This Brooklyn carriage house is now in its third incarnation. Originally constructed as a stable for horses and their caretakers, it had been modestly renovated as a one-bedroom home in the 1970s; a second renovation allows the built space to accommodate a three-bedroom home and full-floor office.
Our renovation explores this building’s history, which itself speaks to a more general relationship between landscape and architecture. The limitations of this 950-square-foot lot include multiple landmarked facades containing translucent (but not transparent) windows; these challenges have been realized as opportunities to form an interior landscape. To connect an introspective domestic space with a broader, exterior landscape, we’ve employed techniques present in nineteenth century Picturesque and Luminist painting. The result is a project in which light serves as the most important organizing principle.
During the day, sunlight cuts through all floors, running from the entry vestibule to the rear of the lot; this arrangement tacitly acknowledges the front-to-back connection and original organization of the carriage house. In the Luminist tradition, pathways like roads and streams would weave from the front to the back of a composition, inviting the viewer into a narrative that unfolds as focus moves into the distance. Interior light plays a similarly organizational role here, connecting the four floors and creating a continuous, illuminated path that passes through fields of books and ephemera. In this way, the staircase resolves the owners’ desire for an uncluttered and expansive living space which acts as a conduit for spatial organization, circulation, storage space, and furniture arrangements.
Collaborators
Design Team:
Structural Engineer:
MEP/FP Engineer:
General Contractor:
Photography:
View of exterior mews.
The carriage house opens onto a mews at mid-block, with alleys flanking the building to the north and south. Through-block vistas provide an organizational axis for the renovation, visually and experientially linking two parallel exterior corridors.
A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove) by Sanford Robinson Gifford.
The spatial and visual concepts in Luminism are rooted in the principles of the Picturesque. Both the tradition of landscape painting and landscape design employ spatial organization and exploit material plasticity as a means of choreographing our experience of nature.
The illusion of depth in Luminist painting is achieved through layered landscapes. Typically, an illuminated element such as a road or riverbed diminishes as the eye moves from the foreground toward the horizon, drawing the viewer deeper into the space of the painting. We’ve employed a similar effect with the carriage house: One’s view is drawn from the point of entry and along a vertical rise toward a view of the sky at the top of the stairs.
In built space, light underscores and frames spatial depth and can be used to draw people from one room to the next. In this project, interior surface materials are chosen for their ability to reflect, refract, and transmit both natural and artificial light.
Satellite image of Central Park with primary roads highlighted.
Central Park provides an iconic precedent for this project, and speaks to the dichotomies it contains. The park itself is rife with contradictions, being home to both specifically programmed space (e.g. Belvedere Castle and Wollman Rink) and expansive areas that are suggestive without dictating specific use (e.g. Sheep Meadow and the Great Lawn). Linking these spaces are overlapping and interlaced networks for pedestrian and vehicular circulation.
Central Park embodies the principles of the Picturesque in its many framed views and through the organization of its landscape. With this in mind, we can imagine a kitchen or a bath as specifically programmed space, a living room as a flexible gathering area, and a staircase as the path linking all spaces.
Sectional model.
The program calls for the reconciliation of seemingly contradictory requirements: that the renovation must accommodate a vast array of personal belongings that can be easily accessed at any time, but must also provide an uncluttered living environment to permit a calm milieu. To realize both, a new primary structural system has been introduced to separate living spaces from service functions while supporting stairs and landings.
The existing structural bays establish a primary rhythm for the system. A secondary system subdivides the structural bays in a rhythm that supports cabinetry, appliances, and archival storage. This module extends beyond the stair to form storage areas in flanking spaces at all levels; closed storage gives way to bookshelves, picture rails, and tapers to a simple reveal along the wall.
Detail drawings of cabinetry system.
The storage system is conceived of as a kit of parts, employing a limited number of units to maximize efficiency and reduce production costs. The individual units are inserted into the secondary framework as needed.
Sketch of living room cabinet from stair below.
At the living room the modular casework evolves into a tailored cabinet. The detailing is refined to match the functions of the room and intertwines metal and wood into one integrated unit.
The custom-designed handrail acts as a continuous ribbon leading from one level of the carriage house to the next. It is a handcrafted, tactile element that physically mirrors the visual experience of the house.
View at stair looking south to alley and gardens beyond.
Site plan showing view corridors through adjacent blocks.
View along the stair from the second floor.
90º axonometric drawing following angle of stair from entry to attic.
View of the storage system, which divides the building’s primary structure into three equal subdivisions, creating a supporting framework for cabinetry and artifacts.
View of the living room with customized cabinet.
Detail of living room cabinet.
Detail of handrail.
