Architectural firm a one-stop shop

LUKE MANDLE, of Two Ton Inc., used the renovations of his Pawtucket office to showcase his designing skills. Founded in 2004, the company is beginning to gain traction, Mandle said. /
LUKE MANDLE, of Two Ton Inc., used the renovations of his Pawtucket office to showcase his designing skills. Founded in 2004, the company is beginning to gain traction, Mandle said. /

Luke Mandle moved to Rhode Island in 2004, armed with a sense of purpose and a business plan for his architectural firm detailed down to a sketch of the floor plan for his ideal office space.
As Mandle, founder and owner of Two Ton Inc., searched available mill spaces for an office, he also needed a place to live. The building he chose at 49 Montgomery St., in downtown Pawtucket, was listed as residential, even though it was gutted and without heat. While it proved unsuitable for a home, the available space was remarkably similar to the sketch he made for an ideal office.
“I parachuted into Rhode Island without much of an identity,” Mandle said, a main reason that the office was so important.
“The office is the first commercial project I had in the state to showcase aesthetic and design style” to prospective clients, he said.
Two Ton is a single-source designing, estimating and building architectural firm that opened in 2004. The company has a project manager and draftsman on site, and the office has a full functioning metal shop and fabrication facility, as well as a drafting studio, gallery space and storefront window, just as Mandle envisioned in his sketch.
The varied services offered afford Two Ton an enormous amount of control in each project.
“As an architect, you cannot legally or ethically tell a contractor how to build something,” he said, “you can only tell them what to build.” At Two Ton, the contractor is also the architect; so despite any necessary alterations, Mandle can maintain the direction of the project and the vision of the client without unwelcome surprises.
“Builders who utilize the design-build schematic often construct their way through the design process,” Mandle said. “At the shop, we design for each client and then build what we’ve designed, not the other way around.”
And Two Ton is beginning to gain traction. This year the American Institute of Architects recognized Two Ton with a merit award for adaptive reuse of Fire Station No. 3 in East Providence.
Mandle’s experience in construction and design was helped by an early start.
When Mandle was 12 years old, he built the deck on his family home. After building an addition to the home of a high school teacher, he was hired to redesign and build the school’s administration offices. He rebuilt all the counters, cabinetry, mailboxes and partitions and installed the electrical wiring and lighting fixtures by himself. He also laid the foundation for a lower-level conference room.
Mandle, who grew up outside of Tuledo, Ohio, went to the University of Michigan to major in fine-art painting after, before instinctively going back to what he knew best – building.
Mandle worked for four years in the Washington, D.C., area for a commercial contractor. When he became frustrated with some aspects of the building process, he enrolled in a master’s program in architecture at the University of Virginia. There, he started a small real estate firm with a fellow student, partnering with a local construction company.
As architect, designer and go-between for the contractor, Mandle learned “how tight the margins really are” for developing properties. He gained increased understanding for what he had previously considered compromises to design and construction.
“It was a constant practice of restraint,” he said, “a balance between what we could do and what we wanted to do.”
But since starting Two Ton, “I know good design doesn’t have to be expensive or bad for the environment,” he said
A 4,000-square-foot building project in South Dartmouth is a prime example of how Two Ton integrates energy conservation into designs, in this case by focusing on a natural cooling system.
“We designed the building so that the prevailing winds will blow through an interior ventilation system,” he said. “The wind is easily directed and controlled, eliminating the need for an air conditioner.”
Mandle said that “when something labels itself green, promotes itself green, and uses ‘green’ as a marketing tool, you don’t have a real sense of what that means, or how it compares to another product of similar value.”
However, he makes it clear that any attempt to evaluate energy efficiency and sustainability is a step in the right direction.
Two Ton is not LEED accredited by the U.S. Green Building Council, but Mandle says his firm has always practiced energy conservation and environmentally sensitive design and construction.
“Every decision we make is reflected against a careful choice of materials, sighting, massing, daylight, orientation and natural ventilation,” he said. •

COMPANY PROFILE: Two Ton Inc.
Owner: Luke Mandle
Type of Business: Full service architecture firm specializing in custom design, construction and construction management, fabrication facility on site.
Location: 49 Montgomery Street,
Pawtucket
Number of Employees: 4
Year founded: 2004
Annual Revenue: WND

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