Peter L. Gluck - Early Work

Early Work

After graduation in 1965, Gluck purchased land in Vermont with the intention of building his own designs—a manifestation of the entrepreneurship that educator Denise Scott Brown has described as characteristic of Yale architecture students during the nineteen-sixties. Gluck purchased 100 acres (0.40 km2) near Warren, Vermont, for which he designed vacation condominiums that were actually erected a few years later in a nearby town, Bolton.

The 4 four-bedroom cluster housing units built in Bolton were partially pre-fabricated with the complicated outer form of the building broken down into component wall panels which were made in a local carpentry shop. "The real value of prefabrication in this case" says Gluck, "lies in getting the product fast and getting it when you want it, and maintaining quality control". It is also a way of betting a rather complex building gets built at all, in areas of the country where builders will either refuse to bid such a job or automatically figure it at a premium because of its unfamiliarity. This early goal of saving both time and money for clients and developers in an integrated design-build method is one that Gluck will carry through the rest of his work.

After designing a series of houses from New York to Newfoundland, Gluck went to Tokyo to design large projects for Takenaka Komuten Co., LTD a leading Japanese construction consortium. This experience influenced Gluck's later work both in his knowledge of Japan's traditional aesthetics and of its efficient modern methods of integrated construction and design.

In the 1970s and 1980s Gluck designed projects of all types including the Marriot Casa Marina (Key West, Florida), Ojai Valley Inn (Ojai, California), Trancas Medical Center (Napa, California) work for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Technimetrics Inc., Lloyd's Bank International in New York, in addition to many private residences.

In 1986 Gluck designed an addition to Uris Hall at Columbia University's School of Business. The original building, completed in 1964, was an eight-story glass and aluminum tower that had widely drawn sharp criticism since its inception. A 30,000 sf three-story addition designed by Gluck provided the building with a new entrance, classrooms, offices, a recruiting center plus student and faculty lounges and preserved something of the original McKim, Mead and White plan. The new facade brought Uris Hall into scale with the original plan and the use of limestone blended naturally with the Low Library directly in front of it.

In the end, perhaps the most pleasing thing about the new addition is the restraint and sense of decorum it exhibits. Indeed, despite its calculated historical resonances, the new Uris Hall addition remains a frankly Modernist building, though one that now acknowledges and defers to its surroundings.

During the years 1986-1989 Gluck designed the addition of guest quarters, an entertainment space and a pool to a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe house in Connecticut. His design, while clearly in the manner of Mies, incorporates elements that are fresh as well as deferential. In trying to "out-Mies Mies" the project grew technically more challenging so that in the end Gluck took on the role of contractor himself. The influence of Japanese style is evident in Gluck's work, as he created systems of panels which are reminiscent of the movable walls in traditional Japanese architecture. Also, dropping the ceilings and raising the floors within the pavilions by several inches are also classic Japanese devices for defining space. In the end "Gluck succeeded in producing work in the manner of Mies that transcends an exercise in imitation or role playing. It succeeds by not being exactly Mies while always being about Mies, an absorbing gloss in steel and glass. It's exactly the deference the master deserves".