Essential Architecture

Largely unseen, and often unappreciated, essential architecture is the vital infrastructure that supports urban life. The provision of clean water, the collection and disposal of waste, the cleaning of streets, the maintenance of the power grid—are critical functions we can’t live without. More visible, but equally important, are the transit facilities, repair shops, fire and police stations that house the essential workers that keep the city moving and safe.

Dattner Architects has designed a wide variety of award-winning Essential Architecture projects. We are proud to create work that demonstrates how modern infrastructure facilities can be functional, aesthetically ambitious, and integrated into the fabric of the communities they serve.

34th Street Hudson Yards Station: The first new subway station constructed in NYC in 26 years, transforming the neighborhood into a major new commercial and residential hub
NYPD 116th Precinct Station: Provides 11,000 sf of community space to promotes social connectivity between law enforcement and the local community.

Essential Architecture is central to our practice. We embrace its “essential” nature, not merely for its functional importance, but because of what it represents: structures that shape our civilized, collective lives; architecture that finds beauty and clarity in its responsibility to the city and the public; projects that not only work hard but inspire.

Infrastructure That Inspires - Building As Cultural Catalyst

The design of the Spring Street Salt Shed is a celebrated civic architectural work whose crystalline form is a bold neighborhood landmark.

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Fashion designer Heron Preston held his first formal Fashion Week presentation–UNIFORM, a collaboration with NYC Department of Sanitation emphasizing sustainability–in 2016 at the Spring Street Salt Shed.

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Preston invited the Dattner team to created a runway-only iteration of Tyvek suiting featuring 3D quilted triangles and foam-impregnated linings for Spring/Summer 2020.

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Dattner Architects developed the show's multi-level scaffolding set backdrop at the Palais de Tokyo. The design focused on reusable, very low-waste materials (the scaffolding will be deconstructed and purposed again, at a future construction site). The grid-work also served as a screen for video projections of New York City street vignettes, lensed by Nicolas Heller.

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"Imagine how cityscapes would improve if all municipal buildings were met with such elegant consideration?”
— Catherine Sweeny, "A Salt Shed as Beautiful as a Museum", Azure Magazine

Envisioning the Future of Essential Architecture

Our long experience designing municipal infrastructure inspires us to envision its future potential. We imagine a world in which an expanded digital realm continuoulsy exchanges vast amount of data to the physical world, allowing infrastructure to become smarter, ecologically attuned and better integrated into its surroundings. As the world continus to urbanize and become more crowded, infrastrure will become more sophisticated and versitile. Instead of thinking simply in terms of structures, we will increasingly think of it in environmental terms: asking not only “ what does it do?”, but “how does it interact?”

“Expressing the civic significance of public structures by superior architecture, meeting community needs, and respecting neighborhoods—literally repairs and enhances the urban fabric of our city. Among the greatest satisfactions of designing in the public interest is the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens pass through, or use, our designs—every day.”
— Richard Dattner, FAIA

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