“There is always a tension between the design and the way we inhabit it, but truly inhabitable space is open to accidents, is a background to life. It makes people feel good and grounded and free without knowing why. It makes the normal special...”
SELECTED WORKS
Pine Street
Pine Street Gallery + Apartments, Philadelphia, PA - 3,837 sqft Interior Renovation + Exterior Restoration / Adaptive Reuse
1108 PINE was built as a single-family home during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and World War I. Over the course of 103 years, it has been an antique store, art gallery, and more importantly, the backdrop for an M. Night Shyamalan movie The Sixth Sense. In its current incarnation, it’s an arts and humanities salon at street level, with 4 rental units above.
Counter to common commercial redevelopment that erases the character of an old building, we applied a sensitive intervention- one sympathetic to the building’s past while focusing on its future. This balancing act of retaining the time-worn patina while providing today’s modern amenities was achieved through textures and finishes bridging the past and present. During the demo phase, we discovered a lot of unused wall space or covered niches original to the building. To maximize square footage, all nooks and crannies were redesigned as storage or shelving for clothing, food, HVAC equipment, etc. Our favorite part perhaps was designing the built-ins, furniture, and peg boards to match the cabinet doors for extra storage and seating.
Hut or Shed?
Hut or Shed? - Residential, Brookline, MA
Hut or Shed is an off-grid structure, situated in the backyard of a home outside of Boston. Standing 8’ wide by 12.5’ deep by 11’ high, its sole purpose is to serve as an outdoor bedroom. Ambiguously minimal in form, it questions the notion of material expression and typologic association - necessitating two finish palette options: one for a shed, and one for a hut. Metal cladding often used in the fabrication of everyday rural sheds is one option, with wood slats more commonly found in snowy nordic regions being another. We suggested Kebony for its rustic tone and beautiful soft gray patina, which would enable the structure to recede into the hardscape.
Keeping a holistic approach to design in mind, we also created a few schemes for the surrounding garden. This project is a collaboration with Sven Schroeder Architect.
QV Loft
Master Suite
The Rental
Home Office
Social Materiality