#designbrooklyn

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Design Brooklyn authors and panelists discuss Brooklyn design at Bookcourt in Brooklyn, NY, on Jan. 30, 2014

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The Best Of Brooklyn's New Architecture And Interior Design

DESIGN BROOKLYN: RENOVATION, RESTORATION, INNOVATION GIVES AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE AESTHETIC RISE OF BROOKLYN DESIGN, INCLUDING A PEAK AT BEASTIE BOY MIKE D'S TOWNHOUSE.

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Lush Living: Summit Street Garden and the Greenest Block in Brooklyn

Summit Street Community Garden in the Columbia Street Waterfront contributes cooperative green space to the neighborhood.

Lincoln Road between Bedford and Rogers Avenues won the title “The Greenest Block in Brooklyn” in 2012.

The summer in Brooklyn reveals itself in lush gushes of green, throughout the borough. There are the community gardens on many city corners, one of which, Summit Street Community Garden, offers a perfect example of tranquility in the midst of urban life. And once a year in August, The Greenest Block in Brooklyn is announced to great acclaim. In 2012, a block on Lincoln Road in Lefferts Gardens was given the title, and we had a chance to photograph it in all its glory. 

Summit Street Community Garden, Columbia Street Waterfront

The sign on the gate to this community garden in the Columbia Street Waterfront reports that it comprises “.103 acre.” It doesn’t sound like a lot of land, but a verdant corner like this, if given the right amount of care and the shade of trees, can feel like a true oasis in the middle of the city.

The concept is simple: garden members from the neighborhood share responsibilities, each pitching in to create a plot that provides both a destination on summer evenings as well as a working green space. Planting beds are divvied up so that neighbors can grow vegetables and flowers. A wooden gazebo roofed with grape vines offers members a cool place to dine. A unique element of Summit Street Garden is its peach trees, which produce fresh fruit in warm months that members can pluck and take home.

Entering a garden like this gives the sensation of stepping off the sidewalk into the country, without the requisite car ride. Of course, there is a great amount of work involved, but it is well, well worth it.

Summit Street Community Garden

The Greenest Block in Brooklyn

Each year, GreenBridge, the community environmental horticulture program of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, selects the “Greenest Block in Brooklyn.” In 2012, Lincoln Road, between Bedford and Rogers Avenues, in the Lefferts Gardens neighborhood, took first place. The contest not only promotes streetscape gardening, tree stewardship, and community development throughout the borough, it motivates beautiful results. On Lincoln Road, homeowners created lush stoops, tree beds, and window boxes, bringing nature into the city’s streets.

Winners of the 2013 contest will be announced in August at a press conference held on their block.

GreenBridge 

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 990 Washington Avenue, 
Brooklyn, NY 11225

Post by Anne Hellman 

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Dining Upside Down: Saraghina, Bedford-Stuyvesant

The notion to hang dining chairs from the ceiling in this Bedford-Stuyvesant restaurant was inspired by the children’s story Peter Pan. Edoardo Mantelli, who owns the Italian eatery and pizzeria, brought in artist Paola Citterio to design an atmosphere that evokes the home-cooked food the menu is based on. The space Citterio created in what used to be a one-story garage is both nostalgic and light-hearted, as though all of it has been sprinkled with a little bit of pixie dust. 

The pay booth from the site’s previous incarnation as a garage has been reconceived as a busing station as well as a place to hang cured meats.

Chairs are not the only items that hang from the ceiling. Glass wine jugs hung like chandeliers provide the ideal light fixtures over the front counter. Found signage from the area’s past and other kitchen elements such as old bottles, canisters, and dangling meats and cheeses decorate the rooms. The interior has been given a coat of white paint, bringing new life to the aged wooden beams. All this, without erasing a strong sense of place and history.

The menu sign utilizes a rusted part from a water well and whitewashed wood to convey the eclecticism of the restaurant interior.

Saraghina’s façade has been painted an uncharacteristic black, giving it a shack-like quality and a sense of history that befits the neighborhood.

Outside, the black façade and rustic menu sign give a hint of the conceptually playful interior, as well as a nod to the old structures of the neighborhood. It is nice to think about, when sitting down inside, what it would be like to float up to the ceiling.

Saraghina, 435 Halsey Street, Brooklyn, NY 11233, 718-574-0010

Post by Anne Hellman

[design-brooklyn]

The Indoor-Outdoor Connection: Prospect Place, Park Slope

One solution in modern townhouse renovation—while retaining the original brownstone façade, with stoop, window decoration, and cornice—is to completely overturn the typology of the row house on the inside. This is how Brooklyn-based design architect Tina Manis approached this turn-of-the-century home in Park Slope. Working closely with the owners, she wanted to make the interior unpredictable, so that walking in, one steps away from old Brooklyn and into a place more like California, where both Manis and one owner are from.

Architect Tina Manis envisioned a completely modern interior for this 1870s brownstone in Park Slope.

“New York is a walled city,” says Manis. “The owners wanted the house to have a stronger connection to the exterior.” Because the house had suffered some structural damage, every joist had to be replaced, which meant that Manis could take the opportunity to maximize the building space. Creating a garden rental, she added an eighteen-foot-deep, four-story-high extension onto the back of the owner’s triplex made entirely of glass and metal aluminum. The ceilings in the living room are double-height, allowing for complete connection with the outdoors and plenty of southern light in the wintertime.

“There is a sunroom feel to the entire house, which I find incredibly heartening in the winter,” says one owner.

The glass and metal aluminum extension creates a seamless connection between exterior and interior. A Lindsey Adelman fixture hangs in the double-height space.

Manis moved the staircase, which traditionally aligns with the stoop, to the back of the building and reversed its direction so that the entry hall and living room can be unobstructed. Also, by re-designating the position of the stairs, she confined the traffic and noise of the stairwell to the back of the house.

The stair wall functions as a library, with white shelves set off by colorful book spines. The railing was reconceived as a netted fence, constructed of PVC-coated chain link and designed by Droog in the Netherlands. The chain link was woven in Bangladesh.

Since both owners work in book publishing, there was a profound need for bookshelves integrated into the house. Manis masterminded staggered white built-ins, which she calls beehive shelving, that run along the stairs, the bottom openings shaped to the slant. The railing is made of white PVC-coated chain link, woven into a lace-like pattern. By contrast, the railings on the upstairs mezzanine overlooking the living room are glass, allowing for the stairs to become a distinct vertical object and simplifying the layers of space.

In the front portion of the house, Manis created a rounded volume that separates the kitchen and entry hall, as well as the formal dining room from the kitchen, and coated it with plaster given a metallic finish. As the volume extends up into the second floor, the plaster continues, providing texture to the walls in these spaces and subtly reflecting the light streaming in.

A 1950s Italian antique fixture hangs in the dining room, which carries the façade in through the traditionally paned windows. The owners worked with interior decorator Buzz Kelly to find elements such as the dining chairs as well as the fixture.

The concrete floor tiles in the vestibule were handmade by North Carolina artist Andy Fleischman. The fixture is by Pelle. 

In the home's entryway, translucent glass installed in a second-story window allows light to penetrate the master bedroom upstairs while maintaining privacy. The eyebrow window opening is original to the house, with the sidelight added to provide more visibility from the inside.

Design Architect: Tina Manis

Post by Anne Hellman