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Rick Polvino
Title: Principal, SLAM Boston
Age: 53
Industry experience: 28 years
S/L/A/M Collaborative is growing in Boston with plans to double the size of its Fort Point offices’ workforce. Headquartered in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the 220-employee architecture firm opened its 250 Summer St. office in 2005 and recently signed its second lease extension. A renovation project completed in August transformed the offices with flexible open-format space and local artwork, as SLAM prepares to hire an additional 20 employees in the next few years. The firm is seeking to expand its work in the health care and workplace sectors to augment its traditional strength in school building projects.
Q: In your work designing K-12 schools, are you seeing a return to the open classroom format and does it differ from the original models in the 1970s?
A: We’re using some of those principles in K-12. Obviously, they’re not adults so there needs to be a lot more supervision. You need to be strategic about how you use open space. There needs to be a feature within that space, such as stairs that go to nowhere, where people can sit and meet or have a class. Writable surfaces are key. That’s been a big thing in higher ed and the corporate world. In K-12, it’s becoming more of a necessity. We’re doing a school in North Providence with a learning commons. It’s an open-format space, but it’s going to be multipurpose that will have a lot of tools for learning within it. Daylight is a big thing with K-12 these days as well: not just daylight itself and keeping down usage of artificial light, but more views and sometimes thermal comfort by operable windows.
Q: How are schools redesigning for security in the wake of Sandy Hook and similar incidents?
A: The challenge with security is you don’t want to create any kind of prison-like design. Half the schools have an open door, and half of them are a little stricter in that regard. Obviously since Sandy Hook, a lot of people are thinking about it harder. Access control technology is a big thing, and surveillance. Sometimes it can be as simple as not providing benches too close to the front door. If you have a door closing, someone who’s sitting on a bench can jump in. It’s a balance.
Q: What’s SLAM’s role in the Shattuck Hospital redevelopment and how is the vision for the property coming into focus?
A: That’s a [400,000-square-foot] $66 million project on which we’re the prime architect. The original facilities weren’t meeting their needs. It’s a three-fold facility: acute care hospital, mental health and also corrections inmates. Each has to be separate and have their own separate rules. The goal for the state is for it to be the safety net hospital, taking folks that not all hospitals can take. As we’re getting into the programming and working with them, we’re finding out that the state and Division of Capital Asset Management want to do more than they can afford. Our task is to create options that are within their budget, and some that aren’t, and then they can make some informed decisions. The schematic design is due in June.
Q: In the corporate sector, is there a pullback from open format offices?
A: That was the big buzz a few years ago. Now studies are coming out that noise is an issue: your neighbors on the phone, not enough glass-enclosed rooms. It’s going to be a mix: a lot of enclosed, shared spaces, more enclosed breakout areas, group workrooms. All-open just isn’t working. However, the pro is that you can jam more people into the square-footage, and corporate folks like that. We’ve been specifying a lot of sound masking and white noise. Finishes help with the sound masking: not just ceilings and floors, but carpets and acoustical file, innovative ways to mask off the walls. It could be artwork in a fabric form.
Q: As you look to expand your Boston workforce, what qualities do you look for in job candidates?
A: If we’re looking for a strategic hire, a senior person to fill a void of a market or specific expertise, we would primarily look for experience – if they’re able to go out and win work – and their expertise. If it’s a senior person in retail, we wouldn’t be too interested because we want somebody who has a lot of depth and background in our markets. With the junior and emerging professionals right out of school, I look for previous office experience, no matter what that is. It’s not just where they went to school and their GPA, but their sports and volunteer work. I have two folks brought on because they did roofing for a summer. Anything hands-on, I look for. In the middle group, I need a communicator because project managers need to do a lot of communication with their own staff and consultants. Technology, such as Revit and BIM, is almost a prerequisite now. The tough part of the mid-level is during the recession, a lot of kids getting out of school couldn’t get any architecture-related jobs and they went off to other things: software, sales. There’s a dearth right now of people with 10-year experience.
Q: What were the goals of your recent Fort Point office renovations?
A: We were trying to create the same theme with all of our offices. The furniture was a lot darker, it sucked a lot of the light out. We get more light on the countertops where we need it. We created more breakout areas, more variable seating options to get out of your chair and talk to a coworker. And also, I’ll call it a cafe, where we just had a galley kitchen. We’ve enhanced our technology with touchscreens and built-in cameras. It’s a great recruiting tool when you update a space.
Polvino’s Five Favorite Ski Resorts:
- Mount Snow, Vermont
- Park City, Utah
- Aspen/Snowmass, Colorado
- Deer Valley, Utah
- Vail, Colorado
