This loft was designed for a young couple looking to take maximum advantage of the tall ceilings and enormous windows in this SoHo loft. The loft had been occupied by artists in the 70s and partitioned into two separate units with a collection of typical illegal conversion features: raised bathroom floors, windowless bedrooms, jerry-rigged mezzanines, clothes dryers venting into coffee cans filled with water, and a single exposure of enormous windows, with no light or ventilation on the other three sides of the apartment. At a later date the two apartments where combined adding further chaos.
The project called for a gut renovation. The strategy was to create a generous, double-height living room at the front of the loft, with the bedrooms, kitchen and dining area all borrowing light and air from it. In order to allow light to penetrate as deeply into the private rooms as possible, the partitions separating these rooms from the light-filled living space were fashioned from etched glass panels, framed in satin aluminum, and composed of hinged leaves which allow the rooms to open directly to the double-height living space. At the mezzanine level, the floor joining the media room to the two children’s bedrooms was itself constructed of laminated glass, and configured as a bridge passing over the Dining Area. Light fixtures fitted into the translucent walls and floor provide varied means for lighting the public and private areas of the loft. A new central air conditioning system, concealed in the built-out party wall to conserve ceiling height, provides fresh air to the interior rooms.
The project is rendered architecturally as a series of clearly defined interpenetrating volumes. Materials are treated as the surfaces of concave spaces rather than as faces of convex solids. This careful delineation of volume focuses upon architectural space, rather than sculptural form, as the principal medium of the design.