This Architect Is About Much More Than Buildings

Nancy Ruddy raises buildings by building rapport.

"Architecture is teamwork, and I enjoy working collaboratively with people," the co-founder and managing principal of Cetra/Ruddy Incorporated, one of New York's top 10 architectural firms, said. "To me, the excitement of architecture is taking the diverse requirements of clients and creating a product that exceeds all expectations. I don't see myself as just a technician working on architectural drawings. I like the give and take."

Ms. Ruddy absorbed the art of give and take from her father, Samuel Ruddy, a prosperous retailer in the upscale New Jersey community of Montclair. Her mother, Sharon Friedman, now deceased, worked with her father; she was, her daughter said, "an extraordinary guiding light" for her and her older brother, Alan, who is a lawyer.

"My mother would say, 'You can be whatever you want to be - there will always be someone smarter, and perhaps prettier, but only you have a unique combination,'" Ms. Ruddy said.

Her mother's faith in her young daughter has played out in Ms. Ruddy's adult life as a career of designing diverse buildings and luxury housing.

"The complexity of architecture is what I love," Ms. Ruddy said. "The experience of great design can enrich people's life, as great art does. It is the architect's role to create inspiration in the everyday experience."

As someone born and raised in the suburbs, she said, her inspiration came from the big buildings of New York.

She said her sensibility was shaped by studying public housing projects all across America as part of her first job. After receiving a degree in architectural history from New York University, Ms. Ruddy completed a five-year architecture degree program at City College in three years. It was at City College that she met another star student, John Cetra, who became her partner in marriage and in business.

After City College, Ms. Ruddy joined the architectural firm of Perkins and Will. She was entrusted with an assignment to improve the standards for public housing.

"I was absolutely devastated by what I saw," Ms. Ruddy said. "Crowded apartments, poor sanitation, and virtually no recreation space - these were common in public housing projects."

Partly as a result of that early professional exposure, and partly because of her own high school experience in Head Start - a Federal program that serves preschool children and their low-income families - 60% of Cetra/Ruddy's work is in housing. Of that, Ms. Ruddy has committed to consistently working on special-needs housing, in addition to the luxury market. Those projects include housing for the homeless, for survivors of domestic abuse, and for people diagnosed with HIV.

"In considering how an architect can positively affect society at large, special needs housing is a means to truly affect a person's life," Ms. Ruddy said. "In special-needs housing, I always ask myself, 'What could I do as an architect?'"

That question was also posed, albeit in another context, by a man named Walter Weiner, then the chairman and CEO of the erstwhile Republic National Bank. The bank's founder, Edmond Safra, occupied a landmark building at 546 Fifth Avenue, and wanted to raise a tower around it.

Ms. Ruddy drew the assignment.

"It was just an extraordinary experience - a five-year experience," Ms. Ruddy said.

She led a team of 25 architects and designers in the construction of a 29-story building that wrapped around the bank's old building.

"My bosses at Attia and Perkins felt that they needed to assign someone to the project who was equal to Mr. Weiner's tenacity," Ms. Ruddy said. "I learned, among other things, that there was no risk in telling people what you think - if what you're saying is knowledge-based, and that your passion for the job is what being a professional is all about."

Although architecture is an exacting discipline, requiring great precision and technical excellence, Ms. Ruddy's definition of her profession included a special emotion.

"I have always been very passionate - I wear my passion on my sleeve," she said.

Innovative architecture, in Ms. Ruddy's view, isn't only about buildings that dazzle.

"You must have a keen understanding of branding and marketing," she said. "That's why, at Cetra/Ruddy, we use the art of design and architecture to create or reinforce the next chapter in a corporation's evolution."

Ms. Ruddy cites one of her much publicized current projects as a case in point: The conversion of the fabled Barbizon Hotel on East 63rd Street into 67 luxury condominiums.

"This project has had great importance to me as an architect, a woman, and as a New Yorker," Ms. Ruddy said. "It afforded me the challenge of taking a landmark-quality building and restoring the interior to the luxury and grandeur of what a building from 1927 might have held. The architectural challenge of maintaining the grace and elegance of this masterfully detailed exterior while converting it to modern uses was challenging and rewarding."

Another project that she cites with special affection is Tiger Mountain at the Bronx Zoo. Working in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Cetra/Ruddy designed an environmentally sensitive four-acre habitat for Siberian tigers.

Tiger Mountain was one of three projects designed by Cetra/Ruddy for the Bronx Zoo, the others being the new Butterfly House and the Bird Propagation Center.

"For an architect, this is a most exciting time to be in New York," Ms. Ruddy said. "In the city that used to be 'location, location, location,' it is now a city of citizens who appreciate and demand high-quality design."

Of course, her sense of excitement about New York dates back to her early fascination with the city when she was growing up across the river. But that sense was also shaped by two mentors - Bradford Perkins of Perkins and Will, and Eli Attia, of Attia and Perkins.

"I have always tried to emphasize collaboration, excellence, and a humanitarian spirit," Ms. Ruddy said. "It's not just a philosophy that sounds good. We have a record that backs it."