Architect-builders are best solution

Real Estate Weekly, April 20, 2005 by Adam Kushner

While I run a busy architecture practice currently with fifteen residential projects, two restaurants and an office building underway, it is my architecture-builder work that is most valuable to my developer clients.

In addition to producing what I think are innovative and cutting-edge designs, we also serve as general contractors on many of our design projects. This unique design/build strategy saves clients valuable time, money and frustration. It also makes for a better end product.

When I am in control of the project in the studio as well as on the job site, I am both a better architect and a better contractor. Each role is both supportive and reliant upon the other; each informs the other, and together, [like a yin and yang], the sums are always stronger than the individual parts.

When I am responsible for the build out of my design, I naturally know what I want and how to achieve it. When questions arise on job sites, as they always do, I can easily and quickly make decisions to solve problems.

Developers benefit from our construction experience, because we bring this knowledge to the design process. As an architect, I have a depth of understanding about what can and cannot be built, how costly something is to construct, and what alternatives there are to explore.

This saves clients a tremendous amount of time and money.

It also saves them the potential frustration of dealing with two parties that too often have separate interests.

Architects and contractors historically have difficulty communicating and understanding each other, which can lead to frustration and delays on a job. Obviously this is very hard on the client.

Contractors view architects as idealists who don't know what they are doing, while designers and developers think that contractors exist and live for change orders. In a design/build situation however, I have only myself to point a finger at.

The skills required of a good architect and a good contractor are, in a general sense, identical. It all comes down to foresight. You've got to think the project through. As an architect, I'm managing my staff and the production of drawings. On the construction side, I'm managing production of work. It's like a chess game. You've got to think five, six or seven moves ahead.

As an architect you're always constrained by the cost of materials and the ability of contractors to implement your ideas. When you're also the contractor you have the freedom and the knowledge to find solutions, which protect the integrity of the design and the quality of the final product.

My current design/build projects include EN Restaurant, which opened in September in Greenwich Village, Ginger & Spice Restaurant in Ramsey, N.J., my own apartment in the Village (see New York Magazine April 4, 2005 issue), a Sutton Place condominium project, a 12 story commercial office building in Poland, a residential addition in the-Rockaways; a few apartments-and MEET Restaurant, in the Meatpacking District.

ADAM KUSHNER, PRINCIPAL, KUSHNER STUDIOS ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN PC