Deborah Berke FAIA, LEED AP is an architect, educator, and the founder of New York-based architecture firm, Berke was born in 1954 in Queen’s land New York City. Berke built a successful career as an architect as her designs are famous for elegance and practicality. Among the most significant works is the Marianne Boesky Gallery building in New York, the Irwin Union Bank in Columbus, Indiana, the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, and the 21c Museum Hotels across the South and Midwest. Being the first woman to hold a dean’s position at yale school of architecture where she has been teaching since 1987, Making her goal to bring maximum trust funds to the university. In 2017 she was honoured with a National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Her commitment to sustainability has brought her success, so she became the inaugural recipient of the Berkeley-Rupp Prize at the University of California at Berkeley. Berke is a board member of the James Howell foundation and a member of the board of directors of Yaddo. she was also a founder and vice president of Design NYC a founding trustee for public space, and a trustee for the National Building Museum.
Education | Deborah Berke
Deborah Berke as a kid was always excited and inspired by the industrial buildings of Queensland in New York City and the small houses of her neighbourhood which she used to walk on summer nights fascinated by the proportion and scale of the buildings, at age 14 she decided to become an architect and attained her bachelor’s degree from Rhode Island School of Design in 1975 and encouraged herself to learn all kinds of arts and was awarded her honorary doctorate in the year 2005. Her graduation was completed in the field of urban planning in the year 1984 from the city of New York. Berke has designed and produced many projects through the architectural firm she established in 1982 in New York. Deborah perspective of design.
The designs of Deborah Berke acknowledge common everyday life activities of people while focusing on the ambitions of the clients, the site climate, and the surroundings as if the design belongs to the space. Berke has always connected her fascination with architecture, she believes design play important role in our lives and that people are connected to buildings in an intimate way the spaces where people engage themselves be it work or home, worship are those buildings that people are less intimate it nevertheless they remain part of them as one walk past through it not knowing what’s going on inside it, the scale the proportion and outside elevation of the building affect him it remains in one’s consciousness that is the impact of design on one’s life and for Berke design lies in simplicity her design is simple and yet elegant and beautiful for her the architecture when she design is for the user it is not her design it is for the people who are going to feel and use the space, that is the essence of her design which she calls as everyday architecture a cornerstone of her philosophy. For the architect, she designs utilizing the surrounding tools and elements that belong to space as its surrounding, climate, and geography of the site she believes that a building must belong to that place rather if placed anywhere else would lose its aesthetics and essence.
During her practice as a professional architect, she was flirtier towards postmodernism but was not ascendant to it and more liked the unpleasant, and unappreciated ugly buildings veined like vernacular. Her designs work on the concept of simplicity yet emerged with complexities and aesthetics she says it takes a lot of hard work to make a simple design that is apparent underneath and is involved a fair amount of complex study overlaying and interweaving designs that solve connecting to the place. To berke the definition of beauty lies in perfection where she is not interested in unnecessary articulation and ornamentation but finds beauty in materials patterns and when put together how they look.
Philosophy of design
Deborah berke was more engaged with everyday architecture during her early professional practice the philosophy of embracing and learning from that which is not expressly constructed through self-conscious design and is rich in culture. Results can be understood from her book the architecture of everyday co-edited with her friend Steven Harris. The architect was trying to bring possible everydayness and exceptional concepts into architecture but when 1990’2 unfolded into the new century the evolution of her thinking became no longer believing in everyday and her philosophy transformed under the impact of highly accelerated mass-mediated civilization. During her time she says the world of architecture has become more deeply self-aware, imitative, and global to her everyday philosophy no longer remained when production became ever more offshore. And her design attributes became more specific to place and people and inspired by the contradictions of new every day as her primary concern became the changes in the architecture.
The idea of Berke designs relies completely on on-site specificity emphasizing the importance of particulars of place and denying interchangeability in today’s global context. According to her if architecture is designed anywhere then it has reduced then it has lost its uniqueness. her desire for buildings is to be in a place that they can be quaint in, not old fashioned or nostalgic but they be anchored, and it can be a quality and antidote to so many places being placeless and interchangeable and unrecognizable while being completely familiar. She believes that architecture still has abilities to challenge its qualities. Deborah says the power of architecture is not to transform but to underscore and highlight. The architecture has to not only build a place but has to put efforts to enhance and underscore the nature of that place.
Adaptive reuse | Deborah Berke
Deborah Berke’s works are related to reusing old buildings and she is also known as the queen of adaptive reuse architecture her portfolio includes interventions, conversions, and re-adaptive uses of 19th-century marvels like Louis Khan, I.M.pei and Mead and white and a dozen of freestanding new buildings lot of work they do is a combination of old and new buildings that are in collaborating with people who are dead the ones who made the building bringing into old structure new program, materials and new ideas that are busting from the old part of the building and hanging up on the parts that resonate someway to redefine old to new futures. These transformations are made more profound and their impact is amplified by a nuanced dialogue between past and present. Adapting these buildings open the door to new possibilities and configurations. transforming an old building can be an opportunity to tell a complex history of a building rather than a story and preserving an old story of a building serves the narrow interest and can be exclusionary.to create a meaningful dialogue between the past and present and the future experience of a place. That also adds to an urgent requirement in times of climate crisis to treat buildings as disposable shot sighted than destructive.
Deborah berke has developed her own style of modernism bringing back the basics with her serious interest in, liveability, and domesticity which satisfies her deeply she describes her contribution to future architecture is to build that is necessary for the people and the safe of the environment. Berke often generates her visual interest in asymmetry, stacking or nesting her simple geometrical volumes, and loves to play with natural light trying to bring maximum into rooms in every different way possible.
References:
Hewitt, Cooper. (2017) Design Legends documents the experiences and perspectives of distinguished designers, architects, design writers, and design critics. Available at: http://ndagallery.cooperhewitt.org/db.
Introspective. (2019) Berke brings back the Basics.Available at: https://www.1stdibs.com/introspective-magazine/deborah-berke/
Voanews (2009) Architect Deborah Berke Creates Beauty Out of Simplicity. Available at: https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-2009-04-24-voa21-68814767/413119.html
Ziba Drew. (2005) Interview with Deborah berke, the quiet queen of adaptive reuse. Available at: https://archive.pinupmagazine.org/articles/interview-architect-deborah-berke-performance-space-new-york-psny
