Bruce Redman Becker has been president of architecture and development firm Becker + Becker for 35 years, but he’s best known in the hospitality industry for turning New Haven’s Pirelli Building into the Hotel Marcel, the first zero-emission hotel in the U.S. Hotel Business caught up with Becker to discuss his career and his first hotel project.
—Adam Perkowsky
Have you always been interested in architecture? What sparked your interest?
I grew up in New Canaan, CT, which is known for its outstanding mid-century modern architecture. Both of my parents were designers—my mother was a furniture designer, while my father was an industrial designer and planner. So, from my early years, I was encouraged to look at the world through the lens of design excellence. But I’m interested in much more than just architecture. I view design as a process of making decisions to simultaneously solve problems of aesthetics, engineering, development and marketing and, at the same time, optimize environmental, financial and community outcomes.
What was your first job in the design industry, and what did you learn from it?
My first real job working as a design professional was with Edward Larrabee Barnes’ architecture office. He was an incredibly talented designer and also a wonderful and kind human being. It was at that firm that I learned how collaborative a successful design process must be and how important good teamwork and office culture are to great outcomes. This was not something they taught in architecture school.
My first real-estate development job was with an inspiring entrepreneur named Scott Toombs, who had worked previously with the Rouse Company. I learned from him that every detail is important, and success comes from understanding the basis of every development decision.
The Hotel Marcel was your first hotel project. What type of projects does your firm primarily focus on?
We are less focused on project type than process. We see design and development as an integrated process and, for most projects, we are both the architect and the developer. But when we are working as a development consultant with a different architect, or as an architect without a development role, we still work hard to ensure that both the architecture and development are successful. I don’t think it is possible to succeed with one and not the other.
While we have designed and developed child daycare centers, supportive housing, a grocery store and an ecological research institution’s headquarters and served as a campus planner, our primary focus over the years has been on market rate and affordable housing—and every project is different. Common threads are sustainability, historic preservation, transit-oriented development and integrated architecture and development.
How did the Hotel Marcel acquisition come about?
Over the two decades that the Pirelli Building sat vacant in New Haven at the intersection of the two major interstate highways in Connecticut, I gradually became obsessed with the building and how it might best be redeveloped for a new use. This iconic mid-century modern building was designed by Marcel Breuer, who was an architectural hero of mine, and who was Edward Larrabee Barnes’ teacher when he studied architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
As Breuer’s most visible building, it had morphed from a symbol of optimism, innovation and progress from when it was built in 1969 into a symbol of neglect and decline. It needed a solution.
For five years before taking on the project, I drove past the structure almost daily while working on the adaptive reuse of the former Bank of America tower in downtown Hartford. Once that mixed-use apartment project was completed, I started to hatch a plan for Hotel Marcel, but that plan took about two years to conjure up before I bought the structure from IKEA. The initial part of the planning included my enrolling in and completing Cornell’s Hotel Investment and Management certificate program to help inform my decision-making and give me some degree of confidence that moving forward could lead to a successful outcome.
Was designing a sustainability-focused hotel on your wish list?
Never, until I realized that was the best way to reuse the Pirelli Building. As far as I know, Hotel Marcel is the first all-electric, zero-emissions hotel in the U.S. I believe it will soon become the first hotel that can be certified as “net zero” given the definition of net zero, which is having no operational emissions while also producing more power than it uses on an annual basis from on-site solar and a fixed allocation from a nearby community solar installation. I don’t like the term “net zero” because it has been misused. This standard cannot be met by purchasing offsets or planting seedlings, according to the organizations that issue certifications.
Do you plan on working on more hotel projects?
I am consulting with several other owners to help them design and undertake new hotel projects and convert existing hotels to zero-emissions hotels. I don’t have another hotel project of my own in the works and feel I can have a greater impact by helping others
