18 | LEHIGH ALUMNI BULLETIN D The “Alloy Block” is his most groundbreaking project to date. “We’re making change here,” says Della Valle, who is both an architect and developer. “We’re making homes for people. We don’t make widgets. We make buildings, and those buildings take a massive amount of investment of time, energy and capital, and people experience them as either their home or in the context of our city.” His last five development projects have been within a block of Alloy’s office building and include the DUMBO Townhouses—five townhomes so efficient, they reduced the typical energy consumption by 90% per home. There’s also One John Street, a mix of 42 apartments, one commercial unit and an annex that Alloy donated to the Brooklyn Bridge Park with a no-cost lease for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. The project, inside the park, is LEED Gold Certified, which means the building has attained environmentally friendly standards, such as using less energy and saving water. “We aren’t a startup, but we have a startup mentality in that we are looking to solve problems in a different way,” Della Valle says. “We have the privilege of innovation. Part of being an architect is wanting to understand the right answer. Architects don’t get taught to build buildings, they learn how to solve problems.” He also believes in repurposing Brooklyn’s historic, once industrial buildings into new uses with an eye toward sustainability instead of tearing them down. “There’s an incredible amount of embedded carbon in these buildings that were built 100 years ago, and rather than demolishing them and starting fresh, we recycle them,” Della Valle says. “We make the joke that they are the largest objects we can recycle.” Known for his laid-back demeanor and preference for blue jeans over suits and ties, Della Valle entered into real estate in 2006 as co-founder and CEO of Della Valle, who majored in architecture and urban studies at Lehigh, started his Brooklyn-based company Alloy Development 17 years ago in the borough’s DUMBO section— Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass—where he works to develop innovative, sustainable buildings with a reduced carbon footprint. His office building is only 200 yards from his home in a Brillo Warehouse that he converted into 10 luxury condominiums in 2013.
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