Rendering of the renovation of St. Vincent's O'Toole Building. Courtesy Perkins Eastman.

Presenting to the community board has got be one of the toughest parts of an architect’s job. The mood in the room at last night’s CB2 meeting for St. Vincent’s Campus Redevelopment Project was cantankerous at best. The public scoping meeting, one of the first steps in the review process, gave an overview of the building massing on the site and delved into environmental impacts. Time for community input was scheduled to follow the developers’ presentations, but that didn’t stop the crowd from shouting down Perkins Eastman’s Frank Gunther and FX Fowle’s Dan Kaplan. As Kaplan worked his way through his presentation he was interrupted with shouts of “Soulless architecture for soulless people.” They were no kinder to Gunther, who discussed several details of the O’Toole renovations, including the removal of the ceramic tiles.  Gunther said the tiles were not original to the building’s facade, which was concrete.

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