Michael Fieldman Architect

4 stories / 103,000 sf

1992 Completion

NYC School Construction Authority - Client

This 850-student K-8 public school is located on an extraordinary site on Roosevelt Island overlooking the Manhattan skyline. The building is designed as a miniature campus which retains the unique village atmosphere of Roosevelt Island. Within the 103,000 square foot 4-story complex there are five major building components:

the classroom building

the commons building

the arts pavilion

the outdoor playground

Each of these elements is articulated with distinct forms based on their function. The promenade terminates with a view across the East River to Manhattan. The structure of the building is exposed architectural concrete. Detailing emphasizes the way in which the school is built, allowing the building to become a tool for instruction in its own right.

In Casabella Issue. 607, the architectural historian Kenneth Frampton commented on Michael Fieldman's recent design of The Roosevelt Island school stating that: "It is difficult to convey to an outsider what a remarkable achievement (PS/IS 217) is, given the totally under funded public school system. Suffice it to say that it is one of few modern buildings of the last decade in Manhattan that is worth a visit."

All Photographs © Alexander Severin unless otherwise noted

8 stories / 730,000 sf

2015 Completion*

NYC Department of Design and Construction - Client

The Master Plan is choreographed around the movements of recruits and officers engaged in rigorous paramilitary education and training. A network of glass-faced horizontal and vertical circulation spaces celebrates these movements through 2-story day-lit ‘streets’ and eight-story atria, visually connecting the NYPD with their city.

Modular learning buildings clad in steel-blue aluminum and glass line the campus edges and define the Academy’s open spaces. Special assembly spaces are legible volumes that punctuate the campus. Ramping terraces rise from the 5-acre canal that runs through the project site. Aggressive energy reductions come from a tri-generation mechanical plant, buildings massed to limit solar exposure, and high performance façades that provide shading, control solar gain, and optimize daylight, removing the need for artificial lighting during the day.

Architect-of-Record:

Perkins+Will

Architectural Design Consultant:

Michael Fieldman Architects

Short list of finalists:

1. Polshek Partnership

2. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

3. Foster + Partners

4. Perkins+Will / Michael Fieldman Architects - selected team

5 stories / 105,000 sf

2015 completion

NYC School Construction Authority - Client

A new Pre-Kindergarten to 8th grade public school for 757 students in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. The building responds to an irregularly shaped site with a plan organized around an entry court that opens to the south to allow sunlight into the facility. A 5-story classroom wing is located on the west side of the entry court and 2 double-height gymnasium spaces are stacked on the east side. Entry to the building occurs through a double-height loggia that looks down into the cellar-level gymnasium and into a double-height entry lobby.

The building offers a central entry court and 2 separate playgrounds for early childhood and older age groups. This entry court features three prismatic skylights which admit daylight to a cafeteria located below, and they are surrounded by plantings and benches configured as outdoor gathering spaces, allowing the classroom environment to extend to the exterior of the building.

The classroom wing on the western side of the site is clad in brick with a granite base. Deep vertical window mullions and vertical sunshades temper daylight into the classrooms. The gymnasium wing to the west is clad in a terra cotta rainscreen system. The library, administrative offices, and circulation spaces overlooking the entry court are enclosed with glazed curtainwall screened with vertical and horizontal sun shades. Selective use of glass block demarcates and provides natural light to vertical circulation cores. Two separate outdoor playgrounds are provided for early childhood and older age groups.

All Photographs © Alexander Severin

11 stories / 420,000 sf

2004 completion

Massachusetts General Hospital - Client

This 420,000 sf outpatient medical facility is incorporated into the Massachusetts General Hospital campus in Boston. Features include a day-lit public circulation spine and structurally expressive canopies at ground floor entrances.

Over the course of several years, Michael Fieldman Architects designed several projects at MGH in Boston. The Yawkey Center for Outpatient Care received an Honor Award in October 2005 from the American Institute of Architects of New England. The jury comments are below:

“Built on a very densely constructed site between, among, and above historic buildings, parking facilities and existing MGH buildings, this project succeeds on many levels to create a great urban healthcare environment. The orientation of the main façade on an angle from the existing buildings, the use of fritted glass and silver cladding help this big structure appear light. Wayfinding both inside and outside the building is intuitive and clear urban design clues resolve the ground-plane circulation. The use of daylighting, a glazed public corridor that runs along the east side of the building, creates a bright, healthful environment and orients patients and visitors to both the building and the city. The design of this building is forward-thinking; the space exudes wellness.”

