MAN WITH A PLAN

THE BALTIMORE SUN

In a booth at the Sip 'n' Bite, Gabriel Kroiz talks omelets and Formica with manager Tony Vasiliades. It's the mid-afternoon lull and a few patrons dawdle in the Canton fixture.

Keenly aware of the waterfront neighborhood's new wave of residents and their healthy eating habits, Vasiliades serves omelets made with egg whites and has banished cooking oil laden with trans fats.

Now it's time to update the diner, faded from wear and tear, as well. But after consulting with local customer Kroiz, the architect who will design the renovations, Vasiliades has nixed other "yupdates," including -- gasp! -- exposed brick, that telltale marker of the young urban professional's feeding grounds.

Why emulate every other refurbished restaurant (and rowhouse for that matter), Kroiz asked him, when he could build on Sip 'n' Bite's rich history as a 24-hour redoubt for city workers, students, artists and those with sketchier job descriptions?

A former vegetarian chef who now enjoys a good steak at the Sip 'n' Bite, Kroiz, 42, takes the same holistic approach to a growing portfolio of redevelopment projects in Baltimore, including a green rowhouse, Donna's Cafe in Charles Village, and Sprout; an organic beauty salon in Hampden.

"Architecture is marginalized when it becomes a formula and does not solve a broader range of problems," Kroiz says. In his view, retail and residential projects must take into account history, urban life, tradition, pragmatism and available, preferably sustainable, resources.

With each project, "I consider the ability to benefit the environment or the community as [equally] tangible and important as creating good forms," the architect says.

Kroiz urged Vasiliades, 35, to keep the Sip 'n' Bite's vintage allure, while making critical structural and cosmetic changes. Swivel stools, neon, booths with individual coat racks: "These are the hallmarks of the place," Kroiz says.

The young restaurateur with red highlights in his dark hair came around. "Just because the neighborhood is changing, doesn't mean the character has to change," says Vasiliades, who stepped in for his father when he could no longer operate the diner that he opened 50 years ago.

With his transformation of a rowhouse in a block that straddles Fells Point and Canton, Kroiz proved that maintaining a community's character does not have to come at the environment's expense.

He sees his work in the context of a timely cultural moment, when society, science and economics have come together in support of green sensibilities.

Intended as a model for restoring Baltimore's rich rowhouse stock, Kroiz's project, dubbed "Green-HAB," completed last year, renounced conventional materials such as joint compound and paint in favor of wheatboard, bamboo, concrete, recycled drywall and other sustainable materials.

Many architects make their mark with "big and important" efforts, Kroiz says. But even "the smallest alley house" presents challenges that "can be really, really interesting."

The 725-square-foot home, tucked into a tiny alley called Winterling Court, is austere, yet made inviting by a palette of earth tones. Unlike paint, which "scratches and gets dirty," Kroiz says, "natural surfaces have a beauty to them and age well."

Not only did the project eliminate costly line items, it demonstrated that the current generation of fluorescent lighting nestled in a stretch of galvanized gutter can cast a friendly, indirect glow. Green-HAB also testifies to the ingenious use of off-the-shelf products from Home Depot, such as the electrical conduit that Kroiz turned into a handsome metal railing. .

Kroiz is part of a burgeoning green movement in Baltimore, says Tom Liebel, who chairs the committee on the environment for the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Architects. "I think there's a very impressive number of architects in town who are all trying to explore some of the issues and [Kroiz] has done a very good job."

The "overall tenet of sustainability is to reduce your consumption of materials," Liebel says. By recycling rowhouses, "You're saving the construction waste of the demolition and you're not using additional material," says Liebel, an architect with the firm Marks, Thomas. "It's a very sound approach."

In 2006, the Baltimore AIA presented Kroiz with a Residential Design award for his project, calling it "truly innovative."

Rehabs with open floor plans, few doors and non-existent paint jobs are scarce, Kroiz says. Typically, homes are remodeled with "incredible redundancy" and often boast that all-too-common feature, exposed brick, he says.

Projects in Korea

With its economical use of space and sliding doors that hide compact appliances, Kroiz's Green-HAB, which he owns and rents, benefits from his exploration of Korea, where homes are small and living areas are put to multiple use.

Since his marriage to Seoul native, Mina Cheon, an artist and faculty member of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Kroiz has traveled frequently to Korea. Each summer, the couple leads a MICA summer studies program in Seoul, where students are challenged "to create and exhibit artwork based on their experience of place and culture."

