Tommy Craig of Hines & Rick Cook of COOKFOX | 555 Greenwich and 345 Hudson Street in New York City | Pioneering Sustainable Architecture
Courtesy of Hines and COOKFOX
Pioneering Sustainable Architecture
Today, I’m joined by Tommy Craig, Senior Managing Director at Hines, and Rick Cook, Founding Partner at COOKFOX. Tommy and Rick are both pioneers of the sustainable architecture movement and have joined forces for the 555 Greenwich and 345 Hudson Street project. As it stands, they’re two existing buildings that form an entire block in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan. The goal for 555 Greenwich was to stitch the two buildings together, complete 345 Hudson Street, and face west out towards the Hudson River.
The combined buildings are 1.2 million square feet, and as you can imagine, designing that kind of space isn’t without its challenges. However, the team at COOKFOX has come up with a way to embrace those constraints and create a thermally active superstructure, the first of its kind in New York City. Rick describes the firm’s various efforts to make radical carbon changes and revamp this 100-year-old building to serve the community for the next 10+ decades.
We also discuss the importance of mentorship, how their own mentors have impacted their career development, and what they hope to pass on to the next generation of young architects at their respective firms. We touch on the current trends that are making buildings better for the planet and its occupants, and how to balance the quality and speed of construction. Listen in to hear more of our conversation about sustainable and modern living spaces.
“We all started out talking about climate change, extreme weather, carbon loading, human induced carbon, and everything originally was about carbon reduction and therefore energy reduction. That’s how the entire green building movement started. More insulation higher-performing glass, as Tommy talked about. How do we reduce the energy consumption and therefore the carbon output. That’s how we started. What I say often is that while doing that, we stumbled into the fact that while we’re trying to make buildings better for the planet, we figured out how to make buildings better for people, quantifiably better for people.”
Courtesy of Hines
About Tommy Craig
Tommy Craig is Senior Managing Director and the Co-Head of the New York office of Hines, as well as Head of the Boston office. Hines is an international developer, investor and manager of real estate with nearly 5,000 employees worldwide. He is on the board of the Urban Design Forum, and the Phipps Houses, a non-profit affordable housing developer. Previously, he taught at Columbia Business School.
Courtesy of COOKFOX
About Rick Cook
Rick Cook is a Founding Partner at COOKFOX, the New York City based design firm he started in 2003 with Bob Fox. Their work focuses on office, residential, interiors and cultural projects and how the natural environment can intertwine with the built environment. Prior to COOKFOX, he founded and ran his own firm, Richard Cook & Associates for 14 years.
Courtesy of Hines and COOKFOX
Episode Timestamps
2:57 – In previous interviews, you both have talked about the sense of purpose in your work as the grounding reason for staying where you are. I want to hear more about that.
12:37 – The amazing project that both of you are working on is the 555 Greenwich and 345 Hudson Street project. It's located in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan. Rick, tell us about this area and more specifically about the site.
15:48 – Tommy, help us understand the design prompt that you gave COOKFOX at the beginning of this entire process.
22:01 – Rick, what was your process like as a design firm in responding to a design problem?
30:39 – In those early discussions about the priorities for the project, what were those internal conversations around sustainability like?
42:36 – Rick, help our listeners understand this project by the numbers.
49:07 – Tommy, help our listeners understand what were some of the earliest projects that Heinz experimented with greener ways of building.
53:39 – Rick, what is the purpose of green building in your mind and your firm's perspective?
1:01:16 – Tommy, what are the ways that the conversations happen around energy efficiency in the Heinz boardroom?
1:07:29 – Rick, how do you see the way to evolve how we're building to go faster and faster and faster?
Connect with Tommy Craig and Rick Cook:
LinkedIn (Tommy Craig)
LinkedIn (Hines)
Hines
LinkedIn (Rick Cook)
LinkedIn (COOKFOX)
Instagram (COOKFOX)
Facebook (COOKFOX)
Twitter (COOKFOX)
COOKFOX
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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