4,300sf on a secluded 13-acre site

1998 Completion

Designed as a weekend retreat for himself, En Fin is a modest home set deep within a wooded site, whose design is built to focus on, and incorporate, the natural surroundings into the spirit of the house. The house sits on a rock surface that was part of the Paleozoic Era in the Geologic Cambrian Period, , 488 to 543 million years ago. The building’s massing and windows are all calibrated to enhance natural features, from the living room, to the upstairs bay window, and the screened-in porch. Outside, the terraced gardens become increasingly less ‘structured’, to integrate physically and materially into the pine forest that surrounds the property.

5 stories / 75,000 sf

2006 Completion

NYC School Construction Authority - Client

Located on 152nd Street on the west side of Manhattan, the school is a replacement facility for a vacated school on the same site. It accommodates 530 students ranging from kindergarten thru to the 8th grade. Notwithstanding a very tight and limited urban site and restrictions in building height, the program includes an auditorium/gymnasium, cafeteria, library and art/music rooms in addition to classrooms. In response to the tight site, the play area is located on the roof with a transparent mesh enclosure, taking advantage of magnificent views of the Manhattan skyline to the south.

The 1st Floor entry lobby looks down into the 2-story auditorium/gymnasium space through architecturally exposed structural steel bowstring trusses and columns. Light enters the gym space from the lobby and through large glass block windows on the north side. Light also plays a key role in the vertical stair towers as slotted windows create small-scale punctuations at stair landings while the primary stair is flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows. Corridors on the upper floors end in windows at the east and west sides of the building, admitting more light into the building.

1,320 feet long

2000 Completion

Port Authority of NY & NJ - Client

This canopy structure provides a pedestrian connection between Terminals B and C at Newark Liberty International Airport. The tubular steel and translucent fabric walkway canopy was conceived and executed at a rapid pace, with the multi-legged structural system allowing for shallow foundations which could be poured in advance of a final design layout. This was critical for the rapid deployment of the structure required by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The airfoil-shaped section of the canopy minimizes the impact on mature trees adjacent to the walkway, eliminating the need for any tree removal to accommodate the project.

Originally intended to serve as a temporary structure during repair of the monorail system, the canopies remain in active service.

2 stories / 20,000 sf

2012 Completion

Port Authority of NY and NJ - Client

Two story office building and support facilities for container shipping terminal.

All photography © John Bertelstone

Competition completion 2004

The Asper Foundation - Client

The program symbolizes the darker, chilling moments of humankind; genocide, hate, repression.

The site is at the edge of two rivers as they meet, between twin cities of different cultures that contribute to the vitality of an enlarged urban texture. The scheme speaks to a large scale space – a protective umbrella - a protagonist as a never-ending infinite passage, suspended in time with a pervasive silence. A trap for sun, a foil for rain, a beacon at nighttime, it gives way to complexity, richness, perspective and chiaroscuro; a resonance of superimposed images reinforced through a series of physical interlocking transactions over a continuous reflecting pool. Four pavilions become sentinels of horrific hate crimes, frozen in space and time, each a repository of four historically-significant horrors. On piloti, with independent cores and memorial roof gardens, each is a stone monument singling out the magnitude of its historic position. It is an architecture allowing stains of changing light to project through a membrane, conferring it with a singularity of an internal and eternal sanctuary. The ‘Beacon of Justice and Democracy’ at the northern extremity, across a bridge, is a triumphal portal for two founding cultures - an international symbol and exemplar of respect for human rights, equality and dignity. It is a city of infinite specificity without a center, the depth and weight of its soul suggesting a prolonged uncertainty and suspended judgment of the very subject matter of human rights. The protective umbrella is but a circumscriptive element illuminating the heart of the piece.

This renovation of his own apartment, a pre-war, 1,500sf Manhattan dwelling with four exposures—views to the North, South, East and West—was conceived to replace a cellular set of small, contained rooms with a continuous flow of spaces. The boundary walls between bedroom, living, dining, kitchen, home office and even bathroom have all been minimized or removed, allowing for visual and physical fluidity for the resident couple. To this end, within the apartment — apart from storage walls — there is just a single interior door to allow total privacy.

On June 1, 2004, at the age of 38, Michael’s son, Jordan, succumbed to cancer, in Pittsfield, MA, where he lived, and practiced medicine. In memoriam, his family renovated a belvedere—an overlook—on the former site of the Aspinwall Hotel, at Kennedy Park, in Lenox, MA, which had burned down in the 1930’s. The site was important to Jordan, and he took frequent walks there. The memorial, which comprises benches, a fire pit, an upgraded retaining wall and fence, new plantings, and a plaque explaining Jordan’s connection to the community, was dedicated on June 1, 2011.

