Environmentally, renovation is significantly less disruptive than demolition and new construction. It reduces landfill waste and the demand for new building materials, decreasing carbon emissions associated with manufacturing and transportation. Moreover, retrofitting these structures with energy-efficient upgrades such as improved insulation, modern heating systems, and solar panels enhances their sustainability and reduces overall energy consumption.
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As our planet continues to warm, sustainable building practices will become even more crucial to constructing new single-family homes for several reasons. Firstly, they significantly reduce the environmental impact of buildings by utilizing eco-friendly materials and energy-efficient technologies, such as solar panels and green insulation materials. This not only helps conserve natural resources but also decreases greenhouse gas emissions.
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Supportive housing in New York City is crucial for addressing some of the most pressing challenges its most vulnerable residents face. By combining affordable housing with essential services such as healthcare, job training, and substance abuse treatment, supportive housing provides a stable foundation for individuals and families to thrive. This approach helps reduce homelessness and alleviates strain on public services like emergency healthcare and the criminal justice system.
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Nestled in the serene woods of New Hampshire, this innovative project entails the construction of an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) designed to Passive House standards. The sustainable approach minimizes environmental impact by preserving the natural surroundings and removing only three trees.
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A panelized prefab home is built faster with a higher degree of accuracy and stricter tolerances enabling a more energy-efficient home in less time. Prefab panelized homes can be assembled on-site in two days, with less building waste (according to the National Association of Homebuilder’s panelized prefab reduces onsite waste by 80%), better quality, and predictable timelines and budgets. Something standard onsite construction cannot achieve. A faster building cycle also means a more rapid ROI, whether you’re renting, selling, or living in your new home.
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In partnership with an affordable care provider in NYC, WAKE was retained to explore, analyze, and assess the viability of up-zoning half an NYC block into an affordable housing development for individuals and families facing chronic poverty and at risk of becoming homeless.
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Nestled between Atlantic Avenue and Fulton Street in the iconic Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, Aqua Development, emerges offering each of its residents private and public outdoor space. The outcome of a six-lot study, resulting in the merger of two tax lots to maximize efficiency, "Aqua" is a 7-stories, 54,000 square feet, and 52-unit residential development utilizing staggered balconies, cantilevers, dormer regulations, and programmatic adjacency to achieve the developer's goal of offering up exterior space to all residences, regardless of size, location, or income.
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What does it mean to create space, to bring new meaning and definition to an existing site, to recreate the genius loci of an existing building, to change a sense of place? To explore this idea, and to ensure that a multiplicity of experiential qualities existed on the site, we decided to situate our intervention perpendicular to the governing axis.
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Located in Manhattan’s South Seaport District Cirque/Haus is a unique studio space that caters to all forms of body movement practices from acroyoga to the aerial arts, rock climbing and jujitsu.
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In bustling cities throughout the United States and the world, space is a premium, and renters complain about high prices. Many believe that micro-apartments answer this complaint and are looking at this growing trend as a possible solution. The micro-apartment offers a new option to young professionals living in city centers unwilling to pay top dollar to live with multiple roommates. Similarly, homeowners find that a well-designed layout can make up for the lack of space while keeping costs significantly lower than a traditional home.
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Offering up a variety of benefits, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU's) can help increase a community's housing supply or an individual's livable space at a minimal cost. ADU's are a flexible solution for many single-family homes that need additional space.
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Warehouse 623 is the conversion of an existing two-story brick storage warehouse in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood. The new building program includes a ground floor commercial art gallery and café, with flexible artist and craftsman studios on the 2nd floor. The 2nd-floor workshop space will be rented out on a per desk/per month basis to accommodate the changing needs of Brooklyn artists.
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The 299 sqft addition – part of a newly renovated duplex apartment w/ private roof terrace – will crown the freshly renovated and restored building designed by the architect Timothy Remsen and built c. 1891. The building's addition was designed as a contemporary take on the mansard roofs found on some Romanesque Revival-style buildings in the Prospect Heights district. The rhythm of the penthouse’s glazing is derived from 576 Vanderbilt’s facade, and the dark bronze and teak material palette will elegantly complement the existing building and its context
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Concept House is an exploration of future expansion considering the growth of a family, the rezoning of a community, and the practicalities of phased construction. Through this exploration, the exiting home is renovated to accommodate the future addition while also creating an exterior porch which will turn into an interior atrium at a later point in time. The atrium connects the existing home with the proposed addition of expanding family living, study, and community space.
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The all-weather public promenade residing under and around the museum space has its environment 'dotted' with wooden columns allowing one to walk through the woods while within a city center. Enclosed within this wooded forest are two informal, stepped theaters for performance and viewing the water.
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The unique opportunity to create a large-scale, innovative, high-density development in the heart of Brownstone, Brooklyn, is scarce. As such, we sought to propose an alternative solution to Ratner’s 'City-In-The-Park' scheme. A solution that creates a series of urban spaces to complement the adjacent neighbor's vibrant street life while responding in scale to the existing context of Brooklyn's Brownstone typology through a series of enlarging porous structures.
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