BBB has transformed two 19th century mansions into a retail stage for one of Manhattan's famed luxury department stores, preserving and celebrating their original materials and details.
BBB's design for a new building on the Bloomington Campus features materials that respect the historic campus context, balanced by contemporary detailing characteristic of a modern addition.
BBB's renovation of the landmark '21' Club Restaurant combines contemporary materials and finishes with restored historic details to attract a new generation of patrons while maintaining its exclusive reputation and ambiance.
BBB's design for a vibrant new residential community at the Watchcase Factory retains the spirit of the historic building through the restoration of original materials and details.
The Game Innovation Lab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering brings together students and faculty from a variety of disciplines to explore the future of digital game design.
BBB has adaptively reused an early twentieth century landmark theater in the heart of Hyde Park to create a home for the Chicago Innovation Exchange — a central gathering place for Chicago's innovation ecosystem and a catalyst in the ongoing renaissance of 53rd street.
BBB has guided the restoration of Marcel Breuer’s iconic 1966 building – originally designed as the Whitney Museum – and helped transform it into The Met Breuer. In this iconic space, The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. The building is bold and intimate at the same time, with an integrity, beauty, and honesty of design, materials, and execution that places it among the most distinguished mid-century modern buildings in New York.
Three staggered mixed-use towers in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan utilize thoughtful siting, a mix of natural and vibrant materials, greenery, and ample communal spaces to optimize daylight and imbue wellness and community.
The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of the City of New York was founded in 1785. For more than 200 years, the General Society has selected four New York architects to highlight iconic buildings and landmarks of social, historical and cultural significance at their Labor, Literature and Landmarks Lecture Series. The Lecture Series pays tribute to the art of craftsmanship by featuring master artisans who lecture about the intricacies of their specialized crafts. The lectures are held in the General Society’s Library, founded in 1820, the second oldest library in New York City and one of three remaining private membership circulating libraries.
BBB has an ongoing relationship with the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation. As an architect, preservationist, and former Director of Historic Preservation at BBB, the contributions of the late Dr. Fitch to the fields of architecture, planning, and preservation provide inspiration to the Foundation’s Fellows. Today BBB continues to support Dr. Fitch’s mission, led by BBB’s Managing Partner and Chairman of the Fitch Foundation, Fred Bland.
Amidst much press and anticipation of the completion of the rehabilitation of the Watchcase Factory into housing, Beyer Blinder Belle's architectural historian Kate Lemos McHale reflects on the historic Village of Sag Harbor and her personal connections to the project.
The Following Function series explores projects in Europe and the US that pioneer the creative reuse of redundant industrial sites, and considers the implications for heritage conservation and post-industrial communities.
Throughout much of history, there was no distinction between architects, engineers, and builders. Instead, an individual—the master builder—conceived of the form and materials of a building at the outset and followed it through until construction came to an end, taking responsibility for all of the challenges that arose during the project. This kind of continuity throughout the life of a project is intuitively beneficial: engineering and construction requirements shape the approach long before ground is broken and design decisions need to be made until the final touches are in place. Many of the world's great monuments, from the Parthenon to Brunelleschi's Dome at the Florence Cathedral, were built in this way.
Detroit has become a symbol of post-industrial distress. Ruin voyeurs photograph scenes of overwhelming decay and the uncanny incursion of nature into spaces once dedicated to the manmade. But just as they overlook the underlying sadness of dereliction, so they ignore the vibrancy of an active city with a population working to translate loss into opportunity.
Contemplating the 50th anniversary of the New York City Landmarks Law—which was being formulated when Penn Station was threatened with demolition and enacted only after it was lost—it is interesting to look at the ways in which preservation and design are intrinsically linked, and the importance of the narrative.
BBB’s office at 120 Broadway in lower Manhattan recently achieved LEED Gold status. Thank you to our design team who made this possible: Elizabeth Leber, Margaret Kittinger, Anna Grabowska, and Steve McCarthy. Designed in collaboration with our sustainability consultants YRG, select sustainable features which contributed to the LEED Gold recognition are listed below:
Architects specify natural materials such as stone, wood, gypsum and lime regularly in designing buildings. And the great cities are veritable museums for the granites, marbles, limestones and exotic stones that are quarried around the world. But the geologic processes that create these materials are not necessarily well known by a designer sitting at a desk in a studio. The best way to grasp the power of these events from the distant past may be to spend a week cycling in the vast and majestic wilds of a place like eastern Oregon.