Fifth Ave Renovation, Brooklyn NY
Two rookies ventured to purchase and renovate a 90-year brownstone that had been unoccupied for over 10 years. The clients asked us to push the limits of the building by extending it outward and upward. They required that the building house two residential spaces, one commercial space, and a private sound studio.
The upper apartment received a rooftop addition reaching upwards with a sky-lit loft and roof deck. This addition fights the horizontality of the existing space and creates a rich volume open to the sky. Because it is angled away from the street, it creates more privacy while allowing light to penetrate deep within the space. The outward addition reaches into the backyard on the ground level, creating a physically separate sound studio for the middle apartment occupant while also giving the middle floor an expansive deck. In a unique condition, each addition is hidden since the top floor is canted away from the street, and the ground floor studio is in the rear. Therefore, the building appears unchanged, maintaining its original context.
Design: Lauren Crahan, John Hartmann, Corey Yurkovich