SO-IL designed an urban multi-unit dwellings in the Gowanus area, Brooklyn, focusing on creating a new model of living together. The design incorporates open spaces, greenery, and courtyards to promote sustainability and bring natural light and nature into the site. It emphasizes the importance of community and interaction while also providing contrasting spaces for privacy and intimacy, with apartments having direct exterior entrances, front porches, and balconies. The integration of transparent materials allows for light and seasonal changes to permeate the building.
-text by the authors
From row house brownstones to towers surrounded by green, the formerly industrial area of Gowanus is richly diverse in historic models if housing. A newly revitalized greenway adds to a specific context from which we question: What is a new model of living together? Our design frees urban multi-unit dwelling from traditional protocols. We engage with what makes the city more livable: conversationse with the outdoors and conversations with others.
We believe open space and green make living in proximity to one another more sustainable. Three courtyards create porosity to bring light and green deep within the site. A number of smaller structures open to the street and throughout the building. Textured masorny winds around each volume and courtyard, shadows move across differing orientations to register the movement of the sun and the seasons.
A community means shared spaces for living and relaxing together, but also informal interaction. Neighbors see one another’s comings and goings across the way, and a shared entry courtyard encourages chat. Transparent materials allow light and changing seasons to permeate the building’s activity.
Community living is also about contrasting spaces for privacy and intimacy. Each apartment entry is directly from the exterior. A front porch begins the transition to private space, reminiscent of neighborhood front stoops, a threshold between in and out, and communal and indivisual.
Living areas are a gradient of indoors and out, defined by their relationship to the landscape that fills the courtyards. Large terraces extend each living space outdoors. Intimate balconies create a buffer from the street for master bedrooms. Courtyards allow windows on three sides of every apartment.
A mix of window sizes define atmospheres of changing natural light and framed views to courtyards and the neighborhood beyond.
Facts & Credits
Project title 450 Warren
Project type Housing complex
Location Brooklyn, USA
Completion 2022
Area 5016 m2
Design team Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu, Ted Baab, Karilyn Johanesen, Doek Kyu Chung, Alek Tomich, Danny Wei
Photography Iwan Baan
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