The TGAS Approach

In its quest to break the boundaries of convention and tradition and infuse each of its projects with individual meaning, identity, and purpose, The Galante Architecture Studio (TGAS) shuns preset, cookie-cutter templates and standards and germinates the seeds of each design right from the client’s original vision. While doing so, it roots the design in the historical context of its surroundings, enabling it to respond to both its neighborhood’s characteristics and its client’s needs as a welcome new component of its community, an enduring presence on its landscape, and the next chapter in its area’s history.

“We try to bring the most contemporary thinking and approach that will allow the client to develop the building type,” said TGAS founder Ted Galante. “The intent is to explore ideas that are relevant to whatever the project is, and make it creative, open-ended and inquiring.”

TGAS’ design of Harvard’s Ceramics Program facility in Boston, Massachusetts, displays the modern aesthetic of a glass façade, which gives the building a welcoming transparency for the Harvardians and locals it serves. The façade’s orange terra cotta tile frame honors the university’s brick building tradition. As an additional creative touch, the frame is sub-framed with COR-TEN steel plates that accumulate a corrosive patina reminiscent of a fired clay pot’s surface, symbolizing the creativity of the pottery and sculpture shaped inside. This effect warmly invites students, faculty, and neighborhood residents to participate in ceramics programs, complementing the façade’s transparency.

“COR-TEN is a warm, romantic material plated to the brick-size of a person’s hand,” said Galante, “making a connection between the exterior and what people are doing inside – making artwork by using their hands.”

TGAS extends its client-centered contemporary design approach to municipal facilities. Its design of the FDNY fire station in New York City’s Bronx received a gray terra cotta rain-screen and a black galvanized aluminum-framed sunscreen, which allude to the red color of fire and firetrucks and the gray of smoke and ashes. This symbolism also tributes the heroes of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, giving the station a historical context relevant to its city’s heritage.

In another example, the new addition and renovation to the fire headquarters in Davenport, Iowa, preserves the historic building while preparing it for future firefighting needs. Here, TGAS retained the original 1902 Italianate buff-brick building – the oldest operating fire station west of the Mississippi – but extended it with a contemporary addition that shortens the fire vehicles’ response time by orienting the doors directly to the main street. The extension also allows the responders a dormitory, a computer room, a fitness room, a training tower, and other present-day support services.

The original station and the new extension together pay tribute to the fire department’s long-term history and future continuity. “A historic and contemporary building are married together,” said Galante. “The glass box separates them, pays respect to both, and lets you experience the gap in-between.”

Pragmatic problem-solving also intrigues Galante, who, for economic and practical purposes, approaches architecture like automotive design. “Automotive looks forward,” he said. “The 2024 Porsche was designed to reflect the heritage of the car, and picked up cues from intervening years, but moved it forward as an object in the world. That’s where we want our design work to go.”

TGAS customizes each of its designs to reflect its client, blend with its neighborhood, and welcome its users to an approachable environment that, like a well-engineered car, will duly serve them now and in the distant future.