Artistic Inspiration

by Jonathan McGaha | August 31, 2015 12:00 am

Growing up, Joseph Coppola[1], AIA, was surrounded by a variety of materials and textures. As a boy, he was born and raised in a small farming village in Italy where his family members were either tailors or weavers or worked in the local marble quarries if they weren’t involved with farming. “My world centered around seeing how people dealt with various types of materials,” Coppola says. “I lived across from a carpentry shop, for example. I was surrounded by things that were made from scratch.”

When he was 7, Coppola’s family made the long journey overseas to New York City. Coming from a small agricultural village and arriving in an urban setting in a major world city was a dramatic change for the family. Coppola went from attending a makeshift school of 20 students of different ages with one teacher in the room, to living in New York City and being educated in the public schools. Coppola was the first in his family to graduate with a professional degree after receiving his Bachelor of Architecture from the City College of New York.

Being surrounded by a variety of different materials helped Coppola discover his artistic side in college. After starting his college career with a major in physics, he switched to architecture after taking an art history class and discovering the great architectural masters of Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright. Coppola says the courses opened a sense in him that he needed to change the direction he was headed. “I was fascinated by the way these masters used materials, which goes back to my beginnings, and how they created an entire design philosophy,” he explains. “It really began to fascinate me. They were just four individuals among a whole slew of other modern architects that I became interested in, but that was the beginning of it.”

He adds that it was during this time that he really discovered that he had an artistic side. Aside from his love for science and math, Coppola realized he had a greater pull and affinity to the artistic side, fueling his change in majors. His design sense was also strongly influenced by his mother, who worked as a tailor in Sicily, making men’s suits and teaching young women to sew, before working for many years in New York’s Garment District.

 

Hands-On Experience

When he graduated college, Coppola says it was a difficult time for architects, with work being scarce and firms going out of business. A few years after graduating one of his college professors, Richard Dattner[2], invited him to participate in a design competition. In 1977, Coppola joined Dattner Architects[3] as an associate and in 1999 became a partner. Dattner was a small architectural firm at the time, offering Coppola hands-on experience designing and managing a number of projects, while working closely with Richard Dattner.

Coppola has a range of experience working on recreational projects, educational institutions and renovations. He has also worked with Estee Lauder, designing laboratories, manufacturing facilities and designing their corporate interiors. In recent years, Coppola has been doing more work with historical renovations such as the Administration for Children’s Services, Wave Hill and Public School 186 in Harlem, a restoration of a 1903 public school into affordable housing and a new home for the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem.

“The nice thing about our offices is that quite a bit of the work is in the public sector, while clients such as Estee Lauder are in the private sector,” Coppola says. “There’s quite a diversity of projects, which appeals to me. I like the idea of working on different types of projects.”

 

Renovation Challenges

Coppola says renovations have their own special sort of considerations, and that most of the time you’re dealing with the unknown, making it very challenging. “There’s a difference in the way buildings were built over a century ago,” he says. “If you are dealing with a turn-of-the-century building, there are certain ways the trades built these buildings. You need to have an understanding of the construction and materials of that time before embarking on a new design. It’s important to understand what has happened over the life of the building. For example, was it vacant for many years? You need to understand the building’s past to know how to fix it and restore it.”

Part of the challenge of doing renovations has to do with whether or not you can find the building’s original drawings. While sometimes you get lucky by going to the municipal archives, Coppola says many times you need to document the building’s existing conditions through repeated survey work. “It’s interesting in that you obtain an education about how things were done back then,” he says. “Now you are using different materials and you have to make sure you’re not adversely affecting the nature of the original construction.”

 

Creating New Environments

Coppola acknowledges that architecture centers around creating new environments, which is inspirational. “You take the spaces you are creating and you’re humanizing them for people,” he explains. “There is an opportunity to use new materials and new technologies, so you are creating altogether new experiences for people as you assemble a project. I find that aspect of the profession very inspiring; it energizes me.”

“As architects, we have a privilege in having the ability to create this environment, how it gets done, where the emphasis is, whether it’s in the materials and colors, how we successfully meet the program, moderating the structure, lights and materials,” he continues. “So all of this has to come out visually harmonious, while fulfilling what the client needs. That aspect, to me, is really the same. It’s a similar process whether you are designing something small or something large. The size of the project doesn’t really matter. I see the process of design as an art that you can keep improving and doing new things.”

