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Grzywinski Pons Architects takes Manhattan

By Dianna Dilworth

Grzywinski Pons Architects is a name that the New York City Department of Buildings is hearing more often these days. The young architects—31 and 32 years old, respectively—met 13 years ago, when Matthew Grzywinski was at the Rhode Island School of Design and Amador Pons was at Syracuse University. They began working together in 2002, when they teamed up to pitch and win the design for a program change of the Hotel on Rivington on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Since the hotel was completed in 2005, the two have been working regularly on gut renovations of older buildings for residential and commercial spaces and have recently taken on more ground-up work. They are currently working on a handful of buildings in the city, including three new hotels, six new multifamily condos buildings, and a seven-story town house in Manhattan.

Image courtesy of Grzywinski Pons Architects

East 115th Street, New York City

To view six recent projects by Grzywinski Pons Architects click here.

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Challenged with the constraints of working in New York City, including laying the foundations for a hotel just 29 inches above a subway line, the two have defined their design approach based on their location. “Having real-world limitations forces us to be creative,” says Grzywinski.

Grzywinski and Pons position themselves not by promoting the use of a material or a particular architectural approach, but rather by trying to work within such limitations. Ground-floor residential space is usually less valuable in New York, whether it’s a rental property or a condominium. Inspired by keeping condo values up, the two have worked to take the ground floor and address the street with more recreational space, by lifting buildings up to a second level. This technique was used for a condo building in the borough of Brooklyn and one in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem. “We take the zoning of the building and we fill it from the top down,” says Grzywinski.

While the two have been developing their design approach based on context and do not identify with any particular materials, they have a progressive approach to the elements that make up the building. “We are not apologetic about the fact that our buildings are of the 21st century, so we use materials that are appropriate from an environmental standpoint and within the context of the neighborhood,” Grzywinski says. “A lot of times, the materials themselves are pretty timeless—like zinc and terra-cotta—but it’s in a system that’s really modern and efficient.” One example is their use of NBK, a terra-cotta rain-screen system, as a waterproofing material and for aesthetic effect on an unnamed hotel project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side that the firm is currently working on. “It’s not a cheap veneer that will weather poorly,” Grzywinski adds. “We choose materials both from an aesthetic and performance perspective and a consideration for how it’s going to look and how it’s going to feel from the street and from the property itself.”

Despite their growing roster of projects, the two are currently the only full-time employees of the firm. “We like to maintain a real connection to the project so that when we talk to any of our clients we know exactly what is going on,” Grzywinski says. Keeping the firm small and busy means they now have the luxury of being choosy with clients. “Sometimes there are people who don’t have the same priorities that we have, and it is best for everyone that we don’t take those jobs.” Picking and choosing notwithstanding, in the future the team hopes to take their work beyond New York’s five boroughs. “We are getting excited about doing jobs abroad or across the States,” Grzywinski says.

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