In honor of Earth Week, we’ve made a temporary change to our logo. While efforts to make everything—including buildings—“greener” tend to dominate the environmental conversation (especially around Earth Day), the energy already embodied in existing buildings should be higher on the sustainability agenda. SUPERSTRUCTURES has long subscribed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s position that “the greenest building is one already built.”

Steve Job’s story of helping his father build a fence around the family’s home illustrates the attention to hidden detail that had long influenced his design philosophy. Jobs later insisted that the interior workings of Apple products—the circuit boards unseen by most—must be equally elegant. At SUPERSTRUCTURES, we take a page from Apple’s approach. Our construction documents—drawings and specifications—are as elegant as the restoration projects they define.

We restore the exteriors of the buildings that are the lifeblood of New York City: government buildings, hospitals, transit hubs, universities, museums, and public schools. We work on New York City’s most prominent buildings—those that make the city run as well as those that turn heads. And we do more of it than anyone else.

Both pre-modern (“historic”) and modern buildings are the same to SUPERSTRUCTURES in the sense that we don’t discriminate between ornate, 19th century terra cotta facades and glass-and-steel curtain walls. For our seasoned team of architects and engineers, reinforced concrete and steel are just as worthy of restoration as the decorative trappings of Beaux Arts, Gothic-Revival, or Renaissance-Revival styles.

Tempus fugit. Time flies. No matter how you say it, the expression holds true when you have a “new” building. If your building is just five years old, an Initial FISP/Local Law 11 report may be due.

…it would be this guy. We’d call him Bucky, after fellow visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller. Bucky’s innovative solution to the maze sums up our mission in a single gif: why follow convention when there’s a better, more direct path?

SUPERSTRUCTURES is excited to launch the fourth season of the Frost Jacking Day Tracker. "Frost jacking" is what happens when freezing temperatures cause rain or snow to turn to ice and expand cracks in a facade. As cycles of freezing and thawing accumulate, the cracks continue to grow and exterior hazardous conditions or interior water damage or leaks can occur.

When you think of historic buildings, a few things probably come to mind: centuries-old architecture, monumental public spaces, and Presidents’ mansions. Those are reasonable examples, but at SUPERSTRUCTURES, we treat every project with the same precision and thoughtful restoration strategy, whether the building is 20 years old or 200 years old.

From the job seeker’s point of view, the services of a recruiter (a.k.a. “headhunter”) might appear to be free. But recruiters charge prospective employers a lot to place a candidate in an architecture or engineering firm. We’d rather dedicate those funds to building, supporting, and compensating our team. Plus, as an acknowledged leader in our field, we know the qualifications we value better than any recruiter could.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.” (Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises). The building envelope behaves the same way. Gradually, minor masonry cracks widen, leaks worsen, and sealant failures are neglected until suddenly, a section of parapet crashes to the street, a sidewalk vault collapses, or a roof leak ruins a priceless set of first-edition Hemingway novels. The author’s clever point is that Mike’s bankruptcy might have been “sudden,” but it should not have been unexpected.