related to the surrounding neighborhood—although the buildings are modern, they don't stick out. The architects also employed a unique system of randomly placed windows for this development in order to easily adapt the façade to changing needs of the interior layouts. |
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