Speaker: Henry Frazier
Welcome back to Magnolia on Mic. I’m Henry Frazier. Today, I’m joined with Elie Gamburg, a principal designer from KPF who worked in designing N Y U Shanghai’s Qiantan Campus, Elie. Thank you for joining me.
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
Before we begin, would you like to do a brief introduction?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
My name is Elie Gamburg.
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I’m a design partner at KPF and I was lucky enough to work with a really great team on the design of NYU Shanghai.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
Alright, awesome.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
So how long have you been an architect for?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I started working professionally as an architect in 2002. But I have known that I wanted to be an architect since I was six. And so I definitely am living the dream.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
Really, why?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I actually don’t quite know. I think I traveled quite a bit when I was younger and I think the one thing I noticed was that everywhere I went, the cities were very different and the architecture seemed to have a lot to do with it. So that got me interested. I love to draw, I love to play with blocks. But I think the more I knew about the world and about cultures and about the way that architecture affects people, the more interesting it got. So actually it hasn’t gone down with age. The interest of anything that has increased with age, get more interested in it every day.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
It’s super cool that you’re able to do a job you love. Now to go from there, you mentioned cities and how all cities are different when designing a new building. How do you take influences from your surroundings and put them into your designs?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I think all cities have certain commonalities in terms of the way they bring people together and create these sort of really intense experiences. But all cities then are different because the kinds of experiences that you get are so different and there’s a sort of way that you know, where you are not just by the way the city looks, but the sort of pace that it creates the kind of culture of how you interact with people. What you’re able to do in each of those cities. I think one of the great privileges and pleasures of an architect is the ability to travel the world, observe. And every time you get to do a building in a different city, it’s like you’re a bit actor that’s been called upon to play on a great stage.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
So when you mention cities and kind of doing these projects how hard is it to adapt to that country or environment, especially? I assume if you’re only there for a short amount of time, you need to build something that’s gonna be a part of the city’s infrastructure.
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I guess there, there’s a couple of schools of thought when it comes to how architecture works with cities. I think some architects have a very clear vision of the work that they do and sort of try to do the same thing wherever they go. And that’s most definitely not. Most definitely not the way that either I or or KPF practice. I think it’s really important to know a city quite well and to have an appreciation of its culture and its history before you start working. And obviously you have to approach it with humility.
There’s no way that I not being from, say Shanghai would ever know Shanghai as well as somebody who grew up there or whose family has been there for generations. But it is kind of important if you’re, I think if you’re going to be an architect practicing in a place that you have to have a real appreciation and respect for the culture, the environment, the people, the economics, the kind of physical infrastructure of a city in order to do your best work.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
So you talk a lot about infrastructure and its importance as an architect when designing something like our school’s basement, how were you able to create a space that incorporated natural light but also protected against flooding during typhoon season.
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
Yeah. And in fact, Shanghai is one of the hardest places in the world to do basements because if you basically think about it, the entire city is a river delta so effectively you’re building in mud. The zoning requirements are basically the permissible building area really limited how far above ground we can go with the building, Which kind of makes sense. Also, I mean, university doesn’t work really, you know, very high up in a building. So the height limit was kind of a natural synergy for a university, but it did require that a lot of the space would be below grade. And that created a couple of challenges. I think one is a construction challenge. And very often in Shanghai building, the basements can take as long as building the building, even for incredibly tall buildings because you literally have to build special walls that hold back the water. And as you’re excavating, you’ll actually see these incredible structures that are built to prop up the walls so that the weight of the water outside them doesn’t cause them to topple. And so if you ever see any early photographs of, of the, of the building that you’re in right now, you’ll see these incredible cross girders that are holding back the weight of the mud that’s around the site as these things get built.
But the bigger challenge really is to make sure that below grade space feels as lively and engaging and natural as above grade space. And as you highlighted, the key issue really is how you bring natural light down. So the key ideas at NYU Shanghai were making sure that it was the right kind of spaces that were placed below ground and that wherever we could, we created skylights and courtyards that were sunken down to bring natural light. And these are orientating devices, you are drawn to natural light, you know, where you are because of your position relative to the central courtyard in the pavilion.
