An innate sense of spatial balance and a love for sketching have made this architect a success
When interns start at his architectural firm, Maziar Behrooz, AIA, gives them a blank sketch book and tells them, “you need to fill this up by the time you leave here and you need to keep getting new sketch books.” Behrooz is a firm believer in the systemized link between hand and eye and mind, emphasizing this advanced system can produce things that computers can’t come close to.
“One thing I always tell my interns is anybody can make a beautiful computer rendering, but not everyone can make a beautiful sketch,” he says. “It allows you to explore ideas in different ways.” Maximizing this mindset, for the past 25 years Behrooz’s ideas have produced beautiful sketches, which have evolved into dynamic designs and successful structures.
He has thought this way early on. “I’ve always known I’ve wanted to be an architect and I can’t do anything else,” he says. “And I’m very happy about that because my mind works like an architect’s mind. As a kid it’s the only thing I could imagine myself being, and I’ve always been good at drawing and geometry. I’ve always been able to think very spatially.”
After growing up in Tehran and graduating from high school in Massachusetts, he went to New Orleans to study at Tulane University, where he earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in architecture in the 1980s. Graduate level studies for two years happened at the Cornell Architecture School in Ithaca, N.Y. It was at the Tulane School of Architecture where he interned at an office geared to New Orleans projects, which was run by the Dean of Architecture Ron Filson. “It was interesting to switch from theoretical and hypothetical projects in class, to real projects that were to be built in New Orleans,” he says.
Extended Vienna vacation
In the late 1980s, he traveled to Europe for what was originally only supposed to be a one-week stay in Vienna, Austria, but wound up staying longer when he landed his first real job as an architect there. “After a week of wandering around and seeing the town, I thought it was such a beautiful place for an architect, that I thought about working there,” he says. “I looked up architect offices and listings. I had my portfolio, found a job with a firm that needed an extra body and my one-week trip became a oneyear- long journey.”
“I think in Europe, metal, steel and aluminum and other non-lumber-based products are used more in commercial and residential buildings than they are here in the United States,” he adds. “There isn’t as much wood in Germany and Austria, and the use of steel and wrought iron in Europe goes back centuries. In the Vienna office, metal work was commonly worked into the designs throughout the buildings. I saw more aluminum and steel windows than wood ones in some of the cities I visited in Germany and France.”
Architect on his own
After working as a junior architect at a few firms, Behrooz struck out on his own to expand the scope of his projects. Maziar Behrooz Architecture was founded in the 1990s in Manhattan and established an office in East Hampton in 1996. His firm has created a variety of projects and buildings from sustainably designed single-family homes, to affordable housing and community-based projects. His firm’s designs have won three AIA Peconic Awards and a Green Building Council Award, among others. But this success wasn’t easy at first.
“I had no idea what it would take to have your own business,” he says. “I had worked in different offices and I thought opening up your own office would continue to be like that. But running a business is a very different thing besides just being an architect. I was absolutely unprepared for it; I dove into it really. If I had known all of the issues, problems, risks and roadblocks you hit when you are running a business, I might have hesitated. But not knowing what the problems are allowed me to go out on my own and put up a shingle and start getting my own work. Of course, the first few years were a little harder, but eventually things smoothed out.”
One thing that has helped Behrooz successfully facilitate projects is his understanding of his clients and their needs. “One thing that my clients have told me that they really like is that I draw by hand,” he says. “Of course, we do use computers too. Clients really enjoy seeing me and other people in my office sketch ideas as we discuss projects on notepads or on a board. They really get engaged with the product, with us and our work. It may seem like a minor thing, but in this day and age, when everyone talks about computer renderings, 3-D modeling and BIM, which we do use to a great extent, it’s good to hear that people react to that very basic architectural tool of drawing with a pencil on paper.”
Migrating to metal
Behrooz has witnessed a considerable shift to more metal projects in both the industry and at his firm. “I’m using much more metal in my buildings as a replacement for wood,” he says. “I find wood problematic for many reasons, not just because we are depleting our wood resources. Wood is problematic as a material over time and becomes an absorber of moisture and humidity. So I have decided to let go of the use of wood as much as I can, and now use it as an interior finish material.”
Behrooz believes a wooden house has some inherent energy issues that need to be resolved. Wooden houses require further repair, modifications and maintenance, which is not efficient. Using steel in that sense is an inspiration. “It’s not just about metal,” he insists. “It’s about looking at alternative materials and being open to other materials than wood, and once you do that you realize metal is one of the most outstanding structural elements that I love to use. Structurally, it gives me the ability to create cantilevers very easily. Making a steel frame is easy to do with far less deflection. Metal gives us a wider palette with more choices and options.”
One metal-based project that brought Behrooz national attention, in addition to a Metal Construction News award for Best Metal Roofing in its Annual Building and Roofing Awards, is his Arc House in East Hampton, N.Y. Fashioned after a Quonset Hut, this custom-designed home has an arching corrugated metal roof with no weight-bearing columns. Both post-consumer and post-industrial recycled steel help provide its clear span design.
Cool container concept
One unique Behrooz project in progress is an all-steel system consisting of prefabricated shipping container pods retrofitted with computer work stations for a nonprofit New Orleans organization. These pods will be installed in various low-income neighborhoods for youths to have access to computers when they normally do not. This educational facility will be connected to the New Orleans public library system and is supported by them.
“These shipping containers are very secure,” he says. “Over these containers we have a very elaborate and beautiful canopy system because New Orleans is obviously a very hot and humid environment. We want to create as much shade as we can. The canopies are made of steel C-channels. They are curved and have loops. Between the loops is steel wiring and cable that become a surface for plants to grow and eventually cover the roof system to create shade. These projects will be installed all over New Orleans. We hope other cities will follow the model and we can introduce them to other places.”
Behrooz is working with a manufacturer who is introducing a line of shipping container-designed buildings. The manufacturer buys shipping containers from different yards, brings them into its factory and retrofits them to Behrooz’s specifications to create a prefabricated module.
“I think that is my biggest metal-related success as an architect. Being open to metal has brought other opportunities in,” he says. “My New Orleans project only happened because I had already worked with metal. Otherwise, our clients would not have called us. They contacted us because they had seen and heard about my work with metal and shipping containers. “Once you’re open to this, other opportunities open up. The building market is seeing increasing use of metal and when you have experience with metal it opens you up to new opportunities.
One inspiration for working with
metal is that AIA has a mandate for all architects to reduce energy usage of buildings by 50 percent by the year 2030. This is a big mandate. We have to be careful about the ways we have traditionally thought about buildings, the materials we use and how to design.”
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Arch Connect
What’s on your iPod while you work?
Online sites that I log into, which is the background music of our office.
What do you do on weekends?
Traveling outdoors, hiking, going to beautiful beaches, website design too.
What is your favorite book?
It changes. Different books at different times in my life have affected me. “Cradle to Cradle” by William McDonough definitely stands out.
What’s your favorite app on your phone or iPad?
Squarespace. I can use it to access and update my website. I check what it’s doing, add photos and manage comments.
Where is your favorite place to vacation?
New Orleans. It has great music, food and architecture.
What historical figure would you most like to have dinner with and why?
I’d like to have dinner with Frank Lloyd Wright.