Kwasspace, A Residential Loft and Studio was designed to serve the personal and professional needs of a dedicated workaholic and creative strategist. While it never intended to provide a business and home- it instead was challenged with the task of making real the term work-live.
Two spaces, one extruded, the other centralized in plan were conjoined by a 32-foot-long sliding wall. The working half borrows from the living half for its intermittent program of presentation and entertainment, blurring the literal boundary between the two.
The more intimate spaces, the master bedroom, and the private office are respectively veiled behind textured glass walls, one curved and one angled. Their relationship across the threshold of separation is revealed only upon the sliding walls’ ceremonial opening.
The kitchen sits here, at the intersection of these two spaces. Made to appear as more of a bar than a kitchen it conceals its appliances and presents instead a wine cabinet and media center. The counter is not intended for sitting but for standing alongside during an opening or event. The cabinetry is finished with a Dupont metallic automotive paint whose color was created by the owner as representative of her brand.
New York
USA
Barbara Kwasnicki
06/2011
260 m2
Frederick Biehle, Partner and Erika Hinrichs, Partner
Jae Heon Lin, Johnny Monrose, staff
Pat Blewitt, Bluetec custom Cabinetry
Biehle Brothers Decorative Painting, Domenick Minervini- Artistic Metalwork
SMC Stone, Tech Lighting monorail track, Chicago Faucet, Elkay, Subzero, Thermador, Bosch, Bluetech
Michael Moran
Curriculum
Erika Hinrichs and Frederick Biehle formed their joint practice in 1997. They met thorough the office of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects, where they had both worked previously as architects at different times.
Erika Hinrichs has a Professional degree from the Cooper Union where she studied under John Hejduk. Frederick Biehle received a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University and was the recipient of a Prix de Rome Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. They are both currently Professors of Architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where Erika is the chair of Undergraduate Architecture.
The work of their practice attempts to mediate their varied interests through a process of thinking through drawing. A fascination with the figure in space, both two and three dimensionally frames this thinking. They describe the process as one that results in a heightened awareness of spatial Interiority, Porosity, and Materiality.
