Work / Sleep Space

This selective renovation of a floor-through apartment on the Lower East Side did the unthinkable in New York real estate: reduced the number of bedrooms to reflect the owner’s desire to have a contemplative living space to accommodate working and sleeping. The client’s ability to look beyond financial value made it possible for this renovation to be a demonstration of how architecture can improve the manner in which one lives, works, and experiences the city pouring into a space.

New York, NY

Completed 2019

The new design is first visible when one enters or sits in the living room, as a light-filled terminus to the existing double-loaded corridor. A simple, partial-height wall serves as the bedroom’s primary clothes closet and is capped with a linear LED that softly washes the ceiling in light. As one enters the room, the recessed oak pulls visible from the hall become full-height shaped wood bars that nod to the oak flooring, signaling the sliding doors to a bathroom, the other storage closets, and back to the hall.

The work area, farthest from the bathroom, is generous enough for a simple couch and a custom desk assembled from simple oak planes that bob and weave around existing radiators and window sills.

The shelving screen possesses openings at a variety of scales to afford visibility, privacy and the selective display of artifacts, books and plants.

The master bathroom enjoys natural light through an acid etched glass plane. The glass encloses an oversize shower bench wrapped in a matte, gray ceramic tile.

Instead of space-wasting and awkward swing doors, all the bedroom doors are over-sized sliding panels with full height solid oak pulls that blend into the composition of oak trim and shelving. The detailing uses subtle offsets to eliminate awkward “butt-joints” that tend to expand and contract with the drier and wetter seasons and reinforces the delicacy of the space.

Photography by Devon Banks Photography

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