Function Before Beauty: CO Adaptive's Ruth Mandl on Questioning the Status Quo
By Amy Stone
Ruth is a Principal of CO Adaptive and a licensed architect, registered in New York and Massachusetts. She completed her M.Arch at Columbia University in 2010. Prior to founding CO Adaptive with Bobby, Ruth’s experience within architecture ranges from working on large cultural institutions for Eisenman Architects and Coop Himmelblau to small residential and restaurant projects for Richard Lewis Architect.
Ruth received her BA in Interior Architecture from Kingston University in London in 2005, which started her enthusiasm for adaptive reuse, and her thinking that in it lies the key to the growth of our cities. She grew up in Vienna, Austria, and has now lived in New York City for sixteen years. In her interview with Amy Stone, Ruth talks about finding the intersection of beauty and functionality, advising those just starting their careers to question the way things are done.
AS: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
RM: My grandfather was an architect in Vienna, Austria. I grew up going to his office, which was at my grandparents’ house. We would go there every Sunday, and I would get to hang out in his studio with his big drawing table and his stencils. I was always into art as a kid, and architecture showed me a profession that was all about drawing.
My sister and I went to an international school from kindergarten on. My parents spent time living in Boston before we were born, which made them want us to grow up speaking a second language. As for my trajectory, I followed my sister to different places. She studied in England, and I followed, and also studied there. Later, she went to the US for her PhD and she took a trip to New York and said that I would love the city. She was right.
I came to New York and worked for two years after I graduated with my undergraduate degree. I applied all over and ended up getting a job at a small architectural practice in the city. I arrived with a ten-month visa and fell in love with New York. I then worked for Eisenman for a few months before applying for graduate schools and getting into Columbia GSAPP.
Ruth walking through COA’s Timber Adaptive Reuse project during construction.
Ruth standing in the completed assembly space of the Timber Adaptive Reuse project.
What did you learn about yourself while you were studying architecture?
I came into this profession with a desire for beauty. What I learned about myself is that my passion is actually for functionality and problem-solving. Even though aesthetics are still very important for me, this is now a secondary priority.
How did that switch happen?
During Columbia, one elective that stood out to me was on urbanization and sustainability. It drove home things that I was already thinking about: how architecture defines how we live on this planet, and therefore has a responsibility to it. There’s a lack of attention to that — going back hundreds of years.
Your practice has a strong focus on passive house, high performance architecture, and sustainability. Did you always know that you wanted to start your own office?
I only got that idea when I met my husband, Bobby Johnston, at Columbia, who always knew he wanted to have his own practice. We are very different but also very alike in our passions; we think that the profession places too much importance on aesthetics, and we are both dedicated to exploring how buildings can affect their inhabitants and change the way we inhabit this planet. We work well as a unit because we have this very similar performative baseline of how we think about things.
We started the process to open our own firm in 2011. At that time, the economy was in recession, but I pushed him to start anyway because he was so unhappy at his job.
“As architects, we are trained to understand that our impact is to create beautiful one-off pieces to be remembered in a singular way. When, in reality, in order to make an impact in the current crisis our planet finds itself in, it is more important to figure out how to make existing buildings more efficient.”
So did you both leave your full-time jobs to start CO Adaptive?
Not quite. Bobby left his job, and he was all in. However, I had an amazing boss at the time who wanted me to stay and finish the project that I was managing. I stayed to see that project finish up, working remotely with him while starting to spend more time on CO Adaptive. It took me six months to transition full-time to COA.
What’s been the trajectory of your practice together?
We started out very scrappy and dirty. We took on everything. We said no to nothing, and did all the filing and permitting ourselves. From the very beginning, we never worked with expeditors, which was great because it taught us a lot about how to get things done in this city.
We actually advertised ourselves early on. I remember we had an ad out in Brooklyn Magazine and a developer contacted us through that ad to do an apartment renovation. It was this little quarter unit in a landmark building, and the budget was really tight. The developer was open-minded about being creative with the design to make the budget work. The project turned out great — we still have it up on our website, even though it was completed in 2013, because it represents an essence of who we are.
We slowly worked our way up and had some amazing clients along the way. We would promote the projects that we liked, and we used that to get more work. One pivotal moment was when we renovated our own townhouse. We turned our home into a passive, net-zero house. This renovation was a hallmark project that we utilized to attract the kind of projects we want to do.
