Tribeca Loft

Tribeca resembles SoHo today in terms of its residential offerings, based for the most part on the conversion of an existing architectural heritage, in a face-off with traces of urban history. But there are also major operations of urban ‘replacement,’ such as the exclusive residential tower at 56 Leonard Street (2017) by the studio Herzog & de Meuron, built where the New York Law School once stood, inserting a new 57-story skyscraper that boasts the most expensive penthouse in the city, sold for 47 million dollars.

This is the context for the project by the firm Dean/Wolf Architects for a loft on the upper levels (sixth and seventh) of one the traditional warehouse buildings from the last century, which still form the urban fabric and architectural image of the area. The loft is inserted in compositional terms in the long narrow plan of the building, whose long sides are without openings (attached to the neighboring buildings) while the short sides have windows, joined by a precious gap along one of the long sides. Taking advantage of the possibility of working on the roof of the existing volume – transformed with the construction of a domestic pavilion to create a welcoming small penthouse set between two new terraces – the spaces below capture brightness from skylights and careful openings that offer views of the sky across the hours of the day.

The entrance from the elevator opens onto the living area, organized along the main front of the sixth floor and directly connected to the dining room, followed by the kitchen and – at the back – the zone with two bedrooms, one of which has its own bathroom. The living-dining-kitchen and wardrobe sequence, connected in a unified composition, is marked by the forceful feature of the new slab in reinforced concrete, alongside the wooden framework of the original structure, exposed to view and restored.

The new structural slab is interrupted at the position of the ribbon staircase, also in concrete, supported by steel rods and leading to the upper level, while creating a sculptural movement produced by the 90-degree rotation of part of its surface, transforming into a beam that continues towards the bedroom zone. In the dining area, besides the wooden ceilings, the project has revealed the original brick of the blank wall, creating an effective material and structural contrast with the fair-face concrete of the new slab and the staircase, but also with the floor in smoothed concrete, like the custom island kitchen.