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Overview
At GLUCK+, design matters and building matters. Better buildings result when architects take on the construction process. Our approach to Architect Led Design Build ensures that the built solution is done right.
The evolution of our firm name from Peter Gluck and Partners Architects to GLUCK+ recognizes that our practice has always been inclusive. From designer to builder to owner to developer, we do what it takes and care how it’s done. “Outside our scope” is not in our vocabulary.
Our work is diverse and recognized worldwide through national and international design awards and publications. Our range of projects–from houses, schools, religious buildings, community centers to hotels, university buildings, recreation centers, and historic restorations—are all unique because each project is specific. We are dedicated to advocating for the wants and needs of our clients.
It is their stories we want to tell.
Architect Led Design Build
Architect Led Design Build is single-source responsibility for the design, construction and commissioning of buildings. Typically, an owner hires an architect to draw a building and a contractor to oversee the subcontractors that will build the building. This separation is adverse for the quality and cost of building. Project stakeholders lose out.
Architect Led Design Build is an agile process in which the same people are responsible for an entire building project. Our architects are also construction managers, meaning feedback between method of construction and design is fluid and responsive. Priorities between design, cost and schedule are clear. Creativity is responsible.
Architectural Services
Typically an owner makes decisions about their project before an architect is involved. What is the program? Where is the site? How will it affect my budget?
As architects and builders, we have tools that are critical for navigating early unknowns, such as assessing the feasibility of a project and vetting real estate opportunities. We are in a position to help clients strategically plan their project, to determine how much space they actually need, and to test-fit their project on potential sites. We also consider construction options that affect the economic viability of the project.
Ultimately these early decisions are up to project owners, but we can serve as a valuable resource to clarify options.
Development
Expanding our role allows us to initiate projects that otherwise could not afford to exist.
We consider sites that developers typically shy away from because our experience as architects and builders allows us to find the feasible opportunity. We can consider building uses that are generally deemed non-profitable, such as middle-income housing, because we are also in a position to pair them with less typical, more economic methods of building, such as offsite construction.
Having the wherewithal to find and make projects is not just an opportunity to build better buildings, but to contribute to building a better urban fabric.
We believe coming from the private realm, we have the responsibility to do our part in enriching the lives of people and communities. The integration of our approach to architecture allows us to do that.
Peter L. Gluck
Principal
Peter Gluck received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1965. After designing a series of houses from New York to Newfoundland, he went to Tokyo to design large projects for a leading Japanese construction consortium. This experience influenced Gluck’s later work both in his knowledge of Japan’s traditional aesthetics and of its efficient modern methods of integrated construction and design. His firm, Peter Gluck and Partners in New York, has been designing and building throughout the country since 1972, joined in 1992 by ARCS, a construction-management firm, established to build the firm’s designs, and in 1997 by Aspen GK, Inc., a development partnership, founded to produce well-designed, high-quality speculative housing.
Exhibitions of Gluck’s award-winning work have been held in the U.S. and Japan, and he is widely published in architectural journals around the world. He has taught at Columbia and Yale schools of architecture, and curated exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Milan Triennale.
Thomas Gluck
Principal
Thomas Gluck joined GLUCK+ as Associate Principal in 2005.
Mr. Gluck has overseen the design and construction of numerous projects in New York City and around the country. Among other projects, he is currently managing a 500,000 SF mixed-use urban development in Harlem. Prior to joining GLUCK+, Mr. Gluck worked with Herzog and de Meuron as the onsite project manager for the design and construction of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Mr. Gluck has published articles in the Architectural Research Quarterly and Retrospecta. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Harvard College and a Master of Architecture from Yale University.
Charlie Kaplan
LEED AP
Principal
Charlie Kaplan joined ARCS Construction Services in 1996 as Construction Manager and Peter Gluck and Partners as a designer in 1997. He became Associate Principal in 1999.
As the lead housing architect in our office, Mr. Kaplan, AIA LEED certified, has been involved in the design of sustainable housing projects throughout the U.S. He was a partner with Peter Gluck in the purchase, development, design and construction of award winning affordable housing in Aspen, Colorado, built as a turn-key project for the City of Aspen.
Mr. Kaplan was a lecturer at the 2007 Annual Colorado Preservation Conference, a collaboration between the Aspen and Telluride Historic Preservation departments and a former trustee and longtime member of the campus building committee for Burke Mountain Academy in Vermont.
Mr. Kaplan earned a BA from Williams College, a Masters of Architecture degree from the University of Colorado, and spent time studying at the Architectural Association in London.
Stacie Wong
Principal
Stacie Wong joined Peter Gluck and Partners in 2001 as Associate Principal.
As the lead architect for school design in our office, Ms. Wong has been involved in many school projects in New York City. Most recently she acted as project manager and on-site construction supervisor for the AIA award winning East Harlem School. Among other projects, she has extensive experience with school feasibility studies at both the grade school and university level.
Ms. Wong received her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master of Architecture from Yale University. She was a member of the Yale Building Project and was a research assistant in the Yale Urban Design Workshop participating in an Urban Density and Neighborhood Revitalization study.
Marc Gee
Principal
Marc Gee joined Peter Gluck and Partners in 1998 as a construction manager for ARCS Construction Services, the construction management arm of Peter Gluck and Partners. He became Associate Principal in 2000.
Mr. Gee is our most experienced construction expert having built most of our projects in New York City totaling over $35M. Most recently Mr. Gee was the on-site constructability and technical detail expert for the East Harlem School. The project was completed on time with a guaranteed maximum price for its construction of $330/SF, about half of what the New York City schools are costing. In addition we returned $500,000 of unused contingencies to the school. The school was awarded an award for design excellence from the Boston Society of Architects (AIA Boston).
Mr. Gee is a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic University and State University with a Bachelor of Architecture.
Alexander Cutrona
Alexander Cutrona received his Bachelor of Architecture with a Minor in Business from New Jersey Institute of Technology. He also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia for two years prior to his architecture studies. Alex has previous design experience on single-family residential projects in the greater New York area.
Alexandra Kovenat
Alexandra Kovenat received her Bachelor of Architecture and Bachelor of Arts with a concentration in Spanish Literature from the University of Texas at Austin, and her Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University. Alex has 9 years previous design experience on large-scale transportation projects in Colorado, Washington, D.C., Florida, and New York City, as well as institutional and high-rise projects in China, India, and New York City.
Alfonso de Barutell
Alfonso de Barutell received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Architecture from CEU San Pablo University in Madrid, Spain, including a semester exchange at Syracuse University. His previous design experience includes single family residential and urban planning projects in Madrid. Alfonso also designed and built a light installation for La Nuit Blanche in Paris in 2013.
Bethia Liu, Associate
Bethia Liu received her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Barnard College and her Master of Architecture from Princeton University. Bethia has worked as a professional modelmaker, graphic designer, and architect. After designing and managing an outdoor citywide interactive arts exhibition for ATHENS 2004, Bethia joined the firm in 2005. Her architectural work in the office includes designing and managing construction for the Little Ajax Affordable Housing in Aspen, The East Harlem School and Lakeside Retreat in New York. Since 2009, Bethia has managed the firm's public relations/press and marketing. She is involved with the firm's business development, and is Director of Strategic Planning. She art directs, writes, and manages the creative team to produce multimedia stories about GLUCK+.
Birgit Garland, Associate
Birgit Garland received her education at the Städtische Berufsschule für Bürokaufleute in Munich. Prior to joining the firm in 2002, Birgit worked in administrative services for the publishing industry and international financial services sector for 15 years. Birgit is Chief Financial Officer of the company.
Charles Gosrisirikul
Charles Gosrisirikul received his undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and his Master of Architecture from Yale University. Charles has over 9 years of previous design experience on international metropolitan projects from China to Spain to the United Arab Emirates; including high-rise mixed-use development, institutional, and residential projects.
Charlie Able
Charlie Able received his Bachelor of Science from Kent State University and his Master of Architecture from Columbia University. He has taught intermediate computation and fabrication at City College of New York and is currently teaching Fundamentals of Digital Design at Columbia University. Charlie has previous design experience for institutional interiors, residential ground-up projects and digital fabrication for custom millwork.
Cory Collman
Cory Collman received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and his Master of Architecture from Yale University. While at Yale, Cory was a teaching and construction assistant for the Yale Building Project. He currently also teaches environmental design at Parsons School of Design. Cory's previous design experience includes residential and commercial projects in New York City and Chicago. Cory was on the project team for the House in the Mountains in Colorado.
Damian Baden
Damian Baden received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Albany, State University of New York. Damian has five years of administrative experience and oversees the office facilities management, including information technology systems.
Elena Francisco
Elena Francisco received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Humboldt State University and her Master of Science in Public Accounting from Strayer University. Elena has over 6 years of administrative management and accounting for recreation club and resort facilities in California. Her experience also involved coordinating design review and construction as an owner's representative. Elena is responsible for administrative and accounting support at GLUCK+ Construction.
Elliot Kwon
Elliot Kwon received his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Mathematics from Columbia University. Elliot's previous experience includes a large-scale hotel complex in Qatar, as well as residential projects in New York City.
Emily Sperber
Emily Sperber received both her Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Architecture from Tulane University. Emily's previous experience includes ground-up multifamily residential and higher education projects in New York City. Emily was involved in Tulane's URBANbuild program with the Make It Right Foundation in New Orlean's Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina.
Eric Schaefer
Eric Schaefer received both his undergraduate degree in environmental design and his Master of Architecture from Montana State University. Eric joined the firm in 2006, following 7 years of leading construction teams for William Massie Architects. Eric has since led the construction management teams full-time onsite for numerous New York projects including the Pool Pavilion, Lakeside Retreat, and In Haven Residence.
Fiona Booth
Fiona Booth received her Bachelor of Science in Interior Design from the University of Texas at Austin, and her Master of Architecture from Columbia University. Fiona's previous experience includes corporate, healthcare, and institutional projects in Lesotho, Mexico City, and the greater Seattle area.
Haitao Zhou
Haitao Zhou received his Bachelor of Architecture from Zhejiang University of Technology and his Master of Architecture from Washington University in St. Louis. Haitao's previous experience includes large-scale commercial, hospitality, healthcare, and mixed-use projects in China.
James Petty
James Petty received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Houston with a semester exchange at the Architectural Association in London, and his Master of Architecture from Yale University. James has over six years of previous design experience on medium to large scale institutional (K-12 and university) and commercial projects in New York City, London, Munich, Brussels, and Tokyo. He also currently serves on the AIA New York Oculus Committee/Advisory Board.
Jennifer Dempsey
Jennifer Dempsey received her Bachelor of Architecture from the Pratt Institute and her Master of Architecture from Yale University. Jennifer's previous design experience includes residential projects in New York City.
Jenny Chang
Jenny Chang received her Bachelor of Architecture with a Minor in Urban Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her previous design experience includes luxury residential development in Miami and large-scale mixed-use projects in China.
Jim True
Jim True received his Bachelor of Architecture from Iowa State University. Jim joined the firm in 2004, with 6 years of residential experience in the Chicago area. Jim led the construction management team full-time onsite, from construction through commissioning, for the Cascade House in Chicago.
