Peaceful Satisfaction: Miriam Peterson on Specificity, Peer Support, and the Pleasure of Hard Work

By Caitlin Dashiell

Miriam is a Principal at Peterson Rich Office (PRO). She majored in Economics at Cornell University. Her advanced undergraduate research focused on issues related to urban economics and more specifically the factors impacting depressed areas within the urban cores that were left behind after white flight and urban renewal. As an M.Arch at Yale University School of Architecture, her design and seminar work focused on investigating how public investments in infrastructure can facilitate the creation of public spaces and environmentally responsible development. Upon graduation she was awarded the William Edward Parsons Memorial Medal for the student showing the most promise in urban design. Miriam is currently Adjunct Faculty at the Yale School of Architecture.

Before co-founding PRO in 2012, Miriam spent five years working for Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects on major institutional projects including The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, PA and The Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. In her interview, Miriam speaks with Caitlin Dashiell about learning the craft of architecture and keeping her practice running, advising young architects to stay in touch with their professors and mentors.

CD: How did your interest in architecture first develop?

MP: I’m the child of two architects who practiced together, so I have been surrounded by architecture my entire life – literally, the walls of the apartment where I grew up were covered in engravings of plans, sections, and elevations. I was also aware of the unique passion and consistent dedication that comes along with being a design professional. In a way, I probably tried to avoid becoming an architect for as long as humanly possible. [laughs].

I went to Cornell and studied Economics and Italian. In undergrad, I was primarily interested in how environmental factors, in particular in urban contexts, influence human behavior - but I was always friends with the kids in the architecture program. Then, when I was a sophomore, 9/11 happened. By the time I was a senior, there were many, controversial public conversations about what to do with the Ground Zero site, and I realized that design could impact politics, society, and how we remember a significant event in our history.

Telfair Studio Exterior, Lyme, CT. Built on a rural site overlooking the Connecticut River, this studio was commissioned by an artist who paints large-scale, imagined landscape paintings. The building also evokes landscape, the black wood siding is of the earth, while the anodized aluminum roof is of the sky. Photography by Kevin Kunstadt.

Proposal for Metropolitan Avenue, in Brooklyn, NY. The design is a deep study of masonry building technique. Corners are curved, giving the brick an appearance of softness that will change with the sunlight over the course of the day. Image courtesy of PRO.

You hadn’t formally studied architecture though, at this point - what did you do when you graduated?

The American Folk Art Museum had just been completed, and I remember going to visit the building with a couple of friends. I had never seen anything like it before, and I wanted to work for the architects who designed it. I interviewed with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien; Tod essentially said, “If we give you an opportunity to work here, I want you to take it seriously and to consider it a part of your education.” Since I hadn’t yet studied architecture formally, I was very lucky to have the opportunity to intern in their office. I did that for just under two years, and then went to Yale to pursue architecture fully.

What do you take away from your time at Yale?

I met Nathan there!

Otherwise, in our time at Yale, Nathan and I have both been supported by a handful of mentors from Yale, many of whom have become friends and colleagues. It’s important in our field to be supportive of one another. It’s not an easy profession. I feel that there has been an attitude shift in the younger generations of architects. There are fewer architectural “camps.”  We don’t feel the need to position ourselves in opposition to someone else. It’s not a zero-sum game. My opinion, approach, or values might not align with yours, but both can be valid and valuable, depending on the context.

“I feel that there has been an attitude shift in the younger generations of architects. There are fewer architectural “camps.” We don’t feel the need to position ourselves in opposition to someone else.”

That’s great to hear. What did you then do after Yale?

I always graduate after moments of crisis [laughs]. I graduated architecture school in 2009 after the market crashed. That timeline, coupled with my roots in economics, have made me hyperaware of the relationship between the economy and our profession. In 2008, the field of architecture was among the first to directly and immediately feel the impact of the crash. At the end of the day, our ability to realize a creative practice is dependent upon clients, markets, and other people’s resources.

When I graduated, only four or five people had commitments at architecture firms. I came home to New York City with a roof over my head and I took the summer to just be a person. Then I was lucky that Tod and Billie had an opening for me to come back to their office and I got to jump right into construction documents for the Barnes Foundation. I learned in a very short time how to put a building together and to understand that design is as much about larger overarching concepts as it is the expression of a detail - that was very much the focus of my work there.

And then you started your own practice?

Nathan and I joke that we talked about it on our first date, and that’s not untrue. We had my parents as married architects to look up to, as well as Mimi Huang and Eric Bunge from nArchitects, Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith from MOS, and of course Tod and Billie. We knew early on it was the direction we wanted to go in.

We opened the office with a commission to design a painting studio along the Connecticut River. The client was Nathan’s painting professor from college; she had been living in New York and Lyme, but would eventually migrate to Connecticut full time and she wanted her own studio designed around her creative process. We started working together on nights and weekends, but there was not the pressure of a timeline to the project – we were designing for a future that had no start date. Six months in, she called and officially said, “Let’s do this.” I was at a good stopping point on the project I had been working on with Todd and Billie, and decided that this was the time to take a leap of faith.

Nathan and Miriam in the studio. Image courtesy of PRO.

Miriam with colleagues in the early days of PRO. Image courtesy of PRO.

How did you transition?

I went from working on over 100,000 SF buildings, with teams of twelve to fifteen architects, to sitting in our home office drawing this entire 1200 SF building by myself [laughs]. But, it became our first built project. I kept the office going for about two years before Nathan joined me.

In a way, our practice was on the low-burner until Nathan came on board, and then we were both fighting for our lives to make it work. At the beginning of our practice, we had his salary to support us, so we could rely on that and a little bit of teaching for financial support. When he came on board that leg was dropped out from under us.

How do you approach the work now that the two of you are on your own?

We put in a lot of work early on and we are open-minded when we meet people, connecting about things not related to design necessarily. We work hard to build trust. For us, it’s non-negotiable for a client to be able to trust their architect to represent their best interests, to design something they’re going to be excited about.

“We had my parents as married architects to look up to, as well as Mimi Huang and Eric Bunge from nArchitects, Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith from MOS, and of course Tod and Billie. We knew early on it was the direction we wanted to go in.”

You are also now a professor at Yale. How do you look at things as an educator?

I feel lucky that I get to teach – it is something I choose to do because I love it, not because I need the salary. There’s something about doing a desk crit or working in a design studio with a student – I try to draw out their interests. People have different teaching styles, and mine is a more of a nurturing and conversational approach. I’m there to teach what I know, and I try to open up opportunities that stem from a student’s individual perspective.

Tell me about how motherhood has played a part in your process as well.

Before Eve, Nathan and I could seamlessly go from work to bed and there was no hard stop at the end of the day. She’s created a good boundary between work and life. Also, because we’re partners in the office and life, we’re able to co-parent in a very equitable way. It’s never a struggle between my career or Nathan’s - we’re both ultimately in service of the same goals. I don’t know what it would be like to be a mother and to work for someone else. I can certainly imagine the immense challenges that would come with that.

Galerie Perrotin Entry, in New York, NY. The historic upper facade of the Beckenstein Building was restored with the new gallery entry defined with blackened steel panels. Photography by Rafael Gamo.

Galerie Perrotin Ground Floor, New York, NY. The ceiling arches provide even, indirect light to exhibition spaces providing flexiblity. Since opening in April of 2018, the gallery has staged exhibitions of works on paper, installations of large-scale sculpture, photography, films, and traditional painting. Photography by Eric Petschek.

Where would you say you are in your career today?

The poem First Fig, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1920) resonates somehow with where I am right now in work and life. It goes:

My candle burns at both ends;
    It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
    It gives a lovely light!

When I first read it, I thought, is this poem about death? But then, as I read it over again, I came to realize that, to me anyway, it’s about the beauty and maybe the pleasure that stems from hard and focused work – and of course, given the date that it was published, the author’s agency in choosing to work as a woman. The poem also recognizes the temporary nature of this condition — burning the candle at both ends is not something that can be sustained indefinitely, but the result brings peaceful satisfaction.

Also, the biggest shift in the last twelve months has been that people come to us because they’re familiar with our work and because they want our voice in their project. It’s a different conversation when a client or collaborator comes to you having visited a project and with a fundamental respect for your creative practice.

That’s amazing – not having to explain what you’re about in convincing someone that they should hire you. On the flipside, what are now the biggest challenges for you?

An unspoken reality is that we’re not trained in architecture school to be business owners. It’s not something that you’re cognizant of when you’re working for someone else. There are invisible structures that happen around you, to you, and that provide essential support for you. But you’re not privy to the behind-the-scenes realities and complexities of running a business. The world is not set up to be financially beneficial to small businesses.

For example, affordable and decent health insurance is not available to a company with fewer than 50 employees, but everyone should have access to affordable healthcare in this country! I have spent more of my time than I ever expected researching and figuring out how to provide and afford the best things for the people who work for us. It’s an essential part of creating a positive work environment. If you asked me if there was something else I could do with my life, I would work on the policy side to figure out how to provide better healthcare for people. Affordable housing has become the subject of ongoing research in our office – policy plays an enormous part in the discussion but design has its place as well. We try to recognize the particular strengths that we have as designers and to have an impact in areas where we can contribute and add the most value.

“No matter how big or small your practice is, you always have to be concerned with what the next thing is going to be. You are never in a moment of complete stasis. You are always on a trajectory forward.”

With this in mind, you recently became a Kaplan Chair for Urban Design for the Regional Plan Association. How does this translate into your work?

What’s been great about working with RPA is that their focus is on the policy side of the issues we are most passionate about. The RPA’s report on NYCHA came out last November, so now we’re ramping up our work to directly relate to those policy proposals. It’s great to hear the issues they’re focusing on, and think about how design is an intricate part of that - it’s not the way they’ve always thought about it.

It’s important we talk about architecture from a “let’s all come to the table” perspective. We have the opportunity to make the most impact when we’re not trying to be insular.

Exactly.

What have been the biggest highlights in your career?

When I first started the office, I had coffee with Deborah Berke. She said, “The first time you see a detail of your own project that you’ve drawn become realized, it’s this incredibly rewarding experience.” I had seen the Barnes Foundation during construction, but watching the art studio in Connecticut manifest from a corner to a reveal – it’s a simple building and so the detail is what it’s all about. It looks simple, but, as with many things in architecture, it’s wrought with a lot of coordination and thought. Seeing that building become a reality, watching the doors get installed – the highlights are these kinds of simple things. 

Model of Abney Studio, in Cold Spring, NY. The painter Nina Chanel Abney recently commissioned Peterson Rich Office to convert a dilapidated garage building in Cold Spring, NY into a live/work studio space. The design is an adaptive reuse of the existing structure, strategically re-purposing concrete block walls for a new layout and building form. Image courtesy of PRO.

Glossier Flagship Stair, New York, NY. With the main retail area located on the 2nd floor, the stair became the starting point for the design. It functions as a transitional space from the street into the serene and softly lit interior. Photography by Jason Schmidt.

What would you say your general approach to your life or your practice is? What’s your motto?

The word “specificity” comes to the foreground as what we’re after. Every single project starts with a series of empirical observations, and there’s a specificity in the design response - it’s not alien to the place, or the context, or the people who might be using it. It works at the scale of our research with the New York City Housing Authority where we’re looking at a giant portfolio of 250 campuses across five boroughs looking for scalable design solutions, to Galerie Perrotin where the indirect lighting strategy came from understanding the underlying structural system of the building. Specificity operates at every level and scale.

Is there anything you wish you had known when you were first starting out?

No matter how big or small your practice is, you always have to be concerned with what the next thing is going to be. You are never in a moment of complete stasis. You are always on a trajectory forward. That’s exciting, because it means there are new opportunities on the horizon to consider. It’s completely a part of why I got into architecture in the first place, but there’s also something unsettling about that, being early to mid-career. There’s always the next thing that you need to be thinking about. What is it? What are we excited about? What can we do now?

It’s daunting, but it moves you.

It’s where all the possibilities are. They lie in the future.

Finally, what advice do you have for those in the profession that are just starting their careers?

People are often shy about keeping in touch with their former professors, co-workers, and mentors. Don’t be! Say “Hello” from time to time. We are a part of a really supportive community. We teachers, we former employees, we mentors - we would like to hear from all of you and see what you’re up to.