Photo courtesy of Choate Rosemary Hall
Mr. Steven Lazarus has worked at Choate for almost 20 years. He teaches one course and one course only — Architectural Design, an art elective that is typically held in the winter term.
In addition to teaching, he runs a small firm based in downtown Wallingford: Lazarus and Sargeant, Architects, which he co-founded in 1986. Now a team of seven, the firm is involved in a wide range of projects: large scale site planning, corporate and institutional facilities (including for Choate), residential homes, and interior design.
What is your process when tackling a project?
Architecture requires a mixed bag of skills. You must have a practical ability to make things work as well as an ability to creatively solve problems. The first component to solving a problem is to think about it with as few constraints as possible and create the ideal solution. You want to start with the ‘what if before letting practical considerations set in.
For example, my class was recently discussing the Beinecke Rare Book Library on Yale’s campus. The building was inspired by the practical decision to have light filter in through a thinly cut stone so that the books would be carefully preserved. That decision ended up affecting the entire design. The building became a ramping-up of that one idea to have stone panels.
Similarly, my process is not necessarily logical. It’s more about the interplay between practical and creative that leads to a design.
What recent projects have you been involved in at Choate?
There has been an on-going dormitory quality of life upgrade, and I’ve been working on that for the past handful of years. Every year we take on one or two dorms and make some improvements to them. The improvements are based upon recommendations from and conversations with students. For example, we just finished a ping-pong tournament lounge space in Clinton-Knight.
What has been your favorite project for Choate?
The varsity baseball dugouts. It was a modest project, but it was a lot of fun. There’s an old English tradition of designing garden follies, and in a lot of ways, the baseball dugouts remind me of them.
What has been your favorite project outside of Choate?
A large part of architecture is meant to help people. My favorite projects off campus have been when I’m helping someone with limited means to use what they have more efficiently.
If you could design anything in the world, what would it be?
The housing project that would bring about the rebirth of downtown Wallingford. It would cause people just out of college to say, “Wow, I really want to live in Wallingford.” It would be a multi-use complex with housing, retail, and commercial components. I’m really interested in helping Wallingford become even more vibrant than it already is.
What advice do you have for someone interested in architecture?
Being educated as an architect is a useful education. Probably only about 50% of people educated in architecture actually practice architecture, but that’s okay. Architecture changes the way you see things; it can be useful in a variety of places in the world — any place where there is a built environment, which is basically everywhere.
