Lea Cloud of CDR Studio Architects | Bushwick Townhouse in New York City | Designing Connectivity
Courtesy of CDR Studio Architects
Designing Connectivity
In this week’s episode, I met with Lea Cloud who is a co-founder and partner of CDR Studio with Victoria Rospond. She shared with me her experience working on several projects, including working on the Bushwick townhouse in Brooklyn as well as a residential project in Snowmass, Colorado. Prior to co-founding the firm, she gained experience working at PKSB Architects where she was project architect for two New York State University projects, a library addition and renovation at the Fredonia Campus.
Lea also shares how she is able to succeed as a designer with a diverse work portfolio. Her expertise has led her to work on multiple projects in Passive House, sustainable design, architectural design, interiors and comprehensive planning. She continues to use this experience in large-scale, complex educational and commercial facilities to implement forward-thinking design solutions.
The Bushwick townhouse project in Brooklyn incorporates the concepts of connectivity and openness into its design layout. Lea also shares with us how she rethinks the role of stairs in this architectural design. Join me as we explore these topics and much more in this week’s episode of American Building.
“One of the wonderful things about the training that we had at RISD is you kind of view everything as a design problem, right? So not only do you view the problem at hand, whatever the program is, but you also view the problem of how do you get work that’s more varied? And one of the things that we thought about was we did not want to get pigeonholed into one thing. We really wanted a well-rounded practice and we want to always maintain our curiosity and by doing many different things, it opened up our curiosity.”
Courtesy of CDR Studio Architects
About Lea Cloud
Lea Cloud is a co-founder and partner at CDR Studio Architects, a full-service design firm in New York. Prior to starting the firm, she was at PKSB Architects, where she had an opportunity to work on the renovation of the famous Seagram Building designed by Mies van Der Rohe, Phillip Johnson, Ely Kahn and Robert Jacobs. Lea serves along with me as a city planning commissioner in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. We will be talking about her Bushwick townhouse project in Brooklyn and more broadly about how to rethink the role of stairs in architectural design.
Courtesy of CDR Studio Architects
Episode Timestamps
5:31 – Despite all the talents that you had as a caterer, you decided to shift your focus to architecture and you worked at PKSB Architects for almost 12 years. How did you know that it was eventually time to make that leap and start on your own as a design firm?
7:44 – How do you succeed as a designer when you're working on a new type of asset class?
10:58 – Tell us about the neighborhood in Brooklyn where the Bushwick Townhouse is located and what's around it.
12:45 – Who is the client and what did he want you to accomplish with your design?
16:14 – Walk our listeners through the townhouse, describing how it will be once it's completed.
19:14 – When you visited the building, what really stood out to you?
21:53 – Tell us about the logistics of how it works when there's two firms that are working together. Who is responsible for what? How do you share files and things like that?
25:13 – Give us a primer about the codes and the rules that dictate the use, the quantity, the layout, the dimensions, and all that minutia about the stairs in residential projects.
30:03 – Give us more about the details of what's going on with these stairs in the Bushwick Townhouse.
35:38 – Tell us about the lighting that you have chosen in terms of the light fixtures that will support this idea of continuity.
39:46 – You did another residential project that prominently features stairs, and that one is in Snowmass, Colorado. Tell us about that project.
Connect with Lea Cloud:
CDR Studio Architects
LinkedIn (Lea Cloud)
LinkedIn (CDR Studio Architects)
Courtesy of CDR Studio Architects
About your host:
Atif Qadir is the Founder & CEO of Commonplace, a technology company making it easy for commercial real estate professionals to find and use the $100B of real estate incentives given out every year in the US.
His work has been covered by Technology Review, The Real Deal, Commercial Observer, and Propmodo. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National DEI Conference, Yale AREA Conference, Columbia Real Estate Symposium, Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.
About Commonplace
Commonplace is a founding sponsor of American Building. It is a 100% minority-owned, real estate technology company founded in 2020 to make financing social impact development projects across the US easier. It is funded by venture capital investors Hometeam Ventures, Park West Asset Management, New York Ventures and Shadow Ventures.
About Michael Graves
The world-famous design firm Michael Graves is also a founding sponsor of American Building. Its namesake, the iconoclastic designer Michael Graves, FAIA was a fierce advocate for people-centric design. His work defines a generation of American architecture and includes the Portland Building, the Humana Building and the Denver Public Library. The 1st season of American Building was filmed live at The Warehouse, his historic home in Princeton, New Jersey:
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