From drawing to building his own house of trees and forts, Sylvia Smith worked well with his hands growing in Chicago suburban in the 1960’s. “I was interested in doing things from an early age,” says FX Collaborative Emeritus. “My mother would say” little suitable things, “but I loved putting things in. I like the logic of understanding, and then questioning,” Could you do it otherwise? “”
After studying Fine Arts and History at Dickenson College in Carlisle, Pa., Smith landed at Virginia Graduate School for Architecture, and in 1982 he began working for Fox & Fowle Architects, the Fxcololitative predecessor. Dissatisfied as a high -height designer, he was elapsed when the signature successfully offered designing an extended American museum in New York City, which was the subject of his school thesis project. “I was in the partner’s office so quickly when they announced this project,” says Smith to defend the project of what is now the Museum of Arts and Design.
This work set up his career in a new course that provoked a series of other projects in the cultural sector and, in short, about 15 years later, forming what would become a award -winning cultural and educational study focused on intensive projects in programs. He was also the first group of the Brooklyn firm dedicated to a sector. Smith hired his own team focused on “cultural and educational projects based on programs,” he says. The team shaped U.S. institutions in Africa, helping to establish sustainability standards before the industry began to adopt environmental responsibility evenly. His projects include the Museum of the Statue of Liberty and the Museum of the Children of Manhattan.
Smith, 73, was elevated to the Fellow of the American Institute of Architects College in 2008 and won the AIA New York State Fellows Award in 2013. He won the Pilar de la Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation in 2019, three years before being presented in women who changed architecture, published by Princeton Architectural Press. “He directs passion, integrity, vulnerability and love,” said Austin Sakong, design director of FX Collaborative, in a statement announced by Smith’s retirement. “We have no better model than it is to be an architect, in the deepest sense of this word.”
Smith’s design for Smith Conservation Society’s global conservation center includes a three -story form that launches two rock outcrops, nesting the structure on the Bronx Zoo campus.
Photo by David Sundberg/This
Ms. Smith goes to New York
After the postgraduate school, Smith designed two houses in Virginia and even worked on the construction crew when one was built, learning to collaborate with contractors and respect “what is needed to converge a building.”
He joined Fox & Fowle in 1982 and became a couple 14 years later. One of the few women who worked at a major architectural firm in New York City, Smith found that customers used to go to their male classmates at meetings, even if he was the architect of the project.
Despite hearing the only woman in the room, Smith adapted. “It was not my style to give up,” he says, noting that his sports knowledge allowed him to scan the New York Times sports section for conversation material with his peers and male clients. “Engineers would invite me to Knicks Games,” he says, while contractors “would invite me to Yankee Games and just meet people from outside the professional
[setting]. “”
Smith advised countless architects, some of which were told that they would have struggled to achieve the culture of men’s workplace. “They thought I adapted too much to the circumstance at the time,” says Smith.
“I am an architect. This influences everything I do. It’s how I see the world.”
—Sylvia Smith, Emerite partner, fxcollabietive
Seeing himself as an “old school” architect with a “capital A”, Smith has a slightly less gender view, especially when it comes to the lack of balance between working life and his generation of career women.
“I am an architect,” he says. “This influences everything I do. It is how I see the world. If you want to succeed and go to places or develop ideas that have not been done before, you have to cross the additional mile. I applaud that there are more options [today]But my shoulder was there. “
Smith found a strong mentoring woman in the late pioneer Pioneer Willis, who led his own company and founded the foundation named by her. Willis taught Smith not only to advise women, but also to defend their advancement. Sometimes when the company’s male partners considered promotions, “the list would look like others [in the room]I would just try to say with a little humor: “Does anyone not realize something about this list?” ”
Trendsetter
Pioneering sustainable practices long before the Leed certification became a standard in industry, incorporating a sustainable design into two buildings in the Black Rock Forest Center for Science and Education in Orange County, New York, in the 1990’s. The work was rooted in his home design courses teaching at the Yesterow Design Build School of Warren, VT. In the 1980’s and 1990’s during the summer holidays. The school developed some sustainable building standards that Smith perfected for its FXCollobaive practice. Although these early sustainable principles included “basic ideas” of building orientation and staggered studies to improve isolation, he also deployed specialized panels of modular roofs, toilet composting and geothermal heating and cooling.
At the Bronx Zoo, he directed the renovation of the Lion House, which became the first Leed Gold milestone in New York City. The adaptive reuse project transformed the largest historic building of Beaux-Arts of the Zoo into a modern and energetic immersive exhibition. “Sylvia worked with us to restore the historic building with respect and led a team to help us use the space efficiently,” says Susan Chin, Vice President of Susan Chin’s Strategy and Advancement, of the wild life of the Zoos and Aquarium Society. “The return ducts became a baobab trees where the birds could put -a column was deliberately designed to be sloping slightly, so it became a thorny tree in the woods. The result is an extremely complex but perfect building.”
For the project of the Zoo’s Global Conservation Center, Smith incorporated the principles of biophilic design, integrating the daylight and outdoor spaces.
Smith also directed sustainable reforms for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Sunya College and Pace University, and demanding that he keeps the project schedules while balanced the consensus of the parties. He sustained a step beyond David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, achieving the energy performance Leed Platinum and Net-Zero in a modern adaptive reuse project. Judy Clark, a former executive director of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Passeric Center, wrote Smith to say that the construction of the center was the most prominent of his career. “It is a wonderful installation, a lot of your vision and the campus has improved beyond words, offering a wide range of cultural opportunities for the enjoyment and education of the surrounding community and the largest audience,” Clark wrote.
Smith, a 20 -year school trustee and chairman of his facilities committee who guided efforts to combine historical preservation with the modern needs of the campus, advises the school on projects. He likes to help “a place that gave me so much” to optimize funding while reflecting school ideals in its built environment.
“Sometimes architects are too trapped in the object of architecture and [its] Mechanics, “says Smith.” In a way, we are ambassadors of the built environment … making people celebrate the place and how buildings contribute to it. They do not have to break the bank with the budget or be designed with a bold face name. They can be reflective inserts in an environment. This has been important to me. “
