Interview with Deborah Berke: 432 Park Avenue, NYC

I am so honoured and excited to be serving as Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. I’ve taught at the school for almost 30 years, and teaching has always been a central part of my professional life, so it is very gratifying to take on this new role at the school.

Yale is a mid-sized architecture school, so the Dean tends to be very hands-on in terms of all aspects of the management and direction of the place. I’m a very collaborative person, so I think there are opportunities for faculty and students to be involved in new ways.

Yes, we are very pleased with the results. This is a very special property with unparalleled views, so for us it was immediately clear that that was what we needed to underscore. I love the materials we selected, which are rich and durable, and we used them in ways that speak to both modernist and classicist traditions. The floor plans are elegant and logical and reinforce the clarity and rigour of the architecture.

Architecture has certainly changed a lot since I started my firm. The diversity of the field is finally beginning to change in meaningful and material ways. But we still have a lot of work to do before we reach anything close to parity in the profession. In my own work, it’s been extremely gratifying to work on a broad range of building types that I personally enjoy, including educational and cultural projects, houses, and boutique hotels. We’re currently designing a ground-up office building with a new urban park; it’s exciting to work on that scale and the scale of a private residence at once.

One thing that’s happened, almost by chance, is that we’ve been asked to work on a number of existing buildings by great architects of the 19th and 20th centuries, including HH Richardson, McKim Mead & White, Albert Kahn, Louis Kahn, IM Pei, and Shreve Lamb & Harmon, the architects of the Empire State Building. I love transforming old buildings for contemporary life, and it’s been an intriguing challenge to work with these buildings by great architects of the past to really understand their thinking from the inside out.

Well, many firms see architecture and interior design as discreet professions and they tend to specialise in one of the other. I see architecture and interior design as integrated, with one informing the other. We particularly enjoy being able to do both the architecture and interiors for a project because we believe it creates more unified and authentic places.

All the sectors of our practice have grown over time because they reflect who we are, what our interests are, who we like to work with, and, most importantly, the interests of our clients. So no, I don’t have a personal favourite between them.

Well, we have a lot of projects that have been in the office for a long time that will be completed this year, particularly institutional and commercial projects. So I’m excited about those buildings being put to use. I think a lot of these projects will be transformational for the people that use them and for the communities where they are located. The satisfaction of that never gets old.

We are also publishing two books this year: House Rules will be published by Rizzoli and Working will be published by Artifice Books.

Read the full feature on Deborah’s finished 432 Park Avenue apartment design here.