Joanne Lee
Joanne Lee is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Architectural Studies at University of Waterloo. Joanne's previous work experience includes large-scale affordable housing in Berlin and large-scale institutional projects in Toronto.
Junghoon Ko
Junghoon Ko received his Bachelor of Science from Yonsei University in South Korea with a dual major in Housing & Interior Design, and Environmental Design, and his Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Jay has over 8 years of previous experience in medium to large-scale mixed use/multi-family residential, hospitality and institutional projects in New York City and Korea, and recently completed a design-build hotel renovation in Korea.
Kathy Chang, Associate
Kathy Chang received her undergraduate degree in architecture from Yale College and her Master of Architecture from Columbia University. Kathy was a 2003 winner of Common Ground and The Architectural League of New York's "First Step Housing" Competition. Kathy joined the firm in 2005 and contributed to Bronx Charter Preparatory School, followed by The East Harlem School. Kathy recently managed the project team from design through construction for the Lakeside Retreat in New York.
Kelly Barlow
Kelly Barlow received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia, and her Master of Architecture from Rice University. Kelly was involved with the design/build project, the ecoMOD preHAB house at the University of Virginia. She also received a Rice Design Alliance Initiatives for Houston grant for Emergency Core, a project that explores an affordable and easily transportable alternative for disaster relief. Kelly has previous design experience in institutional, commercial and residential projects in New York State.
Wazir Khan
Wazir Khan received his education and training in Guyana, and has over 15 years of construction experience on residential, commercial and institutional projects in New York City and Guyana. Khan has worked on numerous projects for the office, most recently the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning.
Marc Pittsley
Marc Pittsley received his Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University. Marc's previous work experience includes Boston transit and infrastructure projects, and 12 years in New York City on small to large scale residential, institutional, commercial, and retail projects. Marc has considerable experience with Landmarks Review, the Public Design Commission Review and ULURP in New York City. Marc has also taught in the Columbia University Master of Science Real Estate Development program.
Marisa Kolodny
Marisa Kolodny received her undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College and her Master of Architecture from Harvard University. Prior to joining the firm in 2007, Marisa worked in the internet industry for over 5 years. At GLUCK+, she contributed to single-family residential projects in North Carolina, Upstate New York, and Chicago Northshore, as well as a large scale commercial redevelopment project in West Harlem until 2014. After gaining additional experience in infrastructure, institutional and healthcare projects in New York City, Marisa returned to the firm in 2016.
Matt Harmon
Matt Harmon received his Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Masters of Science in Physics from Idaho State University. He later received his Master of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture. Previously, Matt worked for 10 years as a research scientist, engineer and project manager in the physics and aerospace industry. Matt's architectural experience includes design build work for single family residential and cultural projects in Los Angeles, and urban planning projects for Los Angeles and China.
Olga Neufeld
Olga Neufeld received her undergraduate degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe, Germany, and her Master of Urban Design from City College of New York. Olga’s previous design experience includes LEED certified equivalent single-family residential and multi-family residential projects in Germany.
Parisa Mansourian
Parisa Mansourian received her Bachelor of Architecture from Isfahan University of Art in Iran, and her Master of Architecture from the University of Arizona. Parisa's previous design experience includes single-family residential projects in Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona.
Rikako Wakabayashi
Rikako Wakabayashi received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Michigan and her Master of Architecture from Harvard University. Her previous design experience includes residential projects in Japan. Rikako was a First Prize winner in the Envisioning Gateway International Competition co-sponsored by the Van Alen Institute, National Parks Conservation and Columbia University. She was on the design team for a residence in Maui and the Orange Beach Arts Center Master Plan.
Robert Wall
Robert received an undergraduate degree in Applied Science from University of Waterloo and undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture from McGill University. Prior to joining the firm in 2007, Robert's design experience was primarily in mid to large scale institutional projects in New York City, and also design/build collaborations with various artists on site specific installations and performances; most recently Mary Mattingly's 2011/2012 'Flockhouse' project. Robert has since designed and managed construction on site at the Pool Pavilion and Rado Redux in New York, and the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning in the Bronx.
Ross Galloway
Ross Galloway received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Maryland, College Park, and his Master of Architecture from University of Texas at Austin. Ross' previous experience includes large scale commercial projects in the Washington, D.C. area. After an internship during his graduate studies, Ross returned to join the firm the following year.
Sam Currie
Sam Currie received his Bachelor of Architecture from Auburn University and is a 2005 alumni of the Rural Studio. Sam joined the firm in 2008 and was onsite full-time managing construction for the Blue Ridge House. Since returning to the New York office, he has contributed to the Orange Beach Arts Center Master Plan, Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning, and the Central Queens Academy Charter School. Sam managed construction full-time onsite for the Lady Liberty Academy Charter School in Newark, New Jersey and the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning in the Bronx.
Scott Scales
Scott Scales received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arkansas. Prior to joining the firm, Scott had 9 years of previous work experience on residential, institutional and commercial projects in Arizona and Arkansas. Scott has since contributed to the Urban Townhouse in New York, House in the Mountains in Colorado, and the urban redevelopment project in Harlem.
Shannon Bambenek
Shannon Bambenek received her Bachelor of Architecture from University of Texas at Austin. After interning for a summer in 2006, Shannon returned to join the firm the following year, and has since contributed on numerous projects, including The East Harlem School, Pool Pavilion, Legal Outreach, and Rado Redux.
Stephane Derveaux, Associate
Stephane Derveaux received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Architecture and Urban Planning from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Nancy in France. Previously, Stephane had 7 years international architectural design experience on large-scale mixed-use commercial, institutional and residential projects in France, Germany, the Netherlands, China and Singapore; he was also senior designer and project architect for a large-scale museum plaza project in Kentucky. Stephane joined the firm in 2007, and has been project architect on numerous residential projects in Florida and East Hampton, New York, and later, the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning in the Bronx.
Steve Preston
Steve Preston received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Structural Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, followed by a Masters in Architecture from MIT. Steve has previous engineering design experience for kinetic architecture and architectural design experience on institutional projects.
Ya Suo
Ya Suo received her Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) from The University of Hong Kong and Master of Architecture from University of Michigan. Prior to joining the firm, her work received Honorable Mention in Blank Space's first Fairy Tales Architecture Competition. As part of the GLUCK+ creative team, she is involved in visual storytelling about GLUCK+ projects and working process. Ya Suo writes, illustrates and designs architectural graphics for multimedia, print and website content.
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- The Modern Impulse: Peter L. Gluck and Partners
- 2008
- Monograph
The Modern Impulse is a book about modern architecture -- a book about buildings conceived and constructed from the perspective of what their award-winning architect, Peter L. Gluck, defines as "the modern impulse."Committed to the principled practice of modernism, Gluck began his career at Yale in the 1960s. For more than forty years he has continued to develop, refine and insist on the best, and boldest, of modernist design. -
- Ten Houses: Peter L. Gluck and Partners
- 1996
- Monograph
Gluck's work contains hints of whimsy, but never so much as to make us want to describe these buildings as witty. His architecture takes itself too seriously for that, but coming close to whimsy without going all the way is, for Gluck, evocative of his glancing allusions to Historicism. He sees what it is about, he understands its purpose, but his main order of business is to do something else. This work comes close to being many other things, but it turns out to be, in the -
- City Realty
- August 22, 2016
- 150 Rivington: Reimagining a Historic LES Site, An Architect's Perspective
In partnership with Cogswell Lee Development, Gluck+ Architects will in 2018 wrap a new construction atop the former site of The Streit's Matzo Factory at 150 Rivington Street. The building that housed the factory is currently being cleared and Gluck+ has designed a new development that, from the ground up, will bring 45 luxurious one- to three-bedroom residences to the burgeoning downtown neighborhood. As Principal, Charlie Kaplan is the lead housing architect involved in reimagining the Lower East Side locale, and in the following interview he discusses Gluck+'s careful and calculated approach to renewing the historic site. -
- Curbed NY
- July 29, 2016
- Streit's matzo factory condos embody the Lower East Side's next iteration
A new building that is current, modern, and responds to the things we think about now and that excite us now. Hopefully it will have that same excitement that the old building had to its user. -
- Wallpaper*
- July 21, 2016
- Minimalist living: Gluck+ creates a calming lakeshore home in Chicago
Envisioned by New York-based architects Gluck+, House to the Beach was designed to encapsulate the atmosphere of West Coast living and transport it to a serene Midwestern lakeside location. Built for a large family of seven, the property is situated on a sandy stretch of private beach on the shores of Lake Michigan, bringing life to a picturesque plot that had been empty for over a decade. -
- The New York Times
- July 14, 2016
- Luxury Developments
The climate is ripe for new developments, which are springing up with regularity all across the city [...] Innovative privacy panels that maximize natural light and views are one of the highlights of 150 Rivington Street, a new development bringing 45 one- to three-bedroom condominium residences by architect GLUCK+ to the Lower East Side. -
- RE Business Online
- June 15, 2016
- Cogswell Lee Development, GLUCK+ Launches Sales...
