- [Chris] The house is a hybrid
between open loft-like space,
but also enough separateness for each room
to have it's own character.
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- [Beth] Hello, welcome to Clinton Hill Courtyard House.
I'm Beth O'Neill.
- I'm Chris McVoy,
and together, with our associate, Ruso Margishvili,
we transformed a run down carriage house
into a 21st century, light-filled spacious home
for a young family.
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- There are three main challenges
when working with this building.
- [Chris] A big challenge was how to carve out these volumes
and maintain the structural integrity of the building,
to create connectivity
between the different parts of the house.
- A big challenge was to transform the house
and maintain the exterior of the building.
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When we came through the front door
what we saw was actually a series of rooms,
expect for the front and the back,
there was no natural light.
- This was a early concept sketch here
where you can see we cut a two-story volume
up through the second story of the house
to connect to the sky and bring light,
and then we cut a second volume
down through the back story
to make a garden,
so connecting to the sky
and connecting to the Earth and nature.
We developed all these ideas
into detailed drawings for construction,
here's the section through the sky volume.
- There's an angle here,
and there's angle here.
Whenever you flare out a wall or a ceiling,
you actually create the opportunity
to bring more light into the space,
so that's what this was about.
What it gives you is pretty remarkable.
- When we started the design of the house,
we thought of just making the whole top of the sky volume
a big skylight.
And as we developed that,
that was costly, we had to introduce mullions,
so we ended up making two squares,
a five-foot by five-foot square,
and a three-foot by three-foot square.
And by doing that,
you see the sun cast on the walls,
you see the figure of the square
and you actually register the movement of the light
in a better way.
The sky volume is made with white-stained plywood,
and it has a kinda brachiating form,
it bends towards the direction of the sky,
but also branches into the bedroom and the bathroom
to bring light into there.
You could think of the sky volume
as a piece of clothing,
and the Epiphany skylight is part of a sleeve
that comes off of a shirt into another space.
Here's a diagram of how that works,
this is the sky volume here
with the white-stained plywood,
you can see this wall coming down and hanging the stair,
and this is that throat, or sleeve, that comes in
with two windows into the bathroom,
and a window into the master bedroom.
And we positioned this window in the master bedroom,
so that when you're lying in bed
you can see through the window, through the skylight,
and see the sky, the stars or the moon.
- This, very smoothly shuts tight
when the sun is streaming in,
and opens in the evening.
- The house is zoned in a way
with this garden being the heart,
with spaces around it.
The garden is only 200 square feet,
but it has a big impact on the house,
bringing nature right into the middle of it.
It's interesting, when you capture in a courtyard,
it has this intensifying effect.
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To help balance the light from the sky volume
into the living room,
we brought one wall down
and that hangs the whole stair.
- [Beth] The client challenged us
to be able to design this wall
in a way that she would still be ale to see her children.
- So, we came up with this idea
of perforating the wall with view holes
so that she could see everything going on
as she's coming down the stairs.
We mapped her eye height along the wall.
As the holes span down from eye height,
the angle of the holes increases
so it maintains the view into the living room below.
And then from above her eye height,
we fanned the holes upward to bring light
so you could see the skylight.
To achieve this perforated wall idea
with the different angles,
we realized we needed to use digital technology,
CNC milling,
so we made a very detailed 3D model
in the computer of very hole,
that then they could use to fabricate
and drive their hole drill beds
to be able to make all the different holes
at different angles.
Here's a section, a full-scale section,
through that plywood wall,
the two layers of plywood,
and then each hole at the different angles.
- The stair that was here
was actually completely enclosed,
it was twice the size,
and it was a heavy concrete and steel stair.
The stair itself is all open riser
to allow, again, visual access,
also you can hear everything.
One of the things that you'll see are these pockets
where the original floor joists were.
We had to remove a few in order for the stair to work.
The essence of the old building and the new building,
come together in this space pretty beautifully.
We're very interested in working with natural materials,
so the concrete continues into the kitchen.
The cabinetry is a white oak,
which you'll see throughout the house.
- There's a kind of play of shapes as you move around
that are good proportion.
This is a square cabinet above the stove
and then some open shelving,
so there's a mix of both.
For the functional aspects,
we integrated LED lighting,
which gives you great light low down
but no glare.
And then for the luminous volume of this space,
we designed these molded acrylic light fixtures,
and the idea was they're just like cubic volumes of light.
So, they have a soft glow
but they have a shape to the light.
We decided upon a concrete floor
that would have radiant heating,
so not only are there no radiators or no devices,
but also it's the most energy efficient,
'cause all you're doing is pumping a little bit of water
through the tubes in the concrete,
and you're not blowing air around.
And that concrete is a thermal mass,
that once it's heated up it maintains its heat.
Normally, a concrete floor feels cold,
but when you use radiant heat
it's very warm to the touch.
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Both of the clients are writers,
and the library holds a special place in their home,
they have a very large collection of books,
so we located it centrally on the second floor,
open to the sky volume.
You'll notice the verticals are very thin,
16th inch steel plate,
and even set back within the field of the shelving.
And then, the horizontals are an inch and a quarter
white oak solid plank,
and that gives you just the sense of the books
and not the structure of the shelving.
But when you get up close to it,
you have that nice detail of the raw steel.
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- This building is a landmark building,
and in order to transform the building so completely,
we also had to respect and work with Landmarks Preservation.
When the building was built in 1875,
you wouldn't have had a natural mahogany door,
this door would've been a painted door.
So, one of the conversations we had to have,
back and forth with the commission,
was can we now install this beautiful mahogany door,
does it need to be painted,
but a lot of times what you end up with
is a really good compromise,
which I think is what happened here.
So, you have a transom and a surround that's painted wood,
and then we have our beautiful mahogany door.
- [Chris] We finished this house two and a half years ago,
and it's been a joy to return to it
and see how the family is using it,
and filling it out with the daily life,
animating the spaces.
- Chris and I have been working together for many years,
and this has been our most challenging conversion,
and our most rewarding.
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