The interior design of Petocchi Gorevic’s Madison Avenue boutique was the New York flagship for a prominent jeweler, based in Rome.

130,000sf

1989 Completion

An underutilized hospital wing at a city hospital in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn was transformed into a family care center to become a beacon of quality in a blighted neighborhood. The 5 story 130,000 sq. ft. space was completely renovated into a modern ambulatory care facility which emphasizes the user’s physical and psychological needs. Small examination modules with sub-waiting areas were developed to avoid negative institutional imagery commonplace in public hospitals. Critical to the master planning and programming part of the assignment was to work carefully with local residents, community leaders and other interested groups to gain consensus on the programs that HHC had difficulty in obtaining, prior.

The mandate included giving the community a facility akin to a private physician’s practice that one would find in Manhattan, with all the materials and appurtenances expected. The result was the setting up of a steering committee with participation from the community and a careful program development that nurtured their understanding of what to expect, what they would actually get, and the need to respect the facility, long term.

Located at the edge of a ravine on a 6 acre estate, this ‘second home’ for a Manhattan family is an addition to a family compound comprising a residence and guest house of 12,500 sq.ft., a stable, a barn, a bath house, a tennis court and a swimming pool.. Imagery for the new house, through its materials and some of its forms, recalls elements of the existing facilities – a plinth of stone to reflect the brick bases of the other buildings, a round ‘tower’ stair to recall that of the existing house and the barn silo, and a sculpting and articulation of various program elements and components to reflect those of the other buildings. The stone plinth faces the other facilities to the south and east, whereby the west and north facades are floor-to-ceiling glass to capitalize on the extraordinary proximate and majestic mountain views, the town of Providence, and a client requirement of having unobstructed views to the twin spires of the Mormon Temple from every room and all circulation.

This 8,600 sq.ft. house comprises four bedrooms with the master suite isolated from the rest of the upper floor. While the living room is a two-story volume, the entire upper floor on the north side is held back from the exterior façade so that the circulation in this singly-loaded building reads as a bridge. Entry to the master bedroom suite is similarly developed in section, the release of space being more prominent in its disengagement from exterior surfaces. The stone walls of the exterior are equally expressed on their interior surfaces, with free, unobstructed circulation along their entire length. All ground floor functions/spaces are placed mid-spatially with circulation on either side, enhancing the openness of the ground floor and enriching the movement in and around the various components.

In 2004, Jordan B Fieldman, MD, a doctor at Berkshire Medical Center, in Pittsfield, MA—and Michael’s son—died at the age of 38. In tribute, he and his other son, Anthony—also an architect—designed a healing garden in his name, at his place of work. They raised the funds for its construction, with the support of the hospital. Ultimately, it was never constructed, due to project complexities, and the Fieldmans designed and constructed a lookout in its place, on State Park lands nearby, in Lenox, MA.

Link to that project, here.

Place Lac Ouimet is an integrated residential/resort development on 59 acres of land, rising to a height of 600 feet above an adjacent lake. It is part of the Mont Tremblant summer and winter resort town, 90 miles north of Montreal in the Laurentian Mountains.

The recreation/administrative building portrayed here comprises 30,000 square feet. Its program includes administrative functions, indoor/outdoor facilities, ski and bicycle rentals, a day care center, games rooms, open lounges, 3 dining areas, a bar and support facilities.

The project attempts a very difficult task of the integration of distinct and separate programmatic elements into a whole; the clarity of form being of considerable importance while at the same time speaking to the varied functions within. Here was developed a system that responds to traditional forms of rural development, read back into the structure in a relatively purist reading of tectonic mass to incorporate native materials of stone and wood.

Building siting was complicated. Rock was two feet below top soil and, for reasons of economy, excavation was to be minimized. Building placement is a manifestation of this, as it is a rational dissection of the program to allow the various forms to respond to the contours, to the requisite views of the lake below, and to solar orientation.

Here, it was a design which operates with elements in opposition to each other and the reconciliation of the rhythm and effect, one to the other. Hence the juxtaposition of modern forms and expectations against the historical traditions of the area. The building is 530 feet in length. It is designed in terms of a “massive” form whose authority and, in a sense, poetic complaint, establishes an iconography, the rigor of which yields freedom, giving in return to the users.

