Saratoga

In 2008, renowned New York City-based architect George Ranalli completed a renovation (commissioned by the New York City Housing Authority in Brooklyn) to Brownsville's Saratoga Community Center--adding 3,500 square feet to the existing 1,500 square-foot facility to create a highly functional and re imagined super-block. Ranalli's facades--adorned with geometric wall planes and featuring multiple masonry units and glass-fiber-reinforced-concrete cast details, mahogany doors and windows as well as an exposed steel structure on the roof--provides a series of exquisitely designed public spaces for its diverse local users. In addition to commentary by Michael Sorkin and Ranalli's sketches, drawings and computer images, this volume contains stunning images by New York-based architecture and design photographer Paul Warchol. In projects ranging from doorknobs to residences to office buildings, George Ranalli experiments with a distinctive brand of ornamentation, a machine-cut, linear vocabulary that suggests computer age manufacturing processes and geometries. For New York City's public housing agency, he uses glass-fiber-reinforced-concrete (GFRC) lintels and copestones, and buff-grey cement panels with routed joints indoors, to imbue a new community center with layers of meaning and visual interest.…