Process

Swinehart Loft

2,200 SF
New York, NY

The clients are a cou­ple liv­ing in the Tribeca loft dis­trict of New York. He is in finan­cial and she is an artist. They needed a space with a dual nature: a quiet refuge for him, a home stu­dio for her.

The strat­egy was sim­ply to reor­ga­nize the loft with a com­pact cen­tral area, seper­at­ing the pri­vate from the pub­lic areas. Within this cen­tral area the bath­rooms, clos­ets, util­i­ties, a study as well as part of the kitchen were placed. To rein­force the box-like appear­ance of this vol­ume, doors were detailed more like inte­grated wall pan­els. More

Stretch­ing the full length of the loft an unin­ter­rupted hall­way con­nects the two win­dow walls. The brick­work along this hall was ren­dered to com­ple­ment the real­ist art­work of the owner. We worked closely with her to give it an appear­ance of some­thing new and old. At one end of the hall­way a slid­ing panel allows the stu­dio to be enclosed.

As a pre­dom­i­nant pal­lette, the mate­ri­als are airey, quiet and neu­tral. In con­trast, there are moments of dark accents such as the exist­ing cast iron columns which were cleaned to their nat­ural patina. As the high­light of the ren­o­va­tion, the mas­ter bath­room is clad in slabs of Paozetto mar­ble. A large translu­cent glass panel pro­tects the wet areas from the van­ity. Float­ing within this glass panel are two mir­rored areas. Per­cep­tu­ally, they appear to be voids into a sus­pended space beyond.