When it came time for New York City Ironworkers Local 580 to transform a dreary medical-supply storage facility into classrooms and workshops one thing was certain, they wanted a building that reflected their craft though the material expression of the façade and the interior spaces. Having seen an earlier renovation in the same industrial neighborhood by Daniel Goldner Architects that was composed of clean linear planes, the union leaders hired the firm to tackle their own 18,000 square foot renovation. In a discrete nod to the neighboring industrial buildings, Goldner's AIA award winning solution left most of the building's brick exterior wall intact. GKD's transparent mesh, says architect Davis Iszard, "enabled them to acknowledge that the building had a previous life." The architects dramatically reinvented the building by encasing it in a carapace–think turtle's shell–of solid metal panels of various dimensions, solid colored slot windows and a great screen of GKD's Lago that has the look of a pull-down blind. The resulting beautifully crafted modernist assemblage of rough brick, solid metal panels and GKD metal fabric, of contrasting textures, of reveals and shallow volumes, of the varied interplay of shadow and light, makes for a façade that shows off the ironworker's skills to great effect.
