22 July 2012 www.TheRealDeal.

com This birdhouse was designed by Robert Siegel and Charles Gwathmey, the heads of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects. The birdhouse is a prototype, but a replica sold at auction for $4,000. I call it the most expensive real estate in New York City, because it [went] for $16,000 per square foot Kaufman jokes. Kaufman bought this novelty book, Why Do Architects Wear Black? at a museum in Berlin.
PHOTOGRAPH FOR THE REAL DEAL BY CHRIS MARTIN

At

the

Desk

of:Gene

kAufmAn
from Cornell University, then launched Gene Kaufman Architects when he was 28. A year ago, he bought Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, though he still operates his eponymous firm, and now boasts a combined 60 architects working from his airy, loftlike Soho office. His designs have at times been panned by critics, to which Kaufman said: The best artists and the leading innovators frequently engender the most opposition. If you dont get any criticism, you arent trying hard enough. By Guelda Voien

ene Kaufman, one of New York Citys most prolific architects, has designed numerous hotels and residential projects, including the Hotel Williamsburg and the revamp of Manhattans famed Chelsea Hotel. He is currently at work on new hotels at 120 West 57th Street and 1414 Avenue of the Americas, and recently took over for Costas Kondylis as the architect on two 50-story residential and hotel towers planned for Jersey City. Born and bred in New York, Kaufman worked for Raphael Vinoly Architects after graduating

For Kaufman, this tribal figurine from early 20th-century Papua New Guinea serves as inspiration. I think that any good designer finds inspiration wherever they look, but obviously, something more interesting is more conducive to that, he says.

This Chetrit Group project, rising at 500 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, is one of many Kaufman has done in the trendy neighborhood, an area whose earlier blight he remembers vividly. I walked around Williamsburg when I was first interested in doing something there, in, say, 1982, and I watched a guy steal a fire hydrant, he says.

This Mexican artifact, which is over 2,000 years old, was used by indigenous peoples to grind food. I like this piece because the form is very functional, but its also archetypal and almost anthropomorphic, Kaufman says.

This figurine of an architect leaning over a drafting table was a gift from Kaufmans parents. Kaufman, who received a degree in architecture from Cornell in 1981, recalls the back pain architects commonly suffered before the profession switched to computers.

This ceramic octopus is a memento from the Green Octopus bed and breakfast, which Kaufman and his wife operated out of their West Village townhouse until 2000. The couple borrowed $400,000 from a client to buy the house in the early 1990s, then opened a B&B there to help pay him back.

This aluminum hard hat, which Kaufman bought at a flea market, is from the 1940s. He notes that Andy Warhol was also known to scavenge for urban treasures at the same flea market on Sixth Avenue in Chelsea.

During a rough patch for his fledgling firm, Kaufman moved my office, with my three employees at the time, into my house, he says. Thats when the firm was at its bottom. His uncle custom-built this desk, with its sharply slanted edges, to fit into the house. Hes kept it as a reminder of how his firm struggled in the past.

This teapot comes from China, where Kaufmans firm recently formed a joint venture with Li Yuan, an architecture firm based in the burgeoning city of Wuhan. Kaufman is currently taking Mandarin lessons.