It’s official. Just in time for the start of the City’s 9th Cycle Facade Inspection Safety Program (FISP) on February 21, 2020, the New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) has published a new amended rule aimed at increasing safety…
Over the years, various boards of directors at Parkside Assocation, located at 549 41st Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, resolved to replace the leaky roof of the 89-year-old building. But best intentions aside, they managed only temporary fixes and patchwork repairs.…
A moldy basement, leaking roofs, and oatmeal-like mortar are scary things no one should ever encounter in a newly renovated building. Unfortunately for one cooperative in Harlem, a less than stellar gut renovation, which included a new roof, windows, and joist…
Rarely does a repair project go exactly as planned, which is why it’s critical to have a contingency plan. And sometimes the contingency plan itself needs a contingency plan. Such was the case on a structural rehabilitation project that RAND…
When it comes to your health, ignorance is not bliss. Refusing to let your doctor perform routine tests and procedures because you’re afraid he’ll find you have a disease is a shortsighted, if not willfully blind, decision. So is avoiding…
As an architectural student in Istanbul and Europe, I had the opportunity to study some inspiring buildings. I was reminded of those buildings when I was assigned as the project manager of an exterior repair program RAND recently completed at…
After nearly 14 wonderful years at RAND, I have left my regular full-time role of Senior Project Associate to take on a new position pursuing an old passion—teaching masonry preservation at a newly established high school. Before I tell you…
Beauty, they say, is more than skin deep. At 33 Fifth Avenue, a luxury co-op in Greenwich Village, the board had to go more than skin deep to restore the beauty of their building and make it watertight. Time had…
New York City has nearly one million buildings (975,000 by the DOB’s count), many of them prewar constructions with historic features that require regular maintenance and repair to guard against the ravages of time and weather. Yet for New York…