The City College of New York
Schiff Daycare Center
Perhaps choosing an imposing and dilapidated neo-gothic house to serve as a daycare center might be an unlikely choice. But with Michielli + Wyetzner Architect's inventive interventions, this new facility offers an elegant, fresh spaces to the babies, toddlers, and young kids of City College's students and faculty.
This project started as an inside-out puzzle - take a bunch of disparate, almost random rooms, with many floor levels due to a myriad of prior uses, and fuse everything into a neatly laid out, harmonious space. Birch plywood is the primary material, offering the warmth of natural wood while also being highly durable. Highlights of color are deployed strategically for maximum effect, leading the eye out to the vibrant playground.
Photographed Summer 2020, Summer 2021.
Please note there are no children present due to the pandemic.
Architect: Michielli + Wyetzner Architects
Landscape Architect: Joanna Pertz Landscape Architecture
Lighting: Anita Jorgensen Lighting Design
Builder: Volmar Construction
I love the built environment. My photographic practice is anchored by my fascination with design, urbanity and the tactile experience of our surroundings. I believe that our built environment is in tension between intentionality and circumstance, the whole made more powerful by the nature of its duality. My passion is creating photographic representations at the intersection of design, implementation, and context.
I believe in telling stories. Great photography creates narrative strings that enhance our understanding of the built environment. I use my experience to highlight, finesse, contextualize the ideas embedded in each project. My goal is to explore implementations of great design, distilling and connecting photographic vignettes that offer insight into the ideas that shape our world.
I began my career as an architectural designer and refined my focus to the representation of architecture. My interest is in built work - the physical manifestation of design. Through scouting, planning, photographing and all the steps that come after, I refine the representation of each project to best reflect the goals of my clients.
I hold a Bachelor of the Arts in Architecture from Columbia University and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. I am based in Manhattan and available for assignments worldwide.
You can reach me at info@alexanderseverin.com