Client suggestion leads to birth of architectural firm.

When your best client tells you that he has someone he would like you to meet, you listen. Like a matchmaker, often an outsider is able to appreciate the synergy possible between people better than those involved. That is how BNK, a young architecture firm, came to be.

In 1995, Natan Bibliowicz and Bruce Nelligan were each architects with their own offices when William Tung, vice president of Real Estate for Bertelsmann, the international media company, made that suggestion to Bibliowicz and Nelligan. Each of them had been doing some work for Bertelsmann, and each of them had started their own firms.

Nelligan opened his own company in 1988, after being the project architect for Two Times Square, the 25-story Ramada Renaissance Hotel, while at Mayers & Schiff Associates, P.C. He had also done two urban studies for New York's Public Development Corporation.

Bibliowicz was with Skidmore Owings & Merrill's New York office, where he was the project architect for a 1.3 million square-foot project for Shearson Lehman. During his 10-year tenure at SOM, he was the project architect on projects as varied as hospitals, dormitories and interiors. He started his own firm in 1993.

David Kriegel started his firm in 1987, after being with Warren W. Gran and Associates, where he was involved in a wide variety of projects including residences, commercial projects and urban design, and had worked with Nelligan on a number of projects. When Bibliowicz and Nelligan started to talk, they included Kriegel because their compatibility was immediately apparent to each of them.

All of them had sterling educational backgrounds: Kriegel at Pratt; Nelligan at the Cooper Union, where he was awarded the New York Society of Architect's Mathew del Gaudio Award and the AIA School Medal and Certificate of Achievement. He also studied at the American Academy in Rome through a program of Columbia University and at l'Universita per gli Straniere, in Perugia, Italy. Bibliowicz is a Cornell Graduate who participated in an urban planning program at the Ecole d' Architecture in Paris.

All three were at a point their careers where they were contemplating a move. At the same time, all three were aware of the large retail project being planned by Virgin Retail in the Bertelsmann building. After meeting and talking, they realized that they all shared many things and that their talents could work together. They submitted their proposal to Virgin, and while they were up against some of the biggest in the business, they won the project and were on their way.

They moved into a 3,000 square-foot office in the Puck Building, in Soho - an area very familiar to Kriegel and Nelligan since they either lived or worked nearby and very appealing to Bibliowicz.

The firm has been awarded, in association with the Stein Partnership, development of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University, as well as apartments on Park Avenue and the Upper East Side, and residential work in Westchester, East Hampton and Connecticut.

Their staff is growing and they have recently been sought after for a facilities management computer program which they developed. The program allows a clerical or secretarial person the means of tracking management of a large facility without a major investment in computer technology and specialists.

William Tung, as the person who has brought together these talented architects, continues to retain them. The Bertelsmann building has new signage designed by the group, as well as display work in their lobby which shows the world the products for which Bertelsmann is famous.

The Virgin Retail space will soon be a new and vital force in the rebirth of Times Square.