8 cell + 1 future cell cooling tower array

2003 completion

Port Authority of New York and New Jersey - Client

This expansion of the Central Heating and Refrigeration Plant at Newark Liberty International Airport consists of 8 cooling tower cells with attendant support facilities such as pump and electrical rooms. The project accommodates an additional future cooling tower cell. The cooling tower cells are stepped in plan following the curved geometry of the airport masterplan while breaking down the apparent scale of the complex. Contrasting with the massive site-cast architectural concrete cooling tower cells, a delicate tracery of stainless steel catwalks and tensioned stainless steel fabric screens partially enclose and surround the facility.

The project was contracted using design/build delivery method. As such clear definition of design intent, required quality of construction, and interdisciplinary coordination was critical.

Award of Merit, Concrete Industry Board, 2003

4 stories / 120,000 sf

2003 Completion

New York City School Construction Authority, Client

This new K-8 school on the Queens College campus occupies a narrow stretch of land between an existing athletic facility to the south and Reeves Avenue to the north. The school houses a citywide special education cluster along with classrooms, art room, library, dance & music room, and science labs. Circulation throughout the facility is single-loaded so that all classrooms have northern daylight and all circulation faces the landscaped open spaces of Queens College Campus. Of special note is a shared space wing that houses the school’s cafeteria, auditorium, and gymnasium, with all three components capitalizing on campus open space through views and direct access. All playground spaces are shared with Queens College.

Administration for Children’s Services

Brooklyn, NY

The Department of Design and Construction of New York City commissioned the firm to design an innovative day care center with the intention of setting new standards in planning and design, and to reinforce social aspects of the neighborhood. In conjunction with these parameters was the initiative to apply high-performance standards in energy conservation, material usage, and appropriate building/classroom orientation. The program comprises eight playrooms/classrooms as self-contained units supported by a variety of indoor and outdoor play areas. The program is 24,000 sf.

Of particular significance is the development of an enclosed two-story volume accessible directly from the playrooms which, in turn, has direct visual and physical connection to all outdoor areas. Playrooms have interior floor-to-ceiling glass walls looking out to interior and exterior play areas. The plan is developed as a singly-loaded distribution of spaces taking full advantage of the entire surround.

Glass is integral to the design. The orientation of the rooms is such that the interior play lobby, in conjunction with its immediate adjacency to the outdoor play space, has always been deemed to enrich a child’s experience in terms of identity of it’s “home room” with an interactive communal space in the interior, and certainly that connection with the offerings of the exterior play space. It is interesting to note that at one of the Day Care Centers we visited, where this openness exists, the Director was virtually adamant that not only was the idea worth maintaining, but that it offered a safety level for the child and the facility so that something untoward could not take place out of sight. In today’s complex society, this cannot be ignored.

Gouverneur Health (formerly Gouverneur Hospital) is a municipally owned healthcare facility in New York City affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine. It is located at 227 Madison Street in Lower Manhattan. The facility offers comprehensive healthcare services, including outpatient, specialty, and skilled nursing care. It primarily serves residents of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

On April 22, 1982, the City of Mississauga invited Canadian architects to participate in an architectural competition to select the architect and design for a New City Hall and a civic square to be built in the city centre. The New City Hall and civic square are intended to consolidate the offices of the civic administration which are now located in several buildings, and to provide space for all civic functions into the foreseeable future.

The location of the New City Hall follows the City Centre Secondary Plan which was enacted in 1979 to create a downtown core at a location which will be the heart of Mississauga. The site chosen for the city centre is north of the historic centre, on the edge of the presently developed area of the city. It is in the geographic centre of the municipality and is about 30 kilometers from downtown Toronto and 13 kilometres from the Toronto International Airport.

The New City Hall will inaugurate this new pattern of urban form, and will extend the development of the city centre westward. It is intended that the City Hall will become an integral part of the everyday life of its citizens, as well as a place for special city-wide events. The design of the City Hall should accommodate and encourage open and accessible government, promote everyday and incidental public use and support assemblies, receptions, public action and civic rituaIs.

A post modern design was ultimately selected and built.

Extended Living Facility (round volume) and Medical Arts Pavilion (bar building)

The 54,000 sq. ft. Medical Arts Pavilion was completed in 1989. The Extended Living Facility was postponed due to lack of adequate funding.