In architecture, Coppola says the greatest measure is the reaction of the people who eventually experience a completed project. As the designer, you are dealing with shapes and flexibility and trying to do certain things visually, he says, but they need to be shared or interpreted by the people who are going to be experiencing it. “And that’s really what’s exciting,” Coppola says. “You are communicating through visual effects with other human beings who have had certain experiences and you are enhancing them and sharing them. I think that’s part of what makes the building or space special, and it’s also how the people are going to use it are reacting to it and how they find it as a welcoming or exciting experience.”

 

The Music of Materials

Coppola compares architecture and the convergence of elements to that of a music conductor who guides musicians with their orchestral instruments to create a symphony. “The end result is that he has created a unique musical event,” he explains. “In a way, I see architects doing things similarly, taking various elements and orchestrating them to provide a very unique place or a unique visual effect.”

Coppola says metal offers enormous opportunities for architectural design. “It is a really strong, durable material, and in more recent times, along with glass, has really transformed many of our buildings.” As he notes, metal and glass has really transformed city skylines, and has also enhanced interiors where transparencies can be created and daylight captured. “[Metal] really helps greatly in creating new, more dynamic and exciting spaces to experience,” Coppola adds. “It’s a very versatile material, and from a personal point of view, I like the precision of metal. It requires a certain discipline to work with it.”

For designers, Coppola says it’s important to understand each type of metal, its capabilities and limits. “It’s also based on what you intend to achieve with the design,” he notes. That includes how it integrates with other elements in the project design. “With [metal’s] visual properties, there are times you are seeking a certain validity and you choose certain metals to do that. And now there are opportunities to have textures on metals. In a way, metal has evolved as a materials and has many diverse uses.”

 

Optimism for the Future

Coppola is somewhat optimistic about the future of architecture. He says the profession has new capabilities and technologies that didn’t exist before, which allow architects to create even more interesting forms and shapes, which have an effect on our environment.

“I think I’m optimistic, while at the same time, I think I’ve realized that there’s a strong need for the construction industry to take more liberties with 3-D and digital technologies,” he says. “Everyday you see firms that are involved in this endeavor, and I think it’s going to be the future of architecture. I think we’ll still be creating spaces that are human, to scale, and are gathering up these various elements. From the design side, the design capabilities are becoming much more advanced, which then puts pressure on the application side. I would like to see more of that collaboration between fabricators and designers. We need to change that a bit in our profession, and generally, in our buildings.”

Arch Connect What kind of music do you listen to? I tend to listen to some classical music, butfrom time to time I like to listen to popular music from countries I have visited or travelled to that brings me back to my travel destinations. I have been lucky enough to travel to Brazil, Tahiti and China. What do you do on weekends? Besides catching up on reading, in particular, architectural journals, my wife and I have two homes. We have a small apartment in Brooklyn Heights and a condominium vacation place in City Island in the Bronx. I try to keep the places well repaired. I’m sort of a hands-on person over the weekends, trying to do some repairs. And listen to some music, catch up on reading, that kind of thing. What is your favorite book? Since college, I keep coming back to Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” perhaps as the seminal book that I like. What’s your favorite app on your phone or tablet? I have an iPhone. I would say that I wasstrongly influenced by having the privilege of staying for several days on a U.S.Aircraft Carrier as a guest. I have a nephew who’s in the Navy and I spent three days on the George H.W. Bush Aircraft Carrier that was heading back to the Virginia station. Those three days I was exposed to all of the aircraft on the ship and witnessed some flights. I have a flight simulator app on my phone that I try to practice F18 landings on the aircraft carrier, which I’m not very good at. So that’s a fun app that’s on my phone, the others are more practical. Where is your favorite place to vacation? There’re really two areas, my wife is Chinese, she was born in San Antonio, and so we go between China and Italy. Some of my favorite places are Hong Kong and Venice, Italy. We go back and forth to these destinations. What historical figure would you most like to have dinner with and why? I would say [Filippo] Brunelleschi, the builder of the dome of the Cathedral of Florence. I was amazed by how he came up with the idea of the stonework to support an entire dome made at a time where there was not much structural analysis. I cannot believe how confident he was that he could do this. I have this affinity for architects who are really builders. And I’m more likely to be in tune with that. I see Renzo Piano as that same sort of talented architects, who have an understanding of how to build. What is the best piece of advice you ever received as an architect? One should be bold in putting forth design ideas. There are so many different conflicting needs and constraints and limitations. For your idea to really survive, you really have to be behind it, you have to feel strongly for it and you should not hold back. If it doesn’t get done, that’s OK, you can come up with other ideas. And, the other aspect of that is to be honest about cost, and really listen to your client and have some flexibility when you’re designing.

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