Cogswell Lee Development, in partnership with architect/developer GLUCK+, has launched sales at 150 Rivington, a residential building located in Manhattan's Lower East Side. -
- Architectural Design
- January 2016
- No More Stopping
Peter Gluck uses an analogue version of BIM, which he calls Architect-Led Design-Build (ALDB). He has been outspoken about the traditional divisions between architecture and construction and how post-occupancy is understood. His firm GLUCK+ regularly enters into contracts to both design and build their projects, and is increasingly involved in the operational activities of their completed buildings in the years following client occupation, becoming an example of a DBO architectural practice. Since the design team leads the entire process, from concept to construction completion, team members can analyse, interpret and respond to post-occupancy issues with immediacy. -
- Real Estate Weekly
- September 25, 2015
- The architects who are building themselves a new future
The panel's moderator, Susan Szenasy, the editor and chief of Metropolis Magazine, told the audience, "New York is such a developer town, we think that developers are kings. In fact they have been given that role here."I think architects need to get into the action. I think there's some reason that they're reticent and there's all this sort of protecting your creative role, but at the same time, feeling that the money or the development or the kind of nasty reputation of development will rub off on you," said Szenasy. "You know, you could do worse," she joked before praising the panel members for finding a productive way to bridge the two practices.Charlie Kaplan, principal of Gluck+ said he felt that his firm's finished products benefit from its versatility."We're always thinking about how do we fill all the niches that need to be filled in order to create a great building," he said during the panel. "That means not just being an architect but, in our case, being a builder."The architects recalled that it was during a slow market in the early 19902 that he and his team asked themselves, "We have all these skills, we design, we build, Why can't we develop? -
- Oculus
- Fall 2015
- The DIY Approach to Housing
Patience might be a virtue, but impatience has a power of its own. Too often, architects "sit in their office waiting for somebody to call them to do a development - and they wait a long time," says Peter Gluck, RA, principal and founder of Manhattan-based GLUCK+. Instead, he and a small but ever-rising number of local architects have been taking a DIY approach with residential projects, developing their own designs. In doing so, they have gained greater control and efficiency in their work process, shed frustrating developer-client constraints, and created noteworthy new living spaces in New York City. -
- Philadelphia Magazine
- August 5, 2015
- Long Time Coming: Ground Broken at 205 Race Street for Apartment Tower
Simply called Bridge, the 17-story apartment tower will officially move forward with construction [...] Greenberger said that the design from Gluck+ "represents the best of what we can do in this city" and lauded its "richness" in how it carefully responds to Race Street, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and the impact it will have bringing density to the northern edge of Old City and further connecting people to the Delaware River waterfront. -
- Women's Wear Daily
- June 17, 2015
- Cary Leeds Center for Tennis, Learning Unveiled
Laurence C. Leeds Jr., Mayor David Dinkins, Bronx Borough President Rubén Diaz Jr., Nick Bollettieri, Kenneth Cole, Mortimer Singer and Manny Chirico were among those who came out Monday night to celebrate the grand opening of the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning in Crotona Park in the South Bronx.They were among the hundreds of supporters from the worlds of tennis, fashion, government and civic engagement who gathered at the new facility, which has been 15 years in the making. The creation of the $26.5 million center is a public-private partnership, with $16.5 million of public funding, and the remainder from private donors, spearheaded by project campaign co-chairs Leeds and Tory Kiam.The facility is a tribute to Leeds' late son Cary, a star on the Yale University tennis team who went on to become a world-ranked player, ranking No. 12 in doubles and competing in six U.S. Open and five Wimbledon tournaments, where in 1981 he reached the semifinals in mixed doubles. -
- Bronx Times
- June 1, 2015
- Cary Leeds tennis center to open in June
A world-class tennis center is set to open in the Bronx next month. New York Junior Tennis & Learning will celebrate the opening of the Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning in Crotona Park on June 15 [...] The modern clubhouse was designed and built by GLUCK+ which aimed to create a building that was both unobtrusive in the park--one of its two stories is below ground--yet sculptural in nature, said Peter Gluck. -
- Architectural Record
- May 2015
- How to Make Money
Like so many other industries, architecture is undergoing profound change, much of it driven by technology, which in turn is undermining the economic foundation of the profession. How architects get paid for-is in flux. The smartest and most profitable firms are identifying new opportunities and creating a broader definition of what constitutes architectural services. -
- md
- March 2015
- Vertikales Loft
In the middle-class Midtown district east of Manhattan a townhouse presents itself as a spectacular eyecatcher with a front façade of steel instead of red brick. The building's interior, too, states clearly that this is a house of the 21st century. -
- The Wall Street Journal
- March 27, 2015
- The Architects' Secrets
Designing their own homes also allows architects to take more risks. When building his vacation home in New York's Catskills, Thomas Gluck of [GLUCK+] Architecture in New York City used a tinted-glass treatment--typically reserved for commercial projects--on the home's exteriors. The dark surface reflects the trees and sky, allowing the structure to blend into the landscape [...] "We are willing to believe in design in a way that sometimes clients would not go for--things that would be a hard sell," Mr. Gluck says. -
- Interior Design
- March 2015
- Big Ideas: Building Blocks
"Unlike in the 1960's, today's modular construction is flexible," Thomas Gluck says. Apartments span multiple modules. No cookie-cutter boxes here. -
- BIG little house
- 2015
- Scholar's Library
Located two hours north of Manhattan, on a heavily wooded site near a reservoir, this simple form sits directly on the ground. It appears as an unexpected folly in the forest. The client, a scholar of Japanese history (and wife of the architect) originally requested a new chair for her desk. The new chair project quickly became a new desk project. Soon, the really hard question "what are you going to do with all of these books?" was asked, and the program requirements gradually became a new library and writing studio. -
- WABC TV Eyewitness News
- February 5, 2015
- New type of modular housing moving into New York City
"In the last two years in New York there has definitely been an upswing in development," said editor in chief Amanda Dameron of Dwell Magazine.A new seven story apartment building called "The Stack" is the first multi-family modular building in the city, developers say, providing moderate income housing.Built entirely at a site in Pennsylvania, the 56 modules were constructed and outfitted in a controlled environment.They were shipped to the site and after the foundation and first floor supports were constructed, the modules were hoisted into place in just 19 days."There was a demand for it, even though it didn't exist yet and so the modular played into that because it gave us the quality of construction and shorten the time frame," said architect Thomas Gluck.Gluck's firm is the designer, one of the co-developers and construction manager on the project. -
- The Architect's Newspaper
- January 14, 2015
- Schoolhouse Block
Nomadic Newark school gets a lesson in offsite construction. Not for profit developer Build With Purpose turned to New York firm GLUCK+ to conceive a design solution that could beat the clock within a constrained budget. -
- Häuser
- December/January 2015
- Viel Luft Nach Oben
The grand finale of the whole [townhouse] is the top floor, the preferred retreat of the couple, which opens out to a private roof terrace. The surrounding panorama of the midtown Manhattan high-rise "giants" is fantastic. And although they tower above in height to the GLUCK+ building, in sophistication they certainly do not. -
- AIA YAF Connection, CRIT
- December 2014
- Built by Design: GLUCK+ and Design Build
Do you think all architects should practice architect-led design build? Do you think there's still a place for other practice models? I wouldn't say that all architects should practice designbuild. I do think that all architects should expand and involve themselves more. I think we've lived through a period of time when the role of the architects has seen a series of limitations of their involvement. Architects used to supervise their work; it was standard practice. Now architects are told not to supervise their work. -
- Dwell
- December/January 2015
- Stack the Deck
Winning the race to build the tallest prefab building in New York City, Gluck+ assembles 28 affordable housing units in less than a month. A new residential building in upper Manhattan, dubbed The Stack and designed by the architecture firm Gluck+, employed offsite prefabrication methods to create a high-quality, affordable housing solution that was raised onsite in only 19 days. The modular construction is visible in the exterior, where individual units jut out to create a stepped façade that celebrates the construction process while still relating to the scale and texture of the surrounding architecture. The Stack also dispels the myth that prefabrication limits the size and shape of the final product: The building’s 28 apartments, which come in a variety of configurations and span multiple modules, optimize the infill site’s small footprint. -
- SUPERHOUSE
- 2014
- Tower House
While the Tower House is a beautifully calibrated, artificial object in its forest setting, part of its appeal is found not in its visual presence, or the arrangement of space, but in the resolution of the practical issue of energy use. The arrangement of the kitchen and bathrooms in a stack means that they form a vertical thermal core, which can be isolated and heated when the house is closed in winter, to avoid both frozen pipes and excessive heating bills. Because of such measures, the tower House uses a third of the energy of a house of comparable size.With regard to cooling, Peter Gluck is quite adamant that 'we don't go to the country to be air-conditioned', and describes how the adaptation of an attic fan system used in traditional American houses was influential in their thinking. Air is heated through the glass in the stair enclosure and, by creating a difference in pressure, air from outside is drawn in through small awning windows or horizontally placed casement windows. At night, either an open hatch at the roof level or a fan positioned under the roofline draws warm air out of the building through the stack effect. -
- Financial Times UK
- October 18, 2014
- Natural Highs
Elevation offers many special - and often sublime - advantages. Living up high provides a feeling of openness and light, as well as a greater sense of space and freedom. But it also offers the temptation of a home that engages with a vista full of interest and promise. This is especially true of a fresh generation of rural tower houses. Like their urban cousins, they offer an enticing vantage point, yet are also belvederes with a powerful and intimate connection with their bucolic surroundings. -
- The Architect's Newspaper
- September 24, 2014
- GLUCK+ Screens a Modern Great Camp
Architect-led design build firm GLUCK+ designed the Lakeside Retreat in the Adirondack Mountains on an historic blueprint: the Great Camps, sprawling summer compounds built by vacationing families during the second half of the nineteenth century. "The clients wanted to hold events there, and to make a place where their kids--who were in college at the time--would want to spend time," said project manager Kathy Chang. "They wanted to create different ways of occupying the space." GLUCK+ carved the hilly wooded site into a series of semi-subterranean buildings, of which the two principal structures are the family house and the recreation building. These buildings are, in turn, distinguished by massive lake-facing glass facades, camouflaged by wooden screens designed to maximize both privacy and views.The project, explained Chang, "was really about sculpting in and out of the landscape, manipulating the ground plane." By using the existing site as a primary element of construction, the GLUCK+ team was able to accomplish two things. First, "it gave us a new level area for the clients to hang out outside," said Chang. "It provided a new way to occupy the site, because before there was no flat ground." Second, they were able to manipulate the program so that the mechanical spaces were tucked into the underground portions of the houses, making way for a transparent facade along the lakeside. "The fact that so much of the program is buried allowed us to build the glass facade, despite the energy requirements," said Chang. -
- Raum und Wohnen
- September/October 2014
- Townhouse Mit Stahlfront
In Midtown Manhattan, this urban townhouse is a spectacular eye-catcher. While its modern steel front mimics the familiar brick facades of the older surrounding buildings, this new building makes it clear: This is a house of the 21st century. -
- Engineering News-record
- September 15, 2014
- Facing Modular's Twists and Turns
Modular-building boosters, including traditional owners, developers, contractors and designers maintain that off-site construction is faster, safer, leaner, greener, better quality and potentially less costly than site construction. But there is a big hitch, they caution: building teams are not likely to reach modular delivery's pot of gold unless they plan and execute the off-site strategy properly. And that is no simple proposition. "Everyone thinks it's a silver bullet," says Jeffrey M. Brown, the developer and general contractor for the Stack, a mostly factory-built seven-story residential building in Upper Manhattan that opened in May. "It really isn't unless you put the right ingredients in the bowl." -
- Engineering News-Record
- September 2014
- Despite Challenges, Developer of the Stack Thinks Modular Is the Way To Go
It's not easy to be first. The team that built the seven-story Stack in Upper Manhattan, New York City's first steel-framed modular mid-rise building, knows that from experience. The developer of the 28-unit residential building—at 90.5 ft tall, the tallest completed modular building in the U.S.—bought the land in 2007, yet the first tenants moved in just this past May."There were a lot of pitfalls," says Peter Gluck, who wears several hats on the Stack. Gluck+ is the architect and design-builder, and Gluck is a minority partner in the development.It also took "a few years to figure out the best design" for the 150-ft-deep, 50-ft-wide lot, which is not an ideal dimension for an apartment building, says Jeffrey M. Brown, the building's co-developer, with Kim Frank, and general contractor, under the firm that bears his name.The solution was a U-in-plan shape that provides a 30-ft-sq courtyard, which offers more exposures. "The building is really two buildings connected by a corridor," says Brown. -
- Perspecta 47
- August 2014
- Interview: Thomas Gluck
P47 Could you describe the approach of GLUCK+ and how it differs from the status quo of the profession? TG Our attitude starts with a global perspective on where the profession has been, where it is right now, and where it's going. What's happened over time is that through trying to limit professional liability and reduce risk, the profession has also limited its own role and capacity to engage effectively.Sometimes we talk about architect-led design-build as a strategy to regain control over the building process, but "control" can conjure up a desire for complete power. The control we're interested in is instead the ability to follow the clients' interests and the conceptual underpinnings of a project through to completion. As the architect retreats back to an increasingly narrow realm of influence, he or she limits the ability to craft a building that truly serves the client and the urban, social, and economic contexts. -
