VMZinc Launches "Interviews with Architects" on YouTube

May 14, 2012 - PRLog -- (Raleigh, NC) -- VMZINC®, the brand of architectural zinc manufactured by Umicore Building Products USA, has released the first in its series of “Interviews with Architects” on YouTube. The first video features award-winning architect Dean Marchetto, AIA, founding principal of Marchetto, Higgins, Stieve of Hoboken, New Jersey.

Formerly with Gwathmey Siegel Architects in New York, Dean Marchetto moved back to his hometown to open his own firm, eventually partnering with architects Michael Higgins and Bruce Stieve.

In 1995 Marchetto purchased a 100-year-old church in Hoboken, which he converted into his firm’s offices. The building had been used by the American Legion since 1930. The American Legion purchased it from a Norwegian congregation.

In the video, Marchetto tells interview Dan Nicely of VMZINC, that when the firm expanded in 2000, he decided to add an addition at the rear of the building, where the old church’s missing apse would have been. But rather than mimic the traditional architecture, as a modernist designer he chose to juxtapose the old with the new and, instead, designed a sweeping, curvilinear addition that floats above the ground on five slender and curving columns.

“I like the old with the new,” he says.

Marchetto worked with the Product Architecture Lab at the Stevens Institute of Technology to create the traffic-stopping (literally) curved form. He points out that the lab used a similar computer program that famed architect Frank Gehry uses for his buildings’ many odd and dramatic forms.

In the video, which was edited by Chandra Hester of Umicore Building Products, Marchetto describes the intricate construction of the great form that was ultimately covered in red, green, and blue hexagonal VMZINC PIGMENTO tiles.

To view the entire interview, go to YouTube and search "Don Marchetto.mpg."

Additional “Interviews with Architects” videos are in the works. Several will be screened in VMZINC’s booth (No. 329) during the 2012 AIA National Convention and Design Exposition in Washington, D.C., May 17-19, and eventually posted on YouTube.

For more information on VMZINC, visit http://www.vmzinc-us.com.

About VMZINC and Umicore Building Products:  VMZINC is a leading specialist in innovative zinc solutions for building envelopes and the international brand name of rolled zinc products manufactured and sold by the Building Products Unit of the Umicore Group, which specializes in materials technology. Umicore is a world-leading producer of architectural zinc. For over 160 years, Umicore has been providing innovative solutions for building owners, architects and contractors. Umicore has offices and representatives all over the world. In the United States, Umicore Building Products USA, Inc., is based in Raleigh, NC. For additional information, visit http://www.vmzinc-us.com.