And also you have a sense of the passing of time throughout the year, throughout the day, the difference between sunset in the afternoon, I mean, it really creates a much more humanizing experience. I think the other really key thing was just making sure that all the spaces below grade were linked up with each other and had height and volume. So for example, the cafeteria has height, it has a direct line of sight to the windows, the gymnasiums have height, the study hall has height. And so there’s a real sense that you’re not trapped in a lower space, but actually in a kind of expansive day lit natural space, even though you may be, you know, 10 m 30 ft underground.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
It’s really cool that you bring that up because something I’ve always raved about and something that I always liked about the campus is that even if you’re in the basement floors, sometimes it can still feel like you’re in an above ground floor, which I’ve always found to be really cool. To go from there, I know sustainability has historically been a part of KPS philosophy. How did you incorporate this into your design of the school?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I think sustainability is a really important thing and obviously, it’s becoming more important all the time. But I think that sustainability has been pretty central to the company’s ethos from the very beginning long before it was sort of first fashionable and then thankfully now required. So as early as the, the early eighties, just a couple of years after the company was founded, one of the big projects that we won was a, a complex called the World Bank in Washington DC and out of all the firms. And I think there was about a dozen firms that entered it. We were the only ones to propose, keeping most of the buildings that were there and only adding what was needed and maybe taking down one or two, what you think about it from an environmental point of view, the building that you don’t build is actually even more sustainable than the most sustainable building that you do build. But for the buildings that are new, such as NYU Shanghai, I think sustainability is incredibly important and should be measured in a couple of ways. I think one is the idea of operational energy.
So you’ll notice at NYU Shanghai that there has been a great deal of focus on making sure that the the facades don’t have too much glass that the heating and cooling systems can be very efficient. But there’s also really a kind of qualitative approach to this, which is the design of the building encourages health and fitness. You’re never in you know, on a floor where you can’t get to another floor through very comfortable stairs. And I don’t mean sending people into kind of backstairs, I mean, graceful stairs that encourage you to walk between floors rather than taking the elevator. The building massing was carved in order to bring natural light into the courtyard, break down the wind in the courtyard and also help bring natural light back down into the basement.
So this idea that you can be in the, in the, in the project, that you’re encouraged to walk that you have access to daylight and natural air. And you’ll also notice that every floor or two there are big outdoor terraces. So even if you’re up in the building, you’re encouraged to go outside and move around. So I think this combination of being efficient about the structure being really thoughtful about how we use material and energy. But also really thinking about people and thinking about making them and encouraging them to walk around, giving them opportunities to get out into the natural air in daylight and really finding ways to improve the sort of internal environments of the buildings is very central to the design process for the project.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
Interesting, interesting. In a previous interview, you mentioned that one of the primary influences of the design of the campus was the idea of the Ancient Chinese Scholar Garden. How did you take a centuries old design and make it modern?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
So going back to your first question was, do you think was a really great one? Which is how does an Architect practice in different cities around the world? I think what’s really important when engaging with multiple cultures is thinking about them in a contemporary way. I think it’s very easy and very tempting when we think about cultures around the world to sort of think about the version of them that we all know from textbooks from 2, 300 years ago, even though every culture is continuously modernizing and reinventing itself and contributing some amazing things to, to sort of contemporary globalism as certainly China and the US and many other countries have. When we approached the design of NYU Shanghai, I think we were very aware of its unique identity as a Sino American Institution. And really, there’s almost nothing like it.
So it is a university that is part of a kind of global university that’s based in New York, that’s in China’s pre-eminent city and engaging scholars and students from these two incredible student bodies and then of course, so many others from all across the world. And luckily, we didn’t have to look far. There are two really great scholarly or academic traditions. There’s the Anglo American approach to the sort of cloistered quadrangle college. But also there’s an incredibly long lineage, the notion of a scholars garden or this sort of cultured cloistered aestheticism of the great scholars in Chinese history. And so the approach to the design of the NYU campus was really thinking about how you balance those two in a contemporary way on a site that also had a lot of constraints. If you think about it, the site, you know, is a very, very large collection of buildings and a very small area. So the idea of the courtyard obviously was very much inherited from the great cloistered quadrangles that you’d see in colleges like Cambridge or Oxford in England, Harvard Yard, UVA and places like that.