Kroiz's architecture practice also extends to Korea. With Korean architect Moongyu Choi, he designed the Ssamzie Gil shopping center in Insadong, a Seoul arts district.

Built as a refrain to the winding streets that surround it, Ssamzie Gil is a spiraling ramp of storefront galleries and shops that remain open to the elements like their ground-level inspirations.

Kroiz also created a courtyard house and studio made of cinderblock, ("A wonderful material!") in an artists' colony near the North Korean border. Korean history and culture played a part in both projects; but as a reference point, not a blueprint. "I don't think you pay respect to the past by doing imitations," he says.

A Baltimore Polytechnic graduate, class of 1983, Kroiz lived a picaresque life as a chef in training in California and New Orleans and as a Grateful Dead fan.

Back in Baltimore temporarily, Kroiz was stretching canvases for artist Raoul Middleman when he impulsively applied to the Rhode Island School of Design. He completed the school's five-year architecture program while supporting himself by picking blueberries in Maine during summers.

After graduating from RISD, Kroiz returned once again to Baltimore in 1991. The city "is as good as any place I've been," he says.

With the building market in a slump, Kroiz took jobs as they arose. He designed Middleman's studio in Havre de Grace and a retreat in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom for a family friend.

Later, he served as project director for the restoration of the Samester Apartments on Park Heights Avenue, where his grandparents once lived. Another restoration project brought Kroiz to the Marlborough Apartments on Reservoir Hill, where he had lived for two years as a child.

In 2001, he opened his own firm, Kroiz Architecture, in a former cobbler shop on Fleet Street in East Baltimore. He, Cheon and their two young children live upstairs.

A feel for the city

Kroiz's loyalty to urban life in general -- and Baltimore in particular -- stems in part from his upbringing, says his mother, Susan Krieger. He and his two siblings lived in the city during the 1968 riots and the fight, starting in the late 1960s, to halt a proposed expressway that would have leveled swaths of East and West Baltimore. "Seeing Baltimore as urban kids [who] were downtown, I think they had a closer feel for the city and its development," Krieger says.

All three Kroiz children live in Baltimore and are enmeshed in the city's arts community. Shana Kroiz-Seidel, is the founder of MICA's jewelry program. Reuben Kroiz co-founded G-Spot, an alternative art space, with his wife, Jill Sell.

Of the three siblings, Gabriel, the eldest, is the most systematic in his approach to work, Kroiz-Seidel says. "He really is very analytical in the way he approaches stuff," she says. "I always think of my work as very intuitive, and very emotional and his work is so much more [researched]. But you're not left cold with his work."

In architecture school, Kroiz never abandoned the beliefs that had led him to become a macrobiotic chef, a discipline that stresses harmony with nature. "Most of my design projects from then were fairly low impact: reduce, reuse, recycle," he says.

As he rehabbed his home and office on Fleet Street, Kroiz exploited the 19th-century structure's inherent glories. The original pine floors are still intact, and he recycled roof rafters to make treads for the stairs.

While scraping wallpaper on the second floor, Kroiz discovered a hand-painted, multi-surface mural that appeared to depict post-Civil War life along a large river, plied by riverboat and frigate. Here and there on the riverbanks, lovers court, men fight. Kroiz cut out frames to expose the best parts of the mural, and covered the rest up with plaster scrims.

As he did at Green-HAB, Kroiz used electrical conduit for railings, and he also created shelving from heating ducts. Textile artist Chris Palmer's astonishing tessellated curtains billow at the windows.

On the third floor, Cheon works at the computer, while Sasha, 3, and Gerson, 5, play in a generous, light-filled space designed for communal family life.

It's a convenient commute to Kroiz's office below, where he is drawing plans for the Sip 'n' Bite, the restoration of an affordable housing project on Reservoir Hill and violinist Hilary Hahn's residence on the city's waterfront.

In June, the family will leave for Korea. But Kroiz is also perfectly happy in his storefront business. Once the wandering son, he says, "I really like being home and doing the work."

stephanie.shapiro@baltsun.com

To see a photo gallery of Gabriel Kroiz's renovations, go to baltimoresun.com / kroiz.

GABRIEL KROIZ

Age:

42

Education:

Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, 1983

Bachelor's in Fine Arts and Architecture from Rhode Island School of Design, 1991

Master's in Architecture from University of Maryland College Park, 2003

Personal:

Wife, Mina Cheon, digital media teacher at Maryland Institute College of Art; children, Sasha, 3, and Gerson, 5.

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