Prospect Park Residence
Brooklyn, New York

Overlooking the verdant expanse of Brooklyn's Prospect Park, this penthouse residence for a family of four elevates daily living activities through a narrative of serene comfort and understated pleasure. The 2,500-square-foot space is located on the fifteenth floor of a 1920s Emery Roth brick and terra-cotta building with sweeping views of the city, harbor, and park. Permeated with light, the interior reflects the cycles of day and night as a volumetric canvas enriched by a warm material palette. Enhancing the sensations of air, light, and sound composes an environment of spatial clarity and casual ease.

The preexisting partitioned layout was reconfigured to create an open primary living space of generous proportions, and replace three small bedrooms with two larger ones. Warm ambient light emanates from cantilevered brushed aluminum light beams designed by Gabellini Sheppard, while wide-plank Peruvian walnut flooring adds tonal richness. Introspective as well as outward-looking, the home provides a revolving backdrop for the client's contemporary art collection, which includes works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Matthew Barney, Richard Prince, Cai Guo Qiang, Rebecca Horn, Douglas Gordon, and Robert Smithson, among others.

The layering of contrasting forms of natural and synthetic materials imbues the residence with subtle vitality. Hand-crafted walnut furnishings, cantilevered white lacquered shelving, and an ink blue llama-wool rug woven on a quadruple-width loom exemplify a balance between modern simplicity and technical dexterity. In addition to plaster walls and ceiling, the palette of texturally distinct white tones includes seamless lacquered cabinetry and sliding panels, and honed sivec marble countertops. Throughout the apartment, an incised architectural reveal traces the intersections of floor, wall, and ceiling planes, articulating them as hovering spatial frames joined in a three-dimensional puzzle. This subtle graphic lining displaces weight with a sense of lightness.