- The Nation
- August 18-25, 2014
- Little Boxes
New York City's first true modular apartment building--the Stack, erected in a mere nineteen days--opened recently in Manhattan's northernmost neighborhood of Inwood. It's a nice-looking building (designed by Peter Gluck), but the apartments are a more conventional mix of unit types, none of them micro. This is a promising development that should help diminish resistance to modular construction by those who know it only through its shabbiest and most unattractive examples. Isn't this a better idea than stuffing people into spaces that can only be inhabited by childless Zen masters and anal-retentives? Shouldn't the city be a place where the investigation is of how to produce choice and not compulsion? -
- Architectural Digest
- August 2014
- High Fidelity
Every architect commissioned to design a mountain home that's sympathetic to its setting faces the same challenge: how to come to terms with the peak itself--the rock, the elevation, the climate, the slope, the vista. Despite the inevitable urge to triumph over topography by building at the summit, embracing a more modest accommodation can sometimes be a better path to achieving domestic bliss in the clouds.Consider the extraordinary house conceived by the New York–based architecture firm Gluck+ in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Situated well below the highest point on the property, at the edge of a sunken meadow ringed by trees and close to a precipice with a hundred-mile view to the bright lights of Charlotte, the residence strikes an elegant balance between exposure and protection, between high-altitude splendor and grounded repose. All of which was accomplished while adhering to environmental standards rigorous enough to earn the project a LEED Silver certification. -
- Architecture + Urbanism 526
- July 2014
- Lakeside Retreat
The integration of building and landscape enhances the experience of the site…what was inhospitable and uninhabitable becomes new playing fields, outdoor dining terraces and recreational lookouts to more fully experience the exceptional characteristics of the geography of that particular place. -
- The Architect's Newspaper
- June 5, 2014
- Inside Architecture's One-Stop Shop
"The typical process of architecture is broken." So begins a slideshow on the website of GLUCK+, the New York firm known for its practice--and advocacy--of architect-led design build. Design-build differs from conventional project delivery in that a single firm is responsible for both design and construction. Proponents of the method argue that by repairing the breach between architecture and building design-build benefits both clients and architects, and produces better designs. -
- Architectural Record
- May 2014
- The New Master Builders
Fact or fiction, it is a common perception that the design and construction process is plagued with problems: cost and schedule overruns, under-detailed design drawings, shoddy workmanship, disputes, and litigation. Some architects have been pursuing a remedy for this fraught situation--the project delivery method known as design-build. Until recently, most practitioners were reluctant to be too involved in construction. But that may be changing, with new approaches that make design-build a more viable alternative--one that gives the architect more control over the building process and the completed project.According to the professional association the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), "design-build is a method of project delivery in which one entity--the design-build team--works under a single contract with the project owner to provide design and construction services." (With the more standard approach--design-bid-build--the owner hires an architect and a contractor separately and holds a contract with each.)Fans of design-build tout its advantages. They say it provides the client with the convenience of a one-stop shop, or a single point of responsibility, for both design and construction. They maintain that it provides tight control of costs and schedules. And they claim it fosters greater collaboration, and therefore results in a less adversarial process, and ultimately produces higher-quality buildings. -
- NBC Open House
- April 27, 2014
- Designer Living: Visit Tower House, A Luxury Eco Retreat
We headed 100 miles north of Manhattan to a luxury eco retreat in upstate New York, designed by architect Thomas Gluck. Called the Tower House, it offers elevated living and uninterrupted mountain views of the Catskills. Not only is it a gorgeous work of art, it's designed to be sustainable and energy efficient. -
- American Public Media: Marketplace
- April 21, 2014
- Prefab apartment buildings on the rise
A big chunk of the substantive consumer goods that we buy, from watches to cars to dishwashers, is built in a factory someplace. One notable exception until now, housing. From New York, Dan Bobkoff explains: I'm in Upper Manhattan, a new apartment building called 'The Stack'. And by design, it looks kind of like a collection of staggered lego blocks. On the inside, it's like any other modern building in New York. -
- Häuser
- April/May 2014
- Crazy Horst
The Tower House sits on a small plateau above the rest of the property and relies on a combination of wood platform construction and steel. Covering the armature is a skin that includes olive-green fritted glass, as part of a rainscreen cladding system, and insulated vision glass. This slick envelope simultaneously emphasizes the structure as a man-made object and acts as camouflage, reflecting the house's environs and altering its appearance over the course of a day, with the passage of seasons, and in changing atmospheric conditions. "We were trying to make a building about the experience of being in the woods without having the materials be natural," explains Thomas Gluck. -
- Fast Company
- March 2014
- The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies In Architecture
Bold designs, innovative business models, and risky projects define the best in architecture this year. 7. GLUCK+ For taking control of the entire building process. With Architect Led Design Build, Peter Gluck and his team ensure quality and efficiency from idea to execution by seeing a building through the entire process of design and construction. -
- Wallpaper*
- February 2014
- The Judges’ Awards 2014 Contenders: Best New Private House
Tower House: “Aiming to keep its footprint to a minimum, the house stands on a narrow ‘leg’, while its raised living area extends horizontally from the slender base.” -
- The Wall Street Journal
- January 2, 2014
- Putting the Pieces Together in Inwood
But just a block north, another development is under way that is unlike any other in Manhattan. The Stack, the city's first multistory modular apartment building, is anticipated to come on the rental market this month. The seven-story building was prefabricated in a Pennsylvania factory, shipped to Inwood in 56 modules, and was assembled on-site in the 50-by-150-foot lot at 4857 Broadway."We wanted to try out a modular approach and see if we could reap benefits from that, not only in providing a well-structured building, but one that would be conscious of good design," said Jeffrey Brown, who developed the Stack with design firm Gluck+. "We wanted to provide spaces that aren't really available to people in this neighborhood." -
- Architecture + Urbanism 519
- December 2013
- The East Harlem School
Much is going on in New York. The city is being transformed at a rapid pace. Large projects are being produced on available sites that require massive amounts of capital, over existing railroad yards, or huge former industrial sites, eg. Atlantic Yards or Trump Place. Deteriorating rail lines, waterfront piers of former times are being repurposed or converted to parks and public recreational areas, eg. Chelsea Piers, Highline, Brooklyn Bridge Park.Unfortunately a major element of change is being driven by "gentrification." Outmoded or decrepit buildings are being replaced. This phenomenon is effectively changing vast areas of the existing fabric. With little focus or scrutiny from the "design community," it is developer-driven and for the most part done without much thought. In major portions of the city, this will become the city of the future. Architectural thinking is seen as a luxury item not relevant to the real needs of the development process. Architects need to acquire multi-faceted knowledge and accept previously shunned responsibilities (to ensure the quality and cost of the built result) in order to change this perception, and merit participation.All players in the process of designing and building have retreated into ever shrinking silos of responsibility. The plus in GLUCK+ is meant to represent our impulse to go beyond; to break through silo walls to engage in facets of both thinking and making that have been avoided by architects. There are many needed pluses. With the addition of these pluses, architects can be the logical quarterbacks of the development game. -
![Image of Architect-Led Design-Build [chapter]](http://gluckpartners.com/sites/default/files/styles/press_item/public/press_item/images/2013%201125%20AIA%20Architects%20Handbook_thumbnail2.jpg?itok=7d_h4N7m "Architect-Led Design-Build [chapter]")
- AIA Architect's Handbook of Professional Practice, 15th Edition
- November 2013
- Architect-Led Design-Build [chapter]
In architect-led design-build [ALDB], the architect is the full-service leader of the design-build team, taking responsibility for the entire process...From the owner's point of view this can better reflect the need for a single source that is responsible for the design, costing, and production of the project, led by the entity that has originated the design and can take responsibility for its execution...It is a continual collaboration between the architect and the construction trades and manufacturers, as well as the owner, which can provide agile responsiveness to the nonlinear process of producing a building. In ALDB, this process can be a continuum from conceptual design to the ultimate commissioning of the building. -
- C3
- November 2013
- Pool Pavilion
...the decision to bury part of the construction allows minimizing the potential impact that an unavoidable large construction would have. In addition, it profits from the earth's thermal mass to reduce heat exchange and, at the same time, it is also a device to create an interesting game of indoor/outdoor spaces. Without any outstanding architectonic outline, the architects designed it to look more like a glass pavilion in a garden, half buried, merging into the landscape as part of it. -
- Vogue Living Australia
- September/October 2013
- Up in the Air
Completed in 2012, the Tower House is a striking and unexpected sculpture sitting in the forest, with a tall, vertical shaft climbing upwards and intersected at the fourth storey by a horizontal, cantilevered box holding the main living spaces, looking outwards to the mountains. Gluck, who started thinking about the design of the house back in 2003, built a full-scale scaffold tower on the site before starting construction, just to test that the idea would work and that the view would be open enough.It's one of a number of buildings on the property that has been in the family for many years. Peter Gluck, Thomas's father and a founding partner at what is now the architecture-led-design-build firm Gluck+, started with an 1820s cottage that he extended in the 1980s. Later he added a guesthouse, called the Bridge House, at the base of the forested plateau. There's also the Scholar's Library, a sublime study and book repository designed for Thomas's mother, Carol, who is a professor of history at Columbia University. The Tower House, which was designed and built by Gluck+, is the latest addition to the site. -
- The Wall Street Journal
- September 22, 2013
- Old School Patrons Wary of New Look
Like the rise of the nouveau riche, the dazzling state-of-the-art buildings touted by New York's newest schools can be viewed askance by some of the centuries-old institutions that rule the city's private-school scene.Their modest--to put it politely--facilities are badges of honor, their reputations rooted in intellect and character, they say, not cutting-edge cafeterias.So when Collegiate School--an all-boys K-12 institution on the Upper West Side that has been in its current location since 1892--announced this year it would move to a brand-new building in the same neighborhood, the reaction was, perhaps, predictable: apprehension.School officials gave the architects simple instructions: Make it nice, but not too nice."There is this pride in how limited the facilities are," said headmaster Lee Levison. "That we can have this kind of building yet generate some of the most creative and thoughtful and talented high school graduates in the country. It wasn't a function of having a shiny new building." -
- GA Houses 133
- September 2013
- Tower House; Floating Box House
New photography by Yoshio Futagawa. -
- NY 1
- August 9, 2013
- City's First Prefabricated Apartment Building Rises In Upper Manhattan
It took only 19 days to rise from foundation to seven stories tall -- and now "The Stack" in the Inwood section of Manhattan is New York City's first prefabricated apartment building. "The Stack is New York City's first modular multi-story apartment building," says Jeffrey Brown, the CEO of Jeffrey M. Brown Associates. "We built modules out of steel frames with concrete floors and we are able to stack them on top of each other." The seven-story building on 204th Street and Broadway is factory-made. Designed by architecture firm GLUCK+, it is made of 56 modules that were designed and manufactured off-site, then transported and put together to create 28 ready-made apartment units that range from studios to thee bedrooms. -
- WIRED
- August 8, 2013
- An Amazing Glass House That Peeks Over the Forest
Gluck, a principal at Manhattan-based architecture firm GLUCK+, wanted to build a home that took full advantage of the view while limiting the impact on nature. He and his team of architects realized in order to do that, they'd have to totally reverse the way family-centric homes are traditionally laid out. Instead of building the family rooms on the ground floor and bedrooms upstairs, Gluck designed a vertical core of three bedrooms stacked on top of each other that supports a living/dining room cantilevered 30 feet from the forest floor. A bright yellow staircase leads from the house's base, up through the bedrooms to an observation deck-like communal space that rises above the tree line. -
- Architectural Record
- August 2013
- House in the Mountains
Houses embedded in the earth are becoming a specialty of GLUCK+, the New York architect-led design-build firm formerly known as Peter Gluck and Partners. The reasons are compelling--the grass roofs reduce energy loads and their low profile doesn't impinge on the natural landscape. In the case of a 2,850-square-foot guesthouse in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the clients... -
- Icon
- July 2013
- Tower House
The neutral colors and materials that camouflage the house are interrupted by the distinct yellow hue of the staircase -- a part of the house Gluck says should be embraced. Just as the ladder is the entrance to the tree house, so the staircase is part of the conceptual experience of being up in the trees. "There is a playfulness to the thing, that you are going to walk up four or five flights of staircases on your relaxing weekend, so we painted the stairs yellow to highlight that sudden exposure," Gluck says. -
- Elle Decoration Thailand
- July 2013
- Open to the Air
The family weekend house of Thomas Gluck is designed and built to save energy and minimize its environmental impact. Located north of New York City, the 4-story vertical house resembles a glass-cladded letter T, with the yellow staircase visible through the clear glass... -
- International Business Times
- July 12, 2013
- Prefabricating Buildings Offsite, Then Installing Them In Location: Is There A Real Renaissance?