4 stories / 245,000 sq.ft

Norwalk, Connecticut

Completed in 1996

Norwalk Hospital, Client

The firm had gained a reputation as a 'turn-around specialist' by assisting hospitals in rescuing projects that had gone out of control. Norwalk Hospital, a 400 bed facility engaged the firm to rescue a project that was 35% over budget and 3 years late. The assignment included expansion and modernization of inpatient floors, intensive care, surgical suites, surgical intensive care, pediatrics, psychiatry, materials management, diagnostic imaging, special procedure rooms, emergency, linear accelerator, and an extended care nursing facility.

Master Planning / Reformulation of Clinical Facilities

1999 Completion

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center - Client

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center is the world’s oldest and largest private institution devoted to prevention, patient care, research and education in cancer. Throughout its long and distinguished history, it has consistently set the standard of care for people with cancer. It is devoted to caring for its patients, teaching tomorrow’s health care professionals, and exploring the roots of cancer. MSKCC prides itself on treating the whole person, not just the disease. It offers psychological and social support to assist patients, family and friends in maintaining the best possible quality of life during and after cancer treatment.

Our scope of work included master planning, programming, concept plans, 3-D modeling for the entire institution. Work included analysis of records, implementation strategies, relocation plans, and programs for ambulatory care clinics, clinical chemistry, surgical day hospital, medical day hospital, radiation oncology, imaging. Our master planning efforts included zoning and highest-and-best-use analyses of existing properties, city-wide, phased implementation design strategies for a new $300 million research building, a $12 million prostate center, and a new $50 million operating suite.

Milwaukee River Development - Client

The Firm was mandated to create a new Master Plan for a segment of the core of the City of Milwaukee by establishing a planning framework which could be reflective of the complex interrelationships of the environment, emerging urban values and current government structures. In specific terms, the challenge lay in taking the particular characteristics of the City of Milwaukee, its river, the breweries, the lakeshore, its industries and, in recognizing its conservatism, a specific plan was produced which acknowledged functional as well as value changes, both present and future.

In 1969-1970, the Operation Breakthrough Program, spearheaded by George Romney when he was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Nixon Administration, was to initiate a crash program to demonstrate the economic feasibility of new systems of housing production for the mass American market.

A total of 236 submissions were made, from companies and consultants worldwide. Of these, only 22 firms won contracts, all American with the exception of one foreign consortium, a Canadian firm, Descon Concordia in partnership with the architectural firm Bobrow/Fieldman, Architects, all of Montreal, Quebec. The first two projects awarded to the team were in Journal Square, Newark, New Jersey, and St. Louis Missouri.

The system comprised assemblies of multiple components that included external cladding and weatherproof elements, kitchen assemblies, bathroom assemblies, mechanical, plumbing and structural components. Flexibility was a fundamental design criterion so as to accommodate a range of building types and heights. Structurally, precast, prestressed panels are interconnected with friction bolts and form floors, walls and beams.

In a pre[FABRICA]tions blog, on November 16, 2020, the following comment was made with regard to the Operation Breakthrough program. “Descon-Concordia, a consortium from Montreal, Canada was arguably the most advanced, forward-looking system in Operation Breakthrough and would certainly still be considered as a great innovation today in matters of applying factory production to building construction”.

Fieldman has been attending Opera Saratoga for over two decades, and when the Director offered opportunities for cameo appearances, acting roles only without singing. Fieldman was granted it for four consecutive years. Three are noted but the fourth, Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi, was thwarted because during rehearsal, Fieldman was travelling on his Italian Vespa and a deer ran out of the woods, hit him in the back and knocked him to the road, suffering concussion and lying unconscious. The deer died. Fieldman was airlifted by helicopter to Albany, New York, with broken ribs, broken back, broken collarbone, and broken foot. Eight days in the hospital and three months rest resulted in full recovery. The fourth opera, then, turned out to be a personal story!

For the three operas pictured, Michael played the following roles:

Opera: Carmen

Composer: Georges Bizet

Role: Lillas Pastia, inn keeper

Opera: Cosi Fan Tutte

Composer: Mozart

Role: Tailor

Opera: La Traviata

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi

Role: Casino Card Dealer

Opera: Don Pasquale

Composer:Gaetano Donizetti

Role:FedEx Agent

In 1996, Michael was nominated for elevation to the American Institute of Architect’s College of Fellows, by a number of the profession’s most visible practitioners. Collected here are their letters of support toward that end.

AIA Fellows are recognized with the AIA’s highest membership honor for their exceptional work and contributions to architecture and society.

Only 3 percent of the AIA members have this distinction.