Vol. 38, No. 18

3-4-2004
By: Susan Wittstock

Architects reinvent the Brooklyn brownstone

The brownstone of the future could have an interior stairwell lit naturally through fiber optics, a public garden within 15 feet, and be stacked in a level off-set from its urban neighbors, according to a design created by the Knowlton School of Architecture’s Beth Blostein and Bart Overly.

Blostein, assistant professor of architecture, and Overly, lecturer and digital publications curator, received first prize in a recent “New Housing New York” International Design Ideas Competition. The contest awarded $10,000 each to winners who created affordable housing concepts for sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens. Blostein and Overly won for the speculative Brooklyn site.

“This competition was a conceptual look at issues concerning affordable housing in New York, and in particular, zoning codes allowing for super high density in Brooklyn and other residential areas,” Overly said. “We were really trying to take a new look at traditional housing styles in New York. Our project tried to reinvent the brownstone.”

Traditional brownstones require that every unit have access to the street, which doesn’t allow for high density housing. Blostein and Overly’s brownstones are essentially stacked vertically, allowing for higher housing density on a single block. However, because they liked the idea of a brownstone’s front stoop as a gathering spot, they took that concept and moved it into the interior for their design.

Interior stairwells connect two levels of units, offset to allow more units to have access to the streetscape. “The internal stairs connecting the two sides of the unit are optic window boxes, which are filled with natural light through fiber optic collectors at the roof,” Overly said.

“We wanted to blur the boundaries between public and private, inside and outside, and we had to reinvent the notion of street,” Blostein said.

The flexible design also includes public gardens that are situated every 30 feet and sit between units. No unit is further than 15 feet from a garden. “We were inspired by the space of fire escapes in New York that are reclaimed as outdoor spaces,” Overly said.

The brownstone project was designed, theoretically, for the development of a block front facing the Fourth Avenue corridor in Brooklyn that has a mix of detached, single-family homes and a few convenience stores. “The issue is how can you support the new high-density guidelines and still respect the neighborhood?” Overly said.

The contest was sponsored by the Council of the City of New York, the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and the City University of New York.

Blostein and Overly met while undergraduates at Ohio State, each earning a bachelor of science in architecture in 1991. Blostein went on to earn an MA in industrial design from Ohio State and a master of design studies at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Overly holds a master of architecture from Princeton University. They are partners for Blostein/Overly Architects, a firm located in Columbus that specializes in interdisciplinary design work.

Overly recently won a Downtown Columbus’ Special Improvement District-sponsored competition, which asked entrants to beautify downtown windows on North High Street. His project, The City Fabulous: A Soap Opera, projected video alternatives for eight vacant storefronts this November through January, recapturing a bit of the neon atmosphere that used to exist downtown. In March 2003, Blostein was a winner in the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s Prototypical Habitat House

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