In New York's Inwood neighborhood, workers are busy stacking together weighty prebuilt modules made in Pennsylvania, as they piece together one of the city's latest and more notable residential complexes built almost entirely offsite. Prefabricated construction, as it's technically known, is constructing a building away from its ultimate location. Developers and architects increasingly look to the technique as a way to save time and money, even as they try to shake off the technique's negative associations. In the case of Inwood, project principals at the 28-apartment complex dubbed "The Stack" point out that construction should take only 10 months from start to finish, down from the 16 months they would project for traditional construction. -
- Architect Magazine
- July 2013
- Stacks on Stacks
Despite the touted economy of off-site, prefabricated housing, the building methodology has made limited inroads in New York, stunted for decades by a wary local bureaucracy and a public that seemed to prefer flashy one-off condominiums. Following a 2008 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, however, interest in the potential that prefab offers for the dense urban environment was renewed. That interest only grew more urgent after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New York in 2012, leading officials to reexamine prefab prototype disaster-housing schemes. -
- Crain's New York Business
- July 26, 2013
- Modular apartment building rises in 19 days
Nineteen days. That is all the time it took to put up a 28-unit, six-story apartment building in the Inwood section of Manhattan this summer. The secret? Modular construction. Working Monday through Friday from June 20 to July 18, a crew of just eight iron workers, a crane operator, and half-a-dozen helpers installed the 56 modules that make up the apartment building at 4857 Broadway. In a bow to the property's innovative construction technique, the building is to be known as The Stack. It was created by a partnership of developer/builder Jeffrey M. Brown Associates and GLUCK+ architects. "We're now done stacking," said Peter Gluck, principal at GLUCK+. "Building any building is a nightmare, but this was not a nightmare. Given that this is the first one we've ever done, this went amazingly smoothly." -
- New York Daily News
- July 24, 2013
- Inwood gets the city’s first prefabricated apartment building
By the end of the summer, uptowners can live in a Lego house: the city's first concrete and steel, multi-story prefabricated building. Broadway Stack is a 28-unit moderate-income apartment complex built with 56 prefabricated modules. The modules were assembled off-site in a former subway car factory and then shipped to Inwood, where they are being stacked to form a seven-story tower. "It's an exciting alternative method of construction," said Stack's architect Peter Gluck. "As the country urbanizes there is more and more need for modern and low-cost housing, and this one response." -
- Fast Company
- July 23, 2013
- This Prefab Building Is A First For New York
"It's really exciting," Gluck, principal of GLUCK+ architects, says, as the building blocks are hoisted overhead. Standing at the edge of the lot, we discussed the history of modular and prefabrication building methods, and why they are again relevant. "This is all about urbanization, the moving back to the cities," the architect tells Co.Design. "Now the technology and the methods for doing it have evolved." Gluck's generation of architects was reared in the shadow of the late modernists, whose oversize urban panaceas and all-encompassing treatises they'd begun to aggressively critique. An inclination toward viewing architecture less as an art form and more as a high-tech solution to society's problems marked a shift in thinking for Gluck and his professional peers. -
- National Mortgage News
- July 22, 2013
- N.Y. Gets Its First Prefab Modular Multifamily Building
A multifamily building under construction in a working-class Manhattan neighborhood promises to offer a new avenue to creating moderate-income housing in urban areas. In a first-of-its-kind building project for New York, the 28-apartment, seven-story structure is being put together with modular units that are constructed off site. It's precise work, with the 56 modulars that make up this steel and concrete structure delivered by truck and then lifted by cranes and slowly and carefully set into place. -
- Crain's New York Business
- July 21, 2013
- NY's modular moment arrives
Trucking thousands of building modules weighing up to 25 tons and as wide as two Hummers is a challenge in a densely packed city like New York, one complicated by narrow side streets and aging bridges. A case in point is 4857 Broadway, in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan. There, a partnership of GLUCK+ architects and Jeffrey M. Brown Associates is building 28 apartments from 56 modules that are being fabricated in Pennsylvania. -
- Real Estate Weekly
- July 17, 2013
- City's first modular apartment building unveiled
New York City's first multi-unit modular residential building was unveiled to the public last week in northern Manhattan. Pre-fab steel and concrete modules were hoisted atop one another by crane for the $13 million project named The Stack -- in a nod to its innovative design -- a seven-story, 28-unit residential building at 4857 Broadway. The 28-unit rental building is expected to be completed in September when the apartments will be leased by a team from Douglas Elliman and Newmark Grubb Knight Frank will handle marketing of the retail space at the base of the building. -
- Architectural Record
- July 2013
- Stacking Up
On Thursday contractors plan to top out a seven-story, 28-unit apartment building known as the Stack on an infill site in Upper Manhattan. The event would be unremarkable, except that four weeks ago, the only part of the structure that had been erected on the 50-foot-wide by 150-foot-long lot was the first floor framing. Now it is completely enclosed, and has its interior partitions as well as plumbing fixtures, countertops, doors, and hardware--even the toilet paper dispensers have been installed. The Stack, designed by architecture firm GLUCK+ (formerly Peter Gluck and Partners), has gone up so quickly because it is composed of 56 steel-and-concrete modules built in a factory in Berwick, Pennsylvania. These components, which make up the studio, one-, two-, and three- bedroom apartments, have been trucked to the site with all interior finishes in place and stacked by crane at the rate of about four per day since June 19. -
- Fast Company
- July 12, 2013
- Watch A New Prefab Building Rise In NYC, Stack by Stack
On a sizable, mid-block site in Inwood, near the northernmost point of the island, what might be New York's first prefab steel-and-concrete apartment building is taking shape. The Stack, a seven-story moderate-income residential project by GLUCK+ architects, champions an exciting modular building method, one with a rich heritage but that has too rarely been implemented. The 50-foot-wide, 150-foot-deep lot is sprinkled with a few cranes and what look like trailers but are actually building modules. From across the street, pedestrians stop in their tracks as each of the 45-foot-long oblongs seemingly takes flight. -
- Mark Magazine
- June 2013
- Tower House by GLUCK+
Looking for the optimal arrangement of the primary building blocks that would constitute Tower House -- living room, kitchen, three bedrooms with adjoining baths -- New York City-based studio GLUCK+ set out to 'accentuate the experience of the site'. The result is a 'tree house for grown-ups' that is mindful of its natural surroundings and indebted to its geographical location: a mountainous area affording astonishing views.We are proud to be the first to release the studio's video about this bold project in upstate New York:*This project was featured in more detail in Mark#44's Cross Section, including an interview with one of the partners, Tom Gluck. Click here to subscribe.*Correction: In the article about Tower House that was published in Mark#44, we printed the name of the studio as Peter Gluck and Partners. The studio had launched its new identity and website in April and it is now GLUCK+. -
- Oculus
- June 2013
- 2013 AIA NY Design Awards: Innovation, Grace and Style
Jury: "Whimsical. Delightful. A mini-house on steroids that recalls a forest ranger's watchtower. It shows the optimism of an architect. Keep the trees!" Designed as a stairway to the treetops, this 2,545-square-foot vacation house, owned by a principal of the firm, occupies a minimal footprint so as not to disturb its wooded site. Dark green, back-painted glass of the rainscreen wall cladding camouflages the house by reflecting the surrounding woods. The tower is a glass-enclosed stair that ascends from the forest floor to a treetop aerie connecting all levels of the building up to a rooftop terrace. The south-facing stair creates a solar chimney- as heated air rises, it is exhausted out the top, and fresh air enters the house from the cooler north side. Spreading out from the top of the stair is the main living space, cantilevered 30 feet from the ground. -
- Interni
- May 2013
- The Tower House
"I have already said that we spent hours and hours in the trees not for utilitarian motives, as so many youths are prone to do, who climb trees to look for fruit or birds' nests, but for the pleasure of negotiating the troublesome bulges and forks, to get as high up as possible, to find the best spots in which to rest and gaze at the world below us. To play pranks and to shout to those passing underneath." This is how the young Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò of the "Baron in the Trees" by Italo Calvino speaks of his choice of going to live in the treetops, after a futile argument with his father. -
- The New York Times
- May 23, 2013
- Prefab Lives!
