Sunnyside Renovation
Published in Dwell
Project Team: Lane Rick, Can Vu Bui and Sol Condo
Photography: Nicholas Venezia
A
busy and often traveling theater couple approached us to reimagine their
Sunnyside co-op, from a quaint pre-war kitchen, into one that is open to the
home, and can act as a theatrical backdrop to their lives at home.
In
keeping with Office of Thing’s practice of subverting accepted ideas to produce
unexpected results, our approach was to reconfigure the layout of the
apartment, turning a bedroom into a larger living room, and open up the
dividing wall between that space and the kitchen, creating a larger
entertaining area. The clients were open to a bold redesign, so we pushed the
the kitchen to be dramatic: a mix of disparate materials and colors, both new
and old, are carefully composed to embolden the space as a functional and fun
kitchen of contrasts: shiny chrome finishes are contrasted with newly exposed
century old iron steam pipes belonging to the co-op; orange upper cabinets
embrace the warmth of the southern sun, are balanced by the rough brushed
finish of the black granite countertop; an aqua-colored handmade and heavily
uneven glazed ceramic tile plays against the standard factory-made smoothness
of plywood at lower cabinets.