Alumni Projects
’85
photo / Andres Orozco
The innovative design for Empire Stores, a group of seven historic warehouses located on the waterfront next to the Brooklyn Bridge, earned Jay Valgora’s (B.Arch. ’85) firm, STUDIO V Architecture, a Merit Award as well as Best of New York State Award at the 2019 AIA New York Design Awards in January. In addition to STUDIO V, the winning team included S9 and Perkins Eastman as associate architect, and landscape designer Future Green Studio. The four- and five-story structures were originally built between 1869 and 1885 as coffee warehouses and used until 1945, before sitting vacant for more than a half-century. In 1977, the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Fulton Ferry as a historic district, protecting Empire Stores from demolition. In 2013, Brooklyn Bridge Park held a competition won by STUDIO V’s design, with developers Midtown Equities and HK Organization, for the adaptive reuse of Empire Stores. The project opened to the public in 2017 as an integral part of New York City’s Dumbo neighborhood and the waterfront development in Brooklyn Bridge Park. According to Valgora, the contemporary design combines innovative elements with historic restoration, including a public passage slicing through the historic fabric that creates a spiraling sequence of spaces culminating in a rooftop public garden. Inspired by the art of Gordon Matta-Clark (B.Arch. ’68) and the “Carcieri” drawings of Piranesi, these public spaces feature rotating compositions of stairs, bridges, terraces, and balconies contrasting the exposed stone walls and masonry arches, and culminate in a rooftop park overlooking the Manhattan skyline. photo / provided
’14
M.Arch. Designs Junzi Kitchen Restaurants “I always enjoyed taking on hospitality projects when I was working at an architecture firm,” says Xuhui Zhang (M.Arch. ’14), director of real estate development and architectural design for Junzi Kitchen, a budding, “fastcasual” restaurant group based in New York City. “But before working with the Junzi team as an owner-plus-designer, the moment of project completion and hand-off to the client felt like being kicked out of my own party when it was just about to start.” With Junzi, Zhang is able to see his design ideas fulfill this project’s mission. While he leaves the creation of the noodle bowls to his partners, Zhang oversees the interior/exterior design and the real estate decisions for the expanding chain, whose Northern Chinese bings (wraps and fillings) and noodles made with healthy, seasonal ingredients are popular with young professionals and college-age students. Junzi Kitchen began at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute in a collaboration between graduate students from varied disciplines such as forestry, management, and art. The team, led by cofounders Yong Zhao, Wanting Zhang, and Ming Bai, grew to include students and foodies with entrepreneurial expertise, including culinary director and chef Lucas Sin, who ran pop-up restaurants out of his dorm at Yale. After meeting the Junzi team at one of Sin’s pop-up restaurants in 2014, Zhang was invited to design the first store, which opened in 2015 near Yale. “I wanted to be not only part of the space design but the creation of a holistic user experience for a brand,” Zhang said. Chinese philosophy holds that a junzi is a person with integrity, honesty, and curiosity. It’s also the guiding principle for the team. In the wake of Junzi’s growth over a four-year period, reviews and other feature stories have appeared in Forbes, Vogue, and Food and Wine, which said, “For the cofounders of Junzi Kitchen, wraps and noodle bowls are more than just lunch—they’re cultural ambassadors.” Junzi’s success has allowed them to open in three more locations—in Morningside Heights near Columbia University, Greenwich Village near NYU, and Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan (pictured above). Traditional cooking methods and seasonal ingredients remain the trademark of Junzi’s cuisine, and the pop-up theme continues with weekend after-hours menus and a chef’s table series. Says Zhang, “Designing a hospitality brand is a project with no completion date, and I’m enjoying working on it.”