It's an exciting time for modular building, especially in New York, and as someone who has been deeply immersed in the world of prefabrication for over a decade, I am glad to see the much-maligned building technology finding its proper niche. It's the killer app for the modular industry.B2, a 32-story tower that is part of a 1,500-unit, mixed-use complex designed by SHoP Architects for Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, will soon be the tallest modular building in the world. nARCHITECTS recently won adaptNYC's competition to design a micro-unit apartment building, and will see its concept transformed into a 10-story -
- Fast Company
- May 22, 2013
- A Skyscraper-Style Treehouse With Soaring Mountain Views
Architects like wordplay. It's a fun and effective way to condense the main thesis behind a project without resorting to archi-speak. It's also a good bit of marketing. A simple subversion like "horizontal skyscraper" immediately makes a potentially interesting (or uninteresting) project that much more compelling. Another example: the Tower House. Designed by GLUCK+ architects, the Tower House looks exactly like it sounds--that is, it takes the form of a skyscraper and shrinks it down to the scale of a house. The four-story-high-building is configured to resemble Lego blocks, an analogy that extends to the house's bright yellow and green color scheme. A vertical bar, the "tower," is bisected at its summit by a wide horizontal volume, which appears to conquer gravity with the most minimal of supports. -
- Financial Times Magazine
- April 26, 2013
- Independence Stay
An increasing desire to house visiting friends and family in privacy has given rise to striking stand-alone spaces that double as anything from a pool house to a music room. Dominic Bradbury reports on a forward-looking generation of guest lodges. One of the great pleasures of having a beautifully designed home is sharing it with others, and in an age when friends and family are often spread far and wide, entertaining house guests has attained a special level of importance. Small wonder, then, that architects and their clients are approaching the business of creating inviting spaces for visiting friends and family with new enthusiasm and a fresh eye. And hence the rise of an ambitious generation of guest lodges: self-contained retreats set apart from main residences which have a sense of delight all of their own. -
- Metropolis Magazine POV Blog
- April 25, 2013
- Expanding the Scope of Architectural Thinking
On Monday night, a crowd of 200 assembled at a construction site in Harlem for the first panel in a series called "Changing Architecture." The discussion, moderated by Metropolis editor-in-chief Susan S. Szenasy, focused on the need for architects to develop a wider skill set that will enable them to take a more involved role in the building process of their projects. Among the evening's panelists was Peter Gluck, founder and principal at the firm Gluck+. He is a strong believer in architects getting their hands dirty at the construction site, working with communities, and being held responsible for a project coming in on budget. He remarked that "Architectural thinking is seen as a luxury item not relevant to the real needs of the development process...Architects need to acquire multi-faceted knowledge and accept previously shunned responsibilities in order to change this perception." -
- World-Architects eMagazine
- April 22, 2013
- Architects House Themselves
There exists a long tradition of architects designing houses for themselves, many of them becoming historically notable works of architecture because of experimentation, a mix of living and working spaces, and an obviously unique architect-client relationship. Think of Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio in Oak Park and his Taliesin estates in Wisconsin and Arizona; Alvar Aalto's house in Helsinki; Walter Gropius's house ten miles from Harvard; the Charles and Ray Eames House in California; Luis Barragán's House and Studio outside Mexico City; Frank Gehry's exploded bungalow in Santa Monica. The list of architects and houses goes on, with pre-20th-century examples found in Thomas Jefferson's plantation home at Monticello and Sir John Soane's house-museum in London, to name just two. -
- Architectural Record
- April 2013
- A Stairway to the Treetops
A Stairway to the Treetops: A chameleonlike house--which changes with the seasons and throughout the day--provides a perch for total immersion in the surrounding woods. Architecture need not always be serious. And nowhere is lightheartedness more fitting than in a vacation house. One such playful example is the Tower House--a 2,500-square-foot structure on a sloping, wooded site in Ulster County, New York, about 100 miles north of Manhattan. Designed by New York City--based Gluck+ as the mountain retreat for one of the firm's principals, Thomas Gluck; his wife, Anne Langston; and their two children, the house resembles a cross between a Modernist skyscraper and a tree house. It is completely glass-clad and has three bedrooms and adjoining baths stacked one on top of the other to support a living and dining room cantilevered 30 feet from the ground. A switchback stair, with bright-yellow treads and risers, connects all four levels and leads to a rooftop deck. The goal, says Gluck, was to create an aerie within the trees and take advantage of views of nearby Catskill Park, a vast state forest preserve. -
- The New York Times
- March 8, 2013
- More Units Going Up In a Snap
A vacant lot on Broadway between Academy and 204th Streets in Inwood is littered with rubble and concrete pilings. But in a matter of weeks, this 50-foot-wide sand pit will be transformed into a seven-story apartment building, with finished bathrooms, maple cabinetry and 10 terraces. It is not a magic trick, but rather the result of modular, or prefabricated, construction. A technique in which a building is manufactured piecemeal on a factory assembly line, trucked to the construction site and erected much the way Legos are, modular construction is gaining popularity across New York City. -
- Domus
- March 5, 2013
- Making Room
An exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York attempts to disrupt the city's present housing situation, exposing the key housing regulations and policies and reinforcing the ambition to produce real and tangible change. An architecture report from New York by Leigha Dennis.Housing in New York City is not easy to find. That is no secret. The city's population is at its highest and steadily increasing. In the next 20 years, the population is expected to grow by roughly 600,000 people, and yet housing conditions are already compromised. Many New Yorkers are living in illegal and often unsafe shared and informal arrangements. But what will happen when more people must squeeze in? Where will they live? How will the city make room? -
- The New York Times
- February 5, 2013
- School Plans Its 17th Move, but Its First Since 1892
After debating nearly seven years about where to move, the board of the Collegiate School, New York City’s oldest and one of its most prestigious private schools, announced Tuesday that it had purchased land for a new building between West 61st and 62nd Streets and between West End Avenue and Riverside Boulevard. It will be the 17th move for the school since its founding in New Amsterdam in 1628, but the first since 1892, when the West End Collegiate Church and the Collegiate School moved to the Upper West Side. -
- Das Ideale Heim
- February 2013
- Rank & Schlank
“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere" sings Frank Sinatra, and the Peter Gluck and Partners team has designed and built a spacious, bright townhouse on a 122-square-meter plot in Manhattan. […] The new home seems to be “snuck in-between” historic buildings on either side, two traditional townhouses that appear to forgivingly embrace the newcomer.The new building’s requirement for open, loft-like interiors with room to breathe, led to the design of the house’s façade and a complete re-envisioning of the configuration of the architectural plan of a typical townhouse.The house itself is a “gap filler,” and the stair’s glass railings demand, once again, outside-the-box thinking -
- Rock The Shack
- February 2013
- Scholar's Library
A pure and elegant cube matches the unity of the building's purpose and form, in both programmatic and metaphorical terms. The first floor of this forest library houses the main book stacks and remains completely closed to the outdoors. On the second floor, the structure opens up to let in light and views for a scholar's working study. The structure expresses this dual character, with the floating roof cantilevered off the second floor to highlight the distinction between solid and void. The windows open on all four sides, to produce a light and airy feeling. The changing seasons outside act as evolving backdrops for the project, moving from green to orange and then white over the course of the year. -
- Domus
- October 2012
- Affordable by Design
When it comes to affordable housing in New York, the strongest arguments for better design are often not architectural but political or economical. Recent work by Phipps Rose Dattner Grimshaw, Jonathan Kirschenfeld, Peter Gluck and Partners, and SHoP Architects contribute significantly to redefining the ins and outs of social housing in the heartland of capitalism. This past July, 100 decision makers from the sectors of policy, finance, real-estate development and design gathered for a 1-day session on the 47th floor of the Deutsche Bank's Wall street office in new York to discuss strategies aimed at "Lowering the Cost to Develop and Sustain Affordable Housing". With the backdrop of Grank Gehry's recent -
- Philadelphia Inquirer
- September 15, 2012
- Changing Skyline: Old City plan deserves praise, not opposition
Forget the government's economic indicators. You know that Philadelphia's real-estate market is coming out of the doldrums when an old-time, bare-knuckle skyscraper fight breaks out in Old City.The scene is a familiar one: a surface lot at Second and Race Streets, hard by the Ben Franklin Bridge and the ramp to I-95. Back in the heat of the condo boom, Brown/Hill Development tried to transform the site into real-estate gold by hiring a big-name New York firm, SHoP Architects. They produced one of the city's best designs of the period, an accommodating 110-foot-high midrise. The Old City Civic Association loved it, but the market collapsed before it was built. -
- The Architect's Newspaper
- August 29, 2012
- Race Street Rising
Last week Philadelphia’s new zoning code went into effect, but projects nurtured under the old code may still be rising. Just yesterday, architect Peter Gluck presented a tower proposal to the Old City Civic Association for a 16-story building adjacent to the Ben Franklin Bridge. Because the zoning permits were filed last month the building is subject to old code.Gluck’s presentation of 205 Race Street soured when new renderings revealed that an early proposal by SHoP Architects, initially approved at a 100-foot height, had morphed into a 197-foot tower that sets back from Race Street, PlanPhilly reported. The group voted 11 to 1 to oppose the project. -
- The Architect's Newspaper
- July 3, 2012
- Tennis Architecture from Newport to the Bronx
Teddy Roosevelt once remarked on the commercialization of sports: “When money comes in at the gate, the game goes out the window.” With Wimbledon in high gear and tennis at the Olympics looming, tennis is getting more than its share of commercial attention lately. Just last month the United States Tennis Association announced it would spend a half billion dollars to upgrade the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Queens, where the U.S. Open is played. The project is linked to the $3 billion Willets Point project. -
- The Architect's Newspaper
- June 14, 2012
- Studio Visit>Peter Gluck and Partners
At a recent competition to design a vertical campus for the prestigious Collegiate School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, several well-known New York firms showed up with snazzy renderings in hand. Peter Gluck did not bring a proposal. When asked by the selection committee why he arrived empty-handed, he responded, “How can we give you a solution when we don’t know the problem yet.” Gluck got the job. -
- Metropolis
- January 30, 2012
- Building as Business
Peter Gluck & Partners and Tocci Construction have developed innovative approaches to project delivery; more broadly, they have shifted the relationship between architect and contractor. Not for them is the typical separation between architect and contractor with its daily time lags, as one party communicates information to the other. It is a well-known fact in the industry that this piece-meal process ultimately creates change orders and cost overruns. -
- The New York Times
- November 16, 2011
- Imagining Housing for Today
Bronx Park East opened last year opposite the New York Botanical Garden. It consists of a five-story brick pavilion with triple-height windows facing the street, and a seven-story wing for 68 small studio apartments. “A good neighbor,” is how its designer, Jonathan Kirschenfeld, described the building’s look. Serious architecture is another way to describe Bronx Park East. It is a single-room occupancy residence, an S.R.O., -
- Architectural Record
- November 2011
- House of the Month
Some minimalist architects boast that given enough money, they can make their architecture almost disappear. Although that claim seems to go against normal expectations about what so many architects really like to do, it often tempts those faced with a large program and sensitive site.Peter Gluck, for example, argues that creating an “experience” rather than building a visibly defined object should be an architect’s supreme goal. -
- Green Building & Design
- September 2011
- Building a Better Way to Build