But at the same time, the notion that that garden would become an experience that was populated by pavilions, had certain axis that you see but don’t walk on. So for example, the great approach to the main auditorium, it’s not actually a walk that runs up the middle, which is how you would do it. In a traditional Western campus. The two walks that approach the auditorium are on the sides, which is how you approach most honorific buildings in China. There may be a central access but the average person walks on the sides. The use of water as a as a threshold, you cross over to get into each of the buildings. And the use of the pavilion as something to create a series of spaces around which the whole courtyard pin wheels. So this melding of traditions in a respectful and contemporary way I think is really central, not just the idea of what NYU is, but to the design of the campus itself.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
And so to springboard off that point, how much time did you spend researching this idea until you felt like you were able to confidently design the school with these concepts and values?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
So there’s an apocryphal story of a carpenter who once told somebody, you know, it’s only, it’s only going to take me 30 minutes and 10 years to fix your problem. And I said 30 minutes and 10 years. Yeah, I can fix it in 30 minutes because I’ve been studying how to do it for 10 years. So I think it’s very much the same way as an architecture firm. I think we’re a very collaborative practice. We’ve had an office in Shanghai for a very, very long time. We as a set of individuals are very interested and very, always trying to learn more about the different cultures in which we in which we practice. So I think the design process for this project had to happen very quickly. But I think the continuous education that we did going into the project during the project and are still doing now, things are a really important part of the approach. We’re, as I said, a collaborative practice. So this wasn’t just my work alone. It was a very close collaboration. Also, you know, one of the other design partners, This guy named Jamie Von Clember is the president of the firm, but a really great team in New York headed by Joe Lerner.
And then also a really great team in Shanghai, headed by Rebecca Chang, who’s also an incredible repository of information about Chinese architecture. So I think the answer to your question is we’ve been doing that research, not knowing we’re gonna do it for years. We’ve always talking about, you know, great architectural traditions. Many of us have traveled rather extensively across China. And it was just such a wonderful privilege and opportunity to sort of put some of those learnings to good use.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
Interesting. So we’ve been talking a lot about KPF as a whole. However, now I want to jump ship and focus a bit more on you when researching the project you’ve worked on and buildings you’ve designed. I’ve noticed a lot of similarities. How do you incorporate your signature style when doing a school campus versus a project like Atlantis the Royal, which is a 1000 room resort.
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
Well, I think I would maybe try to shift the question away from an issue of style, which is, I think how a lot of non architects think about architecture and really think about it as a series of design techniques. So certainly the idea of breaking very large buildings down into smaller objects was a common technique that we used both to do Atlantis as well as NYU Shanghai. But there are other buildings that K P F has done that I’ve done as part of KPF that have other design approaches. So, for example, the lot 8 13 project, which is the media port which is actually elsewhere in Qiantan. Is all very seamlessly curvy buildings and that’s actually under construction right now about a half a kilometer away from, from NYU. And there are other projects that we’ve done around the world that are, have different approaches.
I think whenever an architect who doesn’t have a signature approach or signature style approaches a project KBF and I’d like to think myself also do not have a real real sort of standard or signature way of doing things. I think we, we try to think about what are the opportunities and what are the challenges that we’re trying to address. So if you think about NYU Shanghai, the really big issue is that it’s a very small site for the amount of stuff that you’re trying to put on there. You’re trying to put gyms and you’re trying to put classrooms and libraries and large event spaces and performance halls and faculty offices. So on the one hand, you want to create this opportunity for all of these different types of programs and people to mix. On the other hand, you don’t want to create one super large megalomaniacal oversized building. So the strategy from the very beginning was to balance two things. How do we create one given formal identity for the whole building for the whole project? So everybody understands that’s the NYU Shanghai campus. On the other hand, like in any real campus, how do you create enough differentiation between all the different buildings so that, you know, oh that’s the library and that’s the study hall and that’s you know, the classrooms from for IMA or the science research labs. And if you think about most great campuses, certainly NYU in New York or Columbia or Harvard or Oxford or any of these campuses, what you’ll see is, is that there is a kind of architectural commonality between the different elements. Even if the buildings were built many years apart, you kind of know the collection of red brick or gothic stone or, you know, sort of New York masonry and brick that you see in each of these campuses, but each of the buildings are distinct and you’re able to see in them what they are and know that you’re going to one and not the other.
