Client: Private individual with children

Scope: Adaptive reuse of light industrial building in Chelsea: 3-story single family home at top, with retail on ground floor and 2nd floor rental apartment

This project started with an old brick building, just yards from Manhattan’s High Line. Our client wanted a contemporary home in historic Chelsea, plus space for retail and residential tenants. Historic guidelines required that we keep the façade. Everything else on the 50-foot by 100-foot lot was demolished. In its place installed a piling system and steel structure to support the design, which doubled the number of stories of the original building.

The house, occupying the uppermost stories, begins on the third floor. Approach is by a long interior stair from the street that, at the top, opens into a garden; the house wraps around on three sides. The garden is both entryway and center—an airy void that offers a counterweight to the dense urban surroundings. Our intent was to make an aperture for daylight to illuminate the interiors and through which occupants visually connect to the home’s layered spaces. Each floor of the house has spaces for sitting, recreation or taking in views of the skyline: a deck runs the length of the second-floor; the third floor has a garden and basketball court.

Materials: Stucco; copper; painted steel; mahogany windows; pigmented concrete; exposed aggregate concrete; cedar; maple; oak; stainless steel

Awards:
Boston Society of Architects, Design Honor Award
Boston Society of Architects, Housing Design Honor Award

Collaborators:
General Contractor: Higgins Construction
Mechanical Engineer: Reynaldo C. Prego Consulting Engineers

Photographer: Chuck Choi Architectural Photography