"No matter what the project, Gluck's goal is always marrying cost-effective solutions with innovative design and careful construction. 'We are trying to push the profession to accept and recognize the power of architect-led design-build,' he says. 'We're trying to improve the role of the architect and hopefully build better environments in the process'...'There's so much waste in a normal construction job, it's unbelievable,' Gluck says. 'Because we both design and build our buildings, our cost savings are 30, 40, sometimes 50 percent. It's important to us that our clients get the most for their money. So we're very interested in sustainability. It's deeply embedded in our design principles.'" -
- Metropolis
- September 2011
- Elegant Solution
All houses have a story. This house has a saga. Call it the Three Ages of Architecture: modern, postmodern, and contemporary. The end result is a 4,600-square-foot house with six bedrooms, a home office, and a playroom, its upper story cantilevered over a picturesque Westchester County ravine. In the summer, from the road, the house seems to float in the trees—unlike its hulking neighbors. But it took the work of two sets of determined architects, first in 1958 and then in 2010, to make it look this easy. -
- Financial Times UK
- July 30, 2011
- Exceptions That Roof the Pool
Homes are constantly borrowing bright ideas from luxury hotels. There’s the super-indulgent bathroom, the home spa and the sophisticated bedroom that feels generous and seductive enough to double as an extra sitting room and a private retreat. Add also the notion of a tempting indoor pool that can be used all year round and happens to be beautifully crafted and exquisitely detailed. No wonder, then, that the architect-designed pool house is enjoying a period of high demand, expressed in a series of fresh, innovative and highly individual buildings. -
- Architectural Digest
- April 2011
- Q+A: Peter Gluck
Palatial houses can be surprisingly modest. At least, that’s the philosophy of Peter Gluck, an acclaimed modernist who has spent the past 38 years creating extraordinary residences that make as little impact on the land as possible. One is featured in the April issue of Architectural Digest: A glass-walled house Peter Gluck and Partners, Architects designed for clients in Illinois, complete with a basketball court, spa, garage,… -
- Architectural Digest
- April 2011
- Lake Effect
Neighboring estates in this suburb of Chicago often announce their presence with showy turrets or columned façades, but Cascade House, a lakeside residence designed by New York architecture firm Peter Gluck and Partners, makes a more discreet impression. From its front drive, all one sees is a stack of two glass boxes: one transparent, one translucent. The rest of this home—true to its name—drops out of view, gently terracing down toward the waters of Lake Michigan. -
- American Builders Quarterly
- March/April 2011
- No Building Stands Alone
Gluck is concerned that the word "responsible" has become a synonym for something good. "Responsible just means taking the least amount of time and risk," he says. "With this approach, the cost is often so far beyond the project's actual value that in the end, the project is irresponsible." Since 1972, [the firm] has worked directly with the variables of time and risk. From conception to closeout, these designers provide cutting-edge architectural solutions without the cost overruns typical of a multiple-source construction approach. -
- Design Bureau
- January 2011
- Designing to Build
According to architect Peter Gluck, the traditional method of designing and constructing buildings is inherently flawed: architects don’t know how to build and contractors don’t understand design. So when Gluck started his architecture firm, Peter Gluck and Partners, he did so with the goal of fixing this broken process. “When architects construct buildings, it’s common knowledge that there are problems; they take too long to build, they leak, they’re over budget. But we really understand construction,” Gluck says…. -
- Urban Omnibus
- February 10, 2010
- The East Harlem School at Exodus House
Recently the staff of the Architectural League had the opportunity to visit The East Harlem School at Exodus House, an independent middle school on East 103rd St. EHS co-founders and brothers Hans and Ivan Hageman grew up on the site when Exodus House was a residential drug rehabilitation center, founded in 1963 and run by their parents. Growing up in East Harlem while attending the prestigious Collegiate School,… -
- Metropolis
- January 2010
- The Pride of East 103rd Street
Ivan Hageman wasn’t sold on the design. He feared anything modern. He didn’t like the method the architect was pushing—design-build, in which a single firm stewards everything from the first conceptual drawing to the last layer of paint. It seemed foreign and vaguely suspect. And above all, he thought that the architect, Peter Gluck, was a bit of a jerk. “Peter was somewhat loutish, somewhat rude, somewhat devil-may-care: ‘Either you’re going to go with me or not,’” Hageman says in his second-floor office, which overlooks, like a happy panopticon, the street outside the private school he helms. Recalling their first meeting, in 2004, with the school’s board of trustees, he says, “At the end of the meeting … the chair of the board said, ‘I agree with you, Ivan. He does seem kind of difficult. He reminds me of someone you’ve worked closely with over the years.’ I said, ‘Who?’ She said, ‘You.’” -
- Fast Company
- July 17, 2009
- East Harlem School: Contemporary Design, at a Bargain Price
Maybe the biggest reason why more builders don't hire contemporary architects is that, in addition to the up front design fees, your typical design visionary is bound to plow straight through the construction budget, and then some. But not always. Recently, Peter L. Gluck & Partners completed a new building for the East Harlem School, a charter school in Harlem. By acting as both the designer and the construction manager, they were able to deliver the building below budget, at a cost of $330 a square foot (which is very low, at least for New York). At the end, they even returned $500,000 in unspent contingencies--that is, the money budgeted for inevitable construction screw-ups. -
- Taschen
- June 2009
- GREEN Architecture Now!
Peter Gluck received both his B.Arch (1962) and M.Arch (1965) degrees from Yale University. He founded his present firm in New York in 1972. He has been chairman of AR/CS Architectural Construction Services, a firm that integrates architectural design and construction, since 1992. He is also a co-founder of Aspen GK (1997), a development partnership intended to build "well-designed high-quality housing)" -
- Architectural Design
- April 2009
- An Enthusiastic Sceptic
The sceptic, if he or she does his or her job correctly, is critical to the productive evolution of any movement, and as we embark on the Building Information Modeling (BIM) revolution, it is worth asking a few questions. We embrace the promise of BIM-- born from the notion of collaboration between disciplines and the integration of design-- and recognize it as a paradigm shift in an industry that has spent too much of the past century trying to separate consultants on the same design team, to clarify liability and to shed responsibility. -
- The Wall Street Journal
- October 10, 2008
- Architect Contractors Gain High End Following
Despite the financial crisis and the housing slump, the phone is still ringing in Peter Gluck's office. "We're OK for now," says Mr. Gluck, whose office of 50 architects specializes in high-end residences costing $5 million and up. That may be explained by the fact that Mr. Gluck and his associates aren't just architects for their homes. They're the general contractors as well, unlocking gates in the morning and stepping onto scaffolds to direct construction. -
- The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture
- October 2008
- Little Ajax Affordable Housing
The form of the residential complex is a direct response to Aspen's need for communal family units, on-site parking and public trail connections. It consists of a two-storey block facing the street, and a three-storey volume behind, which climbs up the base of the mountain and is oriented along an adjacent public hiking trail. -
- Architectural Digest
- October 2007
- Above and Beyond
Sometimes a single element - a rug from a honeymoon in Istanbul, an inherited coromandel screen, even a low, midcentury sectional sofa picked up at a yard sale - tells a story that reveals the meaning of a house and explains the character of its owners. If you can find the world in a grain of sand and eternity in an hour, you can fathom the spirit of a house from a Buddha bought on Hollywood Road in Hong Kong. In telling momment in the house that New York architect Peter L. Gluck designed and built for a young couple outside Austin, Texas, is a historic view: a striking -
- Metropolis
- September 2007
- Peter Gluck's Social Work
Peter Gluck has a problem with the AIA. He has a problem with architectural education too. Really he has a problem with the whole profession of architecture as it is currently practiced. Economic exploitation of youth. Big ideas in service of the highest bidder. Callow young CAD monkeys trained in archispeak. Designers who don’t know how to build. Engineers rescuing forms untethered from reality. He doesn’t seem like an angry person: he’s a sort of laid-back father figure with a gentle demeanor who appears to relish his work. But don’t get him started on the irresponsibility of architects and the way the profession is practiced. Or do get him started: you might learn something. -
- Architectural Record
- July 2007
- Peter Gluck Builds the Inverted Guest House
"I wanted to build a barn," says Richard Yulman, the client for the Inverted Guest House in Lake George, New York. "Just a country barn where we could park cars and put stuff in the winter." What started as a simple shed kind of project, though, became a 5,600-square-foot building that features a pair of two-bedroom guest apartments on either side of an eight-car garage. With its rugged-yet-elegant copper cladding and flat roofs, it looks like no barn. But its industrial materials capture the utilitarian spirit of rural buildings, and its large, folding doors and shutters connect it to the light and views of its wooded site. -
- Bloomberg Businessweek
- May 7, 2007
- No Building Contractor? No Problem
Peter Gluck sits on the couch of his office loft recalling the house that "broke his back." In the working environment of that project, the tensions between his architectural firm, Peter Gluck & Partners, and the general contractor were so high that the construction dragged on for what seemed like forever. Inefficiencies abounded. As he concludes his story, his son, Thomas, another architect at the firm, comes by with a dustydesign plan that falls heavily on the table where he drops it. "This is how we used to dobusiness," he says. -
- Architectural Digest
- January 2007
- The AD 100
Throughout his 34-year career, New York-based architect Peter L. Gluck has remained steadfastly Modernist, creating houses with an acute awareness of time and context while eschewing sentimentality or any reference to tradition. His design approach is governed by "the ongoing and evolving set of principles and impulses inherent to Modernism," and his projects are characterized by clean geometric lines, sculptural elements and respect for light, serenity and individuality. If Gluck's houses possess a certain Japanese sensibility, it is no accident. After graduating from Yale School of Architecture, he spent two years in Japan acting as a consultant for a local construction company. -
- Texas Architect
- October 2006
- Floating Box House
Surrounded by a grove of more than 200 live oaks, the house is located just outside Austin and stands between the city's new urban skyline and its rural past. The forms of the house consist of a box, a stainless steel stucture on which the box is perched, transparent glass encolusre, and a plinth. Significant portions of the program are located below grade to prevent the size of the house from drawing attention away from the landscape. The guest bedrooms, media room, and gallery are located within the buried plinth. In addition, the garage is underground to keep the precinct of trees free of distracting automobiles and black top. The floating box contains the family bedrooms. -
- Wallpaper*
- July 2006
- Gluck of the Draw
A 32-mile sliver of water in upstate New York, Lake George's shores are scattered with holiday homes and summer retreats. It's also a hot spot for America's ongoing battle of domestic architectural styles, as over-scaled neo-vernacular dukes it out with sleek modernism along the prime waterfront sites. One architect in particular, Peter L Gluck, makes a sound case for progressive modernism, His practice, Gluck & Partners, has stuck to his modernist guns, developing and honing the skills he learnt while a student at Yale in the late 1960s under the tutelage of Paul Rudolph. Gluck & Partners has since built up a respectable body of work, and now consists of 40 architects working on everything -
- Architectural Record
- April 2005
- The Scholar's Library
Sited at the architect's weekend family retreat in upstate New York, this library provides a study area for his wife, Carol, a scholar of Japanese. The building also houses 10,000 of her books, mostly in a compact basement. Thin columns extending from the basement to the second level support structural loads. The 20-by-20-by-20-foot building, solit at its base and translucent above, offers sliding glass doors in place of windows, allowing its occupants to experience a completely open environment. Architect Peter Gluck says his wife stays in the space from 8 in the morning until 9 at night. "She gets more done in there than anywhere else." -
- Architectural Digest
- January 2004
- The AD 100
