Forays in Freelance

So I’ve shaved twice since June for the same woman, S.. There was an ad for a high end residential architecture position that I applied to in September. The call was short and rushed. She seemed disinterested. I immediately regretted shaving for that zoom call interview.

For a month I lamented shaving off my beard especially since S. didn’t call me back. I had found some weird comfort in tugging at my beard. Just when my beard started sprouting again, S. emailed again for an unexpected follow up interview at the end of October. I debated whether to shave it off again. I lost my hard earned beard and had no job to show for it after the first interview. But again, I succumbed to societal norms and shaved off my beard to try to get the job.

For the second zoom interview, she saw that I had shaven and asked whether I was still interested in the job. I said yes. She asked me to meet at her office. 3 days later I biked across the bridge in the rain (since covid still lingers in the subways) to her office in queens to assess the situation. She was 4 years younger than me... overwhelmed with too much work. I was 4 years older than her, parking my car on alternate sides of the street. We made a great pair. The project she was hiring for was a town home renovation. I had no experience in this type of work. An addition to the top and back of an existing townhouse building in Brooklyn.

She handed me a hard drive, a computer, a stack of drawings and most importantly 3 stapled sheets of department of building objections to her project. We agreed that I wasn’t a full employee, that I would be working on an hourly wage. This gave her flexibility to fire me if I did an incompetent shit job and gave me flexibility to leave hastily if my library project is ever resurrected. I assured her even though I have no experience, i work super fast and I have plenty of construction wisdom to draw upon. I said a lot of things in my interview to try to get hired.

For a building to start construction, it needs to pass city bureaucratic reviews and plan examiner approvals. For the past 2 years I’ve handled this aspect of architecture ad nauseam. for a mental clinic, then an apartment building, then a library... but now this was my first foray into obtaining code approval for residential work.

A week into the project I realized architecture is architecture. Whether you’re drawing a library or a house, to do a good job you need to, as they say in baseball, “play the game the right way”. In baseball when you get a hit, you run hard to first. When you play defense you always get in position to make a play. You don’t loaf around. Glenn Murcutt would call this ‘play the game the right way’ mentality in architecture, morality. For him, when you have a client, you focus 100% on the project, you try your hardest to define and solve problems and you don’t compromise or slack off. If you don’t have this commitment as an architect, Murcutt advises you should go into accounting. “The hours are better and you get paid more.”

The condition of the drawings I inherited for the townhouse were dismal, sloppy, and disorganized. The cross sections were not coordinated with the survey. The existing plans didn’t relate to the elevations. The roof and stairs did not comply with safety and environmental code mandates. The proposed designed walls had no element of reality or constructability. The structure was designed for 4” thick brick, whereas the design assumed 1/2” thick brick. The facade was not based on the module of its material (brick). The mechanical system developed did not fit within the ceiling heights given and would’ve resulted in 5.5 foot tall ceilings. I had enough experience to quickly recognize the game had not been played the right way for this townhouse project.

My initial efforts for the project focused on setting up the drawings. I set the plans up so they could all be overlaid. This is a little tedious to do, but because the proposed townhouse has 6 levels... it is imperative to be able to see all six levels simultaneously. This helps to line up stairs and plumbing lines, mechanical ducts and structure.

The original building was made to codes from the 1930s. Since we were doing alterations whose value exceeded 30% of the value of the property the building had to follow the 1968 code... but we opted to use 2014 codes since we’re designing in 2020 to take advantage of specific provisions. Capishe? Each code has its peculiarities. For 1968 codes, the stairs can be narrower and steeper, but they have to be non-combustible construction (i.e., steel) and you can’t have a continuous run of stairs beyond four stories without enclosing them. In the 2014 code, the stair must be 3’-0” wide, riser heights are limited to 8.25”, the stair has to exit on the roof through a bulkhead, and the building has to have a sprinkler system but you can have a continuous stair rise all the way up a residence without enclosing walls. Technically, once you select a code, everything in the building should be consistent with that code.

The townhouse is rather narrow at 16’-0” wide so fitting the stair was a challenge. The existing stairs were 30” wide, made of wood, and very steep. Since the building was made prior to 1968, its wood stairs were grandfathered in under previous codes. Ideally from the cellar to the 3rd floor we wanted to keep the existing stair compliant to 1968 code to avoid the expense and complications of replacing it with an enlarged 36” wide steel stair, yet we wanted to present the entire stair as 2014 code compliant to have it rise up the building without enclosures, and build the upper floor stairs out of wood.

I brought up this dilemma of jumbling 2 codes to our advantage with S. She introduced me to J., an expeditor whose sole job it is to gain regulatory approval for building projects. She warned me this guy is a little strange. He works at odd hours through the night. He’s an old man who works regulatory magic from his studio. On Thanksgiving he emailed me at 3:37 AM and then we had long conversations and traded obtuse emails and esoteric sketches throughout this day Americans usually set aside to celebrate family. Forget the turkey, we had to figure out how much of the sidewalk and pavement to repave or how large the opening to the alcove was to comply with code regulations, etc...

S. told me she never joins these conference calls with the building department since she feels she can’t provide any value. I join these calls to learn the art of regulatory finesse and because I have nothing better to do now.

When facing alterations to buildings existing buildings that straddle multiple codes, I found the codes are open to interpretation. There is no black and white. An architect and expeditor make their case to plan examiner and the examiner makes a judgment whether to accept or not accept the design. Over the past month I’ve had weekly meetings with J. Our plan examiner A. was not very sharp. He didn’t seem to know the codes himself and spent time on the conference calls looking up various sections to understand the code to check things. Sometimes he would ask his boss to join him, who was equally muddled in the head confusing codes from different eras like an Italian trying to speak French in Spain.

To achieve our goals, J. advised me to not show any dimensions for the existing stair. And to simply label the existing stair to remain. If we don’t bring attention to the fact that it is not code compliant to 2014, and the examiners don’t object to it, it can get approved. really? As architects, we rationalize in a house with a sprinkler system, the stair would be safe, regardless.

In these department of building sessions while the plan examiner asked questions about the stair’s combustibility, landing dimensions, etc.. he never once asked for the dimensions of the existing stair to remain. It was terrifying to sit on the conference call while the examiner was sifting slowly through the drawings... at any given point he could’ve asked the most obvious question... “is your whole stair 2014 compliant? Or how wide is the stair there?” And we would’ve been forced to make a new stair that would have had huge spatial and financial impacts. J. and I were like 2 criminals in the bushes looking at a detective at a crime scene who didn’t see the murder weapon in plain sight. This was suspense at the highest degree at a plan examiner meeting.