For this half-million square foot industrial/commercial-to-residential conversion project in Williamsburg, we are acting as interior architects, designing the apartment interiors, and all other interior public spaces, including lobby area, lounge/game area, conference/business space, children’s room, gym, and corridors. SLCE Architects is the executive architect on this project.

The building program calls for over three hundred units across a variety of apartment types. In our design, we created modules for kitchens and baths that can accomodate the particular conditions in each unit. This excercise was especially challenging as the pre-existing industrial shell has a substantial column grid that resulted from the non-standard conditions in the units. We worked directly with kitchen and bath vendors to accomplish our design goals in the most economical fashion. Understanding vendors’ fabrication constraints and designing around those, while standardizing as much as possible, has allowed us to achieve an apparently luxurious design aesthetic on a tight per unit budget.

In the public spaces we strove to create a design that incorporates the elegant industrial shell of the existing building shell while customizing it to its next phase as a residential building. The characteristic concrete shell is the largest presence and we felt that it should be preserved and featured. The intrinsic appeal and distinguishing characteristic of this building will ultimately be the marriage of modern design with industrial heritage. In that spirit, the junction of concrete with new material introduction is articulated clearly, allowing the occupant to appreciate and understand both conditions. The extensive public amenity program includes a lobby, several lounges, game areas, gym, children’s room, flexible conference space and kitchenette.