David Burns is a principal at Studios Architecture, an international design practice, where he works from New York on workplaces, civic and educational buildings and master plans. He grew up outside Baltimore, started his career in the firm's Paris office, and still solves problems by drawing. Much of his New York work reinvents older buildings, which makes him a practical guide to what owners of half-empty offices can do.

David Burns, Studios Architecture

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In this conversation

The high school shop teacher who taught David to fix barns, and the tiny-house studio they may build together.

Why risk-averse clients want proof you have done it before, and how ideas crossing between hospitality, office and education push back.

His habit of asking for the opposite scheme when three options start to look alike.

Three futures for a struggling office tower: a community of smaller tenants, a new institutional use, or conversion to housing or dorms.

Desk reservations, fair pay for junior designers, and where AI helps today: images, proposals and early density studies.

We've looked at these three schemes, they look very similar. What is the opposite of it? What would you do that's totally different?

David Burns

Chapters

Drawing first

From a seventh-grade career paper to the studio, where architecture finally clicked.

Cross-pollination over repetition

Why the process with the client, not the building type, is the product.

Asking for the opposite

Testing preconceived answers by forcing a scheme that is totally different.

Three futures for an office tower

Smaller tenants, new institutional uses, or the big leap to residential.

By the numbers

Manhattan office vacancy rate

FY 201910.5%

FY 202322.4%

David says owners who built for one large tenant are now splitting floors into communities of smaller ones. The share of empty space more than doubled in four years.

Source: NYC Comptroller, Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report release (October 2023) ↗

Desks, dorms and flexibility

Student housing as a conversion option, and workplaces with fewer desks than people.

Balance, fair pay and AI

Ending the all-nighter rite of passage, and using AI to free time for thinking.

That's the hard part, finding the projects that are not just about repeating something but about doing something different or doing something better.

David Burns

Takeaways

The lightest fix for an underused office building is splitting floors among smaller tenants, adding shared hubs and outdoor space, and giving it an identity instead of an anonymous lobby.

Full residential conversion is the biggest leap: occupied buildings are hard to empty for two to three years of work. Student housing has more room to maneuver, since dorm rooms face looser rules on kitchens, daylight and ventilation.

When the options on the table look alike, draw the opposite. It tests whether the obvious path is really the right one.

My worry is that all the chopping up into small apartments in the Financial District is going to lead to a little bit of backlash.

David Burns