This is a conversion of a historic landmarked Cass Gilbert warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn into nearly three hundred residential units. We were responsible for designing all apartment interiors, corridors and interior public spaces for the extensive amenity program including lobby area, gym, lounge/game area, conference/business space, children's room.
In the public spaces we strove to create a design that incorporates the historic industrial shell of the existing building while adapting to its next phase as a residential building. 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 materials is articulated clearly, allowing the occupant to appreciate and understand both conditions. By focusing on specific moments for new intervention within the expansive existing industrial shell we were able to create a refined luxurious experience at specific points of contact with occupants while also maintaining and celebrating the authentic, industrial character of this historic building. These smaller scaled refined insertions are also an efficient and cost effective way to deal with the huge scale of the existing structure.
The building program calls for a variety of apartment types. We created a modular design to accommodate the particular conditions in each unit. This exercise was especially challenging as the pre-existing industrial shell has a substantial column grid that resulted in very few entirely standard conditions in the units. We also worked directly with kitchen and bath vendors to accomplish our design goals in the most economical fashion. This allowed us to achieve an apparently luxurious design aesthetic on a tight per unit budget.
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