So the design of NYU Shanghai is really not one building. It’s actually 34 interconnected buildings that interlock and then you can see there’s the library, there’s the reading room, these are all, there are all these different places around the same time that we were working in N Y U Atlantis had a very similar problem which was, it’s, you know, 850 hotel rooms, 250 apartments, a nightclub, a bar, a spa. So we also had this idea of trying to break down the scale of the building. But if you look at NYU Shanghai and Atlantis, you’ll see that while both of them are broken down collections of separate blocks, the approach to Atlantis is very much more unified across the entire building and is really about splitting the building apart to create these open spaces that you can use. Whereas the design of NYU Shanghai is very much this idea that you can look at every one of those blocks and understand precisely what’s happening in, in them and get that they’re part of a related whole, but actually that each one of them is different.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
That’s actually super interesting and a way of thinking about architecture that I’ve never really thought about. Now,I want to talk a bit about the relationship between KPF and NYU. And I really want to know what influenced NYU and, you know, more specifically NYU Shanghai to pick you to work on this project. Did they want to work with you specifically or is it more of them wanting to work with the firm as a whole?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
So, I think it’s, it’s a combination of things. So as I mentioned, we’re a collaborative and NYU is as well. So I think the leadership of NYU at the time were people like Jeff Leman and also Joanna and others. We had been fortunate enough because we had worked with NYU Shanghai before on the original campus in, in LuJiazui. And also we had worked with NYU in New York before. And also we had worked with Jeff actually on a, on a law school for Peking University that was down in Shenzhen. So I think we were a familiar group or familiar with a familiar ethos in an approach and I think the flexibility and if you look at the way that we design, for example, the Peking School of Transnational Law, it looks nothing like what we did for NYU Shanghai.
So stylistically, let’s say they’re not identical, but they were both trying to you know, address a set of constraints or issues or problems or opportunities that we had on the two different sites. So people at our office like Jill and like Jamie, like myself and others had worked with Jeff for a very long time. And I think we had a real respect for the intellectual way in which he approaches things and his same cosmopolitan outlook and others. And we’ve been on panel discussions together and talked about, you know, broader cultural issues long before actually that, you know, the NYU project was even conceived. So I think the opportunity to work together was something that we were obviously very excited about because we’ve been able to do really great things together with Jeff. And I think not wanting to obviously put words in, in his mouth.
But I think the idea that we would bring new thinking to solve a very complex problem and a thinking that was based on a familiarity with the institution because we’ve worked with NYU globally before and also familiarity that was based on our knowledge of Shanghai and specifically the Qiantan District, I think was very helpful. So we, we as a firm had solved problems that were similar to the challenges that that NYU faced at this particular site. We knew the organization, we knew the city, we knew the area specifically and hopefully had demonstrated that we were willing continuously to kind of reinvent and think of new ideas in order to sort of create great solutions to very interesting situations.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
So it’s really interesting to hear about how close your relationship was with a lot of the higher ups at NYU Shanghai. And it makes me want to ask in the process of designing the camp, how was the relationship between you, the firm and NYU?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
Extremely? Yeah, extremely, extremely well. I think we have a really profound respect for both Jeff and Joanna. But also, I mean, all of the faculty, we spent a lot of time meeting with faculty. I think a really big part of the design process for universities for us is to try to get to know people really well because at the end of the day, it’s not a building for us, it’s a home for you. So we came to Shanghai regularly and also, you know, we’re using tools like teams and zoom even before the pandemic. We met with faculty quite a number of times we met with a lot of students, we met with a group of students who wanted to put bees on the roof, which is actually a big part of why we have so many terraces is just this idea that there really would be people who would take care of them.
We met with faculty in New York as well as in Shanghai. We met with people in the community. I think this idea of having a really close working relationship with the people ultimately going to use the building is, is really important. Otherwise, it, it, it doesn’t work like you need to, to think about where people are and where they’re going, what their needs are in order to kind of respond to it. We had an incredible working relationship with, with pretty much everybody at NYU from, from Jeff and Joanna all the way on across the entire campus, you know, students and faculty and operations and everything. I think there’s a real common sense of purpose. And our approach to design and NYU’s approach to education being the sort of cosmopolitan big tent approach to culture and innovation, I think was really, was really great. I think we’re very fortunate. I think something like 80% of our work is with peak clients. And so the idea is really to kind of establish relationships where we get to explore ideas together over the arc of very big projects and multiple projects.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
So you talk a bit about how close your relationship and KPF’s relationship was with the students and teachers and faculty of NYU when designing the new campus. So to really go from that question, how much creative flexibility and creative freedom did you and KPF have when designing the campus.
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
A lot, I think it was a project where the constraints were imposed on it. So, for example, there was a height limit and so a lot of the stuff had to be in the basement. There was, you know, a a given mix of departments and, and programs that those departments needed. You know, IMA needs certain kinds of space in an auditorium for certain kinds of thing in a music room that meets certain kind of performance. But I think the ability to conceive of a kind of integrated campus that is greater than some of its parts, the notion of combining an approach to design that celebrates both sort of Sino and international approaches the play of materials, the creation of outdoor space, all of that was, was really a kind of very flexible dialogue between ourselves and, and everybody in the NYU side and everybody contributed. I mean, I mentioned the, you know, the, the group of students and faculty who wanted the place you know, the gardens for the bees. But even Jeff, you know, came up with the idea of the kind of tree at the middle, that kind of anchors the whole courtyard. So the best moment of an architect is when it seems that the project is no longer yours alone. But the part of a kind of bigger collective that are all pulling in the same direction to make it happen. And the idea is kind of ping pong across all sorts of different people. And that happened from the very beginning on this one.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
So we’ve talked about all the positives in regards to design the campus. However, from being hit with a global pandemic to delays in buildings, I can imagine that there were some challenges. Can you talk about some of the difficulties that you and the team faced and how you all overcame them?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I think the biggest challenge that we had like anything is this is a vastly vastly vastly large and complex project. I mean, legitimately to do an entire campus of buildings, fully integrated, deliver them in one phase is it’s a simply herculean undertaking. So to be in that, you know, campus now, it it almost, you know, it all kind of comes together and it looks easy, but there was the work of literally tens of thousands of people to make it happen. Covid was a very big impediment. It meant that the teams from New York could no longer travel. And so the direct interpersonal connection between not just us and NYU but also us LuJiaZui and which is the developer that built the project, the local authorities, the other architects and engineers that to work on the project, which were mostly based in China, you know, was, was, was really severely impacted. But I think the really great thing is, as I I mentioned before, we have an incredible Shanghai office. And unlike other international architecture firms where each of the offices operate kind of quasi-independently, we’re an integrated practice. And so there’s a very close daily working relationship between us and the Shanghai team. And I think they were always going to have a very big role and the role got even larger in the absence of the ability of our team to actually physically be there.
We were on zoom calls and team calls at all hours of the day and night for literally years as this thing was happening. Of course, you know, had we all anticipated the sort of physical split that would have created. There are things that we would have done a little bit differently in terms of the handoff between our design work and some of the design work of the local team, the other architecture offices that actually do some of the field work in building the building. So there are definitely challenges that were created in the construction process as a result of this. But I think in the end when people like yourself and your colleagues or get to use the building and are generally happy with it, that’s all the reward that we need.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
As you mentioned previously, COVID hit while you and KPF were designed the campus, despite the challenges that you’ve already mentioned, were there any changes to the design that you had to implement, to accommodate for something like COVID as well as the aftermath of COVID itself?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
Yeah, I mean, I think in my humble opinion, speaking, generally, you know, sort of the, the history of humanity is we’re always trying to solve the last problem and nobody can ever predict what the next one is. Covid definitely had a big impact on the way that we design. I think the way that everybody does everything. But I would say in the case of, of NYU, moving beyond the sort of more granular changes about, you know, whether there, you know, there was a greater desire for hands free, you know, faucets and things like that. I think really what it did is it placed greater importance in some of the design ideas we already had. So a really big part of the campus design was always this idea that it should be possible no matter how, how high up in the building you are to be, you know, very close to a major outdoor space and that the outdoor spaces weren’t just nice to look at, but actually kind of rooms where things could happen, class classes, student meetings and other things.
Obviously in a post COVID environment, I think people understand that this outdoor space is not a nice to have but a must have. I think indoor spaces that are, divided up so that large groups of people can be together, but not necessarily on top of each other. Was always again a really important thing. You want to create these sort of collective spaces for people to meet informally, but you need them to be spacious and comfortable. And I think that’s obviously really a big part of the design from the kind of study hall with cascading staircases to certain other spaces within the building like the cafe bridge. So I think this idea of proximity with comfortable distance again, which is really central to making a campus feel comfortable was something that people emphasize the importance of even more after COVID.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
All right. Now I want to jump to something completely different. I want to ask a few kind of personal questions to really wrap this all up. The first part is what was your favorite part of designing NYU Shanghai? And why?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I think my favorite part of designing NYU Shanghai was the sort of moment where the idea of the pinwheel blocks sort of broke down the problem into something that was really an elegant solution. For a very long time, we were sort of overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that we had to put in this building and we were trying to find a way to have the design respect all these different pieces, but not look like it was a kind of messy collection of separate things or like one big oversized block.
And as an architect, you sort of undergo a process where you don’t really quite know where you’re going to get to as a result. But when you do, it’s like an aha moment and it kind of unlocks and there was a really great moment. We were all sitting together as a team, we’ve been playing around with different models and the kind of the big idea settled in and I think that was just like, I can distinctly remember where we were when that happened and it’s a really beautiful thing.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
Next of all, you obviously have had a lot of time either in NYU or designing NYU. So what’s your favorite location at the school?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
I think the challenge is that there’s so many really fun spaces in the building. I find that really hard, like I, I got to watch a recital in the, in the recital hall and that was just amazing. Being there for the you know, opening the main auditorium was really amazing. I love being in the courtyard. The happiest moments that I’ve had in that building. The project since it opened was watching, a bunch of students, in the quadrangle, some were playing hacky sack and some were doing a kind of coral round Robin and they were, they were warming up for something and just seeing the students living in that courtyard was amazing. If I had to pick one moment though, I think it would probably be hanging out on one of the balconies in the cascading study hall stairs. In that big kind of glass volume with the sun shades on the north side of the courtyard. I think there’s something really cool about being there and being able to be alone in your own thoughts, which I like to do and kind of observe quietly and then just seeing groups of people and sort of twos and threes and sixes and tens kind of gathering there and then being able to see out into the courtyard and up into the building all at the same time. It’s kind of this moment where it all sort of comes together.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
So lastly before we start recording, you told me that you used to be a teacher. So from the perspective of both a teacher and a designer, what is one piece of advice that you would give to someone who wants to become an architect?
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
Well, I think the first thing of being an architect, embrace hard work. And just really, really make sure that you love what you do because I think the reward of architecture is the process and it is a very intense, intense process. I think architecture is one of the most fun things you can possibly do. I think we all do it for different and unique and individual reasons. And if you love it and you really kind of throw yourself into it, I think it’s possible to do amazing things.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
I think that’s a great way to end this Elie. Thank you so much for your time and for answering all these questions and talking about your design and how KPF designed the school and everything in between. I appreciate so much. Thank you.
Speaker: Elie Gamburg
Thank you very much for having me. It’s a privilege to talk to you and hope everybody enjoys the campus.
Speaker: Henry Frazier
Thank you very much.