While taking a class taught by Vincent Scully at Yale on the history of architecture, Peter L. Gluck experiences an architectural awakening in which Louis Kahn, Alvar Aalto and "contemporary Swiss and Dutch architects" would become his "heroes." He later incorporated Japanese sensibilities that carry over into what he described as a "contextual modernism," replete with sculptural elements, unflinchingly sleek geometries and attention to detail, craft and light. Gluck formed his own firm 32 years ago and derives satisfaction from designing and building museums and affordable housing. Nonetheless, he takes on a number of residential commitments every year and is now working on houses in California -
- Architectural Digest
- January 2000
- The AD 100
"A main concern of ours is to produce significant, properly constructed buildings at costs appropriate to their use," says Peter L. Gluck. "In this endeavor, we act as construction managers by actually building most of our projects." These range from houses across the United States for people "interested in real architecture" to multiuse building in New York's East Harlem and a 50,000-square-food community center in the South Bronx. The Yale-educated architect opened his firm in 1972, after spending two years in Japan. Gluck, whose office now consists of 20 architects, got his inspiration from the sensibilities of Japanese architecture and from "all serious and good architects," especially early- and mid -
- Architectural Digest
- September 1996
- The AD 100
Peter L. Gluck gave his modern addition to an 18th-century New York farmhouse the character of utility farm structures pieced together over time. "The context demanded that the existing house remain prominent in the composition without inhibiting the sculptural possibilities of the new structure," the architect says, "I chose not to miniaturize the original but to enhance it by contrast." It seems, at first, to be altogether wrong, this sprawling modernist addition of stone, glass and metal on a delicate Federal-style farmhouse. Some kind of demonstration project in architectural insensitivity, you wonder? Why would any thoughtful do such a thing to a graceful eighteenth-century house? -
- Architectural Record
- April 1996
- Record Houses: Annex Supports Varied Pursuits
For architect Peter Gluck's family of four, its new 8,000-square-foot annex to a much smaller nearby house (site plan below) embodies more than simply expanding a weekend retreat. It shows how to accomodate a unified group of people's differing needs in a single location. "We spent a lot of time rethinking how we live," says Gluck, talking about the maturing family's increasingly diversified pursuits and habits, not to mention its widening circle of friends and acquaintances. Their traditional little farmhouse in new York's rural Catskill Mountains, which had served well for 20 years, had begun to burst at the seams wityh too many activities and people. Nor did the formal character and gardens lend themselves to the extensive, innovative addition the -
- Architectural Digest
- February 1992
- Modifying Mies
In augmenting an International Style house in Connecticut designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1955, architect Peter Gluck was forced to confront a vision of architectural purity. Gluck did two additions - a pool with two pavilions and, later, a bedroom wing connected to the house. Few archtiectural problems are as vexing as adding to a building by Mies van der Rohe. First, any Mies building by definition possess the status of a historic artifact, protected by an ethical presumption if not by a legal requirement that any future architect tread lightly. But the nature of Mies's architecture leaves almost no room for anyone else anyway. How do you expand a glass box that aspires to Platonic perfection? -
- Progressive Architecture
- April 1984
- Return to Grace: Residence, South Connecticut
It was the kind of classic design problem we all thought only our design professors fiendish enough to devise. All that would be required to strike terror and paralysis into the heart of a prospective architect/designer in the imperative "Add to an existing house by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe." The rest of the program could say just about anything; God has left the details for later. Originally designed in 1955, the house in lower Connecticut was built for the brother of Mies's client for the renowned Lake Shore Drive apartments. Its fenestration and glazing echo those apartment towers and, in fact, the house even used materials lft over from the Chicago projects. This was a forgotten Mies, however, having -
- House and Garden
- January 1984
- Masterful Meeting: Gluck adds to Mies van der Rohe house
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed a small house in 1955 for a site on a Connecticut river, one of only three built by the architect in the United States. His client was the brother of a Chicago developer who had commissioned Mies' great apartment project on Lake Shore Drive. Family ties did not end here. The little house incorporated into its facades the same pattern of mullion and glass used in the Chicago apartments - suburbanized with a coat of white paint - and even used surplus materials from the Chicago job site. -
- Architectural Digest
- December 1982
- Architecture: Peter L. Gluck
The design of an architect's home can present a special challenge. When building for himself, there is an implicit desire to make a statement, a signature. Because the project is so personal, the presumption grows that it must reveal the designer's innermost musings, not simply about house design, but about the condition of architecture, as well. Often this leads to self-consciousness or attempts at a perfection impossible to achieve. Other times, the error -
- Architectural Record
- March 1979
- The Ojai Valley Inn Addition
Because the building is set into a hillside in a series of stepped floors, and becasue the area is particularly subject to earthquakes, the feasibility of the project might have been in severe question if standard (and more expensive) structural techniques were used. The problem was accentuated by the single-loaded corridors and by the weight of 18 inches of earth on the uppermost roof. Working with engineers Spiegel & Zamencik, Gluck developed a composite system of plywood, steel and concrete -
- MoMA Exhibition
- August 1973
- The Phenomenal City: Shinjuku Japan
Shinjuku is a dense clutter of commercial activity at the largest interchange in Tokyo's vast mass transit system. There are 12,000,000 people living in Tokyo; every day more than 1,000,000 of them pass in and out of Shinjuku station on nine radiating rail lines and fifty-odd bus routes. It is to accommodate the needs and wants of this mind-boggling concentration of people that a huge shopping and entertainment area has grown in, around, and through the station, including 4 mammoth department stores and over 3 thousand small retail shops, restaurants, bars, and entertainment facilities. -
- Record Houses
- May 1973
- Apartments of the Year
A cool secluded pond is the focus for this house in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Access by car is possible only at a level 35 feet above the water, and so the entrance is at the top and the house is a series of terraced rooms facing the view and arranged around a central stairway that steps down inexorably from the entrance to the pond below, and just before (for the less adventurous) to an open deck and swimming pool. -
- Progressive Architecture
- July 1967
- Light and Air Houses: Peter Gluck, Architect
Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Gluck, the architect's parents, requested a vacation house that was easily maintainable, contained two bedrooms, two baths, and a large living room. For privacy, the architect separated the living room from the bedroom wing, and the latter took on the minimum dimensions and shape required by the bathroom core and bed space. The structure is supported by 40-ft telephone poles sunk 23 ft into the ground.
- 2016 President's Award, Residential Category, American Society of Landscape Architects (Illinois), Cascade House
- 2016 Design Award of Merit, Society of American Registered Architects/NY Council (SARA/NY), Duke University Marine Laboratory
- 2016 Design Award of Merit, Society of American Registered Architects/NY Council (SARA/NY), House to the Beach
- 2016 Finalist, Architecture + Prefab, Architizer A+ Awards, Lady Liberty Academy Charter School
- 2015 American Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum & The European Centre for Architecture, The Stack
- 2015 Housing Honor Award, AIANY/BSA, The Stack
- 2015 Jury Winner and Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Urban Transformation, Architizer A+ Awards, The Stack
- 2015 Special Mention, Multi Unit Housing - Mid Rise (5-15 Floors), Architizer A+ Awards, The Stack
- 2015 Finalist, Single Family Home M 1,000-3,000 SF, Architizer A+ Awards, House in the Mountains
- 2015 Bronze Award of Merit, Society of American Registered Architects/NY Council (SARA/NY), The Stack
- 2015 Award of Merit, Residential Architecture - Single Family, AZ Awards 2015, Tower House
- 2014 Bronx Building Award, The Bronx Chamber of Commerce, Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning
- 2014 Shortlist, WAN Residential Award, The Stack
- 2014 Finalist, Single Family Home M 1,000-3,000 SF, Architizer A+ Awards, Tower House
- 2013 National Housing Award, American Institute of Architects (AIA), House in the Mountains
- 2013 Architecture Merit Award, American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIA NY), Tower House
- 2013 Record Houses, Architectural Record, Tower House
- 2013 House of the Month, Architectural Record, House in the Mountains
- 2013 American Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum & The European Centre for Architecture, Tower House
- 2013 American Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum & The European Centre for Architecture, House in the Mountains
- 2013 International Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum & The European Centre for Architecture, Tower House
- 2013 Design Award of Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects New York Council (SARA/NY), Tower House
- 2013 Design Award of Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects New York Council (SARA/NY), House in the Mountains
- 2013 Special Mention, Single Family Home, Architizer A+ Awards, Lakeside Retreat
- 2012 Award for Excellence in Design, NYC Public Design Commission, Cary Leeds Center for Tennis & Learning
- 2012 Design Award of Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects/NY Council (SARA/NY), Rado Redux
- 2011 November, House of the Month, Architectural Record, Lakeside Retreat
- 2011 Design Award of Merit, IALD International Lighting Design Awards, The East Harlem School (with Lux Populi)
- 2011 Design Award of Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects/NY Council (SARA/NY), Lakeside Retreat
- 2011 Design Award of Merit, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), Cascade House
- 2011 Design Award of Honor, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), Blue Ridge House
- 2011 Design Award of Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), Lakeside Retreat
- 2011 Shortlist, WAN Effectiveness Award, The East Harlem School
- 2010 Architecture Honor Award, American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIA NY), The East Harlem School
- 2010 International Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum & The European Centre for Architecture, Urban Townhouse
- 2010 International Architecture Award, The Chicago Athenaeum & The European Centre for Architecture, Pool Pavilion
- 2010 Design Award for Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects/NY Council (SARA/NY), The East Harlem School
- 2010 Design Award for Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects/NY Council (SARA/NY), Urban Townhouse
- 2010 Design Award of Recognition, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), Urban Townhouse
- 2010 Design Award of Merit, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), Pool Pavilion
- 2009 K-12 Educational Facilities Design Award for Design Excellence, Boston Society of Architects (BSA), The East Harlem School
- 2009 Design Award of Merit, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), Little Ajax Affordable Housing
- 2009 Design Award of Excellence, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), Floating Box House
- 2009 Design Award of Honor, Society of American Registered Architects (SARA), The East Harlem School
- 2009 National Design-Build Award of Excellence, Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), The East Harlem School
- 2009 National Design-Build Award of Merit, Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), Little Ajax Affordable Housing
- 2009 Project of the Year, Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) New York Tri-State Region, The East Harlem School
- 2009 Citation of Excellence, BusinessWeek/ Architectural Record 'Good Design is Good Business' Award, The East Harlem School
- 2008 Winner, New Construction, North American Copper in Architecture Awards, Inverted Outbuilding
- 2007 Award of Merit, American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York State, Little Ajax Affordable Housing
- 2007 Show You're Green Award of Excellence, American Institute of Architects (AIA) National, Little Ajax Affordable Housing
- 2006 Honor Award, Boston Society of Architects (BSA), Floating Box House
- 2006 Design Award, Texas Society of Architects, Floating Box House
- 2006 Award of Excellence, American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York State, Floating Box House
- 2005 Design Award, American Institute of Architects (AIA) Connecticut, Split House
- 2004 Honor Award, American Institute of Architects (AIA) NY, Scholar's Library
- 2004 Honor Award, American Institute of Architects (AIA) NY, Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service
- 2004 Award of Excellence, American Institute of Architects (AIA) New York State, Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service
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Fax 212 690 4961
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