Ruth and her daughter Lucia at their home while it was undergoing renovation to a Passive House.
How has motherhood played into this?
Without the ability to run my own business, I don’t think that I could be a mom and be in architecture at the same time. I get to set my own hours. I get to be precise about my work-life balance – something that we very consciously do with our team. At CO Adaptive, everyone works strict eight-hour days. We care about working smarter, not harder. We drew a line in the sand and found that it’s okay to do that. I’m super passionate about running my business this way. If more firms did this, more women in architecture could be in higher positions and be mothers at the same time.
Where are you in your career right now?
We’re at that point where we have done enough projects that represent who we are and how we want to work. Because of that, people come to us, which allows us to work on what we want to be doing. I feel like my career has come to a full circle — I’m putting into practice some of the things I thought about in grad school, so I’m in a really good place in my career.
We’re working on a really exciting project right now for a 1940’s Queens house. We are asking: what is the minimum amount we can do to retrofit this into a Passive House? It’s been very surgical, and it’s also the lowest carbon footprint PH we’ve done because we’re keeping as much as possible intact while we upgrade it. The project is fueling our current research into designing for disassembly and deconstruction.
“One thing leads to another — one person believing in you leads to another person believing in you.”
What are your biggest highlights?
I feel like I’ve had several highlights. It’s always a highlight when people take a chance on me and believe in me. During my undergraduate studies, I applied for internships in Vienna. I only applied to two places that interested me the most at the time. I had an interview at Coop Himmelblau, where I clicked with the women who interviewed me, so I got the job. With that name on my resume, I got the job at Eisenman, and that experience became really instrumental in getting me into Columbia. One thing leads to another — one person believing in you leads to another person believing in you. Looking back on it, I feel like I can’t take any credit for it, either — I was on a roll of luck.
What have been some of the biggest challenges?
I remember graduating from Columbia with this confidence from my Master’s degree in my back pocket and my passion to go out into the world, but it was a really bad time. It was 2010 and it was difficult to get a job. I interviewed at several places, excited about their work, but the pay they offered me was peanuts.
I distinctly remember one job. There was a personal project that I was working on at the time, so when I got another job offer with very little compensation from a firm I really admired, I said, “I will take this if it means I can work nine-to-five and get weekends off.” They responded, “We don’t offer full-time pay for part-time work.” I didn’t take the job.
Now as an employer, I make sure our team is respected and compensated for the work that they do without expecting that to look like midnight hours and work on the weekends. It’s just not how we should run this profession. If we value the students coming out of school and entering our practice, it will bring the whole profession up.
Who are you admiring right now and why?
My world is pretty insular. I’m a mother and I run my own practice, so the people I admire are those in my everyday life. My sister — she’s raising two boys, and just got tenure at McGill. She’s doing amazing things in supporting other women and LGBTQ people in science. Another really good friend is managing to run the global public relations of a big fashion house while having a nine-month-old. I admire women who inspire me to find a work-life balance, while also supporting and uplifting each other.
Ruth and Bobby in their first office in Bushwick, 2013. Photo by Peter Dressel.
I always think it shows a lot of wisdom to have your eyes open to the examples around you. Do you feel like you have a core mission? What’s the impact you want to have on the world?
I read an article from the Guardian written by Rowan Moore, titled “Where are the architects who will put the environment first?” He wrote something in the article that resonated with me. As architects, we are trained to understand that our impact is to create beautiful one-off pieces to be remembered in a singular way. When, in reality, in order to make an impact in the current crisis our planet finds itself in, it is more important to figure out how to make existing buildings more efficient. How do we bring our cities into the future with resiliency? It is not about being iconic — it’s about scaling the need to make resilient architecture more accessible and more affordable. My core mission, therefore, centers around efficiency and respecting our time. We don’t need to stay up until midnight to create perfection. Instead, we have to solve problems in a scalable way — with respect for each other and this amazing planet.
What is something that you know now that you wish you knew starting out?
How to run a practice. In school, we don’t learn how to manage people, money, or time. We are very focused on how to sell ideas and how to create them — which is great — but we should have more of a balance.
What advice do you have for those starting out?
Don’t be afraid to query the way that things are done now and have always been done. Don’t be shy to question the status quo. I wish somebody told me that because it took many years for me to say, “I reject that. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Can we do it differently?” I think this profession can use more of that.