- Good architecture is all about using clever design
to solve challenging problems
[chill out music]
My name is Matt Berman, and welcome to The Printing House.
Every project has its challenges.
And this apartment is no different.
We were dealing with compressed spaces.
We were dealing with an owner
that wanted a lot of flexibility in the use of their space.
And we were dealing with an owner
that had a very large collection of objects and books
that we needed to display in a curated way.
So The Printing House is, like its namesake says,
it was a printing house.
It was converted back in the '70s into apartments,
what we would call sort of shoebox apartments.
They added these very low mezzanines.
In some cases, you had areas where the ceiling height
was only six foot six.
I'm short, but for people who are slightly taller
than I am, you can imagine how uncomfortable it is
to walk into a space that compressed.
Now one of the great things about The Printing House,
about all the units, is that when you get closer
to the windows, you have this tremendous volume of space.
You have 16 foot ceilings,
you have incredibly tall windows.
So our challenge was to really think about
how we can open these spaces up,
while retaining the square footage
that everybody so desperately needs.
This particular unit started as three separate apartments.
Two of those apartments were 1000 square foot,
and the third apartment was 1300 square feet.
When we combined them all together,
We have an apartment that is around 3300 square feet.
[chill out jazzy music]
Because we have this amazing double height space,
we have this idea of this secondary space, this bird's nest.
And of course, we started iterating and experimenting.
And we had something that literally was nest-like,
to something that was actually very simple,
to something that started to contain you
within a more library feel.
This particular client has an amazing collection
of objects and artifacts and books.
And we wanted to showcase that, and this is where we landed.
It is a lightweight glass and steel structure
that is anchored to the structure around it,
and allows you to flow
from the entry all the way up to this space
that kind of hovers above the living room.
Now what's really neat about it is the way
that the structure and the mezzanine
all cantilever off of this bookcase wall.
So the mezzanine structure
is a fairly straightforward concept.
But what you don't see in all this lightness
is all of the structural work
that's doing the heavy lifting.
In this case, we have steel that's running
across the top and bottom of the space.
We have steel columns that anchor
between those horizontal pieces of steel.
We have steel that runs across the bottom
and the top of the back wall
that's embedded, above and below the bookcase.
Then between those pieces of steel,
we have vertical members that tie those pieces together
to create this whole structural support system.
Off of that vertical structure, that bookcase
is the mezzanine and the staircase
which are actually cantilevered off of that wall
which means they hang off of that wall.
The bird's nest language, the mezzanine language
was intended to be very organic.
So you can see the way that this swoops out into the space.
We didn't want to have something that was hard edged
and rectilinear, we wanted it to be soft.
And so you can see the shape of the mezzanine here,
but you can also see the way that we carried that up
into the wishbone supports that hug the column
and suspend it from the beams above.
So what we did was introduce glass here,
and introduce these coffers.
That gives us the extra ceiling height
so that we have the structure we need
to support the mezzanine.
But we also have the additional height
to make it actually feel a bit taller.
We introduced glass both as a railing component
and at the floor, and you can see
the kind of diaphanous light that comes through it.
It has a really nice cloudy, ghosty soft quality.
And when you're looking through the railing,
it virtually disappears.
One of the most exciting parts of this project
is the kitchen.
The kitchen is now the hub of the home.
It is no longer the back of house space
that it might've been 50 or 100 years ago.
On the other hand, if you entertain a lot,
you want it to be something that you can close off
and possibly have a caterer come in
so that they can serve and prepare and do their work
without affecting the rest of the party.
In this case, we were able to do that.
We have an incredible kitchen space
that has all of the appliances you could ever want,
lot of storage space, a big island for presentation,
for sitting and having breakfast.
But we can also close it off.
So we've come up with a pretty ingenious solution.
This 16 foot wall
which blends in with the rest of the architecture
is on a spring action hinge
with an integrated handle, and it closes behind me
to now close off the kitchen.
So when this is closed, this now becomes a service bar.
If you want to close the kitchen off entirely,
because you're catering,
and you've got a room full of guests,
you can slide this panel over,
again another 16 foot high wall.
And reveal another aspect of the owner's collection.
In this case, we've got more millwork,
and a built in media area,
when the family is getting together to watch a movie.
And then coming over to another 16 foot door,
and closing off the entire kitchen.
Now the kitchen can be accessed from the side,
servers can serve from the side.
But from the living space, it's completely closed off,
and because of the high gloss finish,
we're capturing a reflection of the entire city beyond.
The master suite in this home is also truly exceptional.
The bedroom flows into a large closet
which flows into a large bathroom.
And we like that setup a lot
because if one of the partners is sleeping,
the other one can get up in the morning, close the door,
and go back and forth between the closet and the bathroom
without disturbing their sleeping partner.
And anyone in a relationship knows
that that's a good way to preserve some sanity.
We have all of the common things
you'd expect to find in this home, like a double sink,
a large shower, a tub, a separate toilet room.
But then to provide privacy we've actually incorporated
some SwitchLite Glass into the shower wall.
So that if you really want privacy,
or if you want to leave the door open
if kids are running around,
or if other family members are present,
you can flip the switch, the shower goes opaque
and you're now in a very private box.
The way SwitchLite Glass works is this,
when there's no charge to the glass, all of the particles
are just moving around the glass like that, right?
They're sort of flowing around the glass.
As soon as there's an electric current
going through the glass, all the particles line up.
So when you're looking at it when there's no current,
clearly it's opaque.
When you're looking at it when there is current,
you can see right through, and it's transparent.
Homes are not static, they're lived in.
People live in them, people collect stuff.
Sometimes people collect too much stuff.
Now sometimes you have a client that has a lot of stuff
that isn't really that great,
and you need to stick it in the closet.
Sometimes you have a client like this
that has incredible stuff, that travels,
collects books, collects artifacts, collects objects
that deserve to be displayed.
So for us it was an opportunity to look at their collection,
and understand how to tell their story in a curated way.
In thinking about how we can begin to work those objects
around the room, around every space
so that you're always interacting with them,
the stair design was part and parcel with that.
We wanted to make sure that as you go up and down the stair,
you are literally walking up and down the bookshelves
and connecting with all of the things
that they've collected.
One aspect about this apartment that I truly love
is the relationship between collection and curation.
You don't always have to have the most expensive art
or the most sophisticated pieces.
You can curate your objects in a thoughtful way.
And what I love about this moment, is the use of color.
And by bringing in yellow, making a bold statement
against the walnut and the white,
we have everything from more important pieces
and more important objects, to yellow rubber duckies.
And on the other side of the apartment,
after we've gone from a collection of small objects,
we move to a large object,
and object that really is well-suited
to this double height space.
And it is a polished, stainless steel
decommissioned World War II rocket.
For us, good design affects everything you do
and everywhere you go.
No matter what you do, what you buy, how you live,
we always want to do it through a design lens.
The key to good architecture is simple,
get to know